Bedford NY Real Estate | Robert Paul Talks Life in Bedford NY

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2% in February, and was unchanged over the past 12 months. According to the latest release from the  Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the seasonally adjusted increase in February was broad-based, including energy. The energy index increased 1.0% after seven consecutive monthly declines. The gasoline index, a component of the energy price index, increased 2.4% in February, but has decreased 32.8% over the past year.  The natural gas index, which was the only energy component to decrease in February, fell 2.0% and 3.4% over the first two months of this year, and has decreased 6.5% over the past year. The food index also increased 0.2% in February, and the index for nonalcoholic beverages had its largest increase since September 2012 at 0.6%. The index for beef and veal increased for the thirteenth consecutive month, while the index for dairy products has decreased in the first two months of 2015. Core...

The downsizing craze has spread to real estate, creating huge interest in petite homes all across the country. This week’s episode of “Portlandia” lampoons the fad. The “ Microhouse ” clip features Kangablue, one of the units in a tiny-homes hotel called Caravan. (Owners Deb Delman and Kol Peterson live in a 690-square-foot home next door that’s “teeny but not tiny,”  Delman says .) If the show’s parody doesn’t put you off small living altogether, here are homes to feed the frenzy. They measure 500 square feet or smaller, from old-fashioned cabins with beautiful natural surroundings to a pint-sized 2-bedroom, single-family home in New York City. Saltese, MT 7759 Forest Service Road, Saltese, MT For sale: $295,000 Size: 380 square feet This property includes more than 200 acres and is surrounded on all sides by U.S. Forest Service land. It’s for a true outdoorsperson, with a loft bedroom and a log-cabin outhouse. Shop for more  pro...

Location:  Smyrna, Delaware Price:  $1,175,000 The Skinny:  Like Dylan's goofy picaresque ballads, this estate in Smyrna, Delaware, mixes eras all over the place. You've got a lot of updated but historically rooted spaces—check the herringbone floors in the  formal dining room,  the columns and french doors in the  less-than-formal  (but still pretty fancy) one, or the accented ceilings and crown moldings in both—and then there's rooms like the theater or the  studio space  in the guest barn, which went a bit off the rails in search of modernity. The original section of this handsome chimera was built in 1740, and there was a large addition in 1800, which features like the timber beams in the  stone-heavy den  date back to. There have been smaller updates and additions since then, but features like the fireplace in the  sitting room  have been maintained. As of a recent renovation, the space leads into an expanded ma...

If you ever wanted a little slice of Italy, here's your chance. An entire alpine village is up for sale on eBay . The auction for the town of Borgata Calsazio, just a few ski runs away from Turin, is real, with a "Buy it Now" price of a mere $333,057. But it's also a fixer-upper. The National Union of Mountain Communities, which is assisting the town's few remaining inhabitants in the sale, told La Repubblica newspaper that any buyer would have to restore the stone and wood homes under a master plan provided by the organization. While the hamlet may be one of the most picturesque Italian municipalities for sale, it's not the first. In recent years, the Italian state has turned to auctioning off monuments and properties to escape its crushing debt and the mounting expenses of maintaining these historic locales. In 2012, a Tuscan village went up for sale for $25 million. And earlier in 2014, the " most haunted island in the world ," off the shore fro...

1930s Biscayne Boulevard, looking south. 18 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://miami.curbed.com/archives/2014/06/17/old-photos-of-miamis-skyline.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/539a116cf92ea153bf001a57/BISCAYNELOOKINGSOUTH.jpg" width="500" height="324"></a><br /><a href="http://miami.curbed.com/archives/2014/06/17/old-photos-of-miamis-skyline.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> Downtown Miami's skyline has evolved quite radically over our city's 100+ year history, from a collection of low buildings tightly huddled around Flagler Street, to a disbursed jumble of boxy towers with large empty parking lots in between, to the dense (and rapidly growing ) agglomeration of condo towers that we know today. Courtesy of the ever popular 'Miami's Often For...

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The most recent results from the Case-Shiller Index published last week suggests that through March of 2014, home prices were starting to visibly slow from the torrid, double digit rates of home price appreciation (HPA) seen over the past two years and more. Whereas in the last year HPA was more than 12% or 1% per month, in the first quarter of 2014, the National Index gained just 0.2%. Nineteen of the 20 cities in the index showed positive returns in March, but New York declined. Not surprisingly, fast growing regions like Dallas and Denver reached new index peaks. The Case-Shiller press release stated: “In March, the National and Composite Indices saw their annual rates of gain slow significantly. Chicago showed its highest year-over-year return of 11.5% since December 1988. Las Vegas and San Francisco, the cities with the highest returns, saw their rates of gain slow to approximately 21%; their post-crisis peak returns were 29.2% and 25.7%, respectively. At the lower end was...

10 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2014/04/09/richard-landrys-illfated-le-grand-reve-now-asks-1875m.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/5345bf06f92ea123920012fb/Screen shot 2014-04-09 at 5.39.24 PM.png" width="499" height="373"></a><br /><a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2014/04/09/richard-landrys-illfated-le-grand-reve-now-asks-1875m.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> It's a story with a plot you predict in the opening credits: renown megamanse sire Richard Landry (who boasts clients like Tom Brady and Mark Wahlberg ) builds a typically exorbitant, overbuilt megamansion in the suburbs (in this case, just outside of Chicago), it gets a silly name like Le Grand Rêve —that's French for "The Big Dream," an estate name that's...

John Lautner's Bayfront 'Jaws' House Asks $6M In SoCal - House of the Day - Curbed National

Is your goal to try to change the terminology, or is your goal to create a scalable business based on happy clients? Yes, this is another one of my “off my normal topic” posts …I’m so not into the altruistic idea that if we change the terminology we use — standardized terminology, by the way — that it will inherently change our industry. That it will change our mindset. It won’t. We will always have unethical agents, always have idiot agents, always have greedy agents, always have hobby agents. …There’s this “passion” that’s been around since the beginning of time — OK, maybe not the beginning of time — but definitely the entire course of my real estate career (spanning over two decades so far) that when we say the word “lead” we are some how demeaning, degrading and/or debasing an individual person. Oy vey. Seriously? Someone is a lead, until I get to know them a little bit and they get to know me a little bit. It’s that simple. You have to bring in a lot of “leads” and funnel the...

Home prices declined in January for the third straight month, slowing the pace of year-over-year appreciation, according to the key 20-city S&P/Case-Shiller survey of home prices. With the decline of -0.08% in January the index saw its longest consecutive streak of declines since March 2012. Economists rushed this morning to say the results do not mean there is a housing bubble and it is popping. Actually, they say, the opposite is true . Month-on-month, U.S. home prices inched down 0.1% in January, matching expectations and after dipping 0.1% in the preceding month. Fully 12 of 20 tracked cities posting drops. Year-over-year, prices increased 13.24%, a drop from the December year-over-year gain of 13.38%, indicating a general slowing of home price appreciation. "You may not realize it given the eye-popping levels, but today’s Case-Shiller numbers actually do represent a bit of moderation for the venerable index. The real pace of gains is probably really half that...

Freddie Mac (OTCQB: FMCC) today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS ® ), showing average fixed mortgage rates moving down slightly after last week's uptick, and remaining within range of average fixed rates for the first quarter of 2014. News Facts 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.32 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending March 20, 2014, down from last week when it averaged 4.37 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.54 percent. 15-year FRM this week averaged 3.32 percent with an average 0.6 point, down from last week when it averaged 3.38 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 2.72 percent. 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 3.02 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, down from last week when it averaged 3.09 percent. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 2.61 percent. 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.49 percent this week wi...

In a new report on home prices and economic risk, Fitch Ratings estimates that home prices today are overvalued, raises serious concerns about the long term viability of the current housing recovery and concedes that significant price declines are unlikely though declines in real terms are not. Fitch estimates that current prices currently are overvalued in real terms by approximately 18% nationally, led primarily by exuberant gains in the West, lingering economic weakness may hamper demand as the housing market normalizes and approaches a new equilibrium. “The current housing market is buoyed by a unique set of market forces that include tightly restricted supply and the short-term effects of both investor money and the pent-up demand of individual owners. Long-term housing demand originates from a strong base of workers, measured both in wages and employment. With today’s economy lagging on both indicators, Fitch continues to have concerns about the sustainability of the rapidl...

October 2013 Home Prices | FHFA Housing Stats October | Cross River Homes | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

House prices will end 2014 between 4% and 8% higher than they start the year, but it is "too early to talk of a housing bubble", the UK's largest lender has said. Further economic recovery and continued low interest rates should support the market, according to Halifax, but several factors – including continuing pressure on household finances – should limit the increase. The lender has reported a 7% increase in prices in the first 11 months of 2013, which puts the average UK house price at £174,910 at the end of November. An 8% increase would push this up by more than £1,000 a month to £188,903, which is still some way from the £199,612 peak recorded in August 2007. Halifax's chief economist, Martin Ellis, said: "Despite the recent gains, house prices remain 12% below their August 2007 peak, and transactions in 2013 are still around a third below the average for 2006 and 2007. "House prices are also lower in relation to earnings, with the average ...

[Photo Via WLRN/Greg Allen] Pomegranate trees are fine. So are plastic pink flamingoes, probably. But Miami Shores homeowners may not grow vegetables in their front yards. Is it legal? Maybe. The persnickety zoning ordinance was implemented last spring. And then, apparently, Miami Shores Village employees went around telling people to dig up their vegetable bulbs: there would be no harvest. Ever again. A Shores resident forced to uproot a garden she had maintained for 17 years has sued the Village, while continuing to grow a bountiful variety of fruits, including pomegranates, papayas, blueberries, and pineapples. · Florida Turf War Blooms Over Vegetable Garden [WLRN]

11 Reasons to Paint Your Ceiling Black | Cross River Homes | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

12 East 69th Street NYC | Cross River Homes | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

100 Wild Goose Ln Water Mill 15 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://hamptons.curbed.com/archives/2013/12/12/33m_water_mill_property_hopes_you_like_antique_barnwood.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/52a9ccedf92ea17b7900b21f/33800.jpg" width="500" height="335"></a><br /><a href="http://hamptons.curbed.com/archives/2013/12/12/33m_water_mill_property_hopes_you_like_antique_barnwood.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> We actually do quite like antique barnwood, but in every single room, it gets a little same-y. At least this 2400sf house is authentic : it was built using reclaimed antique barns. There's a double-height living room, dining room, kitchen, and three bedrooms, all featuring—wait for it—antique barnwood on the walls. The plot is one acre , and there's a...

Applications for purchase loans increased a seasonally adjusted 1 percent for the week ending Dec. 6 compared to a week earlier but were down 10 percent on an annual basis, according to the latest Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey. During the same period, refinance applications increased 2 percent. The slight rise in mortgage applications came as interest rates climbed to their highest level since September, with the average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a balance of $417,000 or less rising to 4.61 percent, up from 4.51 percent a week earlier. http://www.inman.com/wire/purchase-loan-applications-inch-up/?utm_source=20131211&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinespm