Tag Archives: Pound Ridge NY Real Estate for Sale

Pound Ridge NY Real Estate for Sale

Mortgage rates increase on speculation over bond-buying program | Pound Ridge Real Estate

In advance of the release of minutes from a July Federal Reserve meeting that was expected to offer clues on the central bank’s timeline for its bond-buying program, rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.58 percent with an average point of 0.8 percent for the week ending Aug. 22, up from 4.4 percent last week and 3.66 percent a year ago, according to Freddie Mac’s latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

Meanwhile, rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages edged up; rates on five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loans slipped marginally; and rates on one-year Treasury-indexed ARMs held steady.

Minutes from the latest meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee released yesterday appeared to show general support for Ben Bernanke’s plan to scale back its bond-buying program this fall.

Source: Freddie Mac

Obama Housing Scorecard: Foreclosure starts reach 8-year low | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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National Association of Realtors RealtyTrac U.S. Census Bureau Lender Processing Services S&P Case-Shiller Obama Scorecard

President Obama spoke Tuesday about how far housing has come from its pit in the middle of the crisis. The latest housing scorecard from the Obama Administration only strengthened the president’s statements, yet serves as a reminder that there is still a long ways to go.

“As the July housing scorecard indicates, the Obama Administration’s efforts to speed the housing recovery are continuing to build upon the progress that has been made over the last four years,” said U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs Kurt Usowski.

Home prices continue to trudge forward, with the S&P Case-Shiller home price index up from 152.4 in April to 156.1 in the latest report in May. Year-over-year the index is up from 139.2 in May 2012.

As rising mortgage rates begin to catch up with the housing recovery, less buyers are feeling the pressure to buy a home right now. According to the National Association of Realtors, existing-home sales fell from a revised 428,300 in May to 423,300 in June.

However, homebuilders can breath a sigh of relief, as new home sales continued to increase, up from 38,300 in May to 41,400 in June, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and HUD.

The pool of existing-homes for sale has continued to grow, a positive sign for potential buyers, with inventory up from a 5.0-month supply in May to a 5.2-month supply in June, NAR reported. Surprisingly, the supply of new homes for sale dropped slightly to 3.9 months, down from 4.2 months in May.

Foreclosure starts take the cake for the most notable change in this month’s housing scorecard. Foreclosure starts dropped from 72,700 in May to 57,300 in June, data from RealtyTrac revealed.

According to a report from Lender Processing Services, mortgage delinquency rates for prime borrowers made a turnaround, heading upward from May. June’s delinquency rate was 3.5%, up from 3.1% in May.

“The annual home price increases over the last several months remain at levels not seen since 2006 and newly initiated foreclosures are at their lowest level since December 2005. As we regain stability in our housing markets, it is time to begin the process of reforming the housing finance system to reduce the federal government footprint and ensure that private capital takes a sustainable central role,” Usowski added.

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/26083-obama-housing-scorecard-foreclosure-starts-reach-8-year-low

Homebuilders build momentum as existing home sales fall | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Disappointment seemed to flood the housing industry upon Monday’s existing-home sales report for June, which revealed total existing-home sales fell from May. Many analysts saw this as a smaller piece of a bigger picture that rising interest rates are deterring potential homebuyers from entering into the market.

However, homebuilders should have slept easy last night, as the drop in existing-home sales actually supports a positive housing outlook for them.

The primary competitor to public homebuilders is existing-homes for sale, Sterne Agee analyst Jay McCanless told HousingWire.

The lack of existing home supply is forcing Realtors to bring buyers who may not have been interested in a new home into new home neighborhoods, said McCanless.

“Assuming that the inventory situation either stays where it is or gets tighter from here, I think that’s a positive for homebuilders,” he added.

With inventory low and demand high, the median days to sell a home dropped 47.1% year-over-year in June, falling from 70 days to 37 days.

According to the analyst, it’s basic supply and demand. Builders can create the supply and the demand for housing is still abundant, despite higher rates. If you have such a high demand level, it implies that group of buyers have access to financing and creates a very positive market, McCanless noted.

According to McCanless, the backdrop remains positive for four homebuilders that he hand selected as his top picks. Meritage Homes Corp. ($45.03 0%), D.R. Horton, Inc. ($21.20 0%),Ryland Group ($39.74 0%) and PulteGroup, Inc. ($18.45 0%)have the potential to increase their pricing power in 2013 as competitive supply comes off the market.

In a conference call on Tuesday, Fitch Ratings Managing Director and lead homebuilding analyst Robert Curran addressed the existing-home sales report as well as the current state of the housing recovery.

Curran said it’s necessary that employment continues growing at a reasonable pace for housing to do well. Last month, 195,000 jobs were created, pushing the unemployment rate down to 7.6%.

Fitch’s economic forecast is hesitant, considering the drag tax increases have had on the economy since the start of the year. However, the growth momentum in the private sector is well supported by the recovery in the housing market.

Fitch’s housing forecast for 2013 predicts inventory remaining near low levels, while affordability remains high.

“The housing recovery shall be maintained this year,” said Curran. Fitch anticipates single-family starts to rise 18% in 2013, while existing-home sales will only increase 7.5%.

Broken down, it is anticipated that total home sales will equal one million this year. Existing-home sales are expected to dominate new home sales significantly.

Homebuilders build momentum as existing home sales fall | HousingWire.

7 Marketing Trends You Should Not Ignore | Pound Ridge Realtor

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The capability to use marketing tools and technology without having to beg or pay for attention is unprecedented. It’s a time where you can now build your own crowd to market and sell to without paying the mass media gate keepers.

That’s social media.

The social media networks are at your disposal and with the right tactics and software you can create brand awareness and access to influencers and decision makers in boardrooms across the world.

This freedom to take control of your own marketing comes at a cost. The cost is complexity and time. To be effective it requires using multiple networks, constant content creation and monitoring and managing.

It’s not just multiple networks and multimedia to think of, it is also about adapting to new hardware platforms where consumers receive their messaging. This is no longer restricted to just print, TV and radio but has proliferated to laptops, smart phones and tablets. They all have their own limitations and parameters to be optimal.

Within this technology and media explosion there are many marketing trends that have been emerging that we should be paying attention to.

7 Marketing Trends

Here are seven trends that all marketers need to consider in their toolbox of tactics to remain effective and current.

1. Content marketing

The importance and role of content marketing and how it works across social media, search, multimedia and mobile is becoming a key focus for many brands. Many companies don’t understand the importance of this trend and how it underlies almost all digital marketing. Brands such as Coca Cola have recognised this and changed their strategies to meet the web realities.

Brands have been blinded by the shiny new toy of social media eg Facebook and think that Facebook marketing is all they should be doing beyond their day to day habitual marketing that they have been doing for decades.

The buyers are back, Canada housing market defies doomsayers | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Daniel DiManno sold his Toronto house for less than he had hoped and wanted to see if prices would cool before he bought a new one. But Canadian mortgage rates are rising again and that’s spurring DiManno and others to jump back into the market, cutting short an already brief housing downturn.

“I saw that they are going to increase rates, so I called my bank last Friday and locked in 2.5 percent for 120 days,” said the 31-year-old accountant, starting the clock on a four-month search for a new home before borrowing gets more expensive.

After nearly a year of cooling sales and plenty of concern that Canada could head for a U.S.-style housing crash, demand has roared back in key markets. What’s still unclear, however, is whether the recent surge is a reinflation of a real estate bubble, a final rush of buyers before rising rates choke off demand, or just a sign of market resilience.

The rise in mortgage rates comes after North American bond yields jumped on fears that an improving U.S. economy will cause the Federal Reserve wind down its monetary stimulus program, known as quantitative easing, more quickly than expected.

After a long cold spring that dampened house hunting, May sales of existing homes rose 3.6 percent, the biggest monthly gain in almost 2-1/2 years, returning the market almost to where it was before Canada’s Conservative government tightened lending rules in mid-2012 to stave off a housing bubble.

Analysis – The buyers are back, Canada housing market defies doomsayers – chicagotribune.com.

Investor and cash buying push Las Vegas home sales | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Homes in the Las Vegas area sold at the fastest pace for an April in seven years due, in large, to investor and cash buying nearing record levels. Sales in the $200,000-to-$500,000 range in the Sin City picked up 81% from one-year prior.

The Las Vegas median price paid for a home increased to the highest level in nearly four and a half years, largely due to price appreciation,tight inventory, a surge in move-up buyers and a drop-off in foreclosure resales.

In the Las Vegas-Paradise metro area, 4,869 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in April, an 8.6% increase from the month before and a 7.0% rise from one-year prior, according to San-Diego-based DataQuick.

Sales have dropped 4.2% between March and April, on average, since 1994. The year-over-year increase in total sales last month follows 10 consecutive months of year-over-year declines.

Investor and cash buying push Las Vegas home sales | HousingWire.

Realtor.com: Broad-based Recovery Underway | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate

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While the median national list price rose by only a modest amount in March, all indicators suggest that a broad-based housing recovery is beginning to take hold across the nation as a whole. List prices are appreciating at a year-over-year basis in more than 100 of the 146 markets tracked by Realtor.com and nearly all are within reach of achieving positive year-over-year price growth by the end of the year. A successful spring market could move the entire nation into the black.
The recovery is broadening and reaching smaller markets and markets that still have significant foreclosure inventories and local employment problems. Of the 146 markets tracked by Realtor.com, only 42 still report negative year-over-year prices compared to 63 in December. Prices rose in all by three of these markets in March.
List prices are down more than 5 percnt in only six of Realtor.com’s 146 markets: Roanoke VA, Akron OH, Dayton-Springfield OH, Springfield IL, Columbia MO and Peoria-Pekin IL.
While the number of markets experiencing year-over-year list price declines increased in the second half of 2012, this pattern appears to have turned around in the past three months. Since the beginning of the year, a growing number of markets have experienced a YOY increase in their list price, while a declining number have experienced a YOY list price decline. These patterns suggest that 2013 could well see a broad-based recovery of the housing market.
Inventories on Realtor.com continue to be down significantly on a year-over-year basis (-15.22%). The size of the for-sale inventory is now roughly half of its 2007 peak. These historically low inventories set the stage for continued broad-based recovery and the change over from buyers’ to sellers’ market.
Realtor.com reported the total U.S. for-sale inventory of single family homes, condos, townhomes and co-ops remained at near-record lows in March, with 1,529,432 units for sale. While the inventory was down by 15.22 percent compared to a year ago, the national inventory increased for the second month in a row, growing by 2.35 percent in March.
The national median age of the inventory fell to just 78 days in March, down by 20.41 percent over the month and by 12.35 percent on a year-over-year basis. The sudden decline in the age of listings indicates that volumes of new listings are flooding into markets across the nation in preparation for the spring season.
The net increase in listings coupled with the 20 percent decline in the median age of listings suggests that seller confidence is responding to higher prices and positive price forecasts.
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via realestateeconomywatch.com

Agents More Bullish on Prices than Sales | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Real estate professionals are more optimistic that prices will increase this year than they were last year, but they’re less enthusiastic about the outlook for sales increases in 2013 than they were in 2012.
For 2013, 84 percent of surveyed real estate professionals believe that real estate values and the number of transactions will increase this year over 2012. Whereas in 2012, one-third of real estate markets were forecasted to see valuation declines, no single market is expected to see a decline in valuations or transactions in 2013, according to a survey of more than 2,400 real estate professionals, all members of ActiveRain, the real estate industry’s largest social media network.
Some 28 percent more participants in the survey this year than last year expect values to improve and 21 percent more expect housing starts to increase. However, only 11 percent more expect the number of real estate transactions to grow and 12 percent ,more anticipate improvement in their local economies.
“The differences in how real estate professionals are seeing the market in the past 12 months is significant,” said Nikesh Parekh, CEO of ActiveRain. “Confidence in the real estate market has increased by 28 percent, and a rebound in both housing and construction this year is a great sign for the economy.”
A similar survey in early 2012 correctly predicted the bottom of the US real estate market, as the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) showed a 9 percent jump in existing-home sales over the previous year.

via realestateeconomywatch.com