via zillow.com
Lindsey Buckingham & Wife Are ‘Macs’ of LA Home Buying, Building, Decorating | Chappaqua Homes
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Tag Archives: Chappaqua Real Estate
Remodeling market reports strong fourth quarter numbers | Chappaqua Homes
The Remodeling Market Index hit its highest reading since the first quarter 2004, hitting 55 in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The fourth quarter report increased five points from the previous quarter.
Any RMI above 50 means most home improvement workers are reporting strong demand for their services.
“Remodelers are optimistic about the outlook for slow and steady market growth in the new year,” said 2013 NAHB Remodelers Chairman Bill Shaw. “Professional remodelers reported more work from large and small projects as well as overall home repair.”
Future remodeling activity indicators rose to 56, up from the previous quarter’s 49. Current conditions also revealed improvement, up from 52 in the previous quarter to 54.
“With existing home sales up, the increase in the RMI partially reflects the remodeling work new home owners undertake when they move in,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Consumers are gaining confidence in the economy and feeling more comfortable pulling the trigger on large and small renovations.”
The RMI in the Northeast saw the largest increase, jumping 24 points. This is due largely to the start of remodeling work related to Hurricane Sandy damage. All four regions of the country saw an RMI above 50.
via housingwire.com
Goats: Its Cold Out There | Chappaqua Real Estate
Rental Property Investing 101 | Chappaqua Real Estate
via zillow.com
We Are Now So Close To The End of The Era Of Crisis | Chappaqua Real Estate
Facebook for Chappaqua NY Real Estate: 5 Ways to Increase Engagement on Facebook Business Pages
Let’s face it, in real estate, people do business with agents they know, like and trust. This is a mantra I have heard over and over again at countless events across the country.
Facebook is one of the best tools available to build relationships; to get to know people and to build trust. One of the ways you do that on Facebook is by posting engaging content.
People are sharing more on Facebook more than ever before.
Remember when the only information you had about a potential client was their name, phone number and perhaps email? Now, the culture of sharing has changed; people openly share about their interests, their vacations, their family and more. Because of Facebook, it is easier now than ever to build relationships and engage with potential clients over the long haul.
One of the best things you can do as a real estate professional is to use Facebook as a tool to engage with potential clients.
Here are five quick and easy tips to increase engagement on Facebook business pages:
1. Stay topical and relevant. As you are thinking about the most relevant content you could share on Facebook, make sure it is relevant to the season. Pay attention to the calendar, holidays, and seasons. For example, now is a great time to talk about the New Year, spring cleaning and tax time. Staying topical will keep people’s attention and engage them more in your content.
2. Include humor. Sometimes we take ourselves so seriously in real estate. Make sure you incorporate some fun into your posts on Facebook. Pinterest is a great source for fun quotes and photos that you can share on Facebook. On the Inman News Facebook Page, we share a real estate cartoon every Saturday. Keeping it light makes it fun, and it is an easy way to build engagement.
3. Brief is better. According to Facebook, posts that are between 100 and 250 characters (less than 3 lines of text) see about 60% more likes, comments and shares than posts greater than 250 characters. Keep it short and edit ruthlessly!
4. Don’t post too often. Statistically a Facebook post on a business page “lives” about three hours. Wondering how long your posts live? Check out EdgeRank Checker. “A Post is considered dead when the growth in engagement is less than 10% of the largest growth of engagement between hourly snapshots” The biggest mistake I see people making with their Facebook Business Page is posting too often. This is why having a content strategy is key; know when you will post and what you post.
5. Photos still are king. Photos are undeniably still the king of engagement on Facebook. Posts including a picture generate about 120%, more engagement. Be smart about your photos; are you pinning interesting photos? Use some of those photos in your Facebook content strategy. Same applies to Instagram. If you are an agent – snap a few Instagram photos of working with clients. Use these photos as part of your Facebook strategy. Do you take a photo with every single client you work with? Every client has a story and those stories are great pieces of content for your brand on Facebook!
Looking for more tips? Check out this webinar recording I did last year – a one hour class on “The Power of Engagement on Facebook.” Would love your comments and feedback, feel free to post below or leave a comment on my Facebook Page!
P.S. I will be speaking at Agent Reboot NYC and Real Estate Connect NYC next week. They are both going to be incredible events. I will be talking about relationships in social media and trust and transparency in social media; both crucial topics for 2013. Hope to see you there!
via next.inman.com
Using Gift Money for a Down Payment | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
It’s not uncommon for first-time home buyers to ask: “Can my mom and dad give me money to help me buy this house?”
The good news is yes, you can receive a gift from your parents to buy a house, but the way that you actually receive the gift is very important. Mom and dad can’t just leave money under your pillow like the Tooth Fairy did when you were younger.
The process of accepting a gift for your down payment isn’t complicated, and by following these simple rules, you can be sure that the underwriter who is reviewing your file will look at it with an approving eye.
Write a gift letter
If someone is going to be gifting you money to help you buy a house, you’ll first need a gift letter. The gift letter needs to be a short, sweet letter that is hand-signed by you and the person giving the gift. It needs to contain the following:
- The relationship between the home buyer and the person giving the gift.
- The amount of the gift.
- The address of the home being purchased.
- A statement that the money is a gift and not a loan that must be paid back.
Establish a paper trail
Next, you’ll need to create a paper trail. This is important because underwriters will look for where the money came from and where it went. In simple terms, they will look for proof that the money came from your parents’ account and went into yours.
Each situation will be slightly different, but be ready to provide paper proof of your parents’ account having money in it, money coming out of that account, a deposit into your account and proof that your account now has the money in it. Accuracy matters when creating this paper trail, so make sure each transaction is for the exact amount of the gift.
Write a gift letter and use this shortcut
Creating a paper trail correctly has proven to have its fair share of hassles. Getting copies of transactions is time-consuming, and underwriters seem to question every little thing in the process (“where exactly did the $10,000 transfer that I see coming into mom and dad’s account come from?”).
The good news is that there’s a shortcut when it comes to gift letters — one that makes the entire process easier.
Simply add one sentence to the letter that says: “Will wire the gift directly to escrow at time of closing.”
If you add this line to your gift letter, you can avoid all of the paper chasing that most underwriters will require. A day or two before closing, you can get wiring instructions from your escrow agent for mom and dad to wire the exact amount of the gift directly to the escrow company working on your transaction.
via zillow.com
Judicial foreclosures jump in December | Chappaqua Real Estate
Judicial foreclosures jumped in December, according to Eugene-based Gorilla Capital. The Associated Press
Court-supervised foreclosures — the alternative to the out-of-court system lenders have favored for decades — jumped in December, a reseller of foreclosed homes reported.
Lenders filed 681 judicial foreclosures in 24 Oregon counties where Gorilla Capital operates. The Eugene company buys, redevelops and sells foreclosed homes.
November saw 446 judicial foreclosures, a decline from 522 in October.
The number of judicial foreclosures has climbed over the past year as regulation and legal trouble for lenders complicated the nonjudicial foreclosure process. Nonjudicial foreclosure activity dropped to almost nothing in July, when a court ruling and a new state foreclosure mediation program simultaneously changed legal requirements to foreclose outside the court system.
Still, judicial foreclosure activity trails the nonjudicial foreclosure activity seen a year ago.
The Oregon Supreme Court and the Oregon Legislature may both make decisions in coming months that could shift foreclosures back to the nonjudicial process, which banks prefer because it is speedier and cheaper.
via oregonlive.com
Chappaqua Real Estate | A Practitioner’s Guide to Social Selling
Complex sales involve a number of different people. You will find multiple decision makers, buyers, each having a completely different role and need than the next one. As a sales professional, it is up to you to work within the ranges of expertise and knowledge to present your solution in a compelling manner. This is where social media and social selling helps!
Know Your Buyers
Social media helps you get to your prospects unlike ever before. Sales is built upon the concepts of empathy and insights which is why a winning sales professional thoroughly researches their prospects before meeting and keeps tabs on real-time updates and buying triggers. Here are some examples how this can be done:
1) Look at your buyer’s website regularly.
2) Download and read their annual reports and check for mentions on trade websites
3) Set up Google Alerts for your buyer’s business and for key decsion makers in the organization.
4) Create Twitter lists with your buyers, listen and interact with them.
Ofcourse LinkedIn is is vitally important here as well. For a great rundown on why sales is social and how LinkedIn helps sales teams, check out this webinar from Ralf Vonsosen, Head of Marketing for Sales Soultions at LinkedIn.
Identify Trigger Events
The problem with the above is that they deliver surface-level information that may not help close a deal. With social media and social selling you can take it a step further by:
1) Finding out who are key decision makers by using LinkedIn, Xing, and other social sites.
2) What’s happening in real-time with their buyers.
3) What needs and challenges their buyer faces on a daily basis.
Craig Elias, a good friend/colleague of mine and creator of Trigger Event Selling, offers downloadable worksheets to help identify personal buying triggers and to help qualify buyers based on trigger events.
Monitor Your CompetitionEveryone wants to know what exactly their competitors are doing on a daily basis. In many sales situations, a differentiator or USP from your competition may be so small that any tiny advantage may mean the difference between a win or a loss. Social selling tools can help you monitor your competitors and get a leg up and an opportunity to be proactive instead of reactive. Tools like HootSuite allow you to build a custom dashboard to help you monitor all of your competitors and look for buying triggers from your customers. Where do you start?
1) Set up a Goolge Alert for your competitors (key people in the company, brands, products, etc).
2) Follow competitors, prospects, and thought-leaders on Twitter keep a pulse on what they’re saying.
3) Monitor Slideshare and Scribd for new documents or presentations from your competitors.
4) Join key applicable LinkedIn Groups and monitor how your competition are positioning themselves.
While many worry about the threat of social media, if you’re in sales, it’s time to look more closely at the opportunities. There has never been a better time to embrace to find new customers, craft pitches that meet their specific needs and bring the right people together to make the sale.
Use Internal Collaborations Tools to Get the Right Help at the Right Time
One free internal collaboration tool that my sales team uses on a daily basis is HootSuite Conversations, which is an internal communication tool for sharing real-time information amongst key members in your organization. Collaboration tools like this allow you to:
1) Find expertise on unique subjects within your own company.
2) Create groups to collaborate on unique sales opportunities.
3) Publish updates to make talented coworkers in your company aware of how they can help you.
4) Collaborate and share important documents very easily.
Too many people have been worrying about the threats and dangers of social media when a carefully crafted strategy can eliminate most of the guesswork. Social selling will help you and your sales team look closer at each of your opportunities, create unique value propositions, meet the specific needs of the buyer at the right time, and bring the right people together needed to close the sale.
Multilender websites let borrowers see pricing | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
This series of articles is about opportunities available to consumers to save money on a mortgage in 2013. The first article was directed to those with an existing mortgage carrying an interest rate above the current market rate who could refinance profitably but haven’t — for reasons that don’t make sense. This article is directed at those looking to find the best possible deal on a refinance or home purchase loan.
Importance of posted prices: Mortgage lenders every morning reset their “posted prices,” which are the prices they will commit to at that time to a borrower who meets their qualification requirements. On a given transaction, posted prices will vary from lender to lender, and in a well-functioning market the shopping borrower would find the lender posting the best price on her deal and grab it. But that turns out to be quite difficult to do.
Agents don’t necessarily quote posted prices: The problem is that posted prices are not public information. Lenders deliver them to their loan officers, brokers and others authorized to offer their loans to the public. But these agents are not obliged to quote posted prices to mortgage shoppers, and in many cases they do not.
Agents looking to snare the shopper as a customer may price below the posted price (called “lowballing”). It is a common practice because it is often the only method available to the agent to separate herself from the others. After the customer is committed, the agent may price above the posted price (“highballing”) to increase the profit margin.
If the market price subsequently declines, the shopper will receive the early price quote instead of the new and lower posted price. If the market price increases, the shopper will pay the new posted price or higher, probably with an explanation and perhaps even an apology.
Why lowballing works: Agents can’t be held to the prices they quote to shoppers because market prices will change before the price is locked. The information provided by a borrower upon which a price quote depends must be confirmed by the lender before the price is locked.
Validation of some features, such as credit score, is quick, but others including property value usually take days to complete, and sometimes weeks. While the applicant is waiting for the lender to validate her information, the posted price is likely to change with changes in the market, making the early price quote obsolete.
Why highballing works: The typical applicant has no way to know whether she is getting the lender’s posted price at the time the price is locked. By that time, furthermore, the applicant may be committed to the transaction, having invested in an appraisal that is not transferable to another lender, and possibly paid other fees as well. Indeed, if the transaction is a home purchase with a firm closing date, there may not be time to start the process again.
The key to effective shopping is access to posted prices: To avoid lowballing, mortgage shoppers must have access to the posted prices of the lenders being shopped. This assures that their selection of the lender with the lowest price is correct. To avoid highballing, they must have access to the posted prices of the lender they have selected when that lender locks the price. This assures that they are receiving the correct price.
The only way that shoppers can compare posted prices of competing lenders and check that the locked price is the posted price is to access a multilender website that obtains the posted prices of participating lenders for disclosure to shoppers in real time. There are three: mortgagemarvel.com; zillow.com; and mtgprofessor.com, which is mine.
Don’t confuse multilender sites with lead generation sites, such as LendingTree.com and LowerMyBills.com, which do business with hundreds of lenders. These sites do not collect price data from lenders. Rather, they collect financial information including Social Security numbers from shoppers, which is sold to the three or four lenders who will pay the most for it. The shopper remains completely vulnerable to lowballing and highballing by those lenders.
Next week: saving interest on the mortgage you have now.
via inman.com