Tag Archives: North Salem NY Real Estate

North Salem NY Real Estate

Uncertainty, QE3 push mortgage rates to new lows | North Salem NY Real Estate

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With U.S. lawmakers heading toward the edge of the “fiscal cliff,” government-backed mortgage bonds that fund the vast majority of home loans are looking like a safe haven for investors, helping push mortgage rates to new lows.

Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.34 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending Nov. 15, down from 3.4 percent last week and 4 percent a year ago, Freddie Mac said in releasing the results of its weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

That’s a new low in Freddie Mac records dating to 1971. In the four decades that Freddie Mac has conducted the mortgage market survey, rates on 30-year fixed-rate loans had never been below 4 percent until last year.

The survey showed rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages averaging 2.65 percent with an average 0.7 point, down from 2.69 percent last week and 3.31 percent a year ago. That’s also a new record in Freddie Mac records dating to 1991.

For five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loans, rates averaged 2.74 percent with an average 0.6 point, up from 2.73 percent last week but down from 2.97 percent a year ago. Rates on five-year ARM loans hit a low in records dating to 2005 of 2.69 percent during the week ending July 19.

Rates on one-year Treasury-indexed ARM loans averaged 2.55 percent with an average 0.3 point, down from 2.59 percent last week and 2.98 percent a year ago. That’s a new low in records dating to 1984.

Applications for mortgage loan applications bounced back last week after being dented by Hurricane Sandy, according to a separate survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

That survey showed applications for purchase mortgages were up a seasonally adjusted 11 percent during the week ending Nov. 9 compared to the week before, and up 22 percent from a year ago.

Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions, and increased demand for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) guaranteed by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae has pushed mortgage rates down.

The Federal Reserve has been one of the biggest purchasers of MBS, in a deliberate move to stimulate the economy by lowering the cost of borrowing.  A first round of “quantitative easing” by the Fed that wrapped up in 2010 helped push mortgage rates below 5 percent. That program involved the purchase of $1.25 trillion in Fannie and Freddie MBS and debt.

A third round of quantitative easing (“QE3”) announced by the Fed on Sept. 13 has boosted its MBS purchases by $40 billion a month. Because of the sluggish pace of the recovery, Fannie Mae economists think that open-ended program could last through all of 2013 and perhaps into 2014, and grow the Fed’s balance sheet by $1 trillion.

via inman.com

Home Depot delivers latest upbeat housing signals | North Salem NY Real Estate

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Thirty-three of the company’s top 40 markets posted positive same-store sales. Its northeastern region was the main one in which some markets saw negative sales.

While the company continued to see demand for maintenance and repair projects, a positive sign also emerged in sales of higher-priced items. The number of customer transactions rose 1.7%, while the average transaction amount rose 2.9% to $54.55, marking a sixth straight quarter of transaction and ticket growth.

While customer transactions — or “tickets” — under $50, representing approximately 20% of Home Depot’s U.S. sales, were flat, transactions over $900, also about one-fifth of U.S. sales, were up 4.3%, driven by demand for appliances, flooring and in-stock kitchens.

Analysts have said a recovery in bigger-ticket items offers a view into consumers’ willingness to shell out beyond basic repair needs. Blake said the company’s windows business, hard hit during the economic downturn, also has seen a return to growth.

“Customers are beginning to be willing to step in and do the decor projects,” Blake said on the call. See story on Home Depot’s e-commerce strategy.

Sandy impact

Home Depot, which saw demand rise as consumers readied for Hurricane Sandy, said recovery and rebuilding efforts will positively impact its sales — to an extent comparable to the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Irene, with possible upside because of the bigger property damage estimated to have resulted from Sandy. The Home Depot executives, however, are uncertain about the timing of that impact. The company said consumers buying batteries, flashlights, generators and extension cords ahead of Sandy buttressed third-quarter sales by about $70 million.

via articles.marketwatch.com

10 Simple Tips to Becoming a Better Blogger | North Salem Realtor

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It was in 1439 a professional goldsmith created an agent for worldwide change. This invention facilitated enormous evolution to society in Europe and globally. The machine he created called the “printing press” provided for the first time, the means for the mass production of books.10 Simple Tips to Becoming a Better Blogger

His name was Johannes Gutenberg and he was German.

Over 3,600 pages a day could be printed compared to the forty that could be produced by hand printing. This was an increase in production of over 9,000 percent!

This machine changed everything.

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher said in 1620 that printing was one of three things that “changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world”. It introduced the era of mass communication which changed forever the structure of society and culture.

Ideas Crossed Borders

Authors such as Luther and Erasmus became best selling authors and their thoughts and writing allowed the blossoming of the middle class. The status of the elite was challenged. Literacy rose sharply. The monopoly and power of the religious and political leaders was threatened.

It led to the unrestricted circulation of information and perceived radical ideas that now crossed borders quickly and efficiently.

The Age of Digital Self Expression and Creativity

In the 1990′s people started expressing themselves with online diaries. According to Wikipedia, Justin Hall was one of the earliest bloggers who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 as the Web started to become widespread.

The phrase was coined “web log“, which has through the wonderful world of language, been transformed into the term “we blog” and hence “blogging“.

The tools for blogging have evolved to the point that the less technical of the population can now publish text, video and images simply and easily without understanding a single line of coding or computer programming. Tools such as WordPress and Tumblr have broken the technical tyranny of the geeks.

Self expression and creativity has exploded online and allowed anyone with enough passion and discipline to publish their ideas via rich digital multimedia.

Blogging plus Social Media

The rise of social media has allowed bloggers to display and market themselves and their content globally without having to pay a cent to a newspaper, television mogul or to the mass media elite.

Bloggers that were previously undiscovered became global brands on topics as diverse as food, fashion and technology. Marketing your blog was no longer restricted to building an RSS or email subscription list.

Publishing and marketing has been democratized. Freedom to express yourself globally is available in seconds and it is also mobile.

The age of the printing press is now threatened after 573 years. Print media marketing has now been surpassed by digital media for the first time in history.

So How do you Become a Better Blogger?

It is quite simple really.

  1. Blog late or early
  2. Blog while travelling
  3. Blog on holidays
  4. Blog even when your friends think you’re mad
  5. Blog on the bus
  6. Blog on the plane
  7. Blog when the boss isn’t watching
  8. Blog when your partner nags you to stop blogging
  9. Blog when your passion has taken a holiday
  10. Blog when you think no one cares about your blog

How About You?

Stephen King the world famous best selling author was asked “how do your become a better writer?” He answered that question in two ways. One word at a time and write 1,000 words every day.

That is what it took for him to become the success he is today.

What are you going to do to become a better blogger? The world is your oyster and it is the biggest opportunity in over 500 years. You are witnessing the biggest change to communication in 20 generations.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below.

Want to Learn How to Learn How to Become a Better Blogger?

My book – Blogging the Smart Way “How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.

I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 121,000.

You can download and read it now.

via jeffbullas.com

Regulators teaming up to build national mortgage database | North Salem NY Real Estate

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Two federal agencies are teaming up to create a national mortgage database they say will help them track emerging mortgage and housing market trends and support policymaking and research.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have signed an agreement outlining the terms of the database’s development, maintenance and funding. An early version of the database, which will aggregate data spanning the life of a mortgage loan, is expected to be complete in 2013.

“This partnership between FHFA and CFPB will create a unique resource that benefits the government and public as we seek to answer important questions about how the housing finance market is evolving and changing,” said Edward J. DeMarco, FHFA’s acting director, in a statement.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray said the database would be a valuable tool for regulators and researchers.

“In order to understand what is going on in the mortgage marketplace and develop appropriate consumer protections, we must have the best facts and data,” Cordray said in a statement.

At least two real estate industry players have set their sights on providing government agencies as well as lenders and secondary mortgage market investors with high-quality analytics products based on public records data and real-time multiple listing service data nationwide: National Association of Realtors subsidiary Realtors Property Resource (RPR) and data aggregator CoreLogic’s Partner InfoNet.

Both initiatives depend on the participation of individual MLSs, which number roughly 900 across the country. Despite some success in MLS adoption, RPR has not achieved the national coverage required by big banks and federal agencies who indicated interest in purchasing analytics from RPR, NAR CEO Dale Stinton told Inman News last week. The initiative has subsequently generated very little revenue and has cost NAR nearly $58 million to date.

“The disappointment is far less about the revenue shortfalls, and far more about the fact that this nationally scaled data could have and still can be a tremendous, reliable, real-time source of market information for the big banks and the federal agencies,” Stinton said.

“They tell us, in plain terms, that this information could considerably speed up the short-sale/foreclosure pipeline clog that has existed for several years and continues to be among the most frustrating aspects of our members’ daily business lives.”

Ben Graboske, CEO of CoreLogic MarketLinx, has declined to disclose how much revenue the company has generated from Partner InfoNet, but has said most of the initiative’s customers are lenders and government agencies.

“All of the big lenders and government agencies are very interested in this data. It’s hard to size the market … but the demand is absolutely there and the demand is absolutely growing,” he told Inman News.

Contract awarded to Experian

Regulators say they’re building their own database in order to track the relative health of mortgage markets and outcomes for consumers; provide insights on consumer decision-making; monitor the volume and performance of mortgage products and identify potential risks; view both first and second-lien mortgages for a given borrower; and understand the impact of consumers’ debt burdens.

The database will not contain personally identifiable information, they said. The database will track a loan from origination through servicing and include the borrower’s financial and credit profile, the mortgage product and terms, the property purchased or refinanced, and the ongoing payment history of the loan.

The agencies will match a nationwide sampling of credit bureau files on borrowers’ mortgages and payment histories with “informational files” from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) database, property valuation models, and other data files, the agencies said. The data will track as far back as 1998.

On Sept. 27, the FHFA awarded Experian Information Solutions an $11.1 million contract to collect and compile consumer credit record files and merge them with other data sources to build the database.

Updated monthly, the database will fulfill an FHFA requirement under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) to conduct a monthly mortgage market survey, the agencies said.

They noted that, although the mortgage market is the single largest market for consumer finance, there is a lack of comprehensive data available on a complete, national scale.

“Multiple federal and state agencies, as well as private vendors, collect and maintain information, but there is no single database that contains all information in one place,” the agencies said.

“The creation of the National Mortgage Database will be the first step in a broader strategy to help streamline data for research and policy analysis and to ensure accurate, comprehensive information is more easily accessible for monitoring the market.”

via inman.com

North Salem NY Real Estate | Mortgage applications down 12%, rates edge up

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The number of mortgage applications filed by potential homebuyers and refinancing borrowers fell 12% for the week ending October 19, an industry trade group said.

The steep drop is attributed to an upward adjustment made a week earlier to account for the Columbus Day holiday, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. When reviewing the numbers on an unadjusted basis, applications fell 2%.

The MBA noted that refinancing activity declined 13% from the previous week while home purchase applications fell 8%. The trend of slowdowns is expected to continue.

The MBA is warning it expects to see $1.3 trillion in mortgage originations during 2013. This is down more than 25% from its revised estimation of $1.7 trillion in 2012.

As applications declined, rates went up with the average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage on a conforming loan increasing to 3.63% from 3.57%.

The 30-year jumbo FRM also grew to 3.85% from 3.81% last week.

The 30-year, FRM backed by FHA edged up to 3.41% from 3.34%, while the average 15-year, FRM hit 2.96% from 2.87% last week.

The 5/1 ARM also grew to 2.72% from 2.59%.

via housingwire.com

North Salem, Lewisboro, Katonah Inventory | North Salem NY Real Estate

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Months of Unsold Inventory in Northern Westchester

North Salem    19 months

Lewisboro        11 months

Katonah           8 months

via trulia.com

US Home Values Post Big Gains, But Recovery Is Uneven Among Markets | North Salem NY Real Estate

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Home values in the United States rose 1.3 percent in the third quarter — the biggest quarterly gain since 2006, according to the third quarter Zillow Real Estate Market Reports. The Zillow Home Value Forecast shows more growth, albeit slower growth, on the horizon with values increasing 1.7 percent over the next year.

However, the pace of the housing recovery is uneven from market to market. Home values are increasing rapidly in some areas. In the Phoenix metro, for example, values are up 20.4 percent year-over-year. But in other areas — such as the Atlanta metro, where home values declined 4.8 percent year-over-year — values continue to fall. But that doesn’t mean the recovery is in jeopardy.

“We’re likely seeing home values fall back into the negative range in some markets due to the close of the traditional home-buying season,” said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries. “While that doesn’t mean the recovery has come off the rails — in fact, most markets have hit bottom — it does present a confusing environment for consumers. Looking forward, we expect to see home values bump along the bottom for some time, before increasing at a slow and steady pace.”

via zillow.com