Katonah Realtor | Looking to sell your home follow these 6 steps
The NAR has it right when they talk about the five steps in selling your home.
1. Consider comparables
2. Consider competition
3. Consider contingencies
4. Get an appraisal
5. Be accurate.
6. Know what you will accept.
It is time to end Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For over four years, Congress has failed to start the process of phasing out the two failed mortgage finance giants and replace them with a private-sector mortgage finance system. Most of the time, opponents used the excuse that housing markets were just too weak to do anything that might delay the housing recovery, leaving both entities to languish under the control of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).
Instead, some in Congress and the Obama Administration have focused on a series of generally unsuccessful efforts to enable borrowers whose homes are now worth less than they owe to refinance the loans.[1] Undeterred by the underperformance of these programs, several Senators have decided to try again. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) is expected to schedule Senate consideration in the lame-duck session of another refinancing bill by Senators Robert Menendez (D–NJ) and Barbara Boxer (D–CA).
As with past efforts, their approach would be a policy mistake. Congress should skip the sideshow and move instead to the main event of ending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Rationale for Mass Refinancing Is Ending
Driven by housing activists, Congress, and the executive branch, government agencies have focused on encouraging lenders to refinance underwater mortgages since mid-2007. Supporters justified their approach by noting that falling housing prices made it virtually impossible for borrowers to reduce the loans to a point where the worth of their houses would equal the amount that they owed. This has led many homeowners to simply walk away from their obligations, leaving their houses to be repossessed and further lowering property values in the area.
However, most of these programs have actually helped only a relatively small number of borrowers.[2] A recovering market with gradually rising prices will do much more to enable underwater borrowers to return to building equity. And there are firm signs that the long-awaited housing recovery is well underway, which would further obviate the need for mass refinancing.
In the third quarter, median sales prices increased over those of last year in 120 of 149 metropolitan areas,[3] with prices increasing an average of 5 percent over those of a year ago, the largest 12-month gain since July 2006. In addition, inventories are shrinking, with only 2.32 million existing homes available, a 20 percent drop from the same period in 2011, while the national median price of a single-family home has risen by 7.6 percent over the past 12 months.
Q: Our landlord has refused to fix our heater, despite our repeated requests. We’d fix it ourselves, but we can’t afford it. In fact, we’re down to one income and are behind in the rent. The landlord says if we fix it ourselves and deduct the cost from our rent bill, he’ll evict us. Is this legal? –Dale and Candace
A: In every state but Arkansas, residential landlords are required to offer and maintain fit and habitable housing. While a handful limit the guarantee to certain types of tenancies (excluding portions of the guarantee for single-family dwellings, for example), most simply extend the warranty to all tenancies. But that doesn’t mean that all tenants, at every moment, can call upon its protections.
In fact, at least eight states condition a tenant’s right to get action from the landlord on the tenant not being delinquent in rent at the time the tenant gives notice to the landlord of the problem. In Delaware, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming, tenants cannot avail themselves of some typical remedies — withholding the rent, using “repair and deduct,” or moving out without liability for rent — unless they’re current in the rent.
The policy behind this rule is pretty straightforward — it’s to discourage tenants from staying rent-free while they manufacture habitability problems and fight an eviction. Although the vast majority of tenants do not engage in such behavior, publicized stories of “tenants from hell” who manage to stay in the property while the landlord spends time and money trying to evict them have gotten legislators’ attention.
You’ll need to find out where your state stands on the issue, before you can confidently fix the heater and lower your rent obligation. If you live in one of the states mentioned above, your landlord may indeed have grounds to punish your exercise of a remedy that would otherwise be available to you.
Q: I’ve just learned that one of my tenants was arrested for assault last week. The incident took place in a city park. Can I terminate the tenancy on this basis? –Andre Z.
A: Several states have laws that allow landlords to terminate tenancies when the tenant has committed certain illegal acts. (Many states also allow for termination when there’s an act of domestic violence, but that’s not exactly what you’re asking about.) These laws vary considerably when it comes to what kinds of acts will justify a termination, and how much proof is needed by the landlord.
It’s most common for states to allow termination when the acts affect the health or safety of other residents or tenants. For example, Iowa’s provision targets acts that threaten the safety of the landlord, landlord’s employee, other tenants, or anyone within 1,000 feet of the property. (Iowa Code Section 562A.27A.)
But not all states are similarly limiting — in Tennessee, for example, the landlord can terminate if the tenant “willfully or intentionally commits a violent act,” no matter where it might have occurred. (Tenn. Code Section 66-28-517.)
So you’ll need to check your state law to see whether it gives you the right to terminate under the circumstances. You’ll also need to find out whether the tenant must be convicted of the offense first, or whether you can terminate based on the arrest alone.
Jill Kelley, right, with her husband, Scott Kelley, and Holly Petraeus, wife of David Petraeus. Source: Zuma Press
As if it wasn’t enough to have sparked an FBI investigation that has exploded into an international scandal and brought down the head of the CIA, one of the women at the crux of the Petraeus scandal must now also endure intense media scrutiny about her imploding financial crisis.
Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite and military booster who alerted the FBI about the threatening emails that led to the resignation of CIA chief David Petraeus, is facing foreclosure on her home.
Purchased in 2004 for $1.5 million after Jill and her physician husband Scott Kelley moved to Tampa, the 6-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom house is at least one asset that creditors are seeking to reclaim from the Kelleys.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the couple’s financial spiral was under way by the time Jill Kelley first invited Petraeus and his wife, Holly, to their home in 2008, soon after the former general was stationed at MacDill Air Force Base.
“Lawsuits show the Kelleys were treading water by then, when Scott Kelley was making just the minimum payment on a Visa Signature card that had accumulated a balance over $70,000 and was taking on hundreds of dollars in interest each month,” the newspaper reported. “According to a lawsuit filed this year, Kelley defaulted on that card in 2010, the same year Regions Bank sued him and his wife over a debt in excess of $250,000. Chase sued for more than $25,000, and Regions Bank filed to foreclose on their Bayshore home. The bank said it was owed more than $1.7 million, and that it had not gotten any payments since Sept. 2009.”
Jill Kelley continues to be heavily scrutinized after it was revealed this week that she was the woman who reported threatening emails she had received to the FBI. The emails led the FBI to Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell, who had an affair with Petraeus while he was serving as the military commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.
A second commander, U.S. Gen. John Allen, who currently oversees U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has also been implicated in the scandal. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it is investigating “potentially inappropriate” correspondence between Allen and Kelley.
While FBI investigators took materials from Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, NC on Monday, the media circus has set up shop outside Kelley’s home on Bayshore Boulevard in the Tampa neighborhood of North Hyde Park. The waterfront home was where Kelley hosted many parties for military personnel and other high-profile guests over the years. By many accounts, Kelley worked fast and furiously to ensconce her family in Tampa’s society circles.
“Determined to make her footprint, Jill Kelley knocked on doors up and down Bayshore Boulevard, asking homeowners if their house was for sale. She wanted the prestigious address, and she got it. In June 2004, the couple paid $1.5 million for a 4,800-square-foot brick mansion with stately white pillars and a view of Hillsborough Bay, just six miles from MacDill Air Force Base,” wrote Ben Montgomery and Amy Scherzer of the Tampa Bay Times.
Reading the headlines this week, you might get the impression that the country was hurtling towards a huge deficit catastrophe on Dec. 31. From the front page of Thursday’s New York Times (“Back to Work: Obama Greeted by Looming Fiscal Crisis”) to today’s Wall Street Journal (“Pressure Rises on Fiscal Crisis”), the rhetoric suggests that the U.S. is facing a crisis akin to problems that have engulfed Europe. (A Yahoo headline from 2011: “The U.S. Fiscal Crisis: Just Like Greece, With One Exception.”)
In fact, the problem with the fiscal cliff is precisely the opposite: The tax hikes and automatic spending cuts that would kick in after Dec 31 would sharply curb our federal deficit through enacting major, sudden austerity measures that would save the U.S. government about $720 billion in 2013 alone, according to the Bank of America’s estimates, which would be about 5.1 percent of GDP.
“If we let all of those changes [happen], there would be a sharp reduction in the budget deficit—in decline in debt to GDP, falling deficits as a share of GDP,” says Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. “It’s all a dream for people who want really sharp austerity.”
So the reason that the fiscal cliff could push us into another recession in 2013 is because it enacts too much deficit reduction upfront, not too little. By contrast, the reason that Europe became mired in a fiscal crisis in the first place is because profligate nations haven’t done enough to curb their spending and raise revenue to their more fiscally responsible neighbors’ satisfaction.
The folks who want to avoid the fiscal cliff for fear of its impact on a still-faltering economy are effectively arguing that now isn’t the time to enact austerity measures: Instead of taking money out of government programs and people’s paychecks, the government should be putting that money into the economy. And certain parts of the fiscal cliff bring more bang for the buck than others, CBBP’s Stone points out: Payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits are more effective way to boost economic growth in the short-term than the Bush tax cuts for upper-income Americans, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office.
So if it’s immediate austerity that we want to avoid, and stimulus that should take its place, why is there so much talk about the need for major deficit reduction as a solution to the fiscal cliff? It’s because lawmakers decided months and years ago that they wanted this austerity crisis to happen as a way of creating leverage for more sensible, long-term deficit reduction measures.
Despite all their hand-wringing over the fiscal cliff, it was Congress and the White House that decided in the summer of 2011 that we would raise the debt ceiling only on the condition of reducing the deficit by over $2 trillion, with some cuts upfront and the rest attached to the supercommittee with a sequester trigger. (As President Obama reminded us in his speech today, “Last year, we cut more than $1 trillion in spending that we couldn’t afford.”) It’s also because lawmakers decided nearly a decade ago that the Bush tax cuts would be phased out in 2010, which Obama and Congress then extended for another two years because of the weakness of the economy.
The essential dilemma, as both the U.S. and European countries like Greece have begun to discover, is that weak economies don’t respond well to immediate austerity measures. The deficit hawks arguing for a bipartisan “grand bargain” or similarly ambitious deficit-reduction plan want to replace the kind of austerity that we’re facing now with austerity that takes effect further down the road, not undo it altogether. Others simply want to put austerity off for at least a year by extending all the tax cuts and suspending the sequester.
All of these solutions affirm one underlying truth: The reason the fiscal cliff is so scary is that it’s an austerity crisis.
President Barack Obama secured reelection while managing to talk around one area of economic policy in which experts frequently charge him with failure: managing the national housing crisis.
In a campaign dominated by talk of joblessness and what to do about it, the president hardly mentioned the epidemic of foreclosures, the fact that roughly one-fifth of all homeowners with mortgages owe the bank more than their properties are worth, or the uncomfortable reality that the American housing market is now largely propped up by taxpayers via public control of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
But while ignoring these issues was apparently a successful electoral strategy — Obama carried most of the “Foreclosure Belt” states, including California, Nevada, Colorado and Florida — that option is unlikely to be available to the president as he begins his second term. The stakes are high. Some experts see Obama’s ability to rejuvenate the housing market as directly influencing his legacy as a failed or successful steward of the American economy.
“There are very important questions left unresolved regarding the future of the housing finance system,” said Julia Gordon, the director of housing policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. “The answers matter not just for the housing market but for the future of economic growth and the future of the middle class.”
Gordon and other housing experts say they expect that with the market stabilized — prices have ticked up 3.5 percent since the market bottomed out in October of last year — the administration will turn to the biggest unresolved housing conundrum: what to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, wards of the state since a bailout in 2008 that has cost $188 billion.
After the bailout, Congress created a new regulator-overlord, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to limit further losses and get taxpayers off the hook. The financial bleeding has stopped, but Fannie and Freddie now hold even greater sway than before. Along with the Federal Housing Administration, which backs riskier loans, Fannie and Freddie own or insure more than 90 percent of all new loans made in the United States. In short: they are the mortgage market.
So what comes next? For a while, many Republicans clamored for rapid elimination of the companies, but the prospect of no housing finance system at all seems to have cooled their ardor, though Fannie and Freddie remain popular punching bags. Obama’s win all but guarantees some level of government support going forward, even if Fannie and Freddie don’t survive.
“There is a clear understanding that the government has to play a role in the mortgage finance system,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Without that support, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, the mainstay of the system, can’t exist.”
Given the stark ideological differences between the president and a severely conservative House of Representatives, and the looming fiscal cliff that will dominate everyone’s attention for the rest of this year, a permanent fix to the Fannie and Freddie problem is probably still far off. In the meantime, the advocates for partial debt forgiveness, or principal reduction, for underwater homeowners will be watching closely to see what becomes of the enemy within: Edward DeMarco, a conservative career bureaucrat who has held the “temporary” job of acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency for three years.
DeMarco, in the past year, has resisted intense pressure from the Obama administration to allow principal reduction on Fannie and Freddie loans, even when a private bank or another arm of the federal government would foot the bill.
Debt forgiveness, when combined with other relief, such as a lower interest rate, can bring monthly mortgage payments down dramatically. A study by DeMarco’s own agency found that targeted principal reduction could save taxpayers as much as $1 billion.
Stan Humphries, the chief economist at Zillow, recently told The Huffington Post that the large supply of underwater homes means that fewer are on the market at any given time. As a result, despite the high foreclosure rate, inventory in many areas is actually very tight. Humphries compared it to a stock with few available shares for trade, a situation that can lead to price volatility and continued disruption in the housing market — and in the economy.
DeMarco, though, has said that bailing out homeowners poses a “moral hazard” that could encourage homeowners still current on their loans to intentionally default in order to cash in on the aid. His obstinance has delighted Senate Republicans, and all but ensures that the Senate will kill any nominee Obama puts forward to replace him as head of the agency.
Recently, some have speculated that Obama will fire DeMarco, though that course poses its own challenges. DeMarco is a bureaucrat, not a political appointee, and would need to be fired for cause. Moreover, those who work under him, and would be next in line to replace him as acting director, share his views, according to two sources familiar with the inner workings of the agency.
For all his power, it isn’t clear whether replacing DeMarco with an administration loyalist would move the scale much for underwater borrowers hoping to see some of their debt slashed. Banks pledged to spend at least $10 billion earlier this year as part of the national mortgage settlement to write down the debt on some of these loans.
By the time a replacement for DeMarco is found, there might not be much left for borrowers with Fannie or Freddie loans. Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be much inclination within the administration to use any of the $40 billion or so in unspent dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program that was pledged for housing support to jumpstart a new underwater relief program.
Instead, administration is promoting a bill before Congress that would expand its existing refinance program.
Still, housing advocates want to see DeMarco gone. One of their biggest beefs is that thanks to his effort to save every penny for taxpayers, Fannie and Freddie have abandoned their mission to provide broader access to the housing market for middle and low-income borrowers.
Under DeMarco, the two companies have tightened lending standards to exclude all but those with the very best credit from participating. The average Fannie Mae borrower credit score from 2001 to 2004 was 718, a few points less than the median credit score of all U.S. consumers. By 2011, the average score had soared to 762, which is at the very top end of the range and is considered “excellent” by the rating services.
This means far fewer people are qualifying for a Fannie or Freddie mortgage, and even those who do qualify report long waits for approval. The United States doesn’t need another housing bubble, but it needs a system that allows financing for people with the ability to repay what was borrowed, said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a group that advocates for low-income borrowers. That’s good for families and good for the economy, he said.
For more than 70 years, since Fannie Mae was established during the Great Depression, it and its later-arriving cousin Freddie Mac provided this vital role, Taylor said. It wasn’t until they tried to catch up with the Wall Street subprime machine that they went off course, he said. A readjustment given the horror of the housing crash makes sense, he said, “but the pendulum has swung too far.”
Last week I gave a lecture to Estonian Business School MBA students. The lecture topic is Content and Strategy and it gives an overview how to use blogs, content and social media to drive business results for your brand.
The key points of the lecture are:
Goals (measurable user actions)
- Marketing models (consistency, predictability, and repeatability)
- Target group
- Content strategy (what do you have to offer)
- Participation rate
- Types of content
- Best practices
- Max strategy of content distribution
- Basics of on page SEO
- Content planning
- Keyword research
- Promoting content
- Engaging target audience
- Social media bomb
- Link building
- Driving conversions
- Distributing content to your blogs and social media sites
- Planning resources (people, time, money)
- Measuring results (and ROI in socia media)
via dreamgrow.com
Entrepreneurs, by nature, are do-it-yourself people. Not a bad thing. While that trait may serve you in many areas there’s one where it actually works against you: Marketing. Here’s five reasons why.
1) You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know.
While you might feel savvy after reading a couple marketing books or listening to a savvy marketing guru, it doesn’t compare to working with a qualified team or consultant with great experience and a great record. You simply don’t know what you don’t know, and if you do it yourself, what you don’t know will hurt you. Like having a tag-line that makes no sense, or sends a wrong message. Like pouring money into SEO or your website when the better focus is Content Marketing and improved organic search. Like not realizing you need video. Or having a self-produced video that’s so unprofessional it works against you. The list goes on.
2) A Business Owner Can’t Be Objective.
Passionate business owners tend to be absorbed by their business—an advantage when it comes to DIY marketing, right? Not really. Effective marketing starts with an unbiased perspective. To be successful at marketing, business blemishes must be seen clearly. As a business owner you just don’t have that objectivity. If you read Ken Segall’s book Insanely Simple, about his working with Apple, you’ll read how Steve Jobs was proven wrong time and time again by his more objective and talented outside team who created some of the most iconic and successful marketing ever done.
3) The Best Marketing Isn’t About A System or Formula.
As more small business owners attempt to save money by trying to do their own thing, more self-proclaimed marketing gurus are popping up on the Internet with their “Amazing Profit-Making Marketing” systems. They all sound amazing and they all claim amazing results. They even have amazing testimonials. But every business is different, and a cookie-cutter, systematic approach is not the most effective way to market a business or product. While an “Amazing Profit-Making Marketing System” sounds amazing, the ones making the most money from them are usually the ones getting you to spend money on them.
4) Great Marketing Requires Talent.
Great marketing is part science, part art. Yet, the creative part often gets lost or diminished in this ever-advancing tech world. Focused, creative talent is the ingredient that helps communicate your message and persuade your prospects to buy. It’s not easy to find, but if you do it’ll make a huge difference.
5) DIY Doesn’t Really Save Money.
Because you’re not spending money on outside resources you might think you’re saving tons of money with a DIY approach. Just remember this…it’s not just what you spend, it’s what you spend and get back on what you spend.
Great marketing will get you back more, and sometimes significantly more, than what you spend. So, how do you get great marketing? You find and hire great marketing people, like Steve Jobs did, like Nike’s Phil Knight did, and like every successful business owner does. And, they didn’t just do it when they were big successful companies with huge marketing budgets. They did it from the very beginning of their companies, only months after they incorporated.
You also have to factor in what your time is worth. It’s not cheap. If you kept track of every minute you spent trying to do it yourself and applied a dollar value to that, you’d be surprised at the expense. Also realize that every expensive minute you spend fumbling with something you don’t do great is taking away valuable time and talent from something you do do great. That’s another expense.
To sum up I’ll end with a simple quote from someone who’s interviewed hundreds of small business owners and knows what it takes to be successful:
“Business success is all about finding the right outside service providers and using them wisely. You can’t do it all yourself.” — Anita Campbell, Founder of Small Business Trends
