| South Salem NY Real Estate Report | RobReportBlog | ||
| 2013 | 6 months ending 7/8 | 2012 | |
| 29 | Sales | 27 | |
| $500,000.00 | median sold price | $600,000.00 | |
| $180,000.00 | low sold price | $185,000.00 | |
| $925,000.00 | high sold price | $1,325,000.00 | |
| 2404 | average size | 2688 | |
| $237.00 | ave. price per foot | $239.00 | |
| 211 | ave days on market | 254 | |
| $546,043.00 | average sold price | $629,575.00 | |
| 96.26% | ave sold to ask | 94.01% |
After years of sluggish sales and false starts, the real estate market is on a tear this summer, with prices posting double-digit gains every consecutive month since April.
Prices have increased so much so quickly in some markets that a few experts are already crying “bubble.” There’s no doubt that the bottom has passed.
Tight inventory and climbing prices have created a seller’s market in most places and realtors are reporting bidding wars in the hottest markets — but that doesn’t mean there’s not opportunity out there for home buyers. “Just because it would have been cheaper to buy a home six months ago, doesn’t mean it’s not a good time to buy one now,” says Trulia housing analyst Jed Kolko.
That’s good news for the 68% of renters surveyed in March by JP Morgan Chase, who said they wanted to buy a home. It may be risky in today’s market for home flippers looking to purchase and sell a home quickly for profit. But for those retail buyers who want to buy and live in a house for five or 10 years, here are five reasons to act now:
1. Home prices are still rising
The massive gains seen over the past few months make it easy to forget that housing only bottomed out last year, hitting its lowest level in March 2012. While recent prices increases aren’t sustainable, there’s plenty of room for home values to climb. Even with four months of improvement, prices remain about 26% below their 2006 peaks.
The chief driver of price gains is constrained supply, reflecting modest homebuilder activity; dwindling foreclosures; and continued foot-dragging by potential sellers who are waiting for prices to improve even further. Total housing inventory at the end of May rose 3.3%, to 2.22 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 5.1 months’ supply at the current sales pace, down from 5.2 months in April, according to the National Association of Realtors. Listed inventory is still 10.1% below a year ago, when there was a 6.5-month supply.
Going forward, price increases will vary by region, while prices nationally are expected to see more modest increases of an annualized 3.9% per year through 2017, according to CoreLogic.
2. Rates are low by historical standards
Rates, currently at about 4.6%, have climbed a full percentage point since May — but they’re still lower than they were just two years ago and far lower than their long-term average of about 8%. “In the history of America, a 30-year mortgage at less than 5% is a gift,” says Mark Dotzour, chief economist at Texas A&M’s Real Estate Center. “It’s not supposed to be that way, and rates are only that low because of extraordinary monetary policy.”
Economists don’t expect the recent surge to continue. The Mortgage Bankers Association predicts rates will remain close to current levels through the end of next year.
5 reasons it’s still a great time to buy a house- MSN Money.
Have an issue with your channel and want to contact YouTube directly about it? Then just call (650) 244…..Ha! Like it’s going to be that easy. As the second largest search engine in the world (the first for video by a country mile) with a billion active users a month and over 1 million partners you are not going to be able to just pick up the phone and speak to someone, however urgent or frustrating your issue may be. However, YouTube do provide resources online where you can submit a request for help and we’ll take you through these options.
YouTube do have a contacts page where they will point you in the general direction of how to contact them depending on what you need. They give an actual bricks and mortar address too:
YouTube, LLC
901 Cherry Ave.
San Bruno, CA 94066
USA
Phone: +1 650-253-0000 | Fax: +1 650-253-0001
They also give you a phone number to ring (and, adorably, a fax number). In reality, the phone takes you through to an automated Google switchboard which will put you through to a living, breathing human if you know their extension number. If you don’t, you can choose options to contact them regarding advertising, recruitment, Google products, info on the Google Search Appliance and, also, customer service. Don’t get too excited though, the customer service option will suggest you visit the Google website for further info.
If you want to talk to them about press enquiries or need information on YouTube itself then email press@youtube.com or visit their Press Room.
There is no way to directly contact YouTube either by phone or email for any general support issues. However, you can contact YouTube staff by completing and then submitting the correct form provided by them or by using some of the tools available online. YouTube encourages the use of this approach (even though you don’t really get a choice in the matter) as it makes things more efficient for both parties. Often, the user will find that they can resolve the issue themselves without taking it any further. Forms that are submitted are subject to a decent response time of around 48 hours.
Regarding specific help for technical or other issues, YouTube provide the following avenues for contact:
Technical Issues:
Account Recovery – If you need help with recovering your account. User name or password is required.
Site Security – Found a hack, exploit or any other issue that you want to alert YouTube to? Report it here.
Playback Issues – If you’re experiencing difficulty with video playback then YouTube welcome your comments and feedback via this form.
YouTube/G+ Problems – You can ask for assistance for issues relating to the integration of your YouTube and Google + accounts via this page.
I.P. And Other Legal Problems:
Defamation Claims – This form allows you to report videos which you believe violate local law.
Privacy Claims – Contact YouTube here if you believe your personal information (image, name, identification number) have been compromised.
Trademark Complaints – Use these forms if you have an issue with others using your trademarked content in their videos.
Copyright Issues – Email YouTube at copyright@youtube.com. Give as much information as possible.
Source: Want To Contact YouTube? Here’s All The Info You Need http://www.reelseo.com/contact-youtube-info/#ixzz2YmXBg2Nn
For 23 years, Mariachi Mexico has been an Armonk institution. Now the restaurant is spicing things up.
The restaurant has undergone interior and menu makeovers thanks to new head chef Joana Herrera, who started in February. Herrera, a Hastings-on-Hudson resident who emigrated from Mexico when she was 11, previously worked at Mariachi Mexico as a waitress.
“I want to create a totally different vibe,” Herrera said. “This is one of my dreams. I want people to feel comfortable and relaxed.”
Herrera said she said wants customers to feel like they can come in and have a little bite to eat, and not have to order entrees.
“They can come in and have tacos and drink,” Herrera said. “I want them to enjoy the company.”
All types of music plays throughout the restaurant, from Spanish music to European techno to tango. The walls have been painted white, and a blackboard hangs in the back offering specials. Herrera, who graduated from culinary school in New York City, wants her passion for life to shine through.
“I believe in living each day to the fullest,” Herrera said. “You truly don’t know what’s happening tomorrow.”
A sign hangs in the center of the restaurant imploring customers to eat, drink, smile and love. The restaurant’s interior is inspired by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Herrera visits the Frida Kahlo museum whenever she is in Mexico City.
Herrera said she feels fortunate to be head chef of a restaurant, knowing how few get the opportunity.
“I am extremely excited that I have gotten to this point,” Herrera said.
Working on the strip in downtown Armonk is also something Herrera enjoys. Herrera said she enjoys people watching outside the restaurant, and is glad she is not working in an isolated area.
When it comes to the menu, Herrera is very high on the restaurant’s chips, offering homemade plantain chips and blue tortilla chips. She described the food as Mexcian with a New York flare. Herrera cooks her food using epazote and guajillo chili.
Herrera said she loves street food, and has a real affection for tacos.
“Tacos are so enjoyable,” Herrera said. “You cannot turn down a taco.”
Tacos al pastor is her personal favorite, but the rest of the menu comes at a close second.
“I like everything,” Herrera said. “It’s hard to grow up in Mexico and not end up loving food.”
Mariachi offers light and healthy food, that Herrera said will fill patrons up and she is always working on the menu to satisfy the needs of customers.
“I want people to walk out with a big smile,” Herrera said. “From the food, décor and music to the smiles of the staff, I want them to have a good experience that reflects how hard we work.”
Mariachi Mexico is at 405 Main Street in Armonk. For more information, contact (914) 273-6805 or visit the restaurant’s website.
Armonk’s Mariachi Mexico Restaurant Gets Makeover | The Chappaqua Daily Voice.
Content marketing is required for success in today’s competitive business world. No matter which industry you are in, your website visitors want high-quality, information-rich, high-impact and captivating
content with deep industry insight. We are in the midst of the information age; your prospects do a significant amount of research, comparing you to your top competitors. How can you distinguish your company and win content marketing game? A top-notch company blog is the foundation for winning content marketing. If you have committed to content marketing, you may as well dive in, and grant your content marketing some superpowers.
Achieving high rates of social content curation—social sharing—is now vital to SEO and the ranking of search engine results pages (SERPS). Each time someone shares your content with their network of friends and industry contacts, it gets a stamp of approval—increasing its reach and amplifying your chances for higher rates of traffic and lead generation. The need to create content, which readers find valuable enough to share, will ultimately improve the quality of online marketing and the Internet as a whole.
There are no shortcuts to producing highly shareable content, which calls for vision, creativity, a deep knowledge base and a sophisticated understanding of your industry. Consistently creating valuable, relevant and share-worthy content will inevitably improve your search rankings, which are increasingly taking into account the social exposure and influence of content and the authors who create it. Creating highly shareable content will get others to promote your content for you. While originality is an important goal of content creation, highly shared content does have some common characteristics.
Everyone with an Internet browser is inundated with content on a daily basis. The best way to keep people reading your content is to structure it so that it can be easily skimmed over. Paragraphs should have headlines, and main points should be put into numbered lists and bullet points. People may not want to read every single point you make; this practice allows them to skip some information and search for what they find most intriguing, which increases your chances of high rates of content curation.
Everyone wants to be found in the search engines. Organic visitors typically account for most Web publishers’ traffic and yield one of the highest long-term returns on investment of any digital channel.
Ranking well in Google has obvious benefits to one’s business. More qualified traffic equals more revenue and customers. As such, this led a lot of companies to take shortcuts in their link building for years because the reward far outweighed the risk.
Some examples of link building tactics that used to work include: Over-optimization of anchor text, low-quality links and creating dummy blogs with robot-generated text.
What is the common theme here? Little to no effort in order to generate these links. Much of it could be automated or purchased relatively cheaply and the low costs yielded tremendous returns until February 2011. That’s when Panda hit, and it hit hard. Then in April 2012 another major update hit: Penguin. This focused primarily on the sources linking to Websites.
After the dust settled, Warren Buffett’s famous saying “when the tide goes out, you see who was swimming naked,” which was intended for those who played the stock market and were heavily leveraged could also apply for many Websites’ SEO. The tide went out on low cost link building and many company’s link profile was naked, resulting in losses of traffic and thousands to millions of dollars for many Webmasters.
Unfortunately for these companies, regaining lost rankings was not as easy as drawing a line in the sand and doing things right from that point on. The cost was exponentially greater because these companies needed to factor in the price of fixing the old issue before moving on towards the newer, cleaner link building.
Earning trust today in Google takes time. A lot of it. It involves building relationships with real people, at authoritative Websites, and distributing quality content across the Web that provides real value to the audience that engages with it. The links earned from quality content tells Google’s crawlers that Web sites of authority trust you enough to link to you.
Google can also quickly discern which content is more valuable than others based on the number of times it is shared across the social Web. Obviously the easiest way they have insight into this data is from their own social property Google+. However, since most Twitter tweets are public, their crawlers can also determine how frequently the content has been shared on this massive social network. In addition, Facebook’s API can quickly indicate how many times a given domain and page have been shared on its site.
The times have changed. Continuing with old link building practices is only a recipe to digging an even deeper grave for a Website’s SEO. Costs associated with link building today have increased mostly because of the time involved, but the end result is the same: prominent visibility in Google which leads to more awareness and customers for your brand.
The board of directors of Jupiter, Fla.-based Regional Multiple Listing Service Inc. has voted to dissolve the 11,000-member MLS following the settlement of a lawsuit filed by one of its shareholder associations.
Regional MLS members are now receiving all MLS services directly through their respective associations: the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches, the Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound Association of Realtors, and the Realtors Association of St. Lucie.
The dissolution of Regional MLS, which was formed in 1987, is expected to be finalized sometime this summer.
In April, the Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound Association of Realtors filed a complaint against Regional MLS and its other two shareholder associations, alleging false and deceptive advertising, unfair competition, and interference with business relationships.
The origins of the suit lie in a change in billing structure made by Regional MLS’ board around November 2012. Whereas previously Regional MLS had provided the three associations with MLS services directly, the board voted to allow each association to offer MLS services separately, using a common database provided to the associations by Regional MLS, and thereby making the associations competitors for MLS subscribers, the complaint said.
Gary Nagle, general counsel for the Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound association, declined to elaborate on the complaint, saying it “speaks for itself.”
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/06/28/associations-vote-to-dissolve-florida-based-regional-mls/#sthash.IxUx0Wmt.dpuf
Associations vote to dissolve Florida-based Regional MLS | Inman News.
If finding something as simple as ketchup in your refrigerator is akin to reaching into astorage unit of forgotten mysteries, it’s probably time to rethink the way you’re storing food. Not only does a well-organized fridge make for a more pleasing kitchen environment overall, but you’ll never again find yourself frantically searching for green onions halfway through cooking dinner. Here are some easy ways to reorganize your fridge and streamline the way you cook and eat, for the better!
Unless you’re planning on hunkering down for the next year or so, there’s no need to hoard food or keep leftovers for longer than 2-3 days. Judiciously throw away any foods that are expiring, or close to expiring, at the end of every week. This allows you to start each week with a clean slate — a great motivational tool if you’re following a specific diet plan or just trying to eat healthier.
It’s easy to forget which leftover came first when you’re looking at five different to-go boxes. To solve this problem, invest in quality see-through containers such as Tupperware or Pyrex, and label with the contents and date. Clear space in your freezer as well by getting rid of unnecessary box packages, and instead keep everything in airtight plastic containers or bags.
Your fridge comes with drawers and compartments for a reason — they’re optimized for certain foods. Meat should go into the deli drawer. If your fridge doesn’t have one, place meat in the shallowest drawer, which happens to be one of the colder areas in your fridge. Also make sure your vegetables are in the drawer with the highest humidity (most fridges will come with a fruit and vegetable drawer). Be careful with your eggs: They absorb odor, so put them in the airtight egg bin if your fridge has one, or in the centermost area.
While you may be haphazardly piling various food and drink items into the door of your refrigerator, don’t forget that most foods should be stored in an area that maintains a stable temperature. The frequent opening and closing of your refrigerator door can actually be damaging to many foods and cause them to expire faster than their regular shelf life.
Some foods just do not belong in the fridge. These include potatoes, onions, tomatoes, avocados, peaches and honey. Some foods, such as bread, nut butters, bananas and apples, do not need to be refrigerated, but can be. Additionally, be careful of storing fruits that emit ethylene gas in close proximity with other ethylene-sensitive foods. Apples, for example, release ethylene gas, which will end up spoiling nearby fruits and vegetables.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. This popular adage is definitely nottrue when it comes to the amount of paperwork involved in buying a home!
To understand how things have changed, we need to compare the past to the present. Luckily my father is very organized and has his entire file of documents from when he bought the family house almost 45 years ago in Virginia. More recently, when he made what he calls his “final” property purchase, he couldn’t believe the stack of paperwork involved in the purchase.
Here’s a comparison of the amount of paperwork involved with a home purchase “then” and “now,” along with brief descriptions of the voluminous stack of documents you’ll encounter the next time you buy real estate.
Then (1 page): In 1969 the purchase contract was a full page long and covered all the material issues related to buying the property, with no other disclosures, reports or documents related to the transaction.
Now (200 pages): The 2012 purchase contract was 10 pages, plus approximately 200 more pages of contract addendums, disclosure reports from the seller and agent(s), third-party disclosure information, plus federal, state and local disclosures, disclaimers, questionnaires, certifications, escrow instructions, inspections, advisories, verifications, counteroffers, receipts for reports and notices.
Then (4 pages): Three-page deed of trust/mortgage note and one-page settlement sheet.
Now (100-125 pages): 13-page deed of trust, five-page promissory note, 50-70 pages of lender disclosures, 3-10 pages of federally required HUD-1 statement and good faith estimate, and other paperwork required as documentation for the loan.
Then (5 pages): Chicago Title cover page plus five total pages of the title abstract, survey, schedule of exclusions and general exclusions pages.
Now (15-20 pages): The title abstract, title insurance policy, exclusions, plat/survey and general information.
Then (unsure): Unfortunately his insurance policy document was not in the file, but his annual policy coverage premium — $25.06 — was noted on the settlement sheet. But this payment might have covered more or fewer perils than a policy covers today, so that annual amount probably is not comparable to a modern-day policy.
Now (30-40 pages): A standard homeowners policy covers the dwelling, liability and medical, and has pages and pages of items that are excluded from coverage.
| Bedford Village NY Real Estate Report | RobReportBlog | ||
| 2013 | 6 months ending 7/5 | 2012 | |
| 40 | Sales | 34 | |
| $887,500.00 | median sold price | $910,250.00 | |
| $370,000.00 | low sold price | $450,000.00 | |
| $8,200,000.00 | high sold price | $4,750,000.00 | |
| 3419 | average size | 4133 | |
| $388.00 | ave. price per foot | $313.00 | |
| 189 | ave days on market | 217 | |
| $1,326,444.00 | average sold price | $1,355,990.00 | |
| 93.37% | ave sold to ask | 93.26% |
Bedford sales up 17% – Prices down 2.5% | RobReportBlog | Bedford Real Estate.