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

On the campaign trail, Jeb Bush has repeatedly emphasized his record overseeing Florida’s boom economy as the state’s governor. He says it’s an example of an economy that created a huge number of jobs and benefited the middle class — an example of what he could do as president. “I know how to do this,” he said in Maitland, Fla., on Monday. But according to interviews with economists and a review of data, Florida owed a substantial portion of its growth under Bush not to any state policies but to a massive and unsustainable housing bubble — one that ultimately benefited rich investors at the expense of middle-class families. The bubble, one of the biggest in the nation, drove up home prices and had many short-term benefits for the state, spurring construction, spending and jobs. But the collapse of the housing bubble as Bush left office in 2007, after eight years of service, sent Florida into a recession deeper than that in the rest of the country, and hundreds of thousands lost th...

Mortgage applications for new home purchases plunged 9% in August from the July level, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association Builder Application Survey. This comes a day after the MBA reported mortgage applications for the week ending Sept. 5 plummeted 7.2% . By product type, conventional loans composed 68.9% of loan applications, Federal Housing Administration loans composed 15.7%, RHS/USDA loans composed 1.0% and Veteran’s Administration loans composed 14.3%.  The average loan size of new homes increased from $297,253 in July to $300,443 in August. The data are not seasonally adjusted. The MBA estimates new single-family home sales were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 424,000 units in August 2014, based on data from the BAS.  The new home sales estimate is derived using mortgage application information from the BAS, as well as assumptions regarding market coverage and other factors. The seasonally adjusted estimate for August is a decrease ...

Earlier this morning we saw that housing starts unexpectedly plunged 9.3% to an annualized rate of 893,000. On the face of it, the report was ugly, considering all the talk about the recent housing snapback. It's important to note that the miss was entire due to one region: the South. Housing starts plunged 29.6% in the South, driven by weakness in single family units. "All the hit is in the south, where starts plunged by 29.6%, the biggest ever monthly drop, despite gains in each other region," wrote Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Starts were actually up in the rest of the country. In the Northeast, housing starts were up 14.1%, driven mostly by multi-family starts. In the Midwest they were up 28%, and in the West they were up 2.6%. It wasn't immediately clear what was behind the sudden plunge in the south. "But homebuilders are being constrained by a shortage of labour and lots," Paul Diggle at Capital Economics. "...

12 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/05/06/what_3600month_can_rent_you_around_san_francisco.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/5368fb24f92ea10aba00d527/rich1.jpg" width="500" height="334"></a><br /><a href="http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/05/06/what_3600month_can_rent_you_around_san_francisco.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> ↑ In the Outer Richmond , this 2-bedroom house is asking $3,600/month. It's got a large floor plan that includes a lower-level den with a vintage fireplace and wood paneling. There's a full bath on the main level and a half-bath downstairs. There's also a backyard, deck, and two-car garage. No pets and tenant pays all utilities. More apartments >> 11 image...

13 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/04/29/time_warner_duplex_asks_425m_for_white_walls_and_views.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/535fa507f92ea17c0502f517/1.jpg" width="500" height="334"></a><br /><a href="http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/04/29/time_warner_duplex_asks_425m_for_white_walls_and_views.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> A duplex four-bedroom on the 54th and 55th floors of the Time Warner Center is on the market asking $42.5 million . The 3,582-square-foot home is uniquely Time Warner Center-shaped with vast views of Manhattan. The fully-updated apartment has four full bathrooms, a few awkwardly trapezoidal-shaped rooms and a neat spiral staircase all coated in lots o' white. The apartment's upper floor hosts t...

Home sales getting crimped by more than the weather - Economic Preview - MarketWatch

It’s an embarrassing moment that you’ve likely experienced or at least feared: You’re standing at the cash register with a long line of people waiting behind you when the cashier announces that your credit card has been declined. Getting declined can be a signal that you are in real financial trouble – something that many people don’t want to broadcast. But not always. There are some other reasons your card may be declined. 1. Low Limits/High Spending Yes, your card may be declined because you maxed out your credit card. This means the purchase at hand would exceed the borrowing limit. The limit is set by the card issuer, but you can often ask for a limit raise. However, by keeping your limit low, you can avoid getting into trouble by overspending . Maxing out your credit cards or spending a large percentage of your available credit (a metric called your credit utilization ratio) can have a negative impact on your credit score. If you want to see how your credit utilization ...

Bullish consumers, rising home prices brighten U.S. growth picture | Reuters

Stocks of some of the nation's publicly traded home builders are hovering in correction territory. This, despite higher sales of newly built homes in February and satisfactory, if not stellar, quarterly earnings for most of the companies. Housing starts are still running well below historical norms, but are still about twice what they were at the trough of the construction crash in 2009. "It seems like everything is set up very nicely for the housing market to have a solid year, not a boom that we can't replicate, like we saw in the first half of 2013, but I think it's just about right-sizing people's expectations," said analyst Ivy Zelman, CEO of Zelman Associates. Last year, Zelman famously declared the market was in "housing nirvana." Then last month, she admitted nirvana had taken a pause but was "around the corner" yet again. She said fundamentals are still good, and she is surprised at the bearishness among traders. "...

Why MBA purchase applications declined and new home sales surged | North Salem Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

A new report from RealtyTrac sheds light on a rapid increase in the cost of owning home, which means that if you've been waiting to make a purchase, it might be best to make a move right now. Before the collapse of the U.S. housing market in 2008, the conventional advice for a first-time homebuyer was to save up money for a down payment and purchase a home "as soon as you can squeak by." That changed during and after the housing crisis, as mortgage loan interest rates dropped and purchase prices in many parts of the country went down by over 50%.   But now the market is changing again. For one thing, long-term interest rates rose during the second half of 2013, although rates have pulled back a bit so far this year, and are still quite low on a historical basis. But the Federal Reserve will likely finish winding down its "QE3" bond purchases this year, which should put significant upward pressure on long-term rates, and home prices are continuing to ris...

There’s no doubt Houston’s real estate market has been on fire in recent years, and the Urban Land Institute predicts 2014 will be even better than the year before. The ULI ranked Houston the No. 2 market to watch in its “Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2014” report . That’s up from No. 5 in 2013 . ULI’s reasoning is not that surprising: “Houston’s booming energy economy has fueled an active real estate market over the past few years, and survey respondents expect that to continue in the coming year.” While Houston came in behind San Francisco on the overall list, it took the top spot for investment real estate. Houston is the No. 2 market for home-building prospects and No. 3 for development. In the investment arena, survey respondents overwhelming ranked Houston a “buy” in all five property types: office, industrial, retail, apartments and hotel. Not surprisingly, the city saw its highest ranking in the apartment sector, ranking No. 1 on that list. Houston has seen a boom in ...

What does Mel Watt mean for housing finance in 2014? | North Salem NY Homes | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

Somebody Just Bought Annie Leibovitz’s Compound for $28.5M | North Salem Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

US mortgage applications fall as refinance hits 5-year low: MBA | North Salem NY Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

Kinetic architecture, which moves or changes to adapt to seasonal, functional or daylight requirements — or just for the heck of it — has roots dating back to medieval times. A castle’s drawbridge served as a multifunctional kinetic wall, door and footbridge. The futurists and constructivists of the Russian art movement of the early 20th century explored kinetics by infusing their proposals with notions of highly mechanized, sleek, modern, industrial construction. Today architects are afforded the freedom to explore kinetics even further because of advances in materials coupled with interesting uses of both old and new technologies. Planted living walls, windows that change aperture based on the amount of light they receive and single doors the size of an aircraft are just a few examples. But while these differ in their execution, they share in the truly stunning spatial effects they create. And it’s easy to fawn over the bespoke nature of some of these constructions. The ones that per...

Few people would go outdoors on a cold winter day without a warm coat. But many of us live in homes that are, for all intents and purposes, standing out in the cold wearing nothing more than a light sweater. On cold winter days, we either shiver inside our underinsulated homes, or we crank up the heat — and that wastes a lot of energy. If it has little or none, insulating your home is one of the easiest and most cost-effective measures you can take to save energy and money. While you may choose to do some of the insulation work yourself, you also have the option of hiring a professional. If you hire an energy auditor, he or she will assess your home’s insulation needs and recommend the proper amount and types for the different parts of your home. Another option is to hire a professional insulation contractor, who will recommend the amount and type of insulation and install it. Whichever option you choose, these tips will help you get started. How to Assess Insulation Lev...

Real estate transactions can be quite cumbersome – they are riddled with legal content and require a lot of documentation – so you can imagine that there are plenty of areas where something could go wrong. It is estimated that nearly one-third of all real estate contracts never make it to the closing table. That means after a buyer and seller have already agreed upon the terms of the sale, (which is difficult in its own right), something happens to sour the deal. What causes these deals to crumble? Here are five reasons your deal may fall apart as a home buyer. Financing Securing a home mortgage has become a lot tougher in the wake of 2008′s recession and housing crisis. Lenders have tightened their restrictions considerably and as a result, more buyers are losing real estate deals because of their inability to secure financing. As a home buyer it helps to get preapproved for a loan , but a preapproval is not a guarantee that you will be able to get the loan you need. Once the actu...

Norway is moving closer to easing mortgage lending standards as the nation’s deflating property market prompts concern among lawmakers that existing regulations are too tight. Real estate prices, which have doubled over the past decade and touched a record high this year, are now dropping faster than the central bank had predicted. The Conservative-led government, which won power in September, says it’s now looking into raising the amount banks can lend to borrowers to 90 percent of a property’s value, from 85 percent previously, in an effort to support first-time buyers. A New Residential Development in Oslo Norway’s housing market, which Nobel laureate Robert Shiller already in 2012 said was in a bubble, has been inflated by a period of record-low interest rates that fueled a borrowing spree in Scandinavia’s richest nation and left Norwegians more indebted than ever before.   Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg said Nov. 8 her government is ready to...

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