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Why the Fiscal Cliff Is Inevitable and Also Necessary | Chappaqua NY Homes

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The fiscal cliff is a powerful metaphor. It sounds like an impending disaster, but in reality, we’ll wake up on the morning of Jan. 3 and life will be unchanged. Sure, tax rates will nominally be higher, some tax breaks will have been canceled, and the government will be expected to implement major cuts in military and domestic spending. If that continues for several months, it will have an adverse affect on the economy.

(VIDEO: TIME Explains: The Fiscal Cliff)

But letting the law take effect will also have some real benefits. For one thing, on the other side of the cliff, we’ll be a big step closer to the kind of fundamental reform of the tax code that both Democrats and Republicans say they want. Two provisions that limit the deductions and personal exemptions the wealthy can take — similar to the cap on deductions proposed by Mitt Romney — will come back into effect. Capital-gains rates will rise from 15 % to 20%, and dividends will be taxed at normal rates, reducing the incentives for tricks like the notorious “carried-interest loophole.” And instead of a tax system that produces less revenue as a percentage of GDP than at any time since 1950, we’ll move toward one that is adequate to the needs of a modern, dynamic economy. The fiscal cliff is, all by itself, a budget deal and a step toward tax reform. A flawed and dangerous one, to be sure, but a far better starting point for a real budget agreement than the temporary rules of 2012.

(MORE: Fiscal-Cliff Deal? Don’t Hold Your Breath)

Once tax rates and other provisions have returned to their previous levels, as planned, Congress and the White House will have a little time to look at taxes and spending, and decide how best to keep the economy moving, now and in the future. Is it by cutting taxes for low- and middle-income working families, who were hit hardest by the recession and gained little in the George W. Bush years, when most of the benefits of growth went to the top? Or is it another round of tax cuts for those who have gained the most?

Let’s remember also that the fiscal cliff is not a natural phenomenon, it’s the law. None of the tax cuts that will be changed by it were supposed to be permanent in the first place. Some of the cuts, mostly those from the early Obama years, were to provide economic stimulus during the recession. Those should be revisited every couple years, and if we think the economy still needs a boost, we should renew them for another year or two. But the bulk of the tax cuts that expire date from 2001 and ’03. At that time — when our country had budget surpluses — both Democrats and Republicans wanted to cut taxes. But Republicans wanted to cut them by about twice as much and to make much bigger cuts for the wealthy than for the middle class. Rather than compromise with Democrats, Republicans twice employed a special rule, known as reconciliation, to use their narrow congressional majorities to push their version of tax cuts through. Because that special rule can’t be used to make permanent changes that worsen the deficit, they had to put an expiration date on those tax cuts. So the fiscal cliff is a long overdue chance to revisit choices from the past and better address what we need to do for our future.

In the world on the other side of the fiscal cliff, Democrats and Republicans will have no choice but to work together on tax cuts that will be fairer to the middle class and encourage economic growth. And then, over several years, we have an obligation to look closely at Medicare, in particular, and figure out how to slow the growth of health care costs in that program. That work can only begin on the other side of the fiscal cliff.

via ideas.time.com

3 homeowner rights that are often underutilized | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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USA Today reports that about 132 million people showed up to vote in this year’s election. As large as that number sounds, that maps to only 60 percent of registered voters.

As I see it, everyone who voted (or tried to) did their civic duty, but I’m most humbled by our Floridian compatriots who had to wait in line for hours to cast their votes, and our East Coast neighbors who dialed in and otherwise took time out of their efforts to get back to normal post-Sandy life to make their voices heard.

The fact is, it’s all too easy in the course of everyday life to simply flake when it comes time to vote and exercise one’s civic rights. People do it for many reasons, from feeling like their single voice is too small to have an impact or simply finding it too inconvenient to take the time out of their already-hectic schedules.

Whether your ancestors came over on the Mayflower, a slave ship or via Ellis Island, though, they likely fought hard for your right to vote — and that’s good enough reason to bear the inconvenience to make your little tiny vote count.

In the real estate realm, it’s easy to feel like almost everything about the market, your mortgage and the value of your home is out of your control. But the truth is that there are many real estate rights that go unrecognized and, thus, unexercised:

1. The right to control your own utility bills. Many a homeowner feels slightly held hostage by their utility companies. Who else can you buy electricity, gas or water from, they wonder briefly, before waving a mental white flag when they sign the check for their monthly payment?

In truth, there is much a homeowner can do to control both the amount and the provider of his utility services. You can go solar, whether by buying panels yourself or working with a solar power service that owns the panels and charges you a reduced, preset rate for energy over 20 years.

And there are many other investments you can make — at many levels — in improving your home’s efficiency and, thus, reducing your utility bills. Things like installing dual-paned windows, improving your insulation, installing tankless or solar-powered water heaters, and converting every faucet to a low-flow fixture are among them.

On a less conventional side of things, installing graywater tanks that use wasted sink water for toilet flushing and landscaping, and replacing swathes of green lawn with low-water-consuming native landscaping or food gardens are some more work-intensive — but more rewarding — ways to put you back in control over your household’s energy and water consumption (and expenses).

2. The right to fire your mortgage lender. Most people find their mortgages to be burdensome, to say the least. Even those who aren’t among the 28 percent of homeowners with mortgages that are still underwater are almost always positioned such that their mortgage is their largest monthly expense and a looming financial obligation. Paying it off seems remote and hard to imagine; further, many homeowners will take out equity lines or refinance their mortgages over time, simply restarting the already long countdown to payoff.

But here’s a shocker: Roughly one-third of American homes are owned outright by their owners, free and clear of a mortgage. Truth is, there are many ways to get your home unmortgaged, and I’m not talking about asking your lender to forgive it.

You can exercise your right to live and own your home mortgage-free by pulling one or both of two basic levers: (1) you can cut your existing monthly spending and redirect your savings to paying down the principal balance of your home loan, (2) you can bring more income in, using that to pay your mortgage off earlier than planned, or (3) you can do both!

This might seem impossible, but if this is a right you’d like to exercise, calendar a few quiet hours to really review last month’s bank statements. What you face is a decision about values and priorities: What’s really important to you?

Some financial experts advise that lunches and dinners out, coffee shop stops and cable TV are common categories of budget leaks — these seemingly small expenses add up. But don’t go extreme and try to deprive yourself of every night out or coffee chat with your friends; it’s not sustainable, and you’ll end up turning these moments of happiness into moments of guilt. Instead, cut back where you feel you want to and also cast an eye at larger expenses that can be eliminated.

I’ve known homeowners who have found hundreds of dollars a month they could redirect away from cable TV packages they didn’t really watch and payments for cars and other big toys (motorcycles, boats, etc.) they didn’t really drive.

In the same vein, it can be relatively painless to turn your hobbies or passions into small-scale side businesses, generating some early mortgage payoff funds. I personally know folks doing this through part-time bookkeeping, getting a stand at the local farmers market or even doing some cake decorating on the side. As well, an increasing number of homeowners are using their own homes to generate side income, either renting out rooms or floors on an ongoing basis, or just for a couple of nights here and there on sites like Airbnb and VRBO.

3. The right to HOA sanity. While the vast majority of homeowner associations (HOAs) are functional and smooth, the fact is that many have at least the occasional personality or financial drama. The spectre of rapidly rising dues, inane restrictions on minutiae like the color of your window coverings and scary “surprise” special assessments for unbudgeted property repairs have made many a homebuyer simply refuse to even look at properties that belong to HOAs.

It would be naive and inaccurate to suggest that you can 100 percent bulletproof your HOA experience from these sorts of potential potholes, but there are a number of rights you can exercise to minimize their likelihood of happening.

First, exercise the right — really, the responsibility — to spot red flags of impending HOA dramas before you even close escrow, by truly reading all the HOA disclosures you receive, no matter how mind-numbingly long and boring they might seem. If you see that many homeowners are behind on their dues or that the HOA’s budgets don’t seem to include plans for reroofing buildings, replacing windows or making similar repairs to the common areas over time, be concerned.

And don’t forget the seemingly fluffy newsletters or the seemingly boilerplate board meeting minutes: That’s often where talk of neighbor disputes and proposed dues hikes and special assessments pop up first.

Once you’re part of the HOA, you have even more of a duty-slash-power to participate in it, if you want to do your part to avoid problems. Attending board meetings or even becoming a member of the board is not overkill if you want to have a hand in choosing the accountants, building managers and contractors who will have such a huge impact on your experience as a member of an HOA.

via inman.com

Quick tip: Top 5 social media faux pas for real estate pros | Chappaqua NY Homes

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When it comes to social media there are a lot of articles telling real estate professionals what they need to do, but it is just as important to know what not to do.

Just like in any social situation, there are some important social norms you need to know and a few faux pas’ you need to avoid.

Here are my top 5 social media faux pas you need to avoid:

  1. Don’t outsource your social media. Many real estate professionals want to hire someone to “do it for them.” You wouldn’t outsource taking your best client to dinner would you? Then don’t outsource one of the biggest opportunities you have to connect and build relationships with past, present and future clients.
  2. Don’t automate it. Turn off those automatic notifications, they are considered spammy and no one wants to look spammy – especially as a first impression!
  3. Don’t sync your Facebook to your Twitter and vice versa. Many real estate pros do this in an effort to save time. Don’t do this – it looks lazy. Plus, the language and conversation on Facebook and Twitter is very different. You can certainly post the same type of content to each channel, but do so separately and make sure to use the right lingo for each network.
  4. Don’t just promote your listings. There is nothing worse than only seeing a feed of listings on a real estate professionals Facebook or Twitter feed. To talk about your listings on social media – highlight an amazing photo using Instagram, or take a quick 15 second video of the home or homeowner using an app like Tout, Ptch or Videolicious. Social media is the place to get creative when talking about real estate – not the “same old, same old.”
  5. Don’t be a broken record. No one wants to hear the same things over and over from your or your brand. This is where having a content strategy really comes into play. Take the time to brainstorm all of the different things you could talk about on your social channels and then make sure you have a nice balance day to day of content.
Did I miss any social media faux pas? I’d love to hear from you, leave me a comment below!
via next.inman.com

Spanish Woman Commits Suicide As Foreclosure Agents Walk Into Her Apartment | Chappaqua Real Estate

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English: Gas station and crossroads at Megapar...

The Spanish city of Barakaldo, in the Basque country

The intensification of the financial crisis in Spain, and across Europe, is having very real effects on the lives of people.  Beyond the rise in the unemployment rate, widespread foreclosures across Spain have caused at least two suicides over the past few weeks, along with an unsuccessful attempt in the city of Valencia.  The latest case, reported on Friday, involved a 53-year-old woman who jumped from her sixth-story balcony in the Basque city of Barakaldo as foreclosure agents forced open her door.

Spain has been one of the hardest hit victims of the European sovereign debt crisis.  Mired in a deep recession, the Iberian nation has seen the unemployment rate skyrocket above 25%, with youth joblessness reaching 50%.  The consequence of a real estate bubble, Spain’s crisis has led to a slew of foreclosures across the nation.

The latest victim has been Amaya Egaña, a former municipal councilwoman for the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.  According to Spanish daily El Pais, Egaña jumped to her death from a sixth-floor balcony on Friday as a legal team from the local court walked into her apartment to foreclose on her.  Receiving no response after ringing the bell and knocking on the door, a locksmith opened the door, only to find Egaña standing on a chair to jump from her balcony.  Egaña was found alive, but paramedics had no chances of saving her life.

Egaña’s suicide isn’t the first related to foreclosures in Spain.  Just a few weeks ago, on October 25, 53-year-old Jose Miguel Domingo was found dead hours before foreclosure agents arrived at his apartment.  Domingo hung himself after not having been able to pay interest payments on a €240,000 mortgage that went sour in 2009.

A day after, a man whose name hasn’t been disclosed jumped from his window in the city of Valencia.  The man attempted to commit suicide minutes before foreclosure agents arrived at his apartment; this time, though, paramedics managed to save his life.

The suicide of Egaña has been like the straw that broke the camel’s back.  A social repudiation of banks’ foreclosure practices has made its way to Madrid, where the Administration of Mariano Rajoy is working on a plan to give subprime debtors some relief.  According to El Pais, Rajoy is looking to put into place a two year foreclosure moratorium for subprime debtors.

Spanish banks are in dire need of cash.  Despite a €100 billion bailout-pledge by the EU, institutions like Bankia and BBVA are struggling to plug holes in their finances.  Much like in the U.S., they are doing whatever they can to extract payment from debtors.

In the U.S., banks’ attempts to speed up the foreclosure processes resulted in the robo-signing scandal, by which major mortgage originators were using fraudulent protocols to processes thousands of mortgages in record time.  Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Ally Financial were forced to fork over $25 billion to settle a suit brought Attorneys General from across the nation.

With Spain falling even deeper into the rabbit hole, as Rajoy refuses to take a bailout and borrowing costs rise, the situation could deteriorate further.  Beyond economic losses, Friday’s events are direct evidence that financial crises have the potential to destroy the lives of ordinary individuals.

via forbes.com

Big real estate investors say Sandy hurts lower Manhattan values | Chappaqua Homes

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Lower Manhattan office building values are likely to suffer as a result of damage inflicted by Superstorm Sandy that has left thousands of downtown Manhattan workers unable to return to their offices, major real estate executives said at a conference on Wednesday.

“I think there’s been value erosion downtown,” Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald LP and BGC Partners Inc, said during the New York University Schack Institute of Real Estate Capital Markets in Real Estate conference. “It had just started to come back. The concept now of fear of flooding is going to affect values.”

About 500 of his employees are unable to return to the three floors they occupy at 199 Water Street. Lutnick expect that to continue for six weeks to two months. Meanwhile his staff has been doubling up at the company’s midtown offices and trading floors at 499 Park Avenue and its connected building at 110 East 59th Street.

Nearly one-third of the 101 million square feet of office space in downtown Manhattan either was closed, powered by generators or had no heat due to the flooding Sandy inflicted last week, said Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. There was no correlation between the age of the building and the damage suffered, the real estate services company said.

Lutnick, unfortunately, knows about disasters. The company occupied floors 101 through 105 of One World Trade when it was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001. Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 of its 960 employees who worked there.

“All disaster recovery plans are a disaster,” he told about 475 real estate investors, bankers and students at the conference.

Cantor Fitzgerald’s lease at 199 Water Street expires in about 15 months, he said, and the company has yet to decide whether to renew it. Lutnick said downtown landlords may have to make more concessions and ultimately take in less rent to convince tenants to stay.

“They’ll have to offer more value to get them to stay,” he said.

The destruction and prolonged building closings and heating and electrical interruptions will take their toll on property values, Darcy Stacom, CBRE Group Inc vice chairman, said later at the conference.

“Will investors think about this when they look at buildings in hard-hit areas? Yes,” she said.

HUDSON YARDS

The repercussions from Sandy could reach well past downtown. Part of Hudson Yards, the office and housing development planned for midtown’s far west side, is also in the flood zone. That could prompt some changes to the plans.

“It is a subject that we and our partner will definitely be talking about,” said Andrew Trickett, senior vice president, U.S. region, for Oxford Property Group, the real estate arm of Canadian pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. Oxford is Related Companies’ equity partner in Hudson Yards.

Stephen Ross, Related’s chairman, said if Hudson Yards had been built already, it would not have had many problems.

“We have plans for backup generators for the entire project,” he said of the planned 6 million square feet of office space, 5 million square feet of housing, and 1 million square feet of retail space.

It will take public and private money to prevent another disaster, real estate experts said, and will require regulatory and zoning changes determining how things are built and where they are located.

It will take even more money to prevent storm surges and rebuild the city’s old infrastructure.

“If they could do it in New Orleans, they certainly can do it in New York,” Ross said, referring to the infrastructure built after Hurricane Katrina.

The rebuilding could stir demand for professions and trade workers who were hit hard by the recession that dried up financing for development projects.

“Construction workers who have been sitting on the bench for five or six years, they’ll be in demand,” said William Rudin, chief executive and vice chairman of Rudin Management Co Inc. “They’ll be able to get back to work, so will the architects, the engineers, the contractors. You go down the line, one of our strengths is that we have these industries here.”

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The iPhone’s Hidden Costs | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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The iPhone 5 is a C-average student. At least, that’s the grade InsuranceQuotes awarded the smartphone, based on its effect on public health, the environment and the U.S. economy.

In the video above, the insurance news publisher weighed the pros and cons of newer iPhone models and gave them a solid C+ grade. Apple has come a long way in making its mobile devices more environmentally friendly, but poor conditions in Chinese manufacturing plants have led to employee suicides and protests.
Likewise, InsuranceQuotes found the cost to charge a smartphone over the course of a year to be negligible, but the overall cost of maintaining an iPhone is high — more than 4% of the average American’s salary, including the cost of data plans, accessories and those addictive apps.

Take a look at some of the other factors InsuranceQuotes considered in the video above. And tell us what grade you would give your smartphone in the comments section below.

 

via mashable.com

How to make the most of Google’s new approach to analytics | Chappaqua Realtor

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Google Analytics logoGoogle Analytics logo

Google Analytics is changing. And it is changing in very significant ways. It’s such a significant change that they’re taking the word “Google” out of the name and calling it Universal Analytics.

For those who find it valuable to understand the behavior of people online, Google Analytics has been the go-to analytics package for many years. The combination of tracking capabilities, reporting options and cost has been a three-pronged fork stuck into the side of any other tracking package out there.

Before anyone gets too excited about all this it’s worth noting that these changes are rolling out in beta to enterprise and premium customers. This means those who are dabbling in analytics won’t see these features in their free Google Analytics accounts for awhile, if at all.

The change to Google Analytics starts with a conceptual shift which then leads to significantly new reporting capabilities. Let’s do a quick overview of two of the bigger changes (there are quite a few more, but I will spare you from a discussion of some of the more esoteric subjects, such as using your own anonymous sessionization keys).

A conceptual shift from visits to visitors

One of the things that is hard for first time Web analytics users to wrap their heads around is the difference between a “visit” and a “visitor.” I sometimes joke that this is the hardest concept to understand in all of Web analytics. Let’s review.

A “visitor” is a unique machine accessing your website. Every individual machine that goes to your website increases your visitor count.

A “visit” occurs each time any machine accesses your website. Your visit count is increased whenever any machine shows up on your website. One “visitor” can generate multiple “visits.”

An example usually helps makes this clearer: If I use my laptop to go to your website, that will generate one visitor and one visit in your Google Analytics reports. If I use my laptop to go to your website once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once before I go to bed that will generate one visitor (my laptop) and three visits (morning, afternoon and before I go to bed).

Note that these things are discussed in terms of “machine” and not “person.” For example, if I visit your site from my iPhone, my iPad, my laptop and a computer at work that will generate four visitors (one for each device) and four visits.

A final, nerdy way to describe the relationship between visit and visitor is: a visit is attached to only one visitor, but a visitor can have many visits.

Why is it important to understand this? Well to make reports for understanding what people are doing on your site we need a sort of common denominator. Most businesses would like to use something closer to their actual customer (in this case “visitor”) as the common denominator across reports.

We want to know how many people clicked on an ad and then arrived on our website and did stuff. We’re not as happy with knowing how many visits resulted from people clicking and and then doing stuff on our site. It could be the same person clicking the ad over and over again, and that makes us anxious.

But for many years now the level of reporting that Google Analytics has given us has been different for visits and visitors. In fact, the reports available for visitors have really only been very high level stuff and not as useful for understanding specific things about our website. Google Analytics wasn’t alone in this — everyone in the analytics vendor space has had this issue.

The common denominator of Google Analytics is visits, not visitors.

The big change is that the newly renamed Universal Analytics will use visitors as the common denominator. This means that all of your reporting will align much better with how you view your business: something that helps customers.

Bullet list version of what this will mean for users of Universal Analytics:

  • The numbers in your Universal Analytics report will more closely align with the numbers in your CRM.
  • All of the measures you’ve been using so far to measure performance will look significantly larger than the new visitor-based versions.
  • Integrity of leadership will be tested with the opportunity to present small, more useful visitor-based numbers instead of larger, more vanity-based visit numbers.

What does “Universal” mean?

The new Universal Analytics will now accept data from other sources than just a Web page. Sure there have been ways to torture the Google tracker into different code bases before. But now there’s going to be an accepted and useful way.

This means all of the ways of distributing content and interactions digitally can now talk to Universal Analytics. For example, your call center can register interaction, or your CRM tool can register interaction.

This, like the switch to a visitor-centric reporting model, is a big deal. Up until now Google Analytics has been very useful for understanding a specific slice of your interactions with customers: starting after they heard about your site and arrived and ending as soon as they left or did the thing you wanted them to do on the Web. This has left a gaping hole of information about things people are doing before they get to your site and, even more importantly, what they do after they fill out the lead form or call you.

You’ll be able to import conversion data as well. So when your Web gal tells you about how many “conversions” the Web is generating, you won’t have to translate the difference between a Web conversion and someone that made it through your qualification systems and actually bought something.

This shift is really what the name change is about. It changes Google Analytics from a good but limited tool — a Web analysis tool — into a broader and more capable tool, a business analysis tool. This is the shift from Web intelligence to business intelligence. And that’s awesome.

The bullet list of what this stuff means:

  • Universal Analytics will be able to perform as a business analytics and reporting tool for customer behavior on platforms beyond the Web.
  • The difference in quality of interactions and leads from a variety of sources will no longer be opaque and will thus present a risk to some businesses (I’m looking at you social media gurus and garbage vendors).

The downside

You didn’t think this was going to be all unicorns and rainbows did you? Even though I’m a proponent of analytics tools like Google Analytics, there are always some trade-offs when major shifts like this happen.

You’ll need to add some tracking code to use Universal Analytics. I know. No one likes doing this. It’s always scary and confusing. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

The new code handles almost everything the Google Analytics code does. But one thing it doesn’t enable is Experiments nee Google website Optimizer. This is, of course, a crushing loss. I’m not sure if this is a short-term thing or not. But there are other great tools for A/B and multivariate testing.

My friends of the tinfoil hat persuasion will likely raise their eyebrow at the idea of Google knowing the deep dark secrets of how a business truly operates once people start uploading conversion data. I also expect a few privacy-related issues with the visitor-based reporting.

And, of course, Google Premium isn’t free. But it wasn’t free before these changes either.

The bottom line

For businesses that either already are or are working towards becoming more data-driven the adjustment in approach from Google Analytics to Universal Analytics will be very useful.

There will be some hiccups as the reporting style is changed from visit-based to visitor-based. These hiccups will provide an opportunity for leadership to demonstrate their value to the organization, analytics practitioners to demonstrate leadership or both.

A technology that increases your ability to observe customer behavior and increases the relevant data sets available for you to discover insights should result in better decision-making and results for you, your technology partners and your customers.

via inman.com

Dublin Home Prices Rose Most in Six Years | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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Dublin home prices rose the most in six years in September, the latest sign that Irish residential property prices are stabilizing after the country’s decade-long real estate bubble started to deflate in 2007.

Home prices in the Irish capital rose 2.4 percent from a month earlier, the biggest gain since August 2006, the Central Statistics Office said today. Residential property prices nationwide rose 0.9 percent in September, marking the third consecutive month of gains.

“Anecdotal evidence points to pent-up demand for family homes, especially in certain areas of Dublin,” said Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Capital in Dublin. “While the figures are encouraging, I think it is too early to say whether house prices are on a steady upward rise.”

Irish property prices are gaining after homes lost half their value since a property crash pushed the nation to the brink of insolvency and the unemployment rate tripled. A lack of bank credit and the end of tax-relief measures for new buyers next year along with high unemployment will weigh on the housing market, according to McQuaid.

Ireland’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 14.8 percent in September. New Irish mortgages granted in the second quarter declined 16 percent to 524 million euros ($678 million) from the same period a year earlier, the Irish Banking Federation said in August.

“For homes in well-established parts of Dublin, demand is outstripping supply,” Aoife Brennan, head of research at Lisney, an Irish broker, said in a statement today. “In recent months, cash buyers have been making up about 40 percent of the Dublin market.”

The CSO data is compiled with mortgage data from lenders. Dublin home prices would show a bigger increase if cash purchases were included, according to Lisney.

via businessweek.com