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Quick Tip: The art of the retweet | Chappaqua Luxury Homes

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One of the easiest ways to provide valuable information to your followers and add to your content strategy on Twitter, is to retweet valuable information. As part of an overall social media strategy, you should retweet a few things each day that you think are interesting, consistent with your brand message and that you think your followers may read. But, what most people don’t realize is that there is the “art of the retweet.”

There are two ways to retweet a message. The first way, is that you can simply click the “retweet button” under a tweet. If you do that, that tweet gets sent out to all of your followers exactly as is – as if it were from them (not you.) The other way to retweet (which is a much better way in my opinion), is to copy the tweet into a new tweet, add the characters: “RT” and then add a short note at the beginning or the end.

Here are a few screenshots to explain:

Option 1:

Click the “retweet” button

Option 2:

Copy text

Click ‘reply’ and then copy/paste

What is the difference? See below!

Important: When you tweet the second way, the person you retweeted gets an “@” notification that you retweeted them. When you retweet the first way, they are NOT notified unless they have their email notifications turned on.

For mobile users:
If you are on a mobile device, here is how you can do this easily.

Click the ‘retweet’ button, and then click “quote tweet”

You can then add your text below

In social media, many times it is the little things that make a big difference – and this is one of them! Would love your feedback about this article, 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

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

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

The Realtor’s 3 Step Guide to Managing Online Reputation | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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The Realtor’s 3 Step Guide to Managing Online Reputation

I thought this was a nice infographic from our friends at DooID.  We talk a lot about your online reputation on Tech Savvy and the things you need to do to stay on top of it, so this graphic falls right into place here.

Here are the three steps they recommend to get started.

1. Define Your Personal Brand

2. Build Your Online Identity

3. Monitor Your Reputation

Check out the graphic below to see the tools you can use to successfully manage your reputation.

via techsavvyagent.com

How to Buy a Home Below Current Real Estate Value | Chappaqua NY Reator

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Want to increase your chances of buying a home below current real estate value? Just look for a seller who didn’t listen to his agent.

The best real estate agents encourage their sellers to do whatever it takes to get the home in its absolute best condition before going to market. The better the home shows, the more likely the seller will get top dollar.

Sometimes, this could be as simple as removing personal items or decluttering. Other times, an agent will suggest bigger fixes, such as painting, replacing carpet or upgrading countertops or cabinets. Savvy sellers listen to their agents, make the changes suggested and go to market in top form. That’s not always how it plays out, however.

For any number of reasons, many sellers protest suggested fixes. Either they don’t want to be inconvenienced, don’t believe the fixes will matter or don’t have the financial resources to make it happen. Inevitably, this means the buyer will get a discount on that property.

How to spot a home that might sell below its value

Is there a home for sale in a good neighborhood and in the desired school district that seems to be well-priced but for some reason isn’t selling? This is the home you want to investigate, because chances are the seller didn’t listen to his agent. Specifically, here are some tell-tale signs to look for.

Big furniture or a lot of furniture

Most people don’t buy furniture to use when staging their home. Often a seller may have a lot of furniture in one room, which makes the room look small to potential buyers. Real estate agents and professional home stagers know this all too well. For example, stagers always suggest a small loveseat over a full-blown couch or sectional sofa. Also, in the bedrooms, king beds often take up too much space. So a stager will often push the seller to swap it out for a queen or full-sized bed.

When you enter a house that seems crowded with furniture, imagine the rooms with fewer or smaller pieces. Be aware that plenty of potential buyers won’t get past the sense that the rooms are too small, and they’re likely to move on to a home that feels bigger. In turn, this could give you room to negotiate a good deal with the seller.

Dark rooms

There was a home in West Hartford, CT on a great block, but the interior was dark. Three large French doors in the living room led to a deck, but the doors were stained black, and the carpet was brown. On top of that, the window coverings were big, heavy and overtook the room.

The house sat on the market for months, even though the price wasn’t far off the real estate market value. Here’s why: Every buyer walked in and out because the house was so dark. After the home had been on the market for three months, a smart buyer made an offer $40,000 below asking and ended up getting it.

Before the buyer moved in, he removed the window coverings, stripped the stain on the doors and painted them white, pulled up the old carpet and had the floors stained to a lighter oak. Right away, the dark room became light, bright and welcoming. The buyer’s total cost: $9,000, which instantly added $31,000 to his equity.

Grandma or Bambi staring down from the walls

Buyers are looking to see themselves — and not the current owners — in a home. Too often, however, the seller hasn’t “depersonalized” his home enough, or at all. Even though the listing agent may have told the seller to clear the house of his possessions, the seller may be proud of his accomplishments and resist.

And so potential buyers are treated to walls decorated with diplomas, family photos, awards and trophies. Moose and deer heads hanging on walls are surefire deal killers, especially when the hunting rifle used to kill Bambi is proudly displayed, too. At best, buyers tend to see such highly personal stuff as clutter that takes the focus away from the home. They’re turned off by it all, and they walk away.

They might also be walking away from a great deal. Are the bones of the home good? Does it have the floor plan you like? Are the kitchens and baths in acceptable condition? Is it in the area where you want to live? If you say “yes” to all of these, hang around a little longer. Imagine the home without the seller’s junk. Picture yourself living there, without Bambi.

A good home that doesn’t show well = a great opportunity

Ultimately, sellers who don’t listen to their agents or stagers inadvertently give savvy buyers a discount. For you to see that potential, try to understand as much as you can about why the seller is selling. Look for sellers who have ignored their agent’s advice. While conventional wisdom says that a buyer would be turned off by a home that shows poorly, go against this. Imagine the potential. And then, once the home is yours, make those small changes the seller should have made. Right away, you’ll have a little bit (maybe even a lot) of equity, thanks to the seller.

via zillow.com

Lost Home Equity Leaves Thirty-somethings Vulnerable | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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Contrary to popular belief, loss of equity in their homes since 2007 has hurt adults in their late thirties more than their Baby Boomer parents, contributing to fears that they will not have enough income and assets for their retirement, according to a new Pew Research survey released today.

Americans today are more worried about their retirement finances than they were at the end of the recession in 2009, especially younger and middle-aged adults rather than among those closer to retirement age-a major shift in the pattern that had prevailed at the end of the recession.

About four-in-ten adults (38 percent) say they are “not too” or “not at all” confident that they will have enough income and assets for their retirement, up from 25 percent in a Pew Research survey conducted in late February and March of 2009. Among adults between the ages of 36 and 40, 53 percent say they are either “not too” or “not at all” confident that their income and assets will last through retirement. In contrast, only about a third (34 percent) of those ages 60 to 64 express similar concerns, as do a somewhat smaller share (27 percent) of those 18 to 22 years old.

Fears over retirement are driven by a companion Pew Research analysis of data collected by the Federal Reserve Board in its Survey of Consumer Finances. For most Americans, equity in their homes represents most of their wealth and the collapse of housing values in the middle of the past decade sent personal wealth into a nose dive for most homeowners, regardless of age.

Overall, the Consumer Finances survey found that median home equity-the fair market value of a home less the amount of the outstanding mortgage and other liens-fell by about a third (32 percent) from 2007 to 2010. And U.S. Census data released in June found that most of the decline in median wealth between 2005 and 2010 can be attributed to sinking home values.

Median home equity-so-called housing wealth-declined the most for homeowners ages 35 to 44. Between 2007 and 2010, the equity of homeowners in this age group was cut in half (52 percent). In contrast, housing wealth fell by 30 percent among those 55 to 64 and by 20 percent among adults 65 and older.

Adults 35 to 44 years old have a much greater share of their wealth represented by their home equity because they have not yet had the time to accumulate financial wealth. Moreover, these younger adults have had less time to build equity, so the market collapse cut into a greater share of a smaller base than for longtime homeowners. Finally, this age group benefitted less than older adults from the rise in stock market values since many sold their holdings when stocks fell in 2009.

The S&P 500 Index peaked at 1,576 in October 2007 but then fell to a modern low of 667 in March 2009. Since then, the stock market began a steady rise, closing at 1,258 on the last day of December 2010. It now stands at about 1,450, nearly back to its earlier peak.

During this decade of wild market swings, ownership of stocks and retirement accounts, such as 401(k) and thrift accounts, fell among most age groups. But the declines were greatest among those ages 35 to 44. The proportion of adults in this age group who directly held stocks declined by nine percentage points from 2001 to 2010, with half of this drop occurring before 2007. In contrast, the share of adults 65 and older who directly held stocks declined only 3 percentage points from 2001 to 2010, from 21 percent to 18 percent.

The proportion of 35- to 44-year-olds who held stocks indirectly through retirement accounts also disproportionately fell by 9 percentage points, about double the decline among those younger than 35 or between 45 and 54 years old (4 percentage points for both groups). As a consequence, those in the 35 to 44 age group have benefited less from the rapid increase in stock prices since 2009 because they were less likely than their older counterparts to own stock and retirement accounts.

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Get over your real estate trauma | Chappaqua Realtor

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Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series.

Every day, more and more Americans click into a decidedly post-recession state of mind. Whether or not they’re still unemployed or upside-down, ever-increasing numbers of us have grown tired of being down and depressed and decided to do whatever it takes to get back on our feet and back into the flow of life — it’s so short, after all.

Fortunately, the real estate market seems to be flowing in that same direction: Millions of Americans have seen their underwater mortgages dry out this year, due to nothing more than increased buyer demand, which, in turn, increased home values. But millions more still owe more than their homes are worth — and many more than that are still dealing with the financial and emotional trauma of struggling to make the mortgage payment, tussling with their banks over loan modification requests, a past foreclosure or short sale, or even recession-created fears around buying a home, or selling and locking in losses.

Here’s the deal: The more you fear or focus on this trauma, the more it becomes a major influence on your decisions and your life. So, how can you extinguish it altogether? Here are some strategies:

1. Focus on what you are for, not on what you are against. We often create what we fear, largely out of our panic and paralysis around the topic. So, if you constantly worry about losing your home, being upside-down and whether your home’s value will ever recover, you are simply more likely to get and stay in these situations. Anxiety will cause you to spend more than you should, or to perform poorly at work, snowballing into high credit card bills or an interruption in income.

It’s a small mindset tweak, but a powerful one, to focus instead on what you want to have happen — or, as “Three Simple Steps” author Trevor Blake puts it, what you are for.

If you are for being debt-free, you might be inspired to start a small business and be your own bailout. If you are for getting out from underwater, you might decide to aggressively pursue the loan modification options, or to rent out an extra room on Airbnb to fund extra payments to reduce your mortgage principal.

I’m not saying these are the things you have to do to create the situations you want — I’m simply suggesting what I know from personal experience, which is that if you focus on what you are for, then you are much more likely to see that happen than when all of your time, energy and emotion is fixated on the things you hope don’t happen.

2. Metabolize the trauma. I believe that everything we do — every endeavor we make, every decision, no matter how painful or joyous the outcome — is a success. We are either successful at what we were trying to accomplish, or the experience is a successful education. But when we have painful experiences, it’s difficult to get free from the pain and move on until we can appreciate the successful education that the experience holds.

In order to let go of the trauma you might still have from things that happened around your mortgage or your home, you might find it helpful to work with the image Dr. Henry Cloud creates in his book “Necessary Endings”: the image of metabolizing the experience.

When we eat food, we metabolize it, holding onto the elements that are nourishing and beneficial and eliminating the rest. You can do the same thing with experiences like losing a home to foreclosure or short sale, or being upside-down on your mortgage: Take some quiet time to be real with yourself and identify what learnings you can cull from all the decisions and events that led to your real estate trauma.

Once you do that, you can almost have a ceremony of sorts where you simply declare to yourself that you’ve got what you needed from the experience, and you’re ready to let the rest go. It might sound new age-y, but even the most wizened business execs and hardened military strategists will tell you that learning and letting go of past failures and disappointments so you can fight the next battle are essential ingredients of resilience, and that resilience is a prerequisite for long-term success.

Next week, I’ll provide you with three more strategies for letting go of your real estate baggage.

via inman.com

Agents: Do not be afraid to set yourself on fire | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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“Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.”

That’s a quote by Arnold H. Glasow I came across years ago that always stayed with me.

I speak with agents almost every day. Selling real estate is a tough business.

Between navigating the shifting expectations from buyers and sellers, building your brand presence online and trying to keep up with all the shiny new tech and social media tools in our space, pushing yourself to innovate your business and experiment with your marketing strategies can be daunting.

That’s why HomeFinder.com set out to find some of the most creative agents across the country who blaze their own trails and find success using digital marketing across YouTube, Instagram, Blogging, Facebook and Single Property Websites. For these agents, success meant actual sales, marketing credibility and lasting client relationships.

We put their stories together in this free E-book, Five Agent Success Stories – Close More Business Using Digital Marketing.

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Five Agent Success Stories – Close More Business Using Digital Marketing

In each story, you’ll learn:

  • How that agent uses that specific marketing channel or tactic in his/her business
  • Detailed success stories that led to a sale
  • Advice to get started or recharge your past or current efforts

Here’s a sneak peek and a few excerpts from one of our fire-starters – Kendyl Young.

Kendyl is an agent with Teles Properties in Glendale, CA. She has produced videos for her business for three years and has more than 146 videos on her YouTube channel for her listings and neighborhoods.

Kendyl constantly gets into situations in which she knocks on someone’s door or
sees someone out at a restaurant and they recognize her from her videos. One such instance happened at a pizza place, where a fellow patron instantly recognized her.

This man watched her market report videos and said he’d always wanted to meet her because of them. He thought she was very smart and would always forward her videos to his
friends who were interested in real estate.

By using YouTube like this, Kendyl made invaluable inroads to this potential client’s insular community without ever having met him or any of his friends.

“It’s made me realize my videos have far more reach than I would have thought,” she said.

A few of Kendyl’s YouTube tips:

  • Resist the temptation to turn on your smartphone and shoot whatever comes to mind and post.
  • Watch as many real estate videos as you can. Note what you like and what you don’t.
  • If you are not willing to learn how to make good videos yourself, find a professional. Everything you put out there is a reflection of the quality of your business.
  • Good sound is more important than good visual.

Kendyl’s story continues in this E-book, along with four others.

Take a cue from these agents who have already tried and succeeded. Learn, borrow, adapt.

And don’t forget to keep those matches handy.

via next.inman.com