What $5,200/Month Can Rent You Around New York City – Curbed Comparisons – Curbed NY.
What $5,200/Month Can Rent You Around New York City | Pound Ridge NY Homes
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When Water Conservation is Not Enough | Pound Ridge Real Estate
For those people involved in sustainability, water—or specifically the lack of water to meet future demands—is a growing concern. This is perhaps most apparent to residents in the Western U.S., where a drought has caused a rather dramatic decline in water flowing in the Colorado River, which provides water for thousands of people and millions of acres of farmland. However, what many people don’t know if that this drought has lasted for 14 years.
Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that these conditions are “unrivaled in 1,250 years…The once broad and blue river has in many places dwindled to a murky brown trickle. Reservoirs have shrunk to less than half their capacities, the canyon walls around them ringed with white mineral deposits where water once lapped.”
According to the newspaper, communities depending on the river are turning to a variety of recycling programs, including recycling sewage effluent, to help address this mounting concern. Tax rebates to remove lawns and water-thirsty vegetation have become the norm in states like New Mexico and Arizona, and many states are also offering rebates to consumers and businesses to replace older water-using appliances with more efficient alternatives. For commercial facilities, this includes restroom fixtures that are either low-flow or, in many cases, no-flow systems, such as waterless urinals, which can save as much as 40,000 gallons of water per urinal.
However, what the residents and businesses in these states must now realize is that they are not being asked to conserve water temporarily; instead, they are being asked to use it more efficiently now and into the future. There is a big difference between the two propositions and greatly affects the way we design our buildings.
Mortgage Loan Rates Dip as Home Sales Stabilize | Pound Ridge NY Homes
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly report on mortgage applications Wednesday morning, noting a decrease of 0.2% in the group’s seasonally adjusted composite index, following a rise of 4.7% for the previous week. Mortgage loan rates decreased last week on three of four loan types to their lowest levels since late November.
The seasonally adjusted purchase index increased by 2% from the prior week’s report. On an unadjusted basis, the composite index decreased by 9% week-over-week. The unadjusted purchase index decreased by 3% for the week and is 12% lower year-over-year.
Mortgage rates continue to inch downward, with only the 5/1 ARM interest rate adding three basis points last week. Adjustable rate mortgage loans account for 7% of all applications.
The MBA’s refinance index decreased by 2%, after rising by 10% in the previous week. The share of refinancings fell by two points, totaling 62% of all applications.
The average mortgage loan rate for a conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgage decreased from 4.57% to 4.52%. The rate for a jumbo 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell from 4.57% to 4.47%. The average interest rate for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage fell from 3.68% to 3.59%.
The contract interest rate for a 5/1 adjustable rate mortgage loan rose from 3.23% to 3.25%.
Sales have held fairly stable in January after an initial recovery, which is good news for sellers. As inventories increase with better weather, buyers should get a break too.
http://247wallst.com/housing/2014/01/29/mortgage-loan-rates-dip-as-home-sales-stabilize/
The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges: First Look | Pound Ridge Real Estate
The first answer is yes. You should go to the Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges. That is, if you can get in. A reservation at the restaurant, owned by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, is the hottest ticket in Westchester since Blue Hill at Stone Barns opened in 2004.
The downstairs dining room, which was not open the evening I went, but all lit with beautiful candles anyway.
The second answer: very good. The food is beautifully presented, and the flavors shine with signature Jean-Georges magic: a little heat, a little sweet, a little acidity, a little umami. The chef is Blake Farrar, who formerly cooked in Jean-Georges’ restaurant The Mark in Manhattan.
Booths downstairs.
The third answer: gorgeous. The renovations of the building, a former inn and restaurant dating from 1833, will leave you slack-jawed. A big white-brick fireplace is the centerpiece of the dining room. The decor is mid-century-modern (elegant wood tables and chairs), vintage (mismatched silver and linens) and farmhouse chic (reclaimed barn wood, exposed beams), all rolled into one.
A fireplace downstairs.
The fourth answer: it won’t break the bank — unless you want it to. Entrees range from $25 to $38. If you’re there for a celebration, you can spend $300 on a bottle of wine. If you’re there on a Tuesday, you can get an appetizer and a pizza and be out of there for under $50.
The busy dining room upstairs.
Food writer Megan McCaffrey and I had a reservation for opening night, but because of the snowstorm, we decided to change it to Wednesday. It meant we missed Martha Stewart and Richard Gere, but lucked in to a sighting of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively.
It also means the restaurant had one more day to work out kinks. Besides a little technical difficulty with the check at the bar and the extra salt on our fries, we didn’t notice many.
Because we changed our reservation at the last minute, we could only get in at 5 p.m. (I think I was the first customer at the restaurant!) We ordered drinks at the bar while the staff scurried around, getting the dining room ready for the evening.
My Manhattan.
The bar is small — about 10 seats — and there are 10 or so tables in the lounge alongside it.
Tables in the lounge.
The lounge and dining room are separated by a banquette (for both). The dining room has a soaring ceiling, but feels cozy nonetheless.
This is not a review, just our first impressions of a restaurant on its second night open to the public. But here’s a look at the food. It was all terrific, though a couple of dishes were heavy handed on the salt.
Our first dish was the Peekytoe Crab Crostini with Garlic Aioli ($14). It came on a rye toast, considerately cut into four pieces, which made it easy to share. Sweet and buttery, and just as good as when I had it at ABC Kitchen.
Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Rise Most Since February 2006 | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate
Home prices in 20 U.S. cities rose in November from a year ago by the most in almost eight years, providing a boost to household wealth.
The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property prices in 20 cities climbed 13.7 percent from November 2012, the biggest 12-month gain since February 2006, after a 13.6 percent increase in the year ended in October, a report from the group showed today in New York. The median projection of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 13.8 percent advance.
A limited number of available properties is helping to sustain home price appreciation even as higher mortgage rates cool demand and leave purchases out of reach for some Americans. Further strides in the housing market this year would be made easier by a pickup in job and income growth.
Thirty Somethings Flip-Flopped on Homeownership | Pound Ridge Real Estate
An analysis by Chris Porter, a senior manager at the John Burns Real Estate Consulting practice, has some frightening findings for the housing industry. Americans aged 30 to 34 years old in 2012 had the lowest homeownership rate of any similarly aged group before them… yet just five years earlier, in 2007, the same people had the highest homeownership rate at 25-29 years old than any group before them.
Porter calls it an amazing reversal of fortune and possibly the most amazing, underreported demographic fact today.
Using homeownership-by-age data from the Census Bureau, Porter compared households by years of birth to examine how homeownership changes over consumers’ lifetimes.
• Lowest ever in 2012: 30-34 year-olds in 2012 (born between 1978 and 1982) had a 47.9% homeownership rate. This is a full 6.5 percentage points lower than those five years older had achieved at the same age and lower than any group before them! (This is based on data available beginning with those born in 1948.) Porter calls them the “Subprime Generation.”
• Highest ever 5 years prior: Those same 30-34 year-olds had a 40.5% homeownership rate 5 years prior when they were 25-29 years old in 2007. This is 6.2 percentage points higher than 25-29 year-olds in 2012 and higher than any 5-year cohort before them.
‘Our consulting team has been pointing out a real dearth of entry-level buyers over the last several years, which is counterintuitive when you consider that this has been the most affordable time in generations to buy a home. What we learned is that a huge percentage of households bought a home earlier than usual, and that same group has gone through more foreclosures than any generation before them,” Porter wrote in his blog.
What does this mean? It is more difficult than usual to sell entry-level homes today, but the pent-up demand for entry-level housing is huge, he said.
http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2014/01/thirty-somethings-flip-flopped-on-homeownership/
Profit on Home Retailers | Pound Ridge Homes
For investors looking to profit from the rebounding U.S. housing market, stocks in the repair and rebuilding sector such as Home Depot(HD_) and Lowe’s(LOW_) should do better than DR Horton(DHI_), Beazer Homes(BZH_), and other home builders.
At present, home sales are starting to cool down, according to the National Association of Realtors. But the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University predicts that remodeling work will increase at a double digit rate for early 2014.
December home sales were the second weakest month for 2013.
Last year, real estate buying was at its highest level since 2006. But investors should not expect that to continue. Joel Narooff, Chief Economist for National Economic Advisors, warned that the pace was simply “not sustainable” due to “mortgage rates likely to move up this year, sales and price gains will likely be half of what we saw last year.” Moreover, November’s rate was adjusted, so the December sales report was not that bullish.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/12266445/1/profit-on-home-retailers.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO
Why life’s a beach for Honolulu’s industrial real estate market, and an increase in Big Apple leasing | Pound Ridge Real Estate
California homeowners face hefty fines for brown lawns- Wasting Water | Pound Ridge Homes
Dallas-area housing market soared last year; 2014 looks promising, too | Pound Ridge Real Estate
Last year’s bull housing market will be hard to top in 2014.
Dallas-area home sales rose almost 20 percent from the previous year, and prices jumped more than 10 percent — more than double the average annual increase North Texas usually sees.
With the local economy booming and consumers ready to buy real estate again, the only limitation this year will be availability and pricing.
“I don’t think 2014 will be as crazy as last year,” said D’Ann Petersen, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Home sales would be doing better if we had more inventory on the market.
“We have seen good increases in prices, but I don’t know if that is going to continue at the rate we saw last year,” she said.
In 2013, median home sales prices were up by double-digit percentages in more than two dozen Dallas-area residential districts The Dallas Morning News tracks.
The biggest sales price increases were in neighborhoods in Oak Lawn, Oak Cliff, Mesquite, Irving and North Dallas, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
The number of homes sold rose by more than 20 percent from 2012 levels in 13 area residential districts, including Sunnyvale, Hurst, Rockwall, Sachse-Rowlett and Far North Dallas.
Covering the area
Jim Fite, president of Dallas’ Century 21 Judge Fite Realtors, said that housing activity is good in neighborhoods across the Dallas area.
“We are looking forward to a 6 percent to 8 percent increase in sales in 2014,” Fite said.
The inventory of homes listed for sale with real estate agents last year fell to less than a two-month supply in several residential areas, including The Colony, Richardson, Grapevine, Coppell, Allen and Plano.