Tag Archives: Cross River NY Homes

6 Tips for Finding Prospects on LinkedIn | Cross River Real Estate

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Are you using LinkedIn to connect with new leads and clients?

Do you want to learn about social selling tactics on LinkedIn?

Social selling is the use of social media to discover and connect with new leads and new clients.

In this article, you’ll discover a 6-step process to find new leads and attract new clients on LinkedIn.

Start social selling on LinkedIn with these 6 simple steps. Image source: iStockphoto

#1: Make Your Profile Easy to Find

Most of social selling requires an active outreach process. But you can draw prospective clients to you when you optimize your profile with keywords a potential new client might use when seeking out someone with the products or services that you provide. Add strong keywords to the Title and Summary sections of your profile to ensure you show up in search results.

Remember that you’ll only show up in search results for people in your network. This includes first-, second- and third-level connections, and people who are members of groups you belong to. For this reason it’s beneficial to have a larger LinkedIn network rather than keeping it limited to close personal connections.

The more connections you have, the more searches you will show up in. That said, try not to treat LinkedIn as a popularity contest, since you’re limited to 3000 connection invites.

#2: Create Strategic Alliances

Next you’ll want to remember to network and build business relationships with peers in your industry.

Find professionals who share a target market similar to yours, but don’t offer the service you provide. Once you connect with them, consider fostering a reciprocal relationship to generate referrals for each of you.

Before connecting with a prospect, ask yourself “What do I have to offer her?”

The third-party credibility you receive will dramatically shorten the sales cycle with prospective clients.

#3: ‘Search’ for Opportunities

Now you can focus on finding the prospects you want for your business.

First, join a few LinkedIn groups to network with a wider audience.

Second, use the excellent functionality of Advanced Search to find prospects. You can filter by relationship, groups, location and industry, and the Save Search function even allows you to store effective criteria.

Search by relationship, groups, location and industry.

Use the Tags feature in LinkedIn Contacts to sort your results and save profiles of prospects to the Profile Organizer without being connected to them.

#4: Carefully Craft Your Message

After you identify someone you want to connect with, you’ll want to carefully tailor your communication.

A great first impression with your prospects on LinkedIn should leave them with an interest in your service and a willingness to continue communication.

 

 

 

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/finding-clients-on-linkedin/

Great news! Shadow inventory drops to 1.9M homes | Cross River Real Estate

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It’s a staggering number: The “shadow inventory” in July– properties that are seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or in lenders’ REO inventories (but not yet listed for sale on a multiple listing service) — stood at 1.9 million homes valued at $293 billion, CoreLogic said today.

But you have to put things in perspective.

That’s a 22 percent drop from a year ago, and 38 percent from the 2010 peak of 3 million homes.

Plus, that’s the national picture, and all real estate is local, right? If you break it down to the state level, the five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of mortgaged homes were: Florida (7.9 percent), New Jersey (6.2 percent), New York (4.9 percent), Maine (4 percent) and Connecticut (3.9 percent). Source: corelogic.com

 

 

– See more at:

 

http://www.inman.com/wire/great-news-shadow-inventory-drops-to-1-9m-homes/#sthash.pe0Y4n90.dpuf

Q&A: Patching Water-Damaged Plaster | Cross River Real Estate

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Q.

My company has done plaster repair work for many years. After repairing water-damaged walls or ceilings, we occasionally get called back to “fix” an unsuccessful repair. Our second repair attempt involves digging out a very bumpy, chalky substance, and more often than not, we have to repeat this process a number of times until the patch finally takes hold. What causes this reaction on some water damage jobs and not others? What is the most efficient way to deal with this problem?

A.

Mel Hines responds: The problem you refer to is caused by efflorescence — salts in the plaster are brought to the surface by the intruding water. The water often causes the magnesium in the lime coat to expand and produce the blisterlike effect you refer to. One of our recent reader, hired a water damage restoration contractor in Phoenix area and got rid of such problems.

Assuming that the water intrusion has been stopped, the first step is to chip away the lime coat at the affected area. Other than this, if you want a best solution then go for plumbing service in the sutherland shire.  There is a good chance that the bond between the finish lime coat and the plaster base coat has been weakened.

When faced with this situation, I use a wire brush to scrub away any loose base-coat particles, then apply a coat of Kilz (Masterchem Industries, Inc., P.O. Box 368, Barnhart, MO 63012; 314/942-2510) to the base-coat plaster. Kilz is an alkyd-based sealer, primer, and stain blocker. The plaster base coat must be completely dry before application. Next, I apply a coat of Durabond (United States Gypsum Corp., 125 S. Franklin, Chicago, IL 60606; 800/552-9785). Durabond is a fast-setting, low-shrinkage compound with tenacious bonding qualities and accelerated setting times. When the plaster walls and ceilings in your home are damaged, it can cause various practical problems, as well as decrease your home’s value. To fix this eyesore, you’ll need to repair the plaster, hire professional contractor like Plaster Installation New Jersey Agency.

Finally, I apply a skim coat of ready-mixed all-purpose joint compound. After a light sanding, the repair is ready for painting.

Mel Hines owns Atlanta/Pro-Serve, a ceiling and wall repair service in Atlanta, Ga.

Mortgage rates fall to 2-month low after Fed announcement | Cross River Real Estate

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Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped to a two-month low this week following a recent announcement from the Fed that it would not begin to wind down its bond-buying program.

Rates on 30-year fixed-rate loans averaged 4.32 percent with an average point of 0.7 percent for the week ending Sept. 26, down from 4.5 percent last week but up from 3.4 percent a year ago, according to Freddie Mac’s latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

“Mortgage rates fell following the Federal Reserve announcement that it will maintain its bond-buying stimulus,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s vice president and chief economist, in a statement. “These low rates should somewhat offset the house price gains seen the last number of months and keep housing affordability elevated.”

Rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loans and one-year Treasury-indexed ARMs also fell.

 

Source: Freddie Mac

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/mortgage-rates-fall-to-2-month-low-after-fed-announcement/#sthash.sZ0FPtml.dpuf

Short Sales Peak, Then Plummet | Cross River Real Estate

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Distress sales as a whole are falling but short sales are declining twice as fast as fewer homeowners are losing their homes over the past year.

For the 12-month period ending in June 2013, distressed sales overall (including both REO and short sales) were down nearly 30 percent from the same period ending in June 2012 — from 650,000 to 463,000. Of these, short sales had declined significantly — by nearly 60 percent — accounting for just over 46,000 sales during that timeframe as compared to 104,000 in 2012 according to residential real estate transaction data from the LPS Home Price Index.

Short sales rose and fell quickly.  In the first quarter of 2012, some 109,521 properties were sold in pre-foreclosure — a proxy for short sales, according to RealtyTrac.  At that time, LPS reported a 25 percent increase from the same quarter the previous year and a three-year high and for the first time, short sale transactions are exceeding foreclosure deals. In January, short sales made up 23.9 percent of home purchases, according to LPS. Meanwhile, foreclosures made up 19.7 percent of sales.  Just one year prior, in the first quarter of 2011, foreclosures made up the bulk at 24.9 percent of transactions while short sales made up 16.3 percent.

LPS’ July Mortgage Monitor report also found that while loan origination volume had slowed slightly from May to June, overall activity remained relatively strong. According to LPS Data & Analytics Senior Vice President Herb Blecher, prepayment activity (historically a good indicator of mortgage refinances) is still largely driving origination volume, as has been the case for some time now.

“Prepayment speeds have been impacted by the sharp increase in mortgage interest rates we’ve seen over the last couple months,” Blecher said. “However, even with that increasing interest rate pressure, July’s monthly prepayment rates are still about where they were this time last year, when rates were at historic lows. In fact, they are roughly at the same levels as the heights of the ‘mini refinance booms’ in 2010 — when interest rates were comparable to where they are today — and in 2009, when rates were even higher. Of course, as interest rates continue to climb, we can expect that both prepayments and associated originations will decline. It’s notable however, that we saw an increase in prepayment activity in July among higher loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages — those with LTVs of 100 percent or more — indicating continued HARP refinance activity.

 

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/09/short-sales-peak-then-plummet/

 

 

 

Citigroup to pay Freddie Mac $395 million to resolve mortgage claims | Cross River Real Estate

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According to Businessweek, Citigroup (C) agreed to pay Freddie Mac $395 million to resolve potential future repurchase claims tied to about 3.7 million loans sold to Freddie between 2000 and 2012.

The deal with Freddie Mac is “another important milestone in successfully resolving Citi’s remaining legacy mortgage issues,” Jane Fraser, chief executive officer of CitiMortgage, said.

The deal doesn’t release the bank from liability tied to servicing the loans. It excludes less than 1,000 loans from the period, and Citigroup said it believes it is adequately reserved for those.

                    Source: Businessweek

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.

Why to Put Your Tub in the Shower | Cross River Real Estate

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Putting your bathtub in the shower may be an unexpected idea, but it’s a solid one and a growing trend in bathroom design.
Sure, it looks great, but what does it mean from a practical standpoint? For one, kids (and grown-ups) can splash all they want in the tub without having to worry about water damage or a mess. Two, the right tub model can double as a great shower bench or spot to perch your leg on while shaving.
Curious if this will work in your new bathroom? Take a look at these examples and learn what questions to ask your contractor before implementing this design.

modern bathroom by Elemental Design, LLC

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Waterproofing is vital in these installations. Your bathtub will have a 1½- to-2-inch drain line that will need to travel through your shower’s waterproofing materials.
Tubs in general are awkward and a pain to hook up, so there are a lot of factors to consider here. For example: Will your tub’s anti-tipping brackets poke through your shower membrane? This is a good question to ask your builder.
modern bathroom by Sean O'Brien Architecture

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If this modern tub were a tub shower, it’d be pretty difficult to waterproof because it’s designed as an undermount tub. Clean-lined tubs like this usually don’t have edging that connects the tub with the wall’s waterproofing. Placing the tub inside the shower means the entire area is waterproofed, and it actually simplifies the room’s design.
Tip: A typical shower’s glass door and fixed panels can cost up to $2,000. I like how this shower-tub combination has a single wall panel and no door. A simple design change like this can dramatically reduce the cost of your new bathroom.
Some tubs are a challenge to get into for people with knee or hip issues. If this is the case for you but you still want a tub, a combination like the one shown here can help with accessibility. This barrier-free shower allows for a tub, but the shower itself can still be used for years and years to come.
Tip: If you plan to wash your kids in the tub, place the shower fixtures so they can be used in both the tub and the shower to make things easier.
A built-in tub like this is actually much easier to install than a freestanding one. Waterproofing behind and under tubs with little wiggle room can be difficult, so I always suggest that clients install tubs like this, for practicality and cost savings.
Tip: Make sure your walls are waterproofed up to a height of 6 feet in your shower and tub area’s primary wet zone. Waterproof the walls at least 18 inches above the tub lip in a bathtub without a showerhead.
contemporary bathroom by Altereco Design

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There’s plenty to love about this shower. For starters, the tiny ledge along the wall on the right is a great way to accommodate a smaller tub in a bigger space, while adding extra storage.
The floor outside the tub is actually graded back to the shower, so everything drains with ease. This is a true wet room, and it looks great.
http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/3149263/

Construction spending grows in July | Cross River Real Estate

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Construction spending in the U.S. grew in July to its highest level in four years, due to gains in residential real estate, Bloomberg News reports.

Outlays climbed 0.6% to a $900.8 billion annual rate, the most since June 2009, after being little changed in June, the Commerce Department reported today in Washington. 

“We’re going to continue to post growth,” Mike Englund, chief economist at Action Economics LLC in Boulder, Colorado, said before the report. “It’s growing a little faster than the broader economy, obviously getting help from residential construction.”

Construction spending grows in July | 2013-09-03 | HousingWire.