Just How Big is the FHA? | Pound Ridge Real Estate
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FHA Largely to Be Spared ‘Sequester’ | Pound Ridge NY Homes
The across-the-board budget cuts enacted into law in 2011 to reduce the federal deficit take effect Friday, March 1, absent additional action by the government. Some $85 billion, split between defense and domestic discretionary programs, is scheduled to be cut over the balance of 2013. In all, about $1.2 trillion is to be cut over the next 10 years.
Not counting the economic impact on housing demand, the cuts are expected to have minimal impact on federally backed mortgage finance programs because the sequester applies to program dollars, not loan guaranty authority. For that reason, loans backed by the FHA, the VA, and the Rural Housing Service are expected to remain at current levels.
The two secondary mortgage market companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which remain under federal conservatorship, will also likely see little impact from the sequester.
Two additional budget deadlines are ahead. The deadline for extending a continuing resolution that’s in place is March 28. A continuing resolution is a temporary budget measure that keeps the federal government operating in the absence of congressionally passed appropriations bills. And the deadline by which the federal government must raise its debt ceiling, which enables it to borrow funds to service its existing debt, is May 19.
The White House has posted an analysis of how the budget sequester could impact federal funding in your state. Access the analysis.
Hottest Market Sales Going for a Premium Over List Price | Pound Ridge Real Estate
How long has it been since you heard the words “sold at a premium over list price?” For the past six years, sales prices ended up somewhere south list prices by at least five percent. Now, in the markets where the recovery is hottest, sellers are increasingly experiencing multiple bid scenarios and buyers are pre-empting the competition with offers over list price that stir up memories of the boom years.
Last month 13 percent of all Realtors participating in the National Association of Realtors’ Realtors’ Confidence Index reported they had at least one sale above the asking price in the previous month. The percentage rose slightly from December, the first month that NAR asked its members about sales at a premium above asking price. Realtors reported some 12 percent reported sales with prices above list price.
According to Pro-Teck Valuation Service’s Home Value Forecast, median sales prices have overtaken list prices in at least one market, San Francisco, and are close to doing so in Sacramento and Seattle.
Reports from Realtors across the country confirm that sales at a premium over asking price are still very unusual and limited to hottest markets.
“This is pretty normal in the San Francisco Bay Area. The shortage of inventory and the fact that there are so many potential buyers leads to multiple offers. I wrote one last week where there were 14 offers on a home. The seller would not consider any offers until the home had been on the market for 5 days. We came in third on that one, where we wrote just $20,000 above list price,” reports a Bay area local broker.
Offers over list price can backfire, according to Elizabeth Weintraub of Sacramento. “An overpriced offer is especially a huge problem on a Sacramento short sale. Let me illustrate for you. Say, a home is listed at $200,000, and the comparable sales over the past 3 months justify a price of $195,000. With the way the seller’s market is moving in Sacramento, $200,000 is a reasonable price 60 to 90 days later when the approval is likely to be received. Along comes Mary Home Buyer who offers $220,000. If the seller accepts that offer, it’s a long shot that it will appraise by Mary’s lender.
“So, down the road, we get the approval letter from the bank at $220,000. Mary’s lender’s appraiser comes in at $200,000. We then go back to the bank, and maybe there are two lenders so now we have to ask 2 banks to adjust their approval letter. The primary lender refuses. Nope, that bank wants $220,000. The bank might feel we can put it back on the market and find a cash buyer for $220,000, some cash buyer who won’t rely on an appraisal. The deal blows up.,” she said.
Solar Power Outside the Sunbelt | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate
2 Million Homeowners Freed From Negative Equity in 2012 | Pound Ridge Real Estate
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Real Estate Video Marketing Starts with a Vision, Stirs Emotions | Pound Ridge Real Estate
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Texas markets boom for homebuilders | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate
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The Evolution of Social Media Marketing | Pound Ridge Realtor
Before the social media boom, marketers thought social media marketing was just another fad that would soon likely pass, something in the vein of pyramid and networking scams. But when Facebook started attracting attention from the year 2004, more and more social media marketing strategies were developed. Today, this marketing tool has allowed start-ups and established companies to gain attention without having to spend millions of dollars on advertisements.
A Brief History
Before there was social media, netizens in the 1970s and 1980s spent most of their time on social networks like dating sites and online forums. Six Degrees, Livejournal, and Friendster were the earliest form of social medias.
The dot-com bubble of 1995 – 2002 was a critical event that allowed the internet to become a viable marketing tool. It began with search marketing, prompting brands to create websites to establish an online presence. As Google, Yahoo and MSN’s search engines evolved, companies turned to SEO strategies to remain at the top of search results.
When web 2.0 sites – blogs in particular – increased in popularity, marketers began to recognize the potential of content marketing. Inbound marketing, where more value is added for the customer and business is earned, starts replacing age-old “buy, beg or bug” outbound marketing strategies.
In 2003 – 2004, the arrival social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and My Space initiates the shift of internet users from multiplayer online games into social networking sites. Eventually, businesses picked up on the positive effects of a social media site presence on e-commerce and started creating their own profiles on the popular networking sites.
In the years that followed, customer’s favorable attitude towards social media marketing slowly changed business marketing preference from the more aggressively-proactive outbound marketing to the more reactive inbound marketing.
Nowadays, over 90% of marketing executives utilize social media as part of their marketing strategies, and successful businesses utilize social media marketing for branding, lead generation, customer retention, research and e-commerce. Not only does social media manage to significantly reduce marketing expenses and the time needed to market products and services, it also increased the effectiveness of marketing and overall customer satisfaction. 83% of customers who post complaints on a brand’s social site like Twitter and get a reply state that they are satisfied. This helped companies retain more of their customers, resulting to increased existing customer transactions.
Capitalizing on free Internet
There are over 2 billion people online at any given time. Around 23% of the total time spent on the internet is spent on browsing or interacting within social media sites. At least 53% of individuals who are active on social media sites such as Facebook are following a brand. With the help of global internet, more and more customers (if not all) are expecting their brands to have an online presence.
This year’s tablets, iPads, and Android-operated phones will only make internet browsing all the more accessible for consumers, and social media marketing will allow companies to reach out to more target markets. As long as the internet exists, social media will remain an important part of marketing strategies.
This post originally appeared at Business Marketing Strategies
Author: Amber King Amber King on the Web Amber King on Facebook Amber King on Twitter Amber King on Google Plus Amber King RSS Feed
Amber King is a marketing executive for Callbox, an international sales and marketing firm. Callbox helps companies increase ROI by generating leads and setting appointments through telemarketing. … View full profile
This article is an original contribution by Amber King.
Taking your POS mobile: The fees to avoid, the deals to grab (free hardware offer)
By Intuit
If you’ve shopped recently for—well, pretty much anything, you know how the retail world is mobilizing the check-out experience: Big retailers like Nordstrom, Guess and Sephora are all taking their cue from Apple and offering their customers an alternative to standing in line. In fact, over the…… read more
Branding, Social Business & The Future: 5 Books that will Inspire New Real Estate Ideas | Pound Ridge Realtor
I love wine tasting in Napa Valley. It’s one of the benefits of living in Northern California. I know you might be thinking it’s the wine I drink that makes it so fun. Wrong. It’s the wineries!
It’s their stories, their winemakers, their micro-climates, their science of discovering new ways to make great wine, and how, above all else each winery makes the experience of tasting their wine an experience different than any other winery.
It’s science, art, inspiration and knowing what’s great. Many wineries share grapes, blend varieties, or have a patch of vines on another wineries’ vineyard to take advantage of the soil they don’t have. And in the end, the Napa Valley has a reputation for a slower, simpler, beautiful community of people who appreciate agriculture, art, and people. There are no signs to tell me to LIKE their Facebook page, follow them on Twitter, sign their guestbook, enter my email on some card, or subscribe to their website. In short, there is not much noise. But what they do is impactful, because of that very thing. They build it and we come — in droves — and buy wine. Lots of it. Napa Valley serves up the good life I want. We can learn from this.
Gather your ideas, get inspired, tell your story
There is a shift that is occurring in business, which is a backlash of social media hype. Less noise, more impact. This is a good thing. But it means being ready for change, especially in online marketing, and how it relates to your brand, personal and business. It’s time to start clearing your path for new ways of reaching your audience. There are NO shortcuts, but there is plenty of inspiration.
- Do you want to be smarter about decisions that actually build your business?
- Do you want to execute on some new ideas?
- How do you want your clients to experience your brand? Do you know what your brand is?
- How do you position your message to resonate with the right audience?
Great books, great inspiration
(not social media sound bites.)
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The Impact Equation by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith
This is not just another Social Media book. From understanding your goals, your ideas, the platforms, and how you are communicating , OR NOT, this will help you define, and polish the most impactful ways to get your brand and message out there to the right people. From HTML emails, blog content, writing and Instagramming, this book untangles the hype and shows you how to focus on what matters; creating trust.
Brand Delusions by Bill Leider
“Your Brand is a widely held set of beliefs and expectations about what you deliver and how you deliver it, validated by customers’ experiences.” Bill Leider. Whether you are a real estate agent, a broker, an entrepreneur, work in collaborative company environment, or are personally trying to understand what building, having and maintaining a brand really means, then you MUST get this book. It’s not business book, or self-help book, but a philosophy woven into a fictional story with characters that any one of us could relate to. The inner dynamics of relationships, office politics, and personalities all play a role in building the brand experience to your consumer or buyer. You will take away a firm understanding of what BRAND really is, in actions, words and behaviors, and be empowered to explore all aspects of your business that touch your clients.
How do true innovations happen? How do ideas go from ideas to execution, to something amazing? Is there a formula that we can use that takes inspiration, to an idea, to a prototype, to a real live innovation? By using Design Thinking the goal is to create demand from a need, by using the techniques in this book.
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Find and Reserve Your Social Media Name | Pound Ridge Realtor
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