How Frequently Should a Brand Tweet? | Waccabuc Real Estate
Leave a reply
Tag Archives: Waccabuc NY
How Hurricane Sandy’s Aftermath Will Affect The Housing Market’s Recovery | Waccabuc Realtor
Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast on Monday, leaving a trail of devastating destruction in its wake. Damages could run as high as $50 billion, according to Eqecat, and hundreds of thousands of homeowners are expected to file claims for flood and wind damage, according to the Consumer Federation of America. Roughly $88 billion worth of homes across eight states were put at risk by the storm’s surge, according to Corelogic.
Hurricane Sandy’s immediate impact on real estate in the hardest hit Northeastern neighborhoods is already painfully evident, from New Jersey shore houses completely swept away by the sea to entire neighborhoods like Queens’ Breezy Point tragically leveled to the ground. But this latest natural disaster won’t just affect certain ZIP codes, it will weigh on America’s housing market as a whole.
In many parts of the country housing has welcomed a nascent recovery. Nationally, home sales have been notably higher this year as compared to last. In September, existing home sales were up 11% year-over-year and pending sales up 14.5%, according to the National Association of Realtors. Prices have risen too, with the national median sales price $183,900, or about 11% higher than September of 2011. Inventory has fallen drastically in many parts of the country, fueling the uptick in prices. The rising numbers have helped housing become a bright spot in recent economic reports, with analysts projecting that residential investment will positively contribute to gross domestic product this year for the first time since 2005.
Now that rosy recovery will dampen. “This will certainly create a negative in the short term,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. “The bottom line is we clearly anticipate a slowdown, but it will be temporary.”
Along the East Coast, expect home sales to trend downward in coming months, as sellers take their damaged digs off the market and buyers hold off on purchases. Pending sales will be delayed or in some cases collapse altogether as lenders insist upon new appraisals in areas battered by Sandy. Yun expects the regional drop in activity to log a “notable, measurable impact” large enough to pull the national sales statistics down for November onward. Home sales typically begin to slow due to seasonality at this time of the year; the storm’s lingering effects will ensure that slowdown manifests more dramatically.
Even so, that short term pain may actually evolve into a market boost four-to-six months from now. “With past natural disasters, home sales pause but what generally happens is in later months, as insurance money begins to flow in, the housing market gets elevated to higher levels than before the storm,” explains Yun.
Interestingly, data tied to comparable natural disasters suggest that home prices tend to be inversely affected. With inventory levels reduced, demand tends to outweigh the supply, causing prices to inch up. “Home prices tend to rise after hurricanes and other natural disasters because some homes are unfortunately lost and new construction is delayed so housing stock isn’t growing as fast as the population,” says Jed Kolko, chief economist of Trulia.com.
However, more drastic storms in areas more commonly associated with, say, flooding — like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans — can have the opposite effect, pushing prices down in the long term as residents relocate to new areas altogether.
Hurricane Sandy will affect residential construction, which has modestly rebounded this year, in two ways. Remodeling activity will jump, as homeowners who sustained damage to their properties, particularly primary residences, hire contractors to make immediate fixes. “It’s bad news for homeowners, but it’s certainly an opportunity for workers who have survived a very down housing market to get back to work,” says Robert Denk, an assistant vice president of economics for the National Association of Home Builders. He notes that this dynamic played out after Hurricane Irene as well.
In the short-term the storm will stifle new housing starts. This will in part be due to seasonality, since new homebuilding tends to pause in the winter months in the Northeast, and in part be due to the fact that many of decimated coastal properties in places like the Jersey Shore tend to be vacation homes and as such, will not likely be considered immediate priorities in terms of repair. New home starts, like sales, will likely rebound in early spring to levels slightly higher than before the storm as owners start to finally rebuild those properties.
A subsection of the housing market now riddled with post-Sandy questions is distressed real estate. On Wednesday RealtyTrac reported that nearly 25,000 distressed properties valued at an estimated $7 billion sit in counties declared disaster areas. Daren Blomquist, a vice president at RealtyTrac, says the number is actually higher, though the California-based foreclosure site has yet to finalize and upwardly revised count.“I think there is potential for people in the foreclosure process to now have less incentive to fight foreclosure on a home if it has been damaged,” says Blomquist. In other words, some distressed homeowners may simply walk away from their preforeclosures altogether rather than try and work out a short sale or other such deal. With bank-owned homes, the question that arises is whether lenders will choose to pour money into renovations for damaged properties, especially since those REOs already represent non-performing assets.
New Jersey and New York have two of the slowest judicial foreclosure processes in the country. New Jersey has experienced 100%-plus increases in foreclosure activity this year, according to RealtyTrac, as lenders finally began processing foreclosures stalled by 2010′s robo-signing scandal. New York state has seen similar activity increases this year. RealtyTrac expects Sandy’s impact will cause a temporary pullback in the number of foreclosure documents filed in both of these states.
“This storm could slow down the foreclosure process and therefore the housing recovery,” warns Blomquist. “It will certainly slow down the pace at which the market will absorb these properties.”
via forbes.com
At American Express, Warnings About the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ | Waccabuc NY Realtor
2:14 p.m. | Updated
After the widespread (and highly visible) damage caused by Hurricane Sandy this week, worries about the fiscal cliff may not be at the forefront of most people’s minds.
The economic calamity is a lot less visual (though The Wall Street Journal did come up with this clever video), and the destructive force seems somehow in the faraway future.
But companies are already warning investors about the harsh effects of the fiscal cliff. American Express’s 10-Q quarterly report, which was filed Wednesday, included a new dire warning about the rapidly approaching year-end deadline.
Article Tools
“The company expects that it will take some time for the U.S. economy to get back onto a steady, upward growth track,” the filing said. “Moreover, in the absence of legislative action, there continues to be growing concerns about the potential impact of the ‘fiscal cliff’ arising from scheduled federal spending cuts and tax increases set for the end of 2012.”
The statement goes into more detail than what the firm’s chief financial officer, Daniel T. Henry, said during the quarterly earnings call two weeks ago. Then, an analyst for the Telsey Advisory Group asked if there might be a larger impact, specifically in terms of the company’s spending on marketing.
“If things were to be better, we know exactly what we’d do. And if things were to be worse, we know exactly what we’re going to do. So we will monitor this closely,” Mr. Henry said, according to a transcript of the call. Marina Hoffmann Norville, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to comment beyond what was in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
American Express isn’t the only large company to mention the fiscal cliff in filings with the S.E.C. But others have been more nuanced or noncommittal on the effects. In its quarterly earnings release on Thursday, the payroll processing company Automatic Data Processing noted that “there is concern in the U.S. surrounding the fiscal cliff.” In its quarterly earnings release on Wednesday, Visa, the giant credit card company, included the “so-called fiscal cliff” in a list of economic factors that might affect the company.
Also on Thursday, Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who just took over as president and chief executive of the Financial Services Roundtable, issued its own warning in a letter sent to President Obama and Congress.
“We urge Congress and the administration to deal with the fiscal cliff in a two-pronged approach: First, bridge over the fiscal cliff as soon as possible to minimize negative economic consequences. Second, address the federal budget deficit in a comprehensive and bipartisan manner in early 2013 to put the U.S. on a path for sustained growth,” Mr. Pawlenty wrote.
But if the Dec. 31 deadline moves closer without any indication of resolution, companies are likely to step up their disclosures in S.E.C. filings.
Michelle Leder is the editor of footnoted.com, a Web site that takes a closer look at companies’ regulatory filings.This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 1, 2012
An earlier version of this post misstated the fiscal quarters that were reported on this week by Automatic Data Processing and Visa. A.D.P.’s report was for its first quarter of 2013 and Visa’s report was for its fourth quarter of 2012, in both cases not the third quarter of 2012.
Great Recession creates 4.8 million renters | Waccabuc NY Real Estate
The United States added 4.8 million renters in the past six years while losing 1.7 million owner households as the dynamics of the real estate space changed in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The market experienced additional changes in the first nine months of 2012, creating unexpected outcomes in the housing finance sector, prompting the MBA to alter its forecast for 2012.
In brief, the MBA revised its estimate for 2012 mortgage originations to $1.7 trillion, up from $1.4 trillion a year earlier. Still, the trade group predicts total originations will taper off to $1.3 trillion in 2013, eventually hitting $1.1 trillion in 2014. However, mortgage rates are expected to hover below 4% through the mid-part of next year.
The MBA expects gross domestic product will inch up from 1.6% in 2012 to 2% in 2013. Meanwhile, the forecast suggests existing home sales will increase from 4.6 million in 2012 to approximately 4.78 million next year.
Still, economic growth is contingent on government tax policies and at least a temporary avoidance of the fiscal cliff in early 2013.
“The tax increase in particular would be devastating to economic growth,” said MBA chief economist Jay Brinkmann. “We believe that the entire package of tax increases and spending cuts, if left unaltered, would cut 3.5 to 4 percentage points from our growth forecast.”
Another outlier is the final definition of the qualified mortgage rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will define what type of mortgage qualifies as safe from repurchase risk in cases of default. It’s unknown whether the final rule from CFPB, which is due out in January, will contain a safe harbor provision to protect lenders from buy back risk if they follow the guidelines.
These forecasts are based on the idea that QM comes in with a safe harbor and legislatures get past the fiscal cliff without dramatic spending and tax changes, said Mike Fratantoni, the MBA vice president of research and economics.
If the nation moves past the QM rule and the fiscal cliff without the introduction of new risks, the MBA expects moderate economic growth and an uptick in home prices annually from roughly 1.2% in 2012 to 3.5% in 2013.
via housingwire.com
Solar and Geothermal Energy for Nearly Net Zero Living | Waccabuc NY Homes
Waccabuc NY Real Estate | Mortgage delinquencies spike in September, report says
While the nation’s foreclosure inventory continues to shrink, new delinquencies spiked sharply during September 2012, new data released Monday afternoon showed.
According to Lender Processing Services ($28.51 0%), the total U.S. mortgage delinquency rate — loans 30-plus days past due, but not in foreclosure — surged upward by 7.72%, reaching 7.4% in September versus the 6.87% reported one month earlier.
Despite the spike, September 2012 delinquency totals still remain below levels seen last year, LPS said.
While new delinquencies spiked in September, the volume of properties in foreclosure continues to shrink as banks and other financial instutions continue to work through a backlog of distressed real estate that remains well above historical levels of half of a percent or so, according to most industry experts.
LPS said that the nation’s foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate fell to 3.87% during September, down 4.05% from one month earlier and down 7.37% less than one year ago.
Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada, and Louisiana represented the states with the highest percentage of noncurrent loans, according to the data report; Lousiana replaced New York, which had been in the top five for most of this year.
Despite the drop in foreclosure inventory, the surge in new delinquencies has led to something not seen this year until now: an increase in the amount of distressed properties, defined as properties 30 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure.
According to LPS, there were 5.45 million properties in distress during August 2012; for September, thanks to increasing delinquencies, that number now equals 5.64 million.
via housingwire.com
10 Strategies To Increase Your Credit Score In 24 Hours | Waccabuc Realtor
When you are in a hurry to increase your credit score there is 10 things that you can do with in 24 hours that help immensly. Here are the 10 things to increase your score:
1. Order your credit reports online for each of the top three credit reporting agencies individually. Even though it may be cheaper to order a three in one report offered by one of the Agencies, ordering individual credit reports will grant you the access to initiate a dispute online with each agency. You can’t improve your score in 24 hours unless you know what it is! Knowing where to start is important.
2. Call your credit card companies and request to increase your credit lines. Increasing credit lines will improve your outstanding debt to-available-credit ratio amounts on your revolving accounts, and can improve your credit by as much as 60 points.
3. Rearrange your debt so that every one of your credit cards have the lowest possible outstanding debt-to-available-credit ratio. A ratio of 25%-35% is ideal.
4. If you have the ability, pay down the cards until that ratio is recognized on your credit report.
5. Borrow money to pay down your debts referenced on your credit reports from a lender that doesn’t report, such as friends and family. Unreported debts will assist you to decrease those debt to available credit ratios and boost your score. Your private lenders may even want lesser interest than you are paying on the cards! While this business deal doesn’t appear on your credit report, it’s still debt, so use it wisely. You don’t want horrible Thanksgiving dinners after failure to pay on a loan made by a family relative.
6. If you have freshly paid down or paid off debts and they don’t show corrected on the report, fax that information to the credit agencies. Providing them with the verification of payoff is much faster then initiating a dispute of the account information. In many cases, the agency won’t verify the payoff with the lender, and accept your proof as correct.
7. Begin your dispute approach online with each service. The online dispute will suspend the negative derogatory items from your credit report for the short term, increasing your score. When the dispute is resolved your score will change accordingly, but for the period in-between you get a momentary reprieve from the effects of the negative derogatory information.
8. If you must choose one credit score to work on, spotlight your focus on the middle score. For most major purchases such as real estate or a vehicle, the lender will pull all three credit scores and use the middle score, (all three scores in one is called the tri-merge score) so this is the one that matters the most. If you improve your middle score over your highest score, the formerly top score is the one that now matters most.
9. Have a close friend or family member with a solid credit history add you to their card. You don’t even need to have the possession of an actual card, but by adding you to the account, you get the benefit of their long credit history. This doesn’t hurt their credit history at all. A Credit report is a compilation of accounts with your social security number attached to them. When your social security number was added to their account, you agreed to be responsible for it, and their years of good credit history now show up on your credit report. The individual person who lent you their excellent credit didn’t add their social security number to any of your accounts with the negative or derogatory history, so there is no way for the bad information to appear on their credit report.
10. If you have recent collection account reporting to your credit file that haven’t been paid? If so call the collection agency and ask, “do you delete?” About half of all collection agencies will take away the item from your credit report if you pay it in full, or a generous portion of the debt. Sometimes the collection agency can remove the debt from the credit bureaus instantaneously.
There are other things that can help you improve your credit score that will take much longer to implement. I think this list will suffice for now because these things can be done in 24 hours.
‘Obamacare’ individual mandate has no teeth | Waccabuc NY Real Estate
If, like most real estate professionals, you’re self-employed, you have to obtain your own health insurance unless you can obtain coverage through a spouse. Lots of self-employed people have no health coverage because they can’t afford it.
Starting in 2014, these people will run up against the most controversial portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) — the individual health insurance mandate. This is the requirement that most legal residents of the United States obtain at least minimal health insurance coverage by 2014.
The word “mandate” sounds pretty serious. But what will actually happen if you don’t obtain health insurance by 2014? Surprisingly little.
The health care law says that individuals who can afford health insurance coverage and are not otherwise exempt must purchase minimum essential health coverage or pay a penalty to the IRS with their tax returns. The assessment of this penalty is the only consequence of not obeying the health insurance “mandate.”
How much is the penalty?
The exact amount of the tax penalty is based on household income above the level at which an uninsured individual is required to file a tax return — currently $9,500 per person and $19,000 per couple. This penalty is scheduled to be phased in over the next several years as follows:
- for 2014, the penalty is the greater of $95 or 1 percent of income
- for 2015, the greater of $325 or 2 percent of income
- for 2016, the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income, and
- the $695 amount is indexed for inflation after 2016.
The penalty for children is half the amount for adults, and an overall cap will apply to family payments. This cap will be three times the amount of the per-person penalty, regardless of how many people are in the family. Thus, the cap is $285 in 2014 but rises to $2,085 in 2016, after which point it is indexed to inflation. Moreover, the total penalty can never be more than the cost of a minimal “bronze” heath insurance plan that can be purchased through a state health insurance exchange. The CBO estimates that these policies will cost $4,500-$5,000 per person and $12,000-$12,500 per family in 2016, with the costs rising thereafter.
All in all, for most people the penalty will be less than the cost of obtaining health insurance. Many people may choose to wait until they get sick to purchase health insurance. This is something they will be able to do because “Obamacare” does not allow health insurers to refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions.
In addition, the penalty applies only to taxpayers who can afford insurance but do not purchase it. The Congressional Budget Offices says that of the 30 million non-elderly Americans it estimates will not have health insurance in 2016, only about 6 million will be subject to the tax. The remainder will be exempt because their income is too low or they qualify for another exemption.
How will the IRS collect?
Taxpayers subject to the penalty are supposed to report the amount due on their tax returns and pay it along with their income taxes. What happens if they don’t? Not nearly as much as when they don’t pay their regular taxes.
The law greatly limits how the IRS can collect the penalty. It cannot use liens or levies to collect it, and taxpayers are not subject to criminal prosecution or any additional penalty if they don’t pay. Moreover, the IRS says that its revenue agents will not be involved in enforcing the penalty — that is, they won’t ask you about it during an audit. All enforcement will be done through automatic assessments and computer-generated correspondence.
The only power the IRS will have to collect the penalty is to withhold it from an uninsured taxpayer’s tax refund. Currently, most taxpayers get refunds because they have too much tax withheld during the year. This year 77 percent of taxpayers received an average refund of $2,707.
However, self-employed taxpayers have no tax withheld from their pay. Instead, they pay estimated taxes to the IRS four times a year. Self-employed people can easily avoid qualifying for a tax refund by making sure they don’t pay too much in estimated tax. If you have no refund, the IRS will have no way of collecting the penalty.
As a result of all this, some experts predict that the IRS will be unable to effectively enforce the penalty tax. Only time will tell.
via inman.com
Wealthy Home Buyers Return to Risky ARMs | Waccabuc NY Real Estate
Luxury-home buyers are returning to adjustable-rate mortgages, despite pitfalls that pushed many homeowners into foreclosure during the housing bust.
The pitch? A lower interest rate — at least for a period — than a fixed-rate mortgage means savings could be huge.
Ryan Sullivan for The Wall Street Journal
ARMs have a fixed rate for a certain number of years before they become variable, rising or dropping depending on prevailing interest rates. A five-year fixed rate is typical, though the time period can vary and be as long as seven or 10 years. As the loan’s rate changes, so does the monthly payment, possibly increasing or shrinking by thousands of dollars.
ARMs account for 30% to 40% of private jumbo loans at Bank of America (BAC: 9.44, -0.03, -0.32%) and roughly half of the private jumbos distributed by NASB Financial (NASB: 22.09, -0.81, -3.54%), the holding company of North American Savings Bank. Private mortgages aren’t backed by the government.
Lenders say high-net-worth buyers face relatively little risk because they can tap liquid assets to pay off a loan should a sudden spike in rates occur.
“They’re typically looking to the future and saying, ‘Here’s how I’m going to strategize based on my assets,’ ” says Tony Caruso, mortgage loan officer for PNC Wealth Management, where more clients have been choosing ARMs over the past two years.
ARMs accounted for just 4.2% of all mortgage applications in July, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. But they had a 34.9% market share of the number of private home loans originated that month, according to data compiled for The Wall Street Journal by LPS Applied Analytics, a division of mortgage-data firm Lender Processing Services.
Rates on a jumbo 5/1 ARM — where the rate remains the same for the first five years and then adjusts annually — average 2.82%, compared with 4.06% on a 30-year fixed-rate jumbo, according to mortgage-info website HSH.com. Over the first five years, borrowers with the 5/1 ARM would save nearly $90,900 in interest on a $1.5 million mortgage compared with a fixed-rate jumbo.
Lenders also prefer ARMs, though for different reasons. When the Federal Reserve raises rates, banks have to increase the rates they pay out on deposit accounts, but they receive bigger interest payments from ARM borrowers whose rates rise. “From a bank’s perspective, it’s a much safer asset to hold if it’s an ARM,” says Mike Fratantoni, vice president of research at the Mortgage Bankers Association.
For that reason, not every lender will offer a home buyer both mortgage options. Here are possible risks associated with ARMs.
Rate spikes: After the fixed-rate period ends, rates could adjust higher. On a 5/1 ARM today, rates could increase by up to five percentage points during the sixth year — surging as high as 7.82%. The rate can move by two percentage points each year after that as long as it doesn’t surpass this cap.
Nowhere to turn: ARM borrowers could refinance into a fixed-rate mortgage when rates rise, but rates on the fixed-rate loans could be just as pricey as ARMs at that point.
Home equity could derail a refinance: Borrowers who decide to refinance out of an ARM will need enough home equity to do that, and so should consider making a down payment of at least 30% when they buy the home, says Kevin Miller, chief executive of Aspire Financial Inc., a mortgage lender that mostly provides fixed-rate mortgages. Otherwise, if home values drop, they may have to pay down some of the loan amount to refinance, or be forced to stay with their current mortgage.
via smartmoney.com
Does China build quickly and cheaply for a reason? | Waccabuc NY Real Estate
Having spent a fair amount of time in China over the past 18 years, and having witnessed its spectacular rise, I’ve always been puzzled that this remarkable nation still cares so little about the quality of the things it makes. Today, more than 30 years after the Opening in 1978, China has yet to address this shortcoming: Everything from dime store trinkets to high-rise buildings continue to show an astonishing indifference to detail.
As a Westerner steeped in the Protestant work ethic, I’ve written thousands of words and done much hand-wringing about Chinese quality over the years, wondering when China would follow in Japan’s footsteps — when it would finally pull off a miraculous reversal in its attitude toward quality, as Japan did in the decades after World War II. It hasn’t happened, and from what I can see, it probably won’t.
All of which has gotten me to wondering if it’s my own Western concept of quality that’s become obsolete. Perhaps making things last has become pointless in a world that changes so quickly.
It wouldn’t be the first time there’s been a fundamental shift in the prevailing idea of what constitutes quality: America’s own early history furnishes a parallel. For obvious reasons, the relatively crude buildings and manufactured goods of the young United States couldn’t compare to those of the Old World — one reason wealthy Americans in the early 18th century still insisted on importing their building materials, hardware and dishes from Great Britain.
Naturally enough, the British remained more than a little condescending toward their renegade former colony, whose building and manufacturing efforts fell far below English standards. This was, after all, an England whose houses were built with cut stone and massive oak timbers, whose cabinets used fine hardwoods in places you couldn’t even see, and whose steam engines were routinely polished, painted and pinstriped in gold.
Yet by the time the Yanks showed off their latest products at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876, it began to dawn on the Brits that America’s mass-produced products, as coarse as they appeared, were overtaking their own. This passing of the torch was symbolized by the towering Corliss steam engine that formed the fair’s iconic centerpiece, but it was apparent in all kinds of exhibits, from to stoves to clocks to furniture.
From the British viewpoint, nothing had changed. They had scrupulously upheld their accustomed standards of quality, steadfastly insisting on the very finest workmanship even when — like those gilded steam engines — it had no conceivable purpose. The eventual result of this shift in perception was an end to Britain’s industrial pre-eminence, and the beginning of our own.
It’s likewise possible that the world is once again changing, this time in a way that’s unfamiliar to our Western frame of reference. Perhaps China builds quickly, cheaply and with indifferent quality because the pace of change no longer demands permanence.
Then again, perhaps the point is moot. China comprises nearly one-fifth of the world’s population and serves, by our own admission, as “America’s workshop.” Its attitude to quality — like it or not — will inevitably affect our own.
via inman.com