Tag Archives: Westchester NY Homes

Westchester NY Homes

Homebuilders and lumber dealers face supply shortage | Bedford Corners Real Estate

Home builders and lumber dealers are facing a significant shortage of materials necessary for building a home, such as lumber and wall board, according to the National Association of Home Builders and theNational Lumber and Building Material Dealers Assocation. 

“Supply constraints are one of the barriers to a more robust recovery,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “The shortages and price increases reported by both homebuilders and lumber dealers are particularly concerning given that the current rate of construction is still far below what would be considered normal or necessary to meet underlying demand.” 

The highest reported incidence of shortages was for oriented strand board, with 22% of builders reporting shortages. Following closely is wall board, with 20% of builders reporting a shortage, and framing lumber and plywood, with 18% of builders reporting shortages. 

The survey asked both builder and lumber dealers about the shortages of 24 specific building products and materials. For the majority of the products, the share of builders reporting a shortage was considerably higher in May 2013 than the previous two years. 

“The shares of reported shortages are not as high now as they were in 2004 or 2005, but the increases since 2012 are quite significant, especially when you take the early stage of the housing recovery into account,” said Crowe. 

He added, “In 2004 and 2005 the home building industry was producing over 1.8 million new homes a year, while the current rate of new housing starts is still below 1 million.”

 

Homebuilders and lumber dealers face supply shortage | HousingWire.

OCC: Housing market shows strong growth | Pound Ridge Real Estate

Treasury yields have posted historical lows for the past several years, implying strongish economic growth and the potential for higher inflation, the Office of the Currency of the Comptroller said.

In the OCC Semiannual Risk Perspective from the National Risk Committee, the yield curve has stayed positively sloped and relatively steep, which shows higher household and corporate income and revenue growth.

However, for banks, the possible negative effects of higher rates include a decline in the value of investment securities, including many mortgage-related securities, the OCC said.

Meanwhile, net income for 2012 increased 12% year over year to more than $94 billion, with banks of all sizes experiencing improvements in operating performance.

Part of the growth was attributed to the largest banks reporting a 21% reduction in provisions for loan losses.

In addition, mortgage refinance activity helped boost system revenue, but that source of strength may ease in 2013.

Overall, the OCC said, “The housing market showed signs of improvement in 2012 due to increased investor demand and the limited supply of new and existing homes for sale.”

 

OCC: Housing market shows strong growth | HousingWire.

Mount Kisco Police Investigate Crash Between Two Police Cars | Mt Kisco Real Estate

Mount Kisco Police were continuing an investigation into the collision of two Mount Kisco Police cars that resulted in the hospitalization of two officers Saturday.

Mount Kisco Police and members of the Westchester County Department of Public Safety Accident Investigation Unit were investigating the collision involving one marked car and one unmarked car that took place just before 11 p.m. Saturday on Main Street near Gregory Avenue.

Detective Tony Correia was operating the unmarked police car, a 2006 Ford Crown Victoria, and Patrol Officer David DiRienzo was operating the marked car, a  2011 Ford Crown Victoria, police said. Both officers have been treated and released from the hospital, according to a press release from Mount Kisco Police.The offishore injury lawyers from The McNeal Law Firm have dealt with such accident and injury cases.

“Both Detective Correia and Patrol Officer DiRienzo at the time of accident were traveling south on Main Street responding to assist a police officer who had effected a traffic stop of a motor vehicle suspected to have been involved in a crime minutes earlier,” police said in the press release. “Witness statements allege the collision occurred  when the marked police car overtook the unmarked police car.”

Mount Kisco Police Investigate Crash Between Two Police Cars | The Mt. Kisco Daily Voice.

How to build a better real estate website | Waccabuc Realtor

In a perfect world, building a real estate website would be a seamless experience: fast, easy and cheap. You would just push a button and customers would start lining up at your door.

If it were only that simple.

Really beautiful and profitable real estate websites are hard to come by. If you want some examples, take a look at a recent post on the Top 25 Beautiful Websites in Real Estate. Sadly, many of those sites are ones that we’ve already seen.

Building a website in this industry has been more like participating in an episode of “Fear Factor.” If you’re not careful, your site can become a financial drain and set your online marketing up for imminent failure. But crafty real estate professionals are starting to learn from the rest of the startup world, using clever ways and new technology to spin up and market their websites without breaking the bank. They’re taking advantage of low-cost and free tools combined with creative marketing strategies to dominate online.

Take a look at the infographic below and see where you can step up your website game. Let me know what’s working for you in the comments below.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/next/how-to-build-a-better-real-estate-website-infographic/#sthash.wC7Sdq5D.dpuf

 

How to build a better real estate website [infographic] | Inman News.

Google Glass apps to download for real estate | South Salem Real Estate

At HousingWire’s Real Estate Expo (REX Annual) this week,VaynerMedia Founder and CEO Gary Vaynerchuk advised the audience of real estate professionals to start eyeing up Google Glass. So, as a real estate agent, how should you be utilizing this new technology?

Google Glass allows users who walk down a street wearing the technology to see alerts about nearby houses on the market. The alerts are courtesy of Trulia which this week introduced an app for Google Glass. It is one of only a handful of apps available for the Internet-connected glasses, and is an example of how software developers are experimenting with the new device.

To read the full article, click here.

Google Glass apps to download for real estate | HousingWire.

San Francisco Median Home Price Tops $1 Million | Bedford Hills Real Estate

Earlier this month, San Francisco reached a potentially dubious milestone–themedian price of a home in the city topped $1 million.

To give a sense of just how quickly this has happened, its important to note that the current median price is a 32 percent jump from where its sat last year.

The phenomenon isn’t solely confined to San Francisco proper. Other Bay Area cities are experiencing similar surges in housing prices, leading the whole region to see a 22 percent increase in prices over the past twelve months.

This is great news for current homeowners thinking about cashing out and moving to the Bahamas. But for everyone else it raises two questions: 1. Where can I get one of those internet millionaire jobs I keep hearing so much about, and 2. Are we in the midst of the housing bubble?

According to a recent study by real estate brokerage house Redfin, San Francisco is one of the cities in the United States most likely to be experiencing a real estate bubblebased on a host of factors ranging from the ratio of home prices to median household income, the speed at which prices are growing and the speed at which houses are sold after being listed on the market.

“The normal laws of economics don’t apply to the Bay Area,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman told HuffPost in April. “You could have huge unemployment numbers here and home prices would still go up because [the supply is so constrained and] there are enough people with limitless amounts of money who want to live there.”

Unlike the real estate bubble that triggered the Great Recession, the Bay Area’s newfound growth in home prices isn’t fueled by sketchy financing (“Do you have a heartbeat and signature? Here are the keys to this 12 bedroom estate!”). Instead, what’s going on is directly tied to the strength of the Bay Area’s largely tech-fueled job market, which is drawing an influx of wealthy people into areas where there isn’t enough supply to go around.

The reason for the Bay Area’s lack of supply is largely due to the aftershocks of the last bubble, which devastated the construction industry and led to far fewer houses being built to accommodate the region’s swelling population.

Some of that is starting to change–especially in San Francisco, where a construction boom is simultaneously creating new housing units after years of virtually nothing coming onto the market–but the new construction isn’t happening fast enough to stabilize demand.

While the Fed is helping to keep interest rates low, which makes buying a house considerably cheaper, the money coming into some pockets of the Bay Area is so great that it’s common for properties to stay on the market for less than a week and the majority of buyers are paying entirely with cash.

However, it’s not only internet millionaires acquiring scores of Bay Area real estate with mountains of cold, hard cash. The practice of house flipping–where an investor buys a property (often with cash), fixes it up and then sells it almost immediately to make a profit both on the renovation and the rising tide of the housing market–is back with a vengeance.

 

San Francisco Median Home Price Tops $1 Million.

Wells Fargo still leans in on mortgage business | Pound Ridge Real Estate

The mortgage business is a top source of revenue for banks, and mega bank Wells Fargo is no exception.

Wells Fargo ($40.55 -0.7%) CEO and President John Stumpf presented at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference on Wednesday discussing the overall health of the bank.

Stumpf said the culture of our company and the way we do business is about serving customers. “We work together. And if it’s not mortgage – its mortgage today, it might be credit card tomorrow.”

“It might not be an even tradeoff and might not be a quarter-by-quarter tradeoff, but if we provide great services and products, the rest seems to take care of itself,” he added.

However, Wells Fargo may adapt for the customer, but the bank’s revenue tells a slightly different story.

Mortgage is an important business, the CEO explained. “We love the mortgage business. For two-thirds of Americans, it is still the biggest asset purchase they’ll ever do. It is part of the way Americans save and it changes families.”

Despite the bank saying it will follow the customer, the bank shows no signs of backing away from mortgages anytime in the near future.

“To be in the consumer business, we think you have to be in the mortgage business. We like it that we love that business, but we also love the other 89 businesses we are in,” Stumpf said.

 

Wells Fargo still leans in on mortgage business | REwired.

Soaring Prices Slow Hedge Funds | Katonah Real Estate

Boasting of spending up to $8 billion dollars to buy tens of thousands of foreclosures to convert into single family rentals, nearly 50 Wall Street investment firms set real estate markets on fire over the past 18 months. Now they are running for cover as soaring prices water down their return on investment.

The winds have already started to shift in the single-family rental business, according to data from RadarLogic. The composite price per square foot paid by institutional investors in 25 of the largest metropolitan area housing markets increased 14.4 percent year over year in March. Over the same period, asking prices for rents have increased just 2.4 percent, according to Trulia, Inc. As a result, yields on single-family rentals are declining.

During the twelve months ending March 2013, purchases of residential real estate by corporations, partnerships and investment trusts in the 25 metropolitan areas included in the RPX Composite increased 41 percent. To put this figure in context, purchases by all other buyers increased only two percent during the same time period. Across the 25 metropolitan areas, institutional investor purchases accounted for 12.2 percent of all property transactions in March 2013, up from 8.8 percent in March 2012, reported RadarLogic.

Conditions for purchasing investment properties have worked in most markets during the intervening weeks. Since March, the median year-over-year list price has risen 2.63 percent according to Realtor.com and much more in some markets where hedge funds have been active like Oakland (up 12.77 percent in April), Las Vegas (up 7.25 in April), Phoenix (up 4.09 percent in April) and Atlanta (up 2.94 percent in April).

Bloomberg Businessweek article last week reported two smaller investment funds have curtailed purchases. Och-Ziff pulled out of the business last fall and Carrington Mortgage Holdings has stopped buying. The Bloomberg piece by John Gittelsohn reported that funds are buying property now, including homes sold by Carrington, for rents that yield 6 percent to 8 percent a year, before costs such as insurance, taxes and vacancies, according to Bruce Rose, Carrington’s CEO. Carrington’s model called for mid-single digit net returns on annual rents on an unlevered basis, according to Rose. While returns would vary by market, they would generally be in the mid- to high teens over the duration of the holding period, with the profit from home price appreciation.

However, a spokesman for the largest institutional, Blackstone, said, “We’re continuing to purchase homes where they fit into our business plan.”

 

Soaring Prices Slow Hedge Funds | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.

10 DIY Planters to Dress Up Your Garden | Bedford Corners Real Estate

How do you can about your garden apart from watering? Are you sure it’s getting enough sunlight? Have you Use a Backpack Sprayer for Roundup to spray chemicals that kill weeds, pests or any kind of disease? How about its pot? Why put your plants in a boring pot, when you can make your own unique planter with materials you may already have on hand?

Not just for spaghetti

Source: apartmenttherapy.com

Source: apartmenttherapy.com

How many colanders do you come across at weekend yard sales? Fit one with a linked chain to create an appealing hanging planter for colorful pansies.

Radio flyer

Source: cre8tivedesignsinc.com

Source: cre8tivedesignsinc.com

A rusted wagon is reborn as a planter displaying pretty annuals. The wheels on the wagon mean the planter can be easily moved around the yard or garden to gather sun or serve as a showpiece.

Getting the boot

Source: trash2treasure.wordpress.com

Source: trash2treasure.wordpress.com

Pairs of red rain-boot planters parade across this porch. Though “made for walking” (as the song goes), these repurposed boots are filled with a variety of herbs and geraniums in a matching hue. Contrasting flower colors would create an equally pleasing look. If you want to see the interesting history of flowers, click here and see all the information related to flowers.

Wheel winners

Source: eatingrules.com

Source: eatingrules.com

This cluster of tires, all dressed up in show-stopping colors, makes for a fun and funky wall of flowers. Best of all, these tires won’t end up in a landfill.

Got oil?

Source: greayer.com

Source: greayer.com

In this bright and playful courtyard, recycled and painted oil drums provide new homes for trees as well as plants. Some of the drums are fitted with platforms to serve as benches. Who wouldn’t want to sit and stay awhile?

Cinder(ella) blocks

Source: lifewithoutexpectations.com

Source: lifewithoutexpectations.com

Stacked cinder blocks, with their readymade potting compartments, create a geometric platform to show off a variety of plants. Unfinished or painted in bold colors, cinder blocks make quick and easy planters with structural heft.

Teapots, short & stout

Source: recyclart.org

Source: recyclart.org

Cracked teapot got you down? Look at this charming, cheerful series of teapots adorning the railing of a stone staircase. Any cracks would be perfect for drainage!

Dressy drawers

Source: meredith.com

Source: meredith.com

Three stacked dresser drawers create a planter with stepped-up height and flair. Shabby chic makes its way to the garden!

Bountiful bathtub

Source: billbatesphotography.com

Source: billbatesphotography.com

A waterfall of petunias cascades out of an old cast-iron bathtub. So many of these antique beauties are discarded to make way for new fixtures, yet here this classic household icon is whimsically reborn.

Vibrant wheelbarrow

Source: myyardrocks.com

Source: myyardrocks.com

A flourish of flowering plants breathes new life into an old wheelbarrow. What a festive way to dress up a utilitarian tool!

10 DIY Planters to Dress Up Your Garden | Zillow Blog.

Using Your IRA to Buy Investment Properties | Chappaqua Real Estate

Nest eggWith taxes going up for most people, you might be paying more attention to your tax-deferred retirement investing options, such as your Individual Retirement Account (IRA). And with property prices going up, you might ponder whether you can invest those IRA funds in real estate to both defer (or eliminate) taxes and earn a fair rate of return.

Putting your hard-earned IRA assets into a “self-directed” IRA can be a very good idea to grow long-term, tax-deferred or tax-free assets. But it doesn’t work for everyone.

Here are a few things you should consider.

Eligible properties

The real estate you buy must be a business property, not a personal residence, second home or occasional rental. Also, you can’t use your IRA to buy a property you already own; it has to be a new purchase directly into the IRA.

If you wanted to buy a rental property, you would open an IRA custodial account, transfer cash from an existing IRA account — or possibly 401(k) — into the custodial account and then purchase real estate under the IRA account name. Very specific rules outline what you can and cannot do in funding and managing the investment, so make sure to get good advice on those rules.

You can also buy and sell real estate in a self-directed IRA if you are in the flipping business, but there are limits on how many you can do per year. The profits on any transaction would be tax-deferred or tax-free and allow your IRA to continue to grow with those tax advantages.

IRA investing concerns

You can’t get a traditional mortgage loan in an IRA, so you really need to have enough money in your IRA to purchase properties for cash if you plan on having the property as a long-term rental. There are also costs to administering the IRA, so factor those into your calculations when penciling out any real estate investment. And you cannot write off losses or depreciation from any investment property in an IRA, so there won’t be the traditional tax savings you’d get on rental properties. Lastly, if you fail to comply with any of the rules, it may kill your IRA and cause you many tax penalties.

Financial considerations

Don’t put all of your IRA eggs into one basket. Too many people don’t properly diversify their retirement assets — present company included. It would be smart to talk to a financial adviser on how to allocate all your investment savings into different assets, based on your age and risk tolerance.

If you want to use your IRA to buy real estate, you need to understand what you can and can’t do. More key information can be reviewed at udirectIRA, which is a self-directed IRA custodian. And as always you also should get professional guidance from an accountant and lawyer.

 

Using Your IRA to Buy Investment Properties | Zillow Blog.