Tag Archives: Westchester Real Estate

Mt Kisco Real Estate | 30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates Increase for First Time Since March

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Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed mortgages increased this week, with the current rate borrowers were quoted on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace at 3.39 percent, up from 3.25 percent at this same time last week. This represents the first rate increase since late March.

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate hovered between 3.26 and 3.30 percent for the majority of the week before jumping up near the current rate on Friday.

“Last week, mortgage rates reversed their month-long decline on a stronger-than-expected jobs report,” said Erin Lantz, director of Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. “This coming week, we expect rates to remain fairly stable with limited news or economic data slated for release.”

Additionally, the 15-year fixed mortgage rate this morning was 2.56 percent, and for 5/1 ARMs, the rate was 2.32 percent.

What are the rates right now? Check Zillow Mortgage Marketplace for up-to-the-minute mortgage ratesfor your state.

05-07-13 0951AM

3 Tips for Insuring Your First Home | Armonk Real Estate

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Buying your first home can be both an exciting and a scary experience. Many homeowners are appreciative of any bit of information that would help make the process less stressful and as painless as possible. Home insurance is usually a major contributor to the anxieties new homeowners’ experience. They are often confused about how much insurance they need. This post will give easy tips for choosing the best insurance for new home buyers.

Your House Should Be Fully Covered

The coverage on the insurance policy should reflect an amount that can adequately take care of the cost of rebuilding and refurbishing your entire house in the event that you lose it completely. Insurance companies may use a cost estimator to ascertain the cost replacement estimate, but you can have a home builder assess your home and furnish you with an estimate of the rebuilding cost. This should include the unique and/or expensive details of your home (if there are any). You do not want to end up being underinsured. Once you have the estimate for rebuilding, you will need to figure out which coverage to take. The choices are:

  • Guaranteed Replacement Cost Coverage – The insurer bears the cost for the rebuilding your home in spite of that cost. Very few insurers are offering these policies now.
  • Extended Replacement Coverage – This coverage involves the capping of the payout you would receive to approximately 125% of the insured value of your home.
  • Inflation Guarantee (or Guard) – This is a feature that ensures the insured value of your home stays on par with that of the marketplace.

Strive to get a reliable appraisal and extended replacement coverage along with an inflation guarantee. These will place you in a good position.

Liability Insurance

Home owners are sometimes caught off guard by third party claims for an injury someone incurred at their house or damages they caused to their neighbor’s property. These things happen, so protect yourself by ensuring your home insurance includes a liability insurance policy. Liability insurance gives the homeowner protection against any third party claims of damages and personal injury that occur on their property or are caused by them. Someone may fall and hurt themselves while on your property, or in the case of neighbors living in close proximity, your child could be playing and accidentally cause damage to their property. Liability insurance takes the burden of paying for medical bills or damages from your pocket, as the insurance company will take care of it.

Get Additional Coverage for Your Valuables

The standard insurance policy covers you home and possessions against eventualities such as natural disasters, fires, theft and accidents, but only does so indirectly for certain assets. Homeowners are sometimes caught off guard when they suffer from a disaster and realize they will not receive full compensation for certain valuables inside the house. The standard HO-3 policy takes care of the structural aspect of the house along with its contents, but there is limits the compensation for expensive possessions such as artwork and fine jewelry. You can obtain full coverage for them by paying a little extra on your policy each year.

 

 

http://blog.homegain.com/guest-bloggers

Mobile Video Viewing on the Rise: Why It Matters [Study] | Bedford Corners Realtor

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Business Insider’s subscription research service, BI Intelligence, has conducted a study about mobile video viewing habits that show a tremendous uptick in the amount of video watched on phones and tablets over the last year.  The uptick isn’t surprising, but the amount of uptick is.  What’s so vastly different between 2011 video viewing habits and 2012’s?  The study finds that the rollout of faster 4G networks, younger audiences gravitating to mobile viewing, and the spread of tablets as the main reasons.  But there is a lot more data to consider in this study.  Let’s take a look.

Mobile Video Continues to Rise in Stature

Here is a chart detailing the viewing habits by device in Q4 of 2012, using data from Ooyala and charted by BI Intelligence:

Mobile Video Viewing on the Rise: Why It Matters [Study]

Here are some amazing stats (courtesy of BI Intelligence):

  • Video on smartphones reached 41 million people by the end of last year.  Additionally, as of January 2013, 41 percent of smartphone owners watch video on the device as opposed to 22 percent as recently as April 2012.  People in the age group of 12-17 watch video on their mobile phone 24 minutes a week, and the 18-24 set watch 28 minutes, compared to 11 minutes for the average person.  Both groups only watch two-thirds of the traditional TV of the average person.
  • While tablets make up a fraction of the total video-capable devices out there, people watch a ton of video on them: 3.5 percent of all online video around the world is watched on them, while 4.5 percent of videos are watched on the far more prevalent smartphones.
  • Tablet viewers watch longer videos (63 percent of their time was spent on videos 10 minutes or longer), and their viewing patterns are close to broadcast TV, making them easier to target for advertisers and broadcasters who know the ins-and-outs of TV best.
  • People who own tablets make video a huge part of it.  It’s one of the top 10 activities they use a tablet for, which can’t be said of smartphones (comScore).  These tablet owners are more likely to cut the cord, or never bother with traditional TV in the first place (Morgan Stanley).  The conversion rates on the ads are much higher than on smartphones.  BI Intelligence cites the Deloitte “State of the Media Democracy Survey” when mentioning that, for the age group of 14-23, watching TV shows on a tablet rivals the time spent watching DVDs and Blu-Rays.  25 percent of the group watch TV shows every day or weekly on tablets.
  • Finally, tablet owners watch 6.7 hours of video content a week, as opposed to non-tablet owners, who watch 5.5 hours (courtesy of Motorola).

The whole point?  With $520 million (13 percent) of the entire ad market devoted to mobile video, finding these tablet owners, who skew younger and voraciously consume video is important.

Source: Mobile Video Viewing on the Rise: Why It Matters [Study]

Do You Know These Time Saving Blogging Tips? | Cross River Realtor

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Over the last few days we’ve been tackling the problem of ‘not enough time to blog’ that many bloggers struggle with. I started by sharing 7 tips for busy bloggers on how to find time to blog and then had 14 of my blogging friends share a little about their blogging routines.

When I asked these 14 bloggers about their routines I also asked if they had any tips for other busy bloggers. I’m glad I did because collectively they give some great insight below.

Chris Garrett

chris_garrett_blogworld.jpg

  1. Write down any ideas you have and transfer them to your blog drafts as soon as possible. If you can, skip the writing down part and go direct to your blog drafts. Maybe use a smart phone so you are more likely to have a handy route to your blog!
  2. In your drafts add a semi-decent headline (not final, just enough to get the idea across) and some bullets. At the very least the point you want to make. If you don’t then you will forget what your post was about. Trust me on this, I speak from experience, ha.
  3. Work out the best time of day for you to write and schedule time in that slot. I find my best writing is between 10am and 1pm, and second best between 6pm and 8pm. After lunch is a better time for me to talk but not write. We all have a rhythm, listen to yours.
  4. Set a timer. Tell the family to not disturb you until the time is up. Close all distractions. Write.
  5. Break up your writing into less daunting chunks if you need to. One session just do outlines. Next session do bad drafts. Third some editing. Then formatting. Then final polish and posting. Don’t try to do too much otherwise you will never do enough!

 

 

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2013/04/27

Despite Sellers’ Markets, Seventy-one Percent Still Say it’s a Good Time to Buy | South Salem NY Real Estate

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Home prices are rising at double digit rates. Inventories are at historic lows. Two out of five applicants for a purchase mortgage are rejected. Yet nearly three quarters of Americans say it’s a good time to buy a home.

While some would argue its always a good time to buy, conditions have turned to favor sellers in most markets across the nation. Yet even though a slight majority of consumers participating in Fannie Mae’s latest monthly National Housing Survey expect prices to rise over the next three months, 71 percent said its still a good time for buyers.

By contrast, the share of respondents who say now is a good time to sell climbed 4 percentage points in April but still reached only 30 percent, compared to 15 percent at the same time last year. That’s not even half as many as those who said it’s a good time to buy. The percentage that said it’s a good time to buy stayed steady from March.

The share of respondents who say mortgage rates will go up fell 3 percentage points to 43 percent, while those who say they will go down increased slightly to 7 percent.

The average 12-month rental price change expectation held steady at 4.1 percent.

Forty-eight percent of those surveyed say home rental prices will go up in the next year, a 2 percentage point decrease from last month’s survey high.

The share of respondents who said they would buy if they were going to move increased slightly to 65 percent.

“For the first time in the survey’s three-year history, the majority of Americans surveyed now expect home prices to increase,” said Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae. “Crossing the 50 percent threshold marks a significant milestone as most Americans believe a housing recovery is truly occurring throughout the country. Reflecting that increased optimism toward housing, the share of Americans who think it is a good time to sell has doubled during the last year. Many homeowners who have been underwater are gradually returning to positive equity, and selling is now becoming an available and attractive option again.”

 

 

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/05

The 10 Commandments of Twitter- Jeff Bullas | North Salem Realtor

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When I stumbled upon Twitter 54 months ago I was bemused, flummoxed and even curious. What is this social network that keeps me to 140 characters, sounds like a bird and seemed…well…. pointless?10 Commandments of Twitter

I tweeted here and there and collected 31 followers in 90 days of meandering. Even followed people with large Twitter tribes on topics as diverse as food, photography and politics. Malcolm Turnbull, the local senator must have thought I was a Twitter groupie.

Luckily he didn’t report me for stalking.

My progress on Twitter was slow, confused but persistent. Despite this I continued to tweet, retweet and play. My curiosity was undiminished.

Obsession on Twitter is not unknown. Some people such as Jennifer Aniston’s boyfriend at the time tweeted so much that she decided that he loved Twitter more than her.

She moved onto boyfriend number twenty seven.

Twitter is more powerful than you think

Twitter’s sometimes chaotic nature does make management of the torrent of tweets seem like herding cats. It is essential that you plug your Twitter account into a management tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. This will help you manage your stream with lists of people and hashtags that categorise on topics.

The real power of Twitter is that you can build a follower base that allows you to share a focused stream of content that adds value to your followers daily lives.

There are no fancy Facebook “Edgerank” algorithms to throttle your tweets and choke your content distribution.

Its pure and wild. I like that.

So what are some fundamental principles that you should embrace if you want Twitter to work for you?

The 10 Commandments of Twitter

Here are 10 commandments that may guide you to the Twitter promised land of a large and loyal following.  That engages with you and shares your content with speed and velocity.

Thou shalt

Moses used this term so I thought that I couldn’t go wrong if I borrowed the term “Thou shalt”

1. Write a meaningful “bio” description

If you are using Twitter for purely personal reasons then go crazy and knock yourself out with a crazy and cute bio. If you are serious then make sure that when they read it they know in a heartbeat what you are about.

2. Have a link

I don’t know how many times I have looked for a link to take a deeper dive into a Tweeter to see what they do and where they have come from but get stymied. If you don’t have a blog then take them to your Linked account or Facebook page.

Let them discover the real you. The bio is just the start

3. Be focused

Build a tribe of Twitter followers who are passionate and interested in your topic of interest. That can be done with tools such as Tweepi or Twellow.

4. Automate where appropriate

This may seem evil to some but as you grow your follower base things like following back become time consuming and unmanageable. Automate the boring tasks such as content distribution and follow back but not the conversation and engagement
Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/05/08/the-10-commandments-of-twitter/#rCCZyAZAUwH7oUCG.99

Loan officers, banks tighten FICO standards | Mt Kisco NY Real Estate

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Obtaining a mortgage with a FICO score in the 620 range is more difficult in today’s lending environment, the Federal Reserve concluded in its April survey of loan officers and bank lenders.

The Federal Reserve polled a little under 100 banks and found 32 of respondents are less likely to approve a borrower with a FICO score of 620 and a down payment of 10%.

Even with a higher 20% down payment, 18 banks remained skeptical about originating a mortgage.

However, when a FICO score reaches 680, banks differ on the outcome. With a 10% down payment, 16 banks remain less likely to approve the borrower, but another 8 banks said they’re now more likely to bite with this FICO-LTV combination in effect.

If you throw in a 20% down payment and a 680 FICO, only 8 banks said they’re less likely to approve the borrower, while 16 are now more likely.

Meanwhile, the subprime market is still around, but lenders tend to avoid it with tighter FICO requirements and more regulations stifling interest.

Ten banks said demand for subprime mortgages remains the same, while another two banks claim consumer activity in the space has grown somewhat stronger in the past three months.

Despite the slim change in the subprime market, 59 of the surveyed banks still avoid subprime lending.

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/news

KB Home CEO: We’re in the right markets | Cross River Real Estate

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KB Home’s chief executive officer sees a housing recovery taking hold in certain markets and feels well-positioned to capture some of the business.

“Across this country, we’re in the right markets,” said Jeff Mezger, president and CEO of KB Home ($32.67 0%) at the builder’s 2013 analyst conference.

Mezger addressed the crowd Tuesday, speaking to the recent growth and success of the homebuilder over the past year. Between investments, revenue generation and cost reduction, the average sales price for the company increase 24% year-over-year in the first quarter.

On top of that, 60% of deliveries were to first-time buyers, noted Mezger, who adds that today’s first-time homebuyers are bringing in more income and buying homes in better communities.

We have focused on both the long term and the short term, said Mezger, who adds the company’s stock over the last four months has been the top performer.

“We’re in the right markets today; it’s the right time,” added Mezger. “We like where we’re at.” Currently, the company is working in some of the strongest markets in the country: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Metro D.C., Nevada, New Mexico North Carolina and Texas.

According to Mezger, 49% of KB Home’s ($24.67 0%) revenue in 2012 came from California; in the first quarter that increased to 51%. Texas is the biggest market by unit sales for the homebuilder.

Mezger noted that the builder likes its footprint and has no immediate plans to expand. “We will at some point, but it’s not necessary today,” he said.

Sentiment shift: Home prices to rise | Katonah Real Estate

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The majority of Americans now are forecasting home prices to rise, and only about a third are expecting prices to fall, a reversal in attitudes of a year ago.

A monthly survey by mortgage finance firm Fannie Mae found 51% of those questioned in April believe prices will rise in the next 12 months, while only 35% are projecting a drop in prices. It is the first time in the three-year history of the survey that a majority said they expect prices to increase.

A year ago, 49% were expecting further price declines while only 32% said they though prices were on their way up.

The latest data from the housing market back up the this new level of confidence in the housing recovery. The S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index rose 9.3% over the last 12 months, the biggest annual rise in home prices since the height of the housing bubble in 2006.

“Crossing the 50% threshold marks a significant milestone, as most Americans believe a housing recovery is truly occurring throughout the country,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist for Fannie Mae.

People who were sitting on the sidelines because of concerns that prices were still falling can be drawn back into the market once they believe prices are on their way up again.Home sales are up 10% from a year ago, helped not only by the climbing prices but alsorecord low mortgage rates and falling unemployment.

 

 

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/07

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively Buy Country Spread Just Outside New York for $5.7 million | Pound Ridge Homes

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Ryan Reynolds and Blake Livelymore big

The happily-married hot celebrity couple, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively has reportedly dropped $5.7 million on a residence in the Westchester County town of Pound Ridge, New York. (Photo : Reuters)

The happily-married hot celebrity couple, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, has reportedly dropped $5.7 million on a residence in the Westchester County town of Pound Ridge, New York.

According to the Real Estalker, the couple had closed the deal on the property sometime back in November 2012, but kept it private just as they had kept their wedding in September.

“Blake was trying to decide between getting married in her new home in New York or in Charleston. She chose Charleston because we could keep it secret, quiet and a private affair for her,” Tara Guérard, their wedding planner told Life & Style at the Martha Stewart Weddings Annual Bridal Market Party. Apparently, they also used a lot of code names to do a lot of things, reports Life & Style Magazine.

The Real Estalker tried searching for some “meaty” property records but could only lay hands on some less interesting stuff. The couple bought the estate under a trust that Reynolds used to purchase his Bedford, New York and Los Angeles homes. Currently, the home is under renovation. However, the original colonial-style residence spans an area of 8892 square feet and  has 21 rooms including seven bedrooms seven/six bathrooms, all sitting on 12 large acres of land. A detached barn and a sweeping driveway are also a part of the property.

Currently, any active listing could not be found on the estate. An eyewitness reportedly saw the couple’s car moving in and out of the property many a times. The witness also saw trucks hauling loads of furniture to the residence.

Well! Nothing can be known until they want it to be known. Recently, Lively opened up about how she and Reynolds chose the Bedford home in an interview with Elle décor. The former “Gossip Girl” star said that the location of the home and the kitchen was why they liked the place a lot. Lively loves to cook and therefore having a comfy kitchen was one of the first things in her mind.

“Since my kitchen is the most important part of my home, I want to be creative and innovative, not only in its aesthetic, but also in the tools that I’m using to cook,” she explains in the interview.

 

 

http://www.realtytoday.com/articles