Tag Archives: Cross River Real Estate

Jobless claims inch down | Cross River NY Real Estate

Jobless claims in the U.S. reversed back down, falling by 23,000 filings for the week ending May 18 and hitting 340,000 total claims.

This slight increase comes after last week’s revised figure of 363,000, according to the Department of Labor

The four-week moving average was 339,500, a drop of 500 filings from the previous week.

Analysts with Econoday said there have been a few bright spots on the outlook for May’s economic data.

“This report is definitely a strong positive for the employment outlook. Whether this correlates with gains for the Dow is uncertain given the possibility, following yesterday’s hawkish sounding FOMC minutes, that strong data could begin to trigger withdrawal of Federal Reserve stimulus,” Econoday said.

 

Jobless claims inch down | HousingWire.

Illinois home sales show 25% annual growth in April | Cross River Real Estate

Home sales in Illinois rose 25.3% year-over-year in April, while median prices increased 7.7%, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors. 

Home sales in the state totaled 12,621 in April, up from 10,076 in April 2012. This marked the best April performance since 2007. 

The median price in Illinois was $145,900 in April, up 7.7% from April 2012 when the median price was $135,500. 

“The spring numbers are very encouraging, especially as we see substantial tightening of the numbers of homes on the market,” said Michael D. Oldenettel, president of IAR. 

He added, “While prices are inching up slightly due to strong demand, the interest rates continue to be a powerful lure for those who want to own a home and the spring housing market looks to be a strong one.” 

Illinois’ home inventory in April was 62,503 units, a 30.6% drop from April 2012, which had 90,041 units for sale. The time homes are spending on the market plummeted from 111 days to 89 days, a 19.8% drop, year-over-year. 

Of the 102 Illinois counties, 55 reported year-over-year increases in home sales in April 2013, while 42 showed year-over-year median price increases. 

“The housing market is exhibiting signs of a more stable recovery with an anticipated strong early summer led by strong sales gains and more modest but still positive gains in median prices,” noted Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, director of the regional economics applications laboratory of the University of Illinois.

 

Illinois home sales show 25% annual growth in April | HousingWire.

Housing market now the ‘tailwind’ pushing economic growth | Cross River Real Estate

It was only a few years ago that the housing market helped drag the U.S. economy into the gutter, but times surely have changed.

In its monthly economic forecast on Monday, Fannie Mae said it believes the recent slowdown in economic growth may be short-lived thanks to the strong rebound of the housing market, which will serve as the economy’s “tailwind” through the rest of the year and even into 2014.

“If (home purchase) demand awakens further and more jobs are added each month, economic activity should step up compared to 2012 levels with housing acting as a significant contributor to growth,” the report said.

After a strong start to 2013, Fannie Mae noted economic growth has been tapering off in recent months “partly due to fiscal drags including sequester.” But with further anticipated improvements in the financial and housing markets, Fannie Mae expects the nation’s economy will grow 2.2 percent by year-end from 2012. That’s a modest gain, but still better than the 1.7 percent and 2 percent year-over-year economic growth the U.S. saw in 2012 and 2011, respectively.

“Employment numbers are getting better, albeit it at a relatively slow pace, and the April employment picture should help boost consumer sentiment toward the economy overall,” Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan said in the report. “Spending grew in the first quarter at a surprisingly strong pace, and although this rate is unlikely to hold up, consumers continue to show signs of resilience in the face of fiscal concerns.”

 

 

Housing market now the ‘tailwind’ pushing economic growth – Phoenix Business Journal.

Consumer confidence hits highest index since 2007 | Cross River NY Real Estate

The University of Michigan‘s consumer confidence survey results are out.

The headline index rose to 83.7 from last month’s 76.4 reading. That’s the highest index reading since July 2007.

 

Consumer confidence hits highest index since 2007 | HousingWire.

Some markets may be pointing toward a bubble | Cross River NY Real Estate

Prices nationwide rose nearly 6% last year — more than most ever expected, writes CNNMoney. While that has continued so far this year, leading builders to build again, prices in some places have risen faster than incomes. Eventually, they could fall back as homes become less affordable.

“If prices keeps going up at this rate for another six months, we will have a bubble, and people will get hurt,” Dean Baker, co-director of theCenter for Economic and Policy Research recently told Bloomberg.

 

Some markets may be pointing toward a bubble | HousingWire.

Organic Pest Control Series: Beneficial Insects | Cross River NY Homes

.Day and night, pesticide-free organic gardens are abuzz with activity, much of it a life-and-death struggle between predators and prey, Pest Control in Mesa is the best ally you can have when we talk about insects. We seldom see much of this natural pest control, in which tiny assassins patrol their surroundings in pursuit of their next meal. Assassin bugs aren’t picky: They will stab, poison and devour a wide range of garden pests, including caterpillars, leafhoppers and bean beetles. Check out True Pest Control, they offer the best pest control in Adelaide. Soldier and ground beetles work the night shift, emerging after dark from beneath rocks, mulch and other daytime hiding places to feast upon soft-bodied insects and the eggs of Colorado potato beetles.

Aphid lions (the larvae of the lacewing) have a hooked jaw that helps them dispatch huge numbers of aphids, caterpillars, mites and other pests. The main reason why pest control is indispensable is the threat to human, plant and animal health posed by the pests. Almost all pests are carriers of some disease or the other and have even been known to cause severe epidemics and massive agricultural destruction. Apart from destroying valuable food supply, causing death and serious health problems such as allergic reaction, the pests also lead to serious property damage. Pests like termites can eat away huge wooden structures and render them hollow and useless. Almost everyone is revolted by these pests. In fact, the mere sight of a pest scurry around on a property is enough to turn you off and question the hygiene maintained at the place. Needless to say, pest control services is something you cannot do without.

However, it is a specialized service that you cannot manage on your own. The professional services of a pest control services company have to be hired if you want to rid your residential or commercial property of pests. For more information about the power pest control services, visit powerpestcontrol.ca. Locating the pests and eradicating them involves the use of special products and equipment that these companies have. Their technicians are trained in the use of these solutions and equipment in a safe manner. With their extensive knowledge of the different types of pests, they are able to identify the places of pest infestation and decide up on the best extermination plan to use for solving the problem, for example using a Flying Termite Removal Program. Their services are focused not only on one-time pest removal, but on minimizing the chances of future infestations as well. If you are interested in periodic pest treatment of your property as a preventive measure, the pest control companies can handle it too. According to Box Elder Bug, pest invasions can cause you great discomfort, physical harm and financial loss. It makes sense to engage a knowledgeable, experienced and reliable professional to deal with the issue. If you are interested in knowing about the pest control companies servicing your area, you can log on to a local business directory and get all the required information. Before we can get into trying to understand whether biological pest control is the answer to the pest-control related environmental concerns, it would be proper to give ourselves a little background information on this whole pest control business; for the benefit of those who may be encountering it for the very first time. Now, pests are organisms (typically insects) that are injurious to the interests of the people who refer to them as such. Thus to farmers, the insects that invade and eat up their crops (whether in the fields or during storage), would be termed as pests.

On the other hand, the ‘domestic insects’ that tend to mess up with things in domestic settings (like moths, that can mess up with cloths in storage), are seen as pests by housekeepers. Worth keeping in mind is that although most pests are insects, there are also quite are number that are non-insects: with the likes of rodents (that can mess up with crops in farms of things stored in domestic settings) being seen as pests too, the fact that they are not insects notwithstanding. Having seen that pests are injurious, it would be natural that the people who happen to ‘fall victim’ to them would want to get rid of them. In the meantime, people who haven’t yet fallen victim to pests would be keen to avoid such a ‘fate.’ Hosting pests, by the way, can be a serious fate: thousands of hectares of farmland have been known to be wasted by pests in a single day, leading to losses that often run into millions of dollars. It is the steps taken to avoid pest invasion then, or to resolve pest invasion if it has already taken place, that are referred to as constituting pest control expert services, like Pro Care. Now pest control takes various forms, depending on the pests one is trying to get rid of (or to prevent the invasion of). And while bigger pests like rodents may be controlled through mechanical means like trapping, for a long period of time, it is chemical control that has worked for the vast majority of pests, which tend to be insects as previous mentioned.

The chemicals used in this endeavor are what are termed as pesticides. And while pesticides are usually very effective in pest-control, the downside to them tends to come up when we consider the fact that they tend to be extremely environmentally unfriendly. Check out pestzone to see the best way to eliminate pests on your house. Worth keeping in mind, at this point, is the fact that the chemicals referred to as pesticides tend to be very potent ones. So it often happens that traces of them remain where they were used, even after the pests are gone. Those traces are eventually washed down to the water bodies where they wreck great havoc to the (non pest) plants and animals resident in the water bodies.

Learning about the beneficial insects in your garden will make it a more fascinating place, and help you tweak it in ways that intensify the work done by wild garden allies. This is often a simple matter of avoiding the use of pesticides (including organic ones), the service of bee removal Phoenix AZ, and growing plenty of flowers to provide beneficial insects with pollen and nectar. In greenhouses or other special situations, you may even decide to purchase and release certain lab-raised beneficial insects. This will not be necessary with the beneficial insects described here, because all will naturally gravitate toward a diversified organic garden.

Although, squirrels in an attic can be a real problem, professional Baltimore squirrel removal services are usually needed as a sound resolution. Don Brody from On The Fly Pest Solutions says squirrels may be cute but in a home a wild animal can cause nightmares, such as electrical fires from rodents gnawing live wires.

Below we feature the best beneficial insects for your garden, each one beautifully illustrated. Get to know these garden helpers individually and make a plan for how you can incorporate them into your garden as part of your natural pest control strategy.Do you have termites? The first step to avoiding a termite problem is having your home regularly inspected for termites. Termite inspections Brisbane provide customers with professional wood destroying organism inspections for real estate purchases and refinancing.

Check out the other sections of our our Organic Pest Control Series: Using Organic Pesticides and Common Garden Pests.

Braconid Wasp

Braconid wasps play an important role in controlling insect pests. Braconids are beneficial insects that lay their eggs inside or on host insects, and then the maggot-like wasp larvae weaken the host pest.

Read more.   

Ground Beetle

The busy ground beetles’ diet can help control slugs, asparagus beetles, caterpillars, Colorado potato beetles, corn earworms, cutworms, squash vine borers and tobacco budworms.

Read more

Honeybee

Have you ever wondered, “What do honeybees eat?” If so, and if you’d like to attract these beneficial insects to your garden, this piece crammed full of honeybee information is a good place to start.

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Hover Fly

Hoverfly larvae eat mealybugs and small caterpillars, and are especially helpful with organic aphid control. Adult hoverflies feed on nectar and pollen, and you can attract them to your garden with flowering plants.

Read more.

Lacewing

Beneficial lacewing larvae prey on aphids, cabbage worms, caterpillar eggs and more. Learn how to attract these garden helpers.

Read more.

 

Lady Beetle

Lady beetles feed on all sorts of garden pests, including aphids, small caterpillars and insect eggs. They even feed on powdery mildew. Learn how to attract them to your organic garden for natural pest control.

Read more.

Mason Bee

The mason bee is a great pollinator and can work blossoms at a lower temperature than honeybees. Mason bees are so named because they pack mud into their nests, like brick masons.

Read more.

Praying Mantis

The praying mantis is a beneficial predatory insect that provides grasshopper control and more. Learn to create an inviting praying mantis habitat.

Read more.

Predatory Bugs

If your goal is to squash garden pests naturally by attracting beneficial insects, then welcome assassin bugs with open, dirt-covered arms.

Read more.

Soldier Beetle

Brush up on your soldier beetle facts, including what soldier beetles eat, where they live, and how to attract this beneficial insect to your organic garden.

Read more.

Spider

Pest outbreaks could be rare if you have lots of beneficial insects and spiders in the garden. Learn how to attract various types of garden spiders.

Read more.

Tachinid Fly

The Tachinid or “Diptera” species is well worth inviting to your organic garden because of its ferocious appetite for garden pests such as Japanese beetles and grasshoppers.

Read more.

Trichogramma Wasp

Itty-bitty trichogramma wasp larvae develop inside of and eat insect eggs, especially those of cabbage worms, codling moths and European corn borers.

Read more.

Yellow Jacket

Yellow jacket wasps feed their young liquefied insects, with caterpillars, flies and spiders comprising the largest food groups during most of the summer. The effect: Adios, garden pests!

Read more.

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/beneficial-insects-zl0z0413zkin.aspx?newsletter=1&utm_content=05.17.13+GFSS&utm_campaign=2013+GFSS&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email#ixzz2TYoKNBGr

Hugh Hefner, Crystal Harris Own First Home as Husband & Wife | Cross River Real Estate

Crystal Harris IMDb

Source: IMDb

Newlyweds Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris may need to set a price limit for exchanging gifts. Shortly after Harris made her husband a homemade gift for his 87th birthday, the Playboy magazine founder dropped $4.995 million on a Hollywood Hills mansion for the 27-year-old Playmate.

The couple finally tied the knot in January. They’d been engaged for awhile, but Harris called off the wedding in 2011. Now the newlyweds have sealed the deal with their first real estate purchase. According toTMZ, Harris is a co-owner of the property.

The modern manse is constructed in a decidedly different style than the traditional and Tudor-esque architecture of the Playboy Mansion. The 5,917-square-foot home was built in 2011 with several modern amenities, as well as a view of the city lights. A gated entrance leads into a contemporary kitchen and up a floating wood staircase into a luxurious master bedroom and bath. Outside, a white-glass infinity pool and deck provide secluded relaxation while sliding doors out front provide open-air living space.

Hefner has lived in the famous Playboy Mansion for several years, but it may come as a surprise that the millionare doesn’t own it. According to details of the lease, filed with the SEC as an appendix to his employment agreement, Hefner pays rent for the 29-room house.

With the Playboy Bunny House (across the street from Hefner’s not-so-humble abode) recently listed for $11 million, time will tell whether Hefner decides to make the Hollywood Hills home is primary residence.

 

 

Hugh Hefner, Crystal Harris Own First Home as Husband & Wife | Zillow Blog.

Has house price deflation begun in Canada? | Cross River Real Estate

Yesterday, the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index for Canada was released. It showed that 12-month home price inflation inCanada was down to 2.0%, the lowest level since November 2009. And given the huge amount of talk in Canada about a potential housing bubble, there is a worry that this is the beginning of a housing bust.

Canada housing market April 2013

You can see from the chart provided by the house price index that there actually was a housing bust in Canada during the global financial crisis with year-on-year declines reaching 6%. What has separated Canada from other markets where there has been talk of a housing bubble is that Canada was able to reverse this trend and bring the year-on-year change to near record highs in 2010. SInce 2011 however, the pace of house price inflation has ebbed and the talk is now about renewed declines.

The talk of a bust is in part due to the soft numbers coming out of two principal bubble markets in Toronto and Vancouver. In Toronto, there has been massive condo overbuilding in the city center and especially along the Lake Ontario coast on Lake Shore Boulevard and Queens Quay where condos are now replacing former docklands. Anyone who has taken the Gardiner Expressway between western Toronto where and the city center in the last 5-7 years knows what I am talking about. There is a massive array of cranes building condos everywhere as this is “one of the largest waterfront revitalization projects ever undertaken in the world“. However, now sales of condos are plummeting in Toronto and condo leases are rising as owners are forced to become landlords.  House prices in Toronto are still appreciating.

In Vancouver, house prices have been falling for some time now as are house transactions. According to the House Price Index, the year-on-year decline in prices is only 1.5%, however – though the decline is greater according to other measures. But this April marked the ninth consecutive month of price declines at a time when the Canadian economy is growing. That tells you that this market decline has not been precipitated by a decline in the broader economy as much as a combination of economic and internal market forces. Vancouver looks to have reached a top. Nearby Victoria is the only other major market that has falling prices nationally with prices now down 3.3% in the past year.

The question is what comes next. First, in the residential housing market, because transaction prices are huge compared to incomes,  sales are lumpy because sellers often pull their listings rather than transact at a lower price. That means that consistently lower sales volume is the harbinger of declining prices and we are seeing a large drop in sales volume, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver. Second, the broader Canadian economy is still doing ok but there are troubling signs in the jobs market and in manufacturing data that suggest weakness. For example, the RBC Canadian Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index ticked up in April to 50.1, barely above contraction, after a shock decline in March at 49.3. And the last six months of 2012 were the weakest since the financial crisis, just as they were weak in the US. Third, the Canadian government’s fiscal outlook is going to be a drag on growth and jobs according to the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office. The PBO estimates that the 2013 budget alone will result in 14,000 job losses by 2016 and have a minor cumulative negative impact of 0.12% on GDP growth. Combining this with cost measures from 2012, gets you to 62,000 job losses by 2016. In sum, the economic and housing market-specific outlook is mixed and not supportive of continued high levels of house price inflation.

Another impediment here is household debt. As of the end of the last quarter, household debt in Canada had risen to a record165.0% of GDP, with the lion’s share of this debt coming from mortgages. The ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has said that because of the slowing of the jobs market and the modest fiscal drag, the next couple of years will be determined by Canadians’ decision to “spend or to save”. And given the high debt levels, we should expect household spending to be restrained. This is borne out in polls that show Canadian consumer confidence waning.

Could this mean a bust, though? No one in officialdom is talking that way but that is the concern. At a minimum, I believe we should count on monetary policy to be loose, not just to offset the fiscal drag but also as a safeguard against a bust.

 

Has house price deflation begun in Canada? | Credit Writedowns.

Goldman Sachs’ DIY Outlook Hinges on Housing Recovery | Cross River Real Estate

Rising home prices stand to benefit home-improvement retailers, especially Lowe’s, although investors may have to wait until second-quarter results are out before they see meaningful acceleration, Goldman Sachs said in a new research report.

For now, first-quarter strength will likely be shrouded by unfavorable weather comparisons after a much colder-than-normal period following a more-mild-than-usual first quarter of 2012.

Recent economic data point to a sharp uptick in prices with the median price for a home resale rising the most since 2005 and the S&P/Case-Shiller indexshowing the best annual increase for single-family home prices since May 2006.

Play Video
Housing: Bubble Watch With Trulia
Jed Kolko, Trulia chief economist, reveals the results of its latest report on housing and credit, explaining that they found in most of the country, “prices are below “their fundamental value.”

Both of these are correlated to increases in do-it-yourself same-store sales trends, Goldman said. The firm also talked with private remodeling firms in five different markets in the eastern half of the U.S. to gauge the health of the housing environment.

“We heard consistent feedback that reinforces our expectation of strengthening sales in remodeling-oriented categories, and for larger projects,” the report said. “Note that all of these players—like most pros—source only a small part of their materials for big box retailers, but these sales are certainly rising, and to the extent that they are representative of the broader market, they bode well for overall demand.”

Analysts also noted that the ratio of residential improvements to gross domestic product remains lower than its level a year ago, with upside of 10 percent until it returns to its historic average.

Even with these sharp rises, home prices have further room to run, said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist. Currently, 91 of the 100 largest metro prices remain below their fundamental values, according to the company’s analysis.

“Right now, prices are still actually 7 percent undervalued relative to fundamentals,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “That’s even with the big price increases we’ve seen over the past year.”

Citing rising home prices and discussions with remodeling firms, Goldman raised its 12-month price target on Lowe’s to $46 with a “buy” rating and upped its target forHome Depot to $81 with a “neutral” rating. Home Depot, it noted, already has a premium valuation and near-peak margins, while Lowe’s margins are well below its historical peak levels.

A separate report from Oppenheimer was also bullish on the two home-improvement retailers with “outperform” ratings on each. The housing market recovery is likely to propel consumer spending for the foreseeable future, driving both home-improvement sales and home-goods sales, its analysts said.

 

 

Goldman Sachs’ DIY Outlook Hinges on Housing Recovery.

Is Canada’s Housing Market Falling Apart? | Cross River Real Estate

Last summer, a Vancouver real estate agent named Keith Roy sold his house. About a month later, he wrote a blog post about it — and set off a firestorm of criticism from fellow real estate agents. “I’m a Realtor and I sold my own home 4 weeks ago. It wasn’t too big or too small. It’s only 6 years old and still feels new. I sold because in 6 months my home will be worth less than it is today. I think it’s time to cash out,” Roy said.

His argument was really simple: the supply of homes on the market was outstripping demand from buyers. Excessive supply and falling demand would lead prices downward. But his fellow brokers felt betrayed. Some even complained that Roy had been disrespectful to the profession. Selling his home was, however, a prescient move.

Home prices in the greater Vancouver area are down 3.9 percent from a year ago, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. In West Vancouver, which is sometimes said to be the wealthiest municipality in Canada, home prices have fallen 5.6 percent. Sales are down 20 percent from a year ago. Vancouver is not alone. All over Canada there is fear that the country is in a housing bubble that is now in the process of popping. In March, Montreal saw sales decline 17 percent year over year, even while inventory continues to climb. In Ottawa, sales have fallen 16 percent.

“A housing correction — or, possibly, a crash — is no longer coming. It’s here,” Macleans magazine declared this past January. The bubble seems fairly obvious, even if it’s existence is still disputed within Canada. Canadian home prices are up nearly 100 percent since 2000. The price-to-rent ratios in major urban population centers are through the roof. In British Columbia, home prices rose 163 percent in the decade from 2001 to 2011, according to a study by the International Monetary Fund.

Although Canada has a reputation for having conservative banks — its banks weathered the global credit crisis without any bailouts — low interest rates have fueled a sort of mortgage and borrowing mania. Household debt has risen to a record 165 percent of disposable income. Total mortgage debt stands at $1.1 trillion. The Canadian government is attempting to engineer a soft landing. It has tightened mortgage lending rules four times in the last four years. The maximum length of mortgages is being reduced from 40 to 25 years. Home equity loans were curtailed. And the government stopped backing mortgages on the most expensive homes.

 

 

Is Canada’s Housing Market Falling Apart? | Cross River Real Estate | Bedford NY Real Estate | Robert Paul Talks Life in Bedford NY.