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Kitchens of Cooking Celebrities | North Salem NY Real Estate

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They sing, they act and some of them even cook. While many celebrities are usually spotted dining out or confess to having private chefs, a small number of them say they love to play chef.

But who would blame them when their cooking space features high-end appliances, a deep farmhouse sink and extended counter space? We’re taking a tour through some gorgeous kitchens owned by celebs who actually use them.

Source: People.com

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel

Who’s the cook in Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel’s relationship?

The newlyweds actually share the kitchen duties, Timberlake told Jay Leno recently.

“She likes to cook. I like to bake … so dinner and dessert,” Timberlake said.

Perhaps the two share duties in his modern Manhattan penthouse. The sleek and minimal space has deep counter space and stainless steel appliances.

Justin Timberlake’s sleek penthouse kitchen

Source: WikiCommons

Emma Stone

For Emma Stone, cooking is both therapy and passion. She confessed recently that baking was one way she could manage her anxiety growing up. Stone’s boyfriend, actor Andrew Garfield, told Vanity Fair that the actress is also serious about some day opening a bakery of her own.

Might as well get some practice in! Her galley-style kitchen in her new Beverly Hills home has white tiled countertops, stainless steel appliances and a large sink with built-in drainboard.

Emma Stone bought her home in May 2012.

Source: US Weekly

Gwyneth Paltrow

In between acting and raising a family with Coldplay rocker Chris Martin, Gwyneth Paltrow runs the website goop.com, which is devoted to healthy living. The actress also recently published a cookbook entitled “My Father’s Daughter.”

The amateur chef likely needs a large space for preparing her meals, which is why her new home in Los Angeles is perfect. The spacious and modern kitchen has high-end appliances and a large island perfect for meal prep.

Paltrow’s kitchen would be a great setting for her next cookbook.

Source: IMDb

Matthew McConaughey

Texas-born actor Matthew McConaughey has long professed his love for Texas-style barbecue, stopping by Guy Fieri’s food show as well as sharing recipes with Rachael Ray.

Even now as he prepares for a role requiring a strict diet, McConaughey told US Weekly he’s been preparing a lot of rib-eye steak for his wife, Camila Alves.

The couple share a home in Austin with their two children. Not only does McConaughey’s home include a large kitchen, but it also has a back patio with great barbecuing space.

McConaughey’s Austin home has great indoor and outdoor cooking spaces.

Source: IMDb

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift has confessed that she loves to bake with her friends Selena Gomez and Emma Stone. She has plenty of kitchens spread across her homes in Nashville, and most recently Cape Cod, but we can imagine her spending time playing chef in her Beverly Hills home.

Her new California kitchen is a charming light-filled space with butcher block countertops and plenty of cabinet space.

Swift’s cheery cooking space is perfect for the singer.

via zillow.com

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

Personal Branding on LinkedIn: 10 Mistakes to Avoid | North Salem Realtor

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LinkedIn is a fantastic online business networking platform for professionals.Personal Branding on LinkedIn 10 Mistakes to Avoid

It has almost become the default global network for all serious business people to connect, engage and share ideas due to its sheer size with over 175 million registered users.

From day one it was set up for the express purpose of  providing an easy to use portal to exchange ideas and network with like minded individuals. Its tone is more formal than Facebook or Twitter which seems to escape some people.

And for job seekers, it’s a brilliant place to showcase yourself and your personal brand. But, if you’re doing the following, you’re NOT doing your “Brand You” any favours:

#2. Don’t lie.

All your connections can view your profile and if you lie, you will be found out. It will be very embarrassing too. Look what happened to former Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson.

#4. Don’t use the “Friend” option

Only do this when you are a friend of theirs. Comments 0It’s a major pet peeve for many professionals on LinkedIn and they won’t want to connect with you.

#6. Don’t leave your LinkedIn profile incomplete

This is important if you want to be found. LinkedIn has a “wizard” which guides you through completing your profile and tells you when it is 100% complete. Most important is your Summary, your Experience, your Skills & Expertise and your Headline. Make sure that they are “keyword rich”. Did you know that all these sections, and more, are searchable? So if you want to be found, make the effort to optimize your profile.

#8. Don’t use LinkedIn groups purely for getting “linkbacks” to your website or blog

This will see you labelled as a spammer. A well managed LinkedIn group is tightly monitored and most will only allow discussions, questions and commentary. Many will allow you to link to other people’s blog posts, but not your own. A bit strange if you ask me. Even if your post is totally relevant to the discussion; it is perceived as self-promotion.

#10. Don’t ask people who DON’T know you to write recommendations for you.

It’s awkward for them and you won’t get a recommendation that you’ll want to publish anyway. Remember, it’s not about the quantity of the recommendations, it’s about the quality of them. And for the record, tit for tat, reciprocal recommendations look dodgy.

What About You?

How is your LinkedIn etiquette. Is it enhancing your personal brand or could it do with some polishing?

How effective is your LinkedIn profile? Could you take some of these tips today and make some improvements?

Is there anything I should have added to this list?  Please add your thoughts to the comments below.

Guest Author: Carolyn Hyams is the Global Marketing Director for award-winning digital recruitment specialist, Firebrand Talent Search, Carolyn is responsible for Firebrand’s entire brand strategy and execution in the UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. She brings a wealth of local and international experience to the Firebrand team, including expertise in brand development and strategy, digital and traditional marketing strategy and execution, and is particularly passionate about social media marketing. Follow Carolyn on Twitter:  or connect with her on LinkedIn:

Want to Learn How to Market Your Personal Brand on Social Media?

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 115,000.

You can download and read it now.

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via jeffbullas.com

Fiscal cliff worries may turn USD 10yr swap spreads negative | North Salem NY Homes

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Worry about the pending fiscal cliff and its implications for the US sovereign rating are weighing on USD 10-year swap spreads and may be the catalyst that tips them into negative territory.

Swap spreads already tightened to zero following the Federal Reserve’s third round of quantitative easing launched in September before moving back into low single digits.

But it’s the fisal cliff, the pending tax increases and spending cuts that will automatically kick in in 2013 if Congress fails to agree on measures to avert them, that are now spooking investors.

“There are salient concerns over the sovereign credit rating, however I fail to see how an investor would take on the credit of a financial institution (via swaps) over that of the US Treasury (bonds) which negative rates would suggest,” said one swaps trader.

The swap spread is the difference between the swap rate, or the fixed rate of an interest rate swap, and the corresponding Treasury yield. An interest rate swap exchanges a fixed payment for a floating payment and is tied to the London Interbank Offer Rate, or Libor.

In normal conditions, the Treasury yield should be lower than its corresponding swap rate, as government debt is considered to be less risky than bank debt. When Treasury yields are higher than swap rates, swap spreads invert.

The typical catalysts for swap spreads are Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and bond supply. That relationship was demonstrated by the Fed’s QE3, as convexity selling occurred between Treasuries, swap spreads and MBS.

Fixed-rate mortgages are tied to the 10-year Treasury yield. When yields fall, mortgage rates drop in sympathy. However, MBS have negative convexity, which means they cannot rise in price rapidly enough to accommodate the drop in interest rates.

Negative convexity is due to the fact that borrowers have the option to prepay their loan and refinance at a better rate. That increased prepayment risk reduces the price gains and causes the convexity selling.

To smooth out duration, an MBS investor will purchase a longer-dated asset, such as a Treasury or swap rate, facilitating the tightening in swap spreads.

THE NEW NORMAL?

The decline in mortgage rates sparked by QE3 led to heavy selling in swap spreads. That pulled the 10-year spread to zero, although it moved back up by the end of September as MBS repriced.

The 10-year spread has plumbed briefly into negative terrain in 2009 and 2010. Other swap spreads, both USD and in other currencies have also inverted.

In fact, the 30-year swap spread went negative following pronounced selling in 30s in reaction to the Lehman collapse in 2008. The trade was not expected to persist for the long term, but four years later, it remains negative and is considered the “new normal.”

The 10-year swap spread is now expected to track a similar pattern as old worries resurface.

This week, Fitch reiterated its negative outlook on the US AAA rating and urged the government to quickly resolve the fiscal cliff, lift the debt ceiling and put a credible deficit reduction plan into place now that the presidential election is over.

“Failure to reach even a temporary arrangement to prevent the full range of tax increases and spending cuts implied by the fiscal cliff and a repeat of the August 2011 debt ceiling episode would mean that the general election had not resolved the political gridlock in Washington and likely result in a sovereign rating downgrade,” the ratings agency said.

Before the presidential election, the 10-year Treasury yield stood at 1.72% and the 10-year swap rate stood at 1.71%, according to the Federal Reserve website. That saw the 10-year swap spread briefly flirt with negativity.

That in turn suggests the market is pricing in a risk premium to Treasury debt over that of the interbank market.

Supply and demand are other factors affecting swap spreads.

“There has been a reasonably robust issuance calendar, therefore there is demand from hedgers,” the trader said. “I believe that a lot of the movement in spreads is attributable to this element.”

The Bank for International Settlements pegged the size of the interest rate swap market at around $442 trillion in aggregate outstanding in its June 2011 survey.

In the intermediate term, swap spreads will take their direction from the fiscal cliff scenario. If there is no resolution to the event risk, they will move wider as Treasury supply will be reduced.

However, many believe some compromise will be met which will result in some fiscal tightening.

via reuters.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