The Westchester County Health Department is now providing breaking public health news and information on Facebook.
Residents can “like” the Health Department’s page to get health information and alerts in their news feed.
In addition to news, the department’s page also offers information on health and wellness, including exercise tips and nutrition information.
Westchester Health Department Puts News On Facebook | The Armonk Daily Voice.
Long Island’s real estate market is rising. Don’t expect it to soar.
The local housing market in June posted some of the highest median prices in three years: $425,000 in Nassau County and $340,000 in Suffolk, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. Sales activity was brisk, with 2,048 homes changing hands, more than twice as many as in the doldrums of early 2009.
A shortage of homes for sale — plus buyers’ sense that mortgage rates will keep rising — has sparked “feeding frenzies” at some open houses, with sale prices occasionally exceeding list prices, said Marie Asher, an associate broker with Century 21 American Homes in East Meadow.
“The market has totally changed,” she said. “I don’t want to say it’s a seller’s market, but we’re heading that way.”
A close look at the Island’s housing market, however, shows signs of lingering distress among homeowners. That distress is likely to keep the recent sprint from turning into a marathon.
Nearly 1 in 10 homeowners with mortgages here owes more than their homes’ value. The number of initial foreclosure filings is on the rise, after a brief respite last year. Banks continue to impose tight lending standards on would-be buyers. And if interest rates jump much more, the higher cost of borrowing could choke off some buying.
Plus, the Island’s economy remains troubled. And home prices on Nassau’s South Shore, in particular, are still suffering the aftereffects of superstorm Sandy, which hit on Oct. 29.
“The housing market continues to recover from its recent lows, but a plateau is in sight,” said Irwin Kellner, Port Washington-based chief economist for MarketWatch.com. Prices could rise by 10 percent to 15 percent, but they are likely to level off next year as interest rates continue to climb, Kellner predicted.
To be sure, the local housing market is increasingly favorable to sellers — particularly in areas not damaged by Sandy.
Quick deal surprises seller
Dottie Weremeychik recently found a buyer for her late uncle’s four-bedroom Cape in Hicksville. The home was listed at just under $330,000 in March, quickly garnered four offers and went into contract within six weeks for close to the list price, to a family buying their first home, according to Asher, who handled the sale.
“I was totally shocked,” said Weremeychik, a Wantagh resident. “I was truly expecting the house to sit for a very, very long time.”
Some first-time home buyers say they want to jump in soon, before prices and interest rates rise further. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate loan recently hit 4.31 percent, according to Freddie Mac. The record low was 3.31 percent, reached in November 2012. In May, the average rate was 3.35 percent. Higher interest rates tend to put a damper on home sales, since they price some buyers out of the market.
For now, though, rising interest rates have delivered a jolt of activity. Buyers “are realizing that the bottom has been hit,” said Marianne Garvin, chief executive of the Community Development Corp. of Long Island.
That’s a belief shared by Wendy Brennan, a mother of three who hopes to buy a home this summer in Babylon Village, where she now rents an apartment. “I need to ensure that I get in now before it starts to get too crazy,” she said. “We love our neighborhood so we’re really trying to stay in the district, but everything that’s available to us at this point is in the flood zone . . . Finding a house within my price range with enough space for us is very, very, very difficult.”
When you buy a computer from Best Buy, you’ll be asked if you want to cover it with an extended warranty. Some people go ahead and pay the extra money, but not everyone thinks these warranties are a good idea. Consumer Reports almost always says they aren’t worth the money.
You might be surprised to learn that, sort of like the computer from Best Buy, you may have the option of buying a warranty for your home. Depending on your situation, a home warranty could definitely be worth the investment.
For a fee of between $300 and $500 a year, depending on where you live, a home warranty covers the costs of repairing or replacing most any malfunctioning system in your home.
Let’s say your dishwasher starts leaking, your clothes dryer burns out, or your water heater won’t heat water anymore. If you had a home warranty, you wouldn’t have to call around to get estimates for repairs. You wouldn’t have to pay out of pocket to get it fixed, either.
Instead, you would just call up your home warranty provider. The warranty company would call the appropriate repair company it has an arrangement with. The repair company then would call you and set up an appointment. The company would send someone to your house to fix the problem, if possible, or replace the malfunctioning appliance with a brand new one. Your home warranty would cover the costs, though you’d probably be responsible for a co-pay of about $50 per incident.
Home warranties are particularly great for first-time Gen X /Y and Millennial home buyers who’ve been renters until now. They’re used to calling the landlord whenever there’s a problem, and a home warranty company takes over that role. These homeowners are working long hours and might not have the time or the energy to call around to find a plumber or an electrician to get quotes or bids, let alone wait around for the noon to 4 p.m. window for the repairman to show up. You can look at this web-site to know how to choose best plumber. Sometimes, it takes just one costly and unexpected system repair — and the drama associated with it — to realize the savings of a one-year home warranty.
But home warranties aren’t limited to Gen X, Gen Y or other first-time home buyers. A homeowner can buy one at any time. Are you buying or do you own a 15- to 20-year-old home (or older)? Does the home have aging appliances and systems? A home warranty might be well worth your money. Many appliances and systems start to break down after 15 or 20 years, and you don’t want them all falling apart on you around the same time. Your real estate agent can give you referrals, and you can read reviews of home warranty companies on the Home Warranty Reviews site.
Home warranties are also great for investors or “accidental landlords,” folks who end up renting their homes out because they have to move and want to hold out until the market picks back up. If you’re not an experienced real estate investor and don’t have a network of repair folks, it might be easier to pay for the home warranty. The last thing you want is a tenant without hot water calling you day in and day out. If you have a home warranty, you can cut right to the chase, keep happy tenants and minimize stress.
If you shop for a home warranty, be sure to ask each company exactly what’s covered. If something isn’t covered (such as the plumbing system), ask if you can add on coverage, and if so, at what cost.
What Is a Home Warranty, and Do You Need One? | Zillow Blog.
California’s groundbreaking efforts to encourage homeowners and businesses to install rooftop solar panels were so successful in 2012 that the program is now effectively winding down, according to a new report.
A record 391 megawatts of solar power were installed statewide in 2012, a growth of 26 percent from 2011, according to a report by the California Solar Initiative released Wednesday.
“The program has made solar affordable for ordinary Californians,” said Susannah Churchill of the San Francisco-based solar advocacy group Vote Solar. “Solar is a classic California success story.”
In January 2007, California launched an unprecedented $3.3 billion effort to install 3,000 megawatts of new solar over
the next decade and transform the market for solar energy by reducing the cost of solar-generating equipment.
One megawatt is enough to power 750 to 1,000 homes. But because the sun doesn’t shine all the time, solar industry experts say that one megawatt of solar can power about 200 households.
The California Public Utilities Commission’s California Solar Initiative, known as CSI,provides rebates for residential and commercial customers of the state’s three large, investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.
The initiative’s road map calls for 1,750 new megawatts of solar power to be installed on residential and commercial roofs in the state by 2016.
Through the end of the first quarter of 2013, California had an estimated 1,692 megawatts of rooftop solar installed at nearly 168,000 sites, meaning the program is zeroing in on its goal. PG&E alone has 77,782 solar customers within its vast Northern California territory.
The aim of the incentives is to help solar achieve what’s known in the renewable energy industry as “grid parity” — the long-awaited point at which solar can compete with cheaper sources of electricity such as natural gas.
Since 2007, the average total installed cost for residential solar systems has decreased 32 percent from $8.77 per watt to $5.98 per watt. Those costs include labor and permitting, as well as the panels themselves.
Rooftop solar takes off across California as costs come down – San Jose Mercury News.
If ghosts paid the rent, Eric Hadar would have an all-star tenancy: Freddy Bienstock, Johnny Burke, Cab Calloway, Nat King Cole, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Jimmy Van Heusen, to name a few. Not to mention J.J. Hunsecker and Danny Rose.
The Brill Building, at 49th Street and Broadway, currently stands more than half empty, after the closing last year of Colony Records and the Sound One postproduction studio.
But ghosts do not pay the rent. Neither do fictional characters. Their onetime home, the Brill Building, 1619 Broadway, at West 49th Street, now stands more than half empty, after the closing last year of Colony Recordsand the Sound One postproduction studio.
Mr. Hadar, the chairman of Allied Partners, a private real estate investment company, believes he can breathe life back into the Brill Building by evoking its show business past. He paid $185 million for the 11-story landmark in February.
For starters, he is in discussions with the Songwriters Hall of Fame — a 44-year-old organization with plenty of fame but no hall — about establishing a small museum in the Brill Building, where songwriters once swarmed to stake out the 80 or 90 music publishers or catch the attention of entertainers whose offices were there. The songwriters group will also curate a permanent exhibition in the lobby.
Irwin Z. Robinson, the chairman of the National Music Publishers’ Association, briefly had an office in the 11th-floor penthouse suite leased to Mr. Bienstock, who was closely associated with Elvis Presley. Mr. Robinson recalled certain songwriters, naming no names, who would knock on enough doors at the Brill that they would end up with a couple of buyers, meaning that two or three publishers owned 100 percent of their songs.
The tale was greeted with amusement by two celebrated songwriters, Jimmy Webb (“By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman, “Up, Up and Away”) and Desmond Child(“Livin’ la Vida Loca,” “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Angel”), who were visiting the building with Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hadar.
Standing in the gleaming, mirrored lobby, Mr. Webb said, “It’s like the physical manifestation of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.” He is the organization’s chairman.
Mr. Hadar said he was prepared to spend $50 million or more to finance, renovate, repair, maintain and lease the Brill Building.
“I would like to get a premium in rents by developing a building that’s exciting because of the people who are in there,” he said.
Though the building was designated an official landmark in 2010, it scarcely stands out these days on Broadway, especially without Colony Records. Its other retail space, where Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant did business from 1937 to 1974, is also dark.
The Brill Building is still home to three important show-business offices: Paul Simon, an inductee of the Songwriters Hall of Fame; Broadway Video Entertainment, a production, postproduction, marketing and distribution company led by Lorne Michaels; and Key Brand Entertainment, which develops touring theatrical productions.
There is also at least one remnant of the days when the Brill Building was a kind of vertical Tin Pan Alley. On the sixth floor, a visitor can find “St. Nicholas Music Inc.,” as the hand-painted gold-leaf letters proclaim on the transom over a door with chicken-wire frosted glass, brass hardware and a mail slot. This is the company that licenses “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” 64 years after Johnny Marks wrote it.
Half Empty but Full of History, Brill Building Seeks Tenants – NYTimes.com.
Here are some tips that will make your home more presentable to buyers, and also help you prepare to move into your new digs.
Navigating the Scarsdale Real Estate Market – Real Estate – Scarsdale, NY Patch.
First the good news: Mortgage interest rates ticked downward for a second straight week. But it’s still been a volatile ride in recent months, and the general direction of interest rates for home loans has been up.
What does that mean?
If you’re a home buyer, that means the money you’ve budgeted for housing doesn’t go as far, in terms of the price you can offer to pay.
If you’re a home seller or home owner, a spike in interest rates can sometimes stall or even reverse the trend of rising home values. But the damage of rising interest rates doesn’t appear to be as bad as you might expect. History tells the tale, as we’ll see in a moment.
As of Thursday, the latest average interest on a 30-year fixed-rate loan is 4.31 percent a year, according to the firm Freddie Mac. That’s down from 4.51 percent two weeks ago.
Still, current US mortgage rates are also up a full percentage point from where they stood back in January. So the fact that their upward race has stalled, for a couple of weeks at least, is welcome news for the housing market.
“Mortgage rates eased for the second consecutive week which should help to alleviate market concerns of a slowdown in the housing market,” Frank Nothaft, chief economist of Freddie Mac, said in a statement released with the weekly mortgage data. “Existing home sales for June were the second highest since November 2009 and new home sales were the strongest since May 2008.”
The progress in the housing market is important for the whole economy, providing some important fuel at a time when gross domestic product is growing only modestly.
Home prices have been rising, boosting consumer wealth, and construction jobs have been aided by a relative shortage of homes for sale.
Many economists say modestly rising mortgage rates aren’t likely to stop the housing recovery. For one thing, mortgage rates are still historically low.
History suggests that moves in mortgage rates can exert an influence on home prices – in the opposite direction. But in some cases the damage isn’t very bad.
US mortgage rates tick downward again: Good news for home prices? – CSMonitor.com.
What could you do with $48 million? You could purchase about 480,000 pairs of heels, or you could buy a shoe designer’s entire estate.
Shoe and fashion designer Vince Camuto — who founded popular shoe brand Nine West in the 1970s— has listed his historic Southampton home with a $48 million price tag.
The home was built more than eight decades ago as just a pool house for the mammoth Wooldon Manor, reports Curbed. The main residence was built by Dr. Peter Wyckoff, who sold it to Jessie Woolworth Donahue, the daughter of Woolworth’s founder, F.W. Woolworth. She renovated the pool house before selling the property to Edmund Lynch of Merrill Lynch.
The original manor — once named the most opulent in The Hamptons — was destroyed in 1941 after Lynch’s death. The land has since been subdivided, with the remaining estate sitting on 5.5 acres. An additional 8.8 acres is also available for purchase.
The past 30 years have been good to the 10,000-square-foot home. Sitting right on the water, the place has been updated and modernized by Camuto — and of course, a new pool house was added to the property. Today, the main residence has 7 bedrooms, 7.5 baths and plenty of entertaining space beneath vaulted ceilings and large windows. Patios and lawns stretch to the private beach, and the entire parcel is protected by security systems.
According to Curbed, Camuto has already moved on to another Hamptons home: the Jazz Age Villa Maria that recently garnered a feature in Architectural Digest.
Shoe Designer Vince Camuto Lists Historic Hamptons Estate | Zillow Blog.
Total sales in the region in June were 6,308, down 2.8 percent from 6,491 in the same month of 2012.
The median sale price in the region, however, jumped 44.7 percent from a year earlier, to $123,000, from $85,000 in June 2012.
The sales decline was felt most strongly in Detroit, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, Genesee County, and in rural areas like Huron and Sanilac counties.
The biggest price pops, however, came in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights and Genesee County. Also reporting strong price increases were the Grosse Pointes, Lapeer County, Macomb County, Oakland County, and rural Sanilac and Tuscola counties.
Inventory on the market shrank a whopping 28.4 percent, with 19,459 houses for sale in the region in June, down from 27,191 a year earlier. Of that inventory, 7 percent is identified as short sales, and 12.6 percent as foreclosure sales. Average number of days on the market before a home sells also continues to tumble, to 66 days, from 81 days a year earlier.
By county or other sub-market, sales were as follows:
Detroit (includes Hamtramck, Highland Park and Harper Woods): 296 foreclosure sales, down 28.5 percent from 414 a year earlier, 183 non-foreclosure sales, down 3.2 percent from 189 a year earlier. Median sale price on foreclosure ales, $7,701, down 4 percent from $8,025 a year earlier. Median sale price on non-foreclosure sales, $23,000, up 76.9 percnet from $13,000 a year earlier.
Dearborn and Dearborn Heights: 40 foreclosure sales, down 45.9 percent from 74 a year earlier. 123 non-foreclosure sales, down 8.2 percent from 134 a year earlier. Median sale price on foreclosure sales, $57,500, up 36.2 percnet from $42,210 a year earlier. Median sale price on non-foreclosure sales, $100,000, up 44.9 percent from $69,000 a year earlier.
Genesee County: 160 foreclosure sales, down 36.5 percent from 252 a year earlier. 291 non-foreclosure sales, up 9.8 percnet from 265 a year earlier. Median sale price on foreclosure sales, $27,000, up 6.8 percent from $25,287 a year earlier. Median sale price on non-foreclosure sales, $97,000, down 2 percent from $99,000 a year earlier.
Region’s Real Estate Sales Slip, But Prices Still Surging « CBS Detroit.
Agents, think your clients would follow you if you were to hang your license elsewhere? That may not be the case.
Less than 20 percent of recent homebuyers and sellers said they “definitely will” switch real estate companies if their sales agent moved to another company, according to a buyer and seller satisfaction study from global marketing research firm J.D. Power.
“A real estate company’s agent remains the most important aspect of the customer’s experience among first-time and repeat homebuyers and sellers; however, customer loyalty is first to the company and second to the agent,” said Christina Cooley, director in the diversified services industries practice at J.D. Power, in a statement.
“In the end, it is the combination of the company’s standards, processes and approach to addressing customer needs combined with outstanding execution by the sales agent that will truly differentiate the customer experience.”
The sixth annual study included 3,930 respondents who bought or sold a home between March 2012 and April 2013 with one of the nation’s largest real estate companies.
The shares of first-time homebuyers and sellers in the market jumped from last year’s study, opening up an opportunity for real estate companies who can better serve their needs, the study said.
Study: Consumers more loyal to real estate companies than agents | Inman News.