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America’s Largest Listing is a ‘Versailles’ With Guitar Gardens | Chappaqua NY Homes
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NAR: Rising home prices infringe affordability | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
The vast majority of metropolitan areas continued to experience strong year-over-year price growth in the fourth quarter, the latest quarterly report by the National Association of Realtors revealed.
However, a companion metro area annual affordability report pictures less favorable conditions, especially in the West.
The median existing single-family home price rose in 73% of measured markets, with 119 out of 164 metropolitan statistical areas recording gains based on closings in the fourth quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2012.
In addition, forty-two areas, 26%, had double-digit increases, two were unchanged and 43 recorded lower median prices.
There are two ways of looking at the price gains, Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said.
“The vast majority of homeowners have seen significant gains in equity over the past two years, which is helping the economy through increased consumer spending,” Yun said.
“At the same time, home prices have been rising faster than incomes, while mortgage interest rates are above the record lows of a year ago. This is beginning to hamper housing affordability,” he added.
On Monday, HousingWire reported on Yun’s remarks at the alabama Commercial Real Estate Conference after he noted that it feels like America is still in a recession.
“Looking at the economy, last year was overall a sub-par performance with 2% GDP. That is below the historical norm of 3% and it’s been several years of under 3% growth,” he added.
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/28920-nar-rising-home-prices-infringe-affordability
Is Now the Right Time to Sell Your Home? | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
With the housing market on an upswing, is now the right time to put your house on the market?
A recent survey by Redfin found 38% of home sellers believe now is a good time to sell, up from 34% last quarter and an enormous improvement from 22% in the fourth quarter of last year.
It is no secret that a lot of homeowners who want to sell their homes have been waiting (for several years in some cases) for a better housing market before listing their house. Mortgage rates are relatively low, inventories are at their lowest level in years, and confidence in the housing market is the highest it’s been since before the mortgage crisis.
Sounds like you should consider selling, right? The short answer is “maybe”, but there are several factors to consider in determining whether it is the right time to sell for you.
Location: What’s going on in your local market? Before deciding to put your home on the market, it is very important to contact a local realtor (or a few) in order to see what’s happening where you live.
Maybe smaller homes are selling but larger, more expensive homes are sitting on the market for six months or more. Maybe there is a high amount of inventory of homes like yours on the market, which generally creates more pressure to lower the asking price. In many coastal areas, markets are at a standstill due to the ongoing drama regarding flood insurance.
On the other hand, maybe your particular type of home is very popular in the area you live in. Maybe condos are in high demand where you live. Maybe a new large employer opened up and homes nearby are in high demand.
The point is there is a tremendous variety of real estate markets in the United States, and there is no way to determine the level of demand for a particular property just by looking at national statistics
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/09/is-now-the-right-time-to-sell-your-home.aspx
Case-Shiller: Home prices dipped in November | Chappaqua Homes
Home prices in November fell slightly for the first time since November 2012, as the combination of price gains earlier in 2013 and higher mortgage rates caused prices to reach a plateau, according to a leading index of housing-market activity.
The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 top cities fell 0.1% in November. A separate 10-city index also fell by 0.1%, Standard & Poor’s/Dow Jones Indices said in a statement. The 20-city index showed prices 13.8% higher than a year earlier, while the 10-city index rose 13.7%.
The company said the dip is not a reversal of the housing recovery. Prices typically dip in November and this performance was the best for any November since 2005. Seasonally adjusted, prices rose 0.9% in November.
“Beginning June 2012, we saw a steady rise in year-over-year increases, (and) November continued that trend,” said David Blitzer, head of the index committee at S&P/Dow Jones Indices. “The Sun Belt continues to push ahead with Atlanta, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Tampa taking eight of the top nine spots.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/01/28/case-shiller-housing/4957633/
Housing Market Resumes This Downtrend | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
Despite a slight improvement in interest rates, mortgage applications and refinancing activity declined in the latest update from the Mortgage Bankers Association. For the week ended January 24, 2014, applications for home loans decreased 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.
On an unadjusted basis, mortgage applications plunged 9 percent from the prior week. There have only been a handful of increases over the past nine months as the housing market is starting to return to a more sustainable pace. The Refinance Index and Purchase Index both declined 2 percent from the previous week. Meanwhile, the unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 3 percent compared with the previous week and was 12 percent lower than the same week one year ago.
Overall, the refinance share of mortgage activity accounted for 62 percent of total applications, down from 64 percent a week earlier, which was the highest level in a month. Interest rates have rebounded higher in recent months, but a disappointing jobs report earlier this month could keep rates under control for the near future as the Federal Reserve maintains a loose monetary policy. In December, the U.S. economy added only 74,000 jobs, the smallest monthly gain in three years and a far cry from the 200,000 jobs estimated by economists
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/housing-market-resumes-this-downtrend.html/?ref=YF
Buyer’s agent builds blog audience by cutting Greenwich, Conn., down to size | Chappaqua Real Estate
Instead of singing the praises of his local market, Greenwich, Conn., buyer’s agent Christopher Fountain has built an audience for his blog, “For What It’s Worth,” by tearing it down.
“The essence of his complaint,” writes the New York Times’ Landon Thomas Jr. in a profile of Fountain, is that “decades of easy money and ceaseless greed have created a glut of unsalable houses that will remain a blight on his hometown for many years.”
Fountain catalogs residents’ “run-ins with the law, debt-fueled implosions or plain old bad taste,” Thomas says, winning a “cult following” among the very people he’s making fun of: “financial titans who can afford to plunk down $5 million or more on a house.” Source: New York Times.
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/greenwich-conn-agent-nabs-attention-with-blog-that-lambastes-local-real-estate/?utm_source=20140127&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinespm#sthash.VtsefwpH.dpuf
A look at shifting trends in home ownership by occupation | Chappaqua NY Homes
The housing crisis didn’t hit all professions equally. In fact, construction workers and builders are the only group who increased their rate of home ownership in the years after the recession, new research shows.
In an analysis of over 70 different professions before and after the recession (2007 to 2009, vs. 2010 to 2012), home ownership among construction workers rose 1 percentage point to 55.4% — the highest growth of any profession — and increased 0.7 percentage points to 65.4% among carpenters during the same period, according to real-estate website Trulia, which mined U.S. Census data for the statistics. Home ownership among electricians remained steady at 75% before and after the recession, the study found.
Construction workers did especially well, given the crash in the property market after 2008, says Susan M. Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at Wharton University of Pennsylvania. “The only sectors that saw growth are groups that have access to bargains and distressed housing and have the expertise to fix them up,” she says. Others are more perplexed by the increase among laborers, especially since they were among the hardest-hit professionals when the housing market crashed in 2008. “It’s certainly ironic,” says Don Frommeyer, president of the National Association of Mortgage Professionals, which represents mortgage brokers. Still, he says, the recovery in the housing market in 2013 should be of some consolation to those who are ready to get back on the property ladder.