Tag Archives: Westchester NY Homes for Sale

Westchester NY Homes for Sale

How to set PPC Marketing Goals | Chappaqua Realor

Leave a reply

What are your PPC marketing goals?

Whether managing PPC marketing yourself or hiring an agency, before you start spending money advertising on search engines, carefully consider what you are trying to achieve.

Of course everyone wants sales but unless you are running an e-commerce site where visitors can buy from you right then and there, you should ask yourself what you expect in return for your PPC marketing investment. Look at how you advertise today, consider what works and what doesn’t and then think about how can you carry a successful sales model into a place where you get to advertise directly to prospects who are already interested in what you are selling.

Let’s review a few basics of Search Engine Pay per Click marketing.

  1. PPC provides any company the opportunity to place ads in front of businesses and individual consumers based upon specific search queries.
  2. It is a pay-to-play bidding platform that rewards companies who are willing to pay more and/or dedicate more time with better ad placement and performance.
  3. Ads positioned at the top of the search results page perform better than ads appearing elsewhere.
  4. When an ad is displayed on the screen for a person who uses a search engine to type a search query, it is called an impression. Impressions are free but in order to get them you must be willing to pay  more than your competitor.
  5. Pay per click… you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
  6. What you pay is determined by a number of factors including what your competitors are willing to pay, how well your ad is written, how relevant your ad is, how well your landing page performs and how successful your ad is.
  7. As with all web based marketing, you need a good website. The more informative, relevant, compelling and encouraging your website is for your target audience the better your PPC marketing will perform.

What should my PPC marketing goal be?

This question is important because without a goal, you cannot measure whether your PPC marketing investment is working for you. Over the years, I have created thousands of campaigns for customers and although the goals may be similar, they are never exactly the same for each campaign. Every business need is unique. Every marketing goal should be unique your business needs.

Is your goal to increase sales, get more leads or expand your brand?

If you answered yes (don’t worry, everyone does) you are partly right, but you need more specificity. Lofty goals are great, but in the real world success more often comes from setting goals that are realistic, achievable and measurable. Are you capable of running a four minute mile? What about a marathon? Although most people could never run a four minute mile (the unrealistic goal), most people could finish a marathon if they were willing to make the investment in time, resources, dedication and perseverance. The same holds true for PPC marketing. Just like dedicating yourself to running a marathon, dedicate yourself to investing the time it takes to set goals, learn what works for your unique business and adjust your goals as you move ahead.

What are some examples?

What is your goal when advertising? Is it to put your ad in front of people who are in your market and are in need of your services to pick up the phone and call you? What about setting a goal for the number of people you want calling or when you want them to call? Do you put a value on each call? Do you break it down by the type of service they are interested in?

Each business will have their own unique set of PPC goals. Some example search engine PPC goals are:

  1. Track when someone clicks on an ad and completes a lead form.
  2. Keep the cost per conversion from PPC less than $25 each.
  3. PPC should drive 15 new leads per month from my website’s contact form.
  4. PPC should get us 50 call leads per month.
  5. With a small budget, the average cost per click (CPC) cannot exceed $5
  6. My website is not doing well in some organic search results and I want to be sure my business is listed on the first page of Google for those search terms.
  7. Average PPC visitor time on the website is more than the time spent by organic site visitors.
  8. Maintain visibility in search engines along with my key competitors.
  9. Be easily discovered in search engines for a variety of relevant keywords.
  10. Target mobile users only.

 

How to set PPC Marketing Goals | Find and Convert.

Buyers Cry Uncle | Armonk Real Estate

Leave a reply

With prices rising every week, lenders as strict as ever, interest rates rising, inventories at decade-low levels and competition for homes breaking their hearts, more and more buyers are reaching their frustration limits.

Two things most every buyer participating in the latest Redfin Real-Time Home-Buyer report agreed upon were prices are going to keep on rising and low inventories are a real pain. Forty-eight percent of buyers listed rising prices as a major concern, up from 40 percent last quarter. Sixty-five percent cited low inventory as a major concern in the first quarter, down slightly from 66 percent last quarter.

Twenty-three percent of buyers expect home prices in their area to “rise a lot” over the next twelve months, up from 22% last quarter; 57% expect prices to “rise a little,” the same as last quarter. Thirteen percent expect prices to “stay the same,” 5 percent expect prices to “drop a little,” and less than 1 percent expects prices to “drop a lot.”

When asked about “major concerns with buying a home this year,” the most common response was still “not enough good homes for sale,” at 65 percent in the second quarter. “General economic concerns” fell yet again, dropping from 19 percent last quarter to just 16 percent this quarter, while “prices are increasing in my area,” shot up from 40 percent last quarter to 48 percent in the second quarter.

Thus it’s no surprise that twice as many buyers believe now is a good time to sell as opposed to a good time to buy. The share of respondents who believe now is a good time to sell shot up again in the second quarter, rising to 67 percent from just 48 percent in the first quarter. Meanwhile, the share of respondents who believe now is a good time to buy fell yet again, decreasing from 40 percent in the first quarter to just 31 percent in the second quarter.

So are these hacked off buyers ready to throw in the towel and negotiate a long term lease with their favorite landlord? Not quite yet.

Looks like more would rather go deeper into debt. Recognizing prices are going to keep going up, 41 percent of buyers said they were “ready to pay more”-if they can get the financing. That’s actually an increase of 34 percent from last quarter. The percentage of buyers who are “taking a break” dropped again this quarter to 30 percent, down 2 percentage points from last quarter. Meanwhile the percentage of buyers who are expanding their search to new areas fell to 44 percent, down from 51 percent in the first quarter.

 

 

Buyers Cry Uncle | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.

Is Canada’s housing market on the verge of a crash? | North Salem Real Estate

Leave a reply

Canada’s housing market has been a wildly popular topic lately with experts sounding off on everything from house-market affordability to house-buying intentions to the effects of too-long, very-low interest rates. All this is keeping the debate about the soft landing, or crash to come, firmly on the minds of Canadians.

The common link is the Bank of Canada’s benchmark rate, which has been frozen at 1.0 per cent since September 2010. The market doesn’t expect the central bank to move higher — if it moves higher — until sometime in the latter part of 2014, or even later, so in some ways there’s a bit more time to sit back, wait and watch.

If you believe The Economist, Canada’s housing market is “especially vulnerable” to a major correction, according to a recent analysis on global property markets. It says house prices here are overvalued by 73 per cent compared to rental prices, and 32 per cent overvalued when compared to household incomes.

“Home sales in March were 15% down on a year earlier. Buyers are in short supply. A recent poll showed that only 15% of Canadians are likely to buy a home in the next two years, down from 27% last year—the steepest decline in the 20-year history of the survey. After a big boom, the housing bust will be a wrenching affair,” the magazine stated earlier this month. This is golden for those who are in the doom and gloom camp, and don’t believe house prices will bounce any time soon.

Now, combine that with a recent warning by the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals. This week the group said many Canadians are managing their debt responsibly, and warned Ottawa’s clampdown on mortgage lending rules has set the stage for up to a 30 per cent plunge in home sales by 2015, translating into massive job losses related to the industry and other negative things that could crimp economic activity. Think of all those first-time home buyers who may be on the sidelines.

But in findings that appear to contradict The Economist and other pessimistic views, an RBC Economics analysis stated that while Canada’s housing market still faces higher-than-usual stress, recent affordability measures don’t suggest a “significant nation-wide price correction is imminent.” In fact, the low mortgage rates helped make owning a house relatively affordable — though arguably a more accurate definition would be less unaffordable —  in the first quarter of 2013, of course, with variations across regions.

At the same time, BMO housing confidence report showed consumers’ buying intentions were bolstered by low interest rates. This poll found some 45 per cent of Canadian homeowners say they are looking to buy a property in the next five years, also with results varying from region to region, in another bit of data to play up the good news story to reassure Canadians the sky isn’t falling. What’s more, it says first-time homebuyers could take advantage of low rates and shorter amortization periods for financial stability.

Given all the data, one can’t help but think everything is being held together — but just barely — thanks to low interest rates.

On that note, consider one final, powerful warning to add to the mix. The head of the country’s banking watchdog told a Bloomberg economic summit this week that a transition to higher rates could be really, really bad. That is, it is a greater incentive for banks to take on more risks when lending, business to depend on cheap credit and for borrowers take on more debt.

“No one can predict when, or how fast, rates will start to climb (or indeed, whether they will fall further),” Julie Dickson said in prepared text of a speech she delivered at the summit. “Yet dependence on low interest rates can become significant, meaning that transition to higher rates could be very painful.”

 

Is Canada’s housing market on the verge of a crash? | Insight – Yahoo! Finance Canada.

Troubling Signs In The Housing Market | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

The housing market showed signs of recovery in late 2011, beginning with a sharp upturn in housing stocks in October of that year. This was followed by a small upturn in housing starts and home sales starting in early 2012. While Wall Street economists and the media are avidly reporting that a full-fledged housing market recovery is under way, my view has been that what looks like a “recovery/bull market,” is more akin to a “dead cat” bounce and that the bear market in housing has a lot further to go to the downside.

With that in mind, I wanted to discuss some indicators I like to follow that, if they become full-blown fundamental trends, could be signifying the start of the next leg down in housing.

The first sign is housing starts. While the current crop of new and existing home sales reports hitting the tape are still showing some growth, assuming the seasonal adjustments are accurate, housing starts appear to be signaling possible future weakness. Housing starts should reflect a new homebuilder’s expectations of future sales. April’s starts were 853,000, which was 12% below the number expected by Wall Street economists and 16.5% below March’s revised number. When the housing starts for April were released, it was also reported that the March number was revised lower from 1.036 million to 1.021 million. Not as strong as originally reported.

 

Troubling Signs In The Housing Market – Seeking Alpha.

Jessica Simpson lists one home, keeps the other | Bedford Hills Real Estate

Leave a reply

The “Fashion Star” judge just listed her longtime residence for $7.995 million, according to Zillow, who writes:

Custom-built in the early ’90s by award-winning L.A. designer Kerry Joyce, the 5,500-square-foot home is located in a private celebrity enclave with a gated entrance and vine-covered exterior. Simpson has owned the 5-bedroom property since 2005, when she bought it for $5.275 million following her separation from then-husband Nick Lachey.

To see photos of the California home, click here.

 

Jessica Simpson lists one home, keeps the other | HousingWire.

Sacramento housing market nears normal | Bedford Real Estate

Leave a reply

With 42 new permits issued in January through March of this year, Sacramento increased by 121% over the same period a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac. Foreclosure starts slid by 74% when compared to the pace from a year earlier, writes the Sacramento Business Journal.

 

Sacramento housing market nears normal | HousingWire.

Foreclosure threat subsides for more Miami households | Pound Ridge Real Estate

Leave a reply

Foreclosure rates in the greater Miami area remain astonishingly high, but they’re headed in the right direction.

In March, 13.25 percent of the outstanding mortgages in the Miami, Miami Beach and Kendall area were in some stage of the foreclosure process, according to CoreLogic. That was down from 17.51 percent a year earlier. But it was dramatically higher than the national foreclosure rate of 2.84 percent, according to the Irvine, Calif.-based real-estate data firm.

 

Foreclosure threat subsides for more Miami households | HousingWire.

Banks Seen Holding REOs for Higher Prices | Armonk Real Estate

Leave a reply

Real estate agents report banks are keeping foreclosures off the market in hopes of higher prices, a practice that is temporarily reducing the percentage of distress sales but lengthening the foreclosure timeline.

The share of distressed properties in the housing market fell to a three-and-a-half-year low in April, falling to 33.0 percent in April, based on a three-month moving average. That was not only down from 35.6 percent in March, but also a very sharp drop from the 43.6 percent distressed property market share seen a year ago, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking

However, there also are reports from real estate professionals participating in the survey that many banks are holding back their sale of foreclosed properties until home prices climb further. As a result, there is the potential for a spike in distressed property sales in the coming months.

In the past year, charges that lenders have sought to manipulate REO process have increased as foreclosure inventories have declined.

In EForeclosure Magazine last April, Wells Fargo senior economist and vice president Scott Anderson explained that withholding a number of foreclosure properties for sale from the real estate market is a deliberate effort on the part of lenders to abate the drastic decline in home prices.

Results from a study of the foreclosures market showed that only one third of repo homes are being marketed for sale. Anderson added that if banks will release all foreclosure properties on their portfolios for sale, property values will surely take another steep plunge.

Anderson pointed out that withholding foreclosure properties from the market could greatly impact the balance sheets of lenders and for any individual who will try to sell a home or seek mortgage refinancing.

In studies for AOL Real Estate last year, RealtyTrac found that just 15 percent of REOs in the Washington, D.C., area were for sale, a statistic that is representative of nationwide numbers, the company said.  CoreLogic provided an even lower estimate, suggesting that just 10 percent of all REOs in the country are listed by their owners, which include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the Federal Housing Administration. As of April 2012, 390,000 repossessed homes sat in limbo, while about 39,000 were actually listed for sale, said Sam Khater, senior economist at CoreLogic.

The drop in distressed property activity in April was accompanied by a parallel dip in the percentage of purchases attributable to investors, the latest HousingPulse numbers show. Investors accounted for 21.6 percent of home purchase transactions tracked last month based on a three-month moving average. That was the lowest investor share recorded since November.

Foreclosed properties in need of repair – or so-called damaged REO – remain the largest category of purchases by investors. Typically, investors buy these properties, fix them up, and then turn them into rental housing.

Last month investors accounted for 62.8 percent of damaged REO purchases, HousingPulse numbers show. This compared to a 63.9 percent share in March and a 60.4 percent share a year earlier.

 

Banks Seen Holding REOs for Higher Prices | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.

Bedford NY Luxury Market Inventory Report | RobReportBlog

Leave a reply

5/22/13

Bedford NY Area Luxury Real Estate Market Report

Over $2,000,000
Homes for Sale165
Homes Sold (6 Mos.)27
Homes in CC, pending, sold44
Inventory- sold36.66 months
Inventory- sold, cc, pending22.51 months

 

 

Bedford NY Luxury Market Inventory Report | RobReportBlog.

Some say housing may not lead the recovery | South Salem Real Estate

Leave a reply

Robert Shiller, Karl Case and David Blitzer — leading experts in the housing market — believe several headwinds will keep a lid on housing gains, such as a low level of new home starts, an unexpectedly slow migration of so-called shadow inventory onto the market, and difficulty for buyers to secure financing, writes NBC News.

Yale University economist Shiller said:

“You’ve got a lot of breathless commentary in the media. All this talk that we’re in this great recovery—we probably are in the short run, the longer run doesn’t look so terrific to me.”

 

Some say housing may not lead the recovery | HousingWire.