Tag Archives: Cross River Luxury Homes

Being ‘tech savvy’ is not what gets real estate agents business | Cross River Realtor

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I reject the idea that younger people can earn a living as real estate agents just because they are “tech savvy,” and that this somehow gives them an advantage that enables them to compete with more experienced agents.

I believe that there is plenty of business for agents young and old, and that we should encourage young people to join our profession. But we might be going about it all wrong. The Internet has been around for more than 30 years. Smartphones have been with us, in one form or another, for 15 years.

Before that we had the Palm Pilot. Many of us “old” agents have evolved, adapted and kept up with the times.

Some of us have even been innovators and early adopters of technology like the iPad, which some experts told us would be useless for business. In some real estate associations and offices, I see an emphasis on having young, “tech savvy” agents teaching older agents about technology.

I think the future of the real estate industry would be better served if older, more experienced agents spent more time teaching younger agents how to be real estate agents.“Young Professionals Networks” (YPNs) for real estate agents have sprung up all over the country.

Many of them offer opportunities for agents to go to bars and parties and social events and network with each other. They also offer occasional educational opportunities that focus on how to use technology.

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/11/15/being-tech-savvy-is-not-what-get-real-estate-agents-business/#sthash.NkQxJR9S.dpuf

Private island costs less than the average NYC apartment | Cross River Real Estate

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Private island costs less than the average NYC apartment

Only in New York is a private ­island cheaper than an average apartment.

Savvy city dwellers looking for a new home might want to consider buying their own private island less than two hours north in ­Putnam County.

While the average New York apartment costs more than $1.4  million, Willow Island on Putnam Lake in Patterson costs $995,000 — and comes with a three-story, four-bedroom home.

In contrast, the average price of a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment is $1.35 million — and $2.63 million for a three-bedroom.

The one-acre property also comes with its own special New York City provenance. The house was built by one of the engineers who created the Holland Tunnel.

The island is an hour-and-a-half commute from New York City, says listing broker Uri Hanoch, of Douglas Elliman.

But the deal does come with a hitch. The new buyer will have to row home each night from Patterson, where the property comes with a two-car garage.

The sellers are retired ad exec Larry Plapler, 79, and his wife Amelia, 70, who first put the island on the market in 2010 for $1.5 million.

Plapler — who has made the weekly drive with his wife, Amelia, and family for the past 38 years — once told The Post that the getaway makes him feel a world away from his Upper East Side home.

The 1¹/₂-bath home is 5,600-square feet and comes with 48 open-view windows. The home includes a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace and an artesian well. There’s a guest cottage and a private garage for your boat, according to the listing.

“Access,” according to the listing, “is a quick five minutes by a rowing boat or 5 mph electric motorboats. Canoes, kayaks, rowboats and sailboats are also welcome.”

Gas-powered boats are forbidden on Putnam Lake, on the Connecticut border.

 

 

http://nypost.com/2013/11/06/private-island-costs-less-than-the-average-nyc-apartment/

Home prices were up 12% in September year over year but growth is slowing | Cross River Real Estate

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Home prices were up 12% in September year over year but growth is slowing, market researcher CoreLogic says.

From August, home prices were up just 0.2%, marking the smallest month to month gain since January.

Price gains will slow further, to 0.1% from September to October, CoreLogic says.

Slower appreciation of home prices was expected by many economists given very rapid gains earlier this year, which fueled fears of housing bubbles forming in some markets, along with higher interest rates since late spring.

Year over year, the states with the highest home price appreciation in September were Nevada, up 25.3%; California, 22.5%; Arizona, 14.6%; Georgia, 14.4% and Michigan, 13.9%, CoreLogic says.

September marked the unofficial five-year anniversary of the start of the housing crisis. Given the strong home price gains for more than a year, average home prices in nearly half the states are now within “striking distance” of their pre-downturn peaks, says Anand Nallathambi, CoreLogic CEO.

Still, it may take longer to make up the rest of the ground.

Asking prices, whose trends lead sale prices by several months, were up 0.6% in October from September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, shows data from market researcher Trulia. That’s the second-slowest monthly gain in seven months.

Despite smaller monthly gains, prices are still rising because the inventory of homes for sale is still tight in many markets. Also, buying still looks cheap relative to renting in many markets, Trulia says.

 

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/11/05/corelogic-september-home-prices/3435687/

 

 

 

 

Mighty Bal Harbour Luxury Tower Bankrupt, Selling Itself Cheap | Cross River Real Estate

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one-bal-harbour-building%2A600.jpg[Photo via SFBJ]

Another one bites the dust! The luxury beachfront condo/hotel building known as One Bal Harbour in (duh) Bal Harbour has officially filed a motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to schedule an auction and begin bidding procedures to sell off itself. The debtor, Elcom Hotel and Spa, owns 51 condo-hotel units and 41,047 square feet of the hotel portion of the building at 10295 Collins Ave, and is apparently over $20 million in debt. Oh, and the building’s practically falling apart.

The 300 room, $225 million luxury resort was all the rage back in 2004, when developer WCI Communities claimed to have sold 87% of the building’s units to high-profile buyers.  The high didn’t last long.  In May 2006, three construction workers died when a concrete wall collapsed, and allegations of structural problems and massive flooding have been plaguing the building ever since.  WCI filed for bankruptcy in 2008, and an unlikely duo (a Virginia lumber mogul and a Colombian businessman) Tom Sullivan and Jorge Arevalo swooped in to save the day.  Or so they thought. Long story short, problems arose between Arevalo and both the residential and the hotel associations, then came a seriously detailed and damaging audit report, followed by a hell of a lot of construction defect lawsuits. And here we are!

Opening price is set at $13 million, with Stoneleigh Capital acting as stalking-horse bidder.  Elcom is hoping for an auction before the end of the year, and we’re all hoping someone can get this mess in order before the building starts to look dated. Oh wait, too late. —Margina Demmer · One Bal Harbour trustee seeks bankruptcy auction [SFBJ] · One Bal Harbour: Swanky high-rise address or big condo hotel mess [SFBJ] · One Bal Harbour coverage [Curbed Miami]

Montlake Spite House in Seattle sells | Cross River Real Estate

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This is the home’s narrowest point, 55 inches wide. Down the path on the left is the front door. Click to go to …Did you spot the Spite House? It’s the wedge-shaped house in the upper left. Click to go to a slideshow.You might think that a little wedge-shaped house built explicitly to aggravate someone would be a tough sell.

Not in Seattle. Listed at $397,500, the home was just snapped up over the weekend, the real estate agent told Yahoo Homes, after spending only a couple of weeks on the market. “We had quite the interest!” she told us. (A local news story published Tuesday and picked up internationally might have helped the quick sale.)

Click here or on a photo to go to a slideshow.

Locals call it the Montlake Spite House. Legend has it that the home, on a mere sliver of a lot, was built by:

• A woman who won only a bit of yard in a divorce settlement, while her ex got the rest of the property, including the (normal-shaped) house they’d shared. Or …

• A landowner who was furious when the neighbor who owned the adjacent (normal-sized) lot made him a lowball offer on the sliver. Or …

• A traveler who, while visiting Germany, gave permission for someone to build on the lot — with the provision that enough land be left for a second house. When the traveler returned, he discovered that the new house took a lot more space than he’d expected, so, “out of spite, he [the landowner] built that funny little pie-shaped home” as an obstacle, the current homeowner told KPLU-FM’s Martha Kang. “I also heard that back when it was first built, the side that was facing the neighbor had been painted black.”

The house at 2022 24th Avenue East has 830 square feet, and it’s just 55 inches wide at its narrowest point. The house is shaped like a right triangle with its sharpest point slightly blunted — that’s the 55-inch-wide edge, where a mudroom and exit door lead into the yard. The longest side of the triangle (the hypotenuse) faces the street, with the entrance placed roughly at its center.

Click here or on a photo to go to a slideshow.

Lisa Horton, the current homeowner, told KPLU that the shape of the house was never much of an impediment, except when she was cooking: The kitchen is toward the narrow end of the house, so you can’t stand in front of the oven when you open it; you have to stand to the side.

 

 

http://homes.yahoo.com/blogs/spaces/montlake-spite-house-seattle-sells-231552209.html

Never be locked out again: KeyMe app creates digital copies of keys, stores them in the cloud | Cross River Real Estate

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KeyMe‘s smartphone app lets you scan digital copies of your keys, so that you can obtain new ones without paying a locksmith to break your lock, and more easily manage or share them.

Drawing on a user’s key scan, the app generates instructions that any locksmith may follow to create a physical copy of a key.

KeyMe users in New York City can also take advantage of special kiosks — a number of which are already deployed around the Big Apple — to print new keys themselves, using either a digital or physical copy of a key.

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/10/25/never-be-locked-out-again-keyme-app-creates-digital-copies-of-keys-stores-them-in-the-cloud/#sthash.ELpFFhT3.dpuf

Old-School Daguerrotypes Capture Urban Sprawl of the 1800s | Cross River Real Estate

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firstda.jpgImage via The Atlantic Cities

No, that’s not an Instagram of rural Connecticut, it’s a look at a “busy street” in the Paris of 1838, and also the first print produced by Daguerreotype creator Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. The Atlantic Cities recently dug up this and a few more Dagerreotypes—prints produced via complicated methods and bulky, expensive machinery once lauded for being the first “practicable” photographic process—of 19th-century cities. The images show off urban sprawl from before Chanel and Michael Kors lined the boulevards and starchitect-designed towers stood shoulder to steel-boned shoulder in the most congested bits of town. Below, Philadelphia in 1843 and Washington, D.C., in 1846.

Realtor.com: Inventories are Returning to Normal | Cross River Real Estate

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While June inventories continue to be down on year-over-year basis, they rose for the sixth consecutive month and are steadily returning to more normal levels. The number of homes listed for sale increased by 4.3 percent in June to 1.9 million homes, the highest level in the last year, according to monthly data released Monday by realtor.com.

Inventories on realtor.com reached their highest level in more than a year, suggesting that market fundamentals continue to be strong and that housing supply in many markets is gradually catching up with housing demand.  At same time, the median age of the inventory increased by just one day in June, suggesting that housing sales are generally keeping pace with new property listings.

Both year-over-year list prices and inventories rose simultaneously. While the median list price has stabilized somewhat, it remains 5.27 percent higher than it was one year ago. Rising inventories appear to be having a moderating effect on median list prices, although on a year-over-year basis, median list prices were up by 1 percent or more in 98 of the 146 MSAs covered by realtor.com, compared to 103 markets in June, while the number of markets with a list price decline of at least 1 percent rose from 23 to 25.

Key Market Indicators for June 2013

June 2013

Year-over-Year % Change

Month-over-Month % Change

Number   of Listings

1,931,713

-7.29%

4.26%
Median   Age of Inventory

80

-15.79%

1.27%

Median   List Price

$199,900

5.27%

0.45%

Despite six consecutive months of steady growth, inventories continue to be down by 7.29 percent on a year-over-year basis, although they are now approaching more normal levels. The median age of the inventory rose to 80 days in June, up by one day (1.27 percent) over the month but down by 15.79 percent on a year-over-year basis.

The geography of low inventories changed during June. The top ten markets reporting year-over-year inventory declines are no longer dominated by California markets but now include Boston, Lansing, Grand Rapids and Monmouth NJ.  Their potential shortfalls in supply are likely to support robust house price appreciation going forward.  Inventories remain depressed in markets where prices have not improved significantly or where negative equity is greater than elsewhere, making it difficult or owners to sell

 

 

Read more…

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/07/realtorcom-inventories-are-returning-to-normal/print/

 

Countertop materials that stand up to years of abuse | Cross River Real Estate

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When shopping for kitchen appliances you’ll see a dizzying array of choices, from basic models to ones loaded with features. But your countertops might outlast your appliances by years, maybe decades, making this decision one you’ll live with for some time. Consumer Reports tested 14 materials and found that except for recycled glass, there wasn’t much difference among competing brands, but there were big differences in materials. Here’s a look at our tests and what’s new in countertops.

Crazy about quartz. This synthetic material is becoming more popular and some mimics stone, although may look too uniform to be realistic. Quartz also comes in vivid colors such as Caeserstone’s Apple Martini and Red Shimmer. Quartz was tops in our tests, whether polished or matte finish. Sharp knives, abrasive pads, hot pots, and most stains didn’t damage it plus it’s easy to maintain and doesn’t require sealing. Silestone’s suede series is designed to have a leathery finish with little reflection, but their website warns that this finish may require extra care.
CR tip: Edges and corners can chip and repairs aren’t a DIY project. Rounded edges help.

Granite’s rock solid rep. It’s been rumored to be on its way out for years but granite is still among the most desirable or must-have kitchen features, according to a recent study from theNational Association of Home Builders. No two slabs are exactly alike, giving your kitchen its own look, and unlike marble, limestone, and soapstone, granite is the only real stone that’s practical enough for heavily used areas. It performed similarly to quartz in our tests and new suede and leathered finishes skip the high sheen and offer a softer look.
CR tip: When properly sealed, matte finish and polished granite fended off most stains, so reseal periodically to maintain resistance. Chipped edges and corners are a possibility and only a pro can repair them.

 

 

Countertop materials that stand up to years of abuse – Yahoo! Homes.