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Consumption falls as consumers break free of mortgage debt | Katonah NY Real Estate
In five years time, U.S. households reduced their total outstanding debt by $1.3 trillion as mortgage debts either paid off or were written down, researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York claim in a new report.
But all this credit wariness comes at a cost, according to the Fed study, which is titled ‘The Financial Crisis at the Kitchen Table: Trends in Household Debt and Credit.’
“While household debt pay-down has helped improve household balance sheets, it has also likely contributed to slow consumption growth since the beginning of the recession,” the Fed researchers asserted.
Some of the more notable improvements occurred on the mortgage side of the lending spectrum. Fresh mortgage delinquencies reached a new low of $140 billion in the third-quarter of 2012. However, a large amount of mortgage debt was also cleared through the foreclosure process and other transactions such as short sales in the five-year period following the financial crisis.
via housingwire.com
20 Enlightening Pearls of Wisdom From Marketing Experts | Katonah Realtor
Life is busy. Marketers are trying to stay on top of content creation, messaging, branding, budget, industry trends — not to mention trying to find time for a personal life. This juggling act is a serious time commitment, but short and sweet inspiration isn’t (or at least we don’t want it to be). Continue reading
Second wave of foreclosure review checks hit the mail | Katonah NY Real Estate
Cops: Good Samaritans Hear Screams, Detain Man After Abduction Attempt | Katonah NY Homes
Bedford Police have added grand larceny to the charges a 28-year-old man is facing after he allegedly pushed his way into a woman’s car in Katonah, and stopped her from trying to escape as he began to drive away.
Travis D. Walker—who told officials he is homeless, and was last listed as living in Yorktown—is at the Westchester County Jail on $500,000 bail as of Tuesday afternoon. Authorities say two Good Samaritans, an 18-year-old from South Salem and a 22-year-old from Brewster, are responsible for getting the local woman involved out of harm’s way.
No one was injured in the Monday afternoon incident, but the victim, a 37-year-old Katonah woman, was in an emotional state—”very distraught” and crying—when about a half dozen officers arrived at the scene.
Several calls came in, at about 2:40 p.m., reporting a possible motor vehicle accident. Witnesses said a 2006 Volkswagen Jetta was “up on the sidewalk,” near Kelloggs & Lawrence on The Parkway.
Officers arrived to find the vehicle as described, with one man in the driver’s seat and two more flanking the Jetta. The victim was standing nearby.
Walker is accused of “yanking open” the victim’s car door as the woman attempted to back out of a parking space. He forced the victim to the passenger side and a struggle, complete with screams, ensued as she tried to open the door and flee, police said.
The defendant reportedly stopped her from doing so and started to move the vehicle in reverse. The keys were knocked out of the ignition during the confrontation.
“They heard screaming and they ran to aid the victim,” Lt. Jeffrey Dickan said of the two young men. “They were able to pull her from the car and get into the car and subdue the male, and get the keys from him.”
Their identities are being withheld as the investigation continues, but the pair may be recognized for their efforts at a later date.
“The big story here is the two Good Samaritans,” Dickan said, “because who knows what they stopped from occurring.”
New mortgage rules won’t end discriminatory pricing | Katonah Real Estate
In an effort to eliminate discriminatory pricing of home mortgage loans, the federal government now imposes a raft of regulations on how mortgage brokers can price loans and charge for their services. The new rules have not eliminated discriminatory pricing, but they probably have raised mortgage broker fees.
Mortgage brokers are independent contractors who find borrowers, counsel and qualify them, take their loan applications, process the paperwork and deliver the package to a lender who funds it. Brokers usually deal with multiple lenders. Loan officers, while they perform much the same functions as brokers, are employed by a single lender. Collectively, they are “loan originators,” or LOs.
Historically, many if not most LOs charged borrowers what they could get away with, since their compensation was tied to the charge. The result was that some borrowers paid more than others for no better reason than their LO’s powers of persuasion. LOs were basically equal opportunity overchargers — they did it whenever they could get away with it. However, for a variety of cultural and other reasons, their behavior had disparate effects on different groups. Bottom line, black and Hispanic borrowers paid more than white borrowers.
This situation was much noted but little was done about it until after the financial crisis, when the political environment became hostile toward brokers. They were viewed as willing accomplices in the process of saddling consumers with mortgages they could not afford.
via inman.com
U.K. Home Sellers Raise Asking Prices for Fourth Month | Katonah NY Real Estate
U.K. home sellers raised asking prices in April for a fourth consecutive month amid a shortage of properties for sale, according to Rightmove Plc. (RMV)
Prices sought rose 2.1 percent from March to an average 244,706 pounds ($376,000), the property-website operator said in a report published today. In London, they fell 0.5 percent. U.K. asking prices increased 6.9 percent in the first four months of the year and were 0.4 percent higher than a year earlier.
Pedestrians pass an estate agent’s sign advertising a property as sold in Saffron Walden, U.K. The number of properties advertised for sale nationwide fell 4 percent from a year ago, the report showed. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
The scarcity of homes on the market is supporting prices and masking the weakness of demand in many areas as Britain risks falling into a third recession in five years. In his budget last month, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne pledged 3.5 billion pounds of loans plus 130 billion pounds of guarantees to spur housebuilding and help people struggling to afford a home.
“With mass-market buyers still sitting on the sidelines, the size of the active market is a lot smaller, making it easier for an upswing in activity to feed through to an upturn in prices,” said Miles Shipside, a director at Rightmove. “This should not be confused with an overall market recovery, as while spring may be here the ongoing chill of the recession is still in the air.”
Message Received
The number of properties advertised for sale nationwide fell 4 percent from a year ago, the report showed.
Sellers in East Anglia led the increase by raising asking prices by 4.4 percent in April, followed by 3.9 percent gains in Wales and Southwest England, Rightmove said. In London, sellers reduced average values sought for the first time this year to 493,635 pounds, though prices remained 6.2 percent higher than a year ago.
Data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders today showed the number of home loans fell 0.8 percent to 37,900 in February from the previous month. Still, it was up 4.7 percent from a year earlier.
In a separate report, Ernst & Young’s Item Club said the government has “got the message,” noting the measures to help the mortgage market announced by Osborne in his March 20 budget. They follow the Funding for Lending Scheme, introduced by the Bank of England last summer to boost credit.
In the report, Item cut its 2013 economic growth forecast to 0.6 percent from 0.9 percent in January and said weak demand in Europe will hold back Britain’s recovery. It sees growth accelerating to 1.9 percent next year and 2.5 percent in 2015.
‘Home Front’
“With export markets continuing to disappoint, the chancellor has focused his firepower on the home front,” said Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser to Item. “Although it’s not a long term strategy, stimulating the housing market and the high street will keep gross domestic product growth positive. Unbalanced growth is better than no growth.”
Item said it expects the government’s 3.5 billion-pound “Help to Buy” program to be “popular” because of pent-up demand for new-build homes. Still, it’s “not clear” whether the demand will lead to an increase in construction or just be satisfied from houses that would have been built anyway, it said.
Recent house-price data have been mixed, with Nationwide Building Society saying in a March 28 report that the outlook for home values was “unusually uncertain.” Halifax, the mortgage unit of Lloyds Banking Group Plc, said this month that prices may continue on a “modest” upward trend this year.
China Slowdown
In a blow to global expansion, data today showed China’s economic growth unexpectedly lost momentum in the first quarter as gains in factory output and consumption weakened. Gross domestic product rose 7.7 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said. That compares with the 8 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 41 analysts and 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter.
European (SXXP) stocks retreated after the China data and as investors awaited a report on manufacturing in the New York area. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index declined 1 percent and the FTSE 100 Index dropped 1.2 percent.
Manufacturing in the New York region expanded for a third month in April, a report at 8:30 a.m. local time may show. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic index declined to 7 this month from 9.2 in March, economists forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. Readings greater than zero mean that activity increased.
via bloomberg.com
Seven Easy Tricks to Write Catchy Headlines | Katonah Realtor
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30 Steps to Energy Efficiency – Step 2: Switch to CFL or LED Lighting | Katonah Real Estate
Top 10 Reasons Why You Need a Content Marketing Strategy | Katonah NY Real Estate
1. Trust in Advertising is Terrible
A recent report from market research giant Nielsen shows consumer trust in traditional media advertising has plummeted. Users don’t like, nor trust the sales messages
The survey found whopping 90% of OECD consumers said they trusted brand recommendations from friends or users they trusted online, while only 10% said they trusted messages from display advertising.
Content Marketing represents a form of word-of-mouth marketing, whereby users consumer, engage and share your useful brand content. A strong content marketing strategy hits closer to the 90% trust level than any paid banner ad at the other end of the consumer trust scale.
2. Content Marketing Delivers Quality Lead Generation
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” said John Wanamaker. This problem may be solved with content marketing.
In fact, Content marketing can convert 30% more organic traffic into high quality sales leads (source: MarketingSherpa). Great content marketing will attract potentially high value customers, and these customers will come back for more.
This compares to more traditional advertising methods, where media planners will buy an audience assuming that an ad message will be received by a target audience, and this also assumes the paid message will compel users to act.
Content Marketing delivers on the strategy of ‘narrowcasting’ where brands focus on a smaller, core group of potential, high quality consumers.