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

A seedy dirt lot is probably the last thing you think of when you’re hungry. But photographers Adam Voorhes and Robin Finlay envisioned a lush backyard full of edibles for their barren backyard.  They turned to landscape designer B. Jane for help. She got to work creating shade and an entertainment space and adding plenty of food-producing plants. The homeowners are now flush with tomatoes, okra and other vegetables, as well as pecans, citrus, wild olives, prickly pear cactus (which they grill or add to margaritas), eggs from three roaming chickens and honey — lots and lots of honey. Voorhes harvests about 3 gallons of honey a year from his nearly 30,000 backyard bees. Hungry yet? B. Jane Gardens B. Jane Gardens When Voorhes and Finlay bought the property, they replaced a chain-link fence with cedar planking. They also added an arbor and a water-catching system.  Jane did the pavers, metal edging, design and plantings.  “We wanted to mesh mid...

[ George Clooney via wikipedia ] News came over the weekend via the  New York Post  that  Discovery Land Company , the firm developing the controversial Hills at Southampton project in East Quogue and planning to buy and raze the  Dune Deck  resort in Westhampton Beach, are backed by celebrities George Clooney, restaurateur Rande Gerber (husband of Cindy Crawford) and billionaire Ron Burkle. The chief executive of Discovery, Mike Meldman, owns Casamigos Tequila with Clooney and Gerber as well. The current plans for the Dune Deck are to  tear the structure down  and rebuild, possibly as a beach club for the Hills at Southampton, although Discovery has told the Westhampton Beach planning board that neither project is contingent on the other. Stay tuned. read more.... http://hamptons.curbed.com/archives/2015/03/09/is_george_clooney_an_investor_in_the_hills_at_southampton.php

The median price of a single-family home on Oahu fell last month, two months after hitting a new record price, as sales in August dropped by 12 percent when compared to last year, according to statistics released Sunday by the Honolulu Board of Realtors . The median price of a single-family home in August was $650,000, which was 2.3 percent below the median price of $665,000 in August 2013. The median price in June set at record at $700,000. Sales of single-family homes on Oahu fell 11.7 percent to 323 homes sold, from 366 homes sold in August 2013. Condominium sales in August declined by 3.5 percent to 444 units sold, from 460 units sold during the same month last year. The median price of a condo on Oahu was unchanged at $350,000. “August was an interesting month for the Oahu housing market, Julie Meier , president of the Honolulu Board of Realtors, said in a statement. “While on the surface it may look like this past August was not on par with last August for sales of single-f...

What is a credit score? Imagine that a friend asks to borrow money from you. Assuming you had the money to loan, you might then ask yourself, “Did he pay me back the last time he borrowed money? Did he pay me back the full amount? On time?” When you approach banks and lenders for a loan, they go through a similar analysis, but since they don’t know you personally, they use your credit history to determine whether you will be a responsible borrower. Lenders learn about your credit history by looking at your credit report. You can get a free Credit Report Card that includes your free credit score right now! Credit reports are developed by three separate credit agencies. These agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) gather information about your credit history, and, using a formula developed by Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), each assigns you a credit score. You will end up with three slightly different credit scores, each from one of the three agencies. Lenders typically look a...

The folks in Conecticut will be unpleasantly surprised to learn they beat out Vegas and Miami as the riskiest market to buy a home. Zillow set out to look at the markets where housing prices have declined the most over the past 35 years and chained the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) backward in time to 1979 Q4 using the FHFA Home Price Index. For each of the 50 largest housing markets, we analyzed the change in median home values over 117 rolling five-year periods since the end of 1979. The “risk of loss” is the percentage of those periods that created negative returns for homeowners. In the case of ties between markets, those with the bigger drop in their worst years were ranked as riskier. The housing markets with the highest percentage of negative five-year returns are Hartford (37 percent risk of loss), Providence (32 percent), Riverside (31 percent), Boston (30 percent) and Los Angeles (29 percent). The five least risky metro areas by the same metric are Buffalo (0 percent ...

Images via Dwell . 4 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/06/19/this_240squarefoot_uws_studio_has_a_crawlin_library.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/53a305d7f92ea14b8e00438c/micro1.png" width="500" height="333"></a><br /><a href="http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/06/19/this_240squarefoot_uws_studio_has_a_crawlin_library.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> When an architect's client is an anthropology professor who has spent the past 30-some years living between a 240-square-foot New York City studio and a single-room hut in a West African village, where do they start? For Tim Seggerman , it was with the disorderliness and lack of visual simplicity of the rotting Upper West Side brownstone studio he was tasked to renovate. Seggerman...

25 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2014/06/04/seven-homes-promising-the-hamptons-of-everywhere-else.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/538f32f5f92ea1509a00d3bf/27_6214620_0_1368086735.jpg" width="500" height="375"></a><br /><a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2014/06/04/seven-homes-promising-the-hamptons-of-everywhere-else.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> When is the Hamptons most definitely not the Hamptons? When it's in Ventura, Calif., Delray Beach, Fla., or New Buffalo City, Mich. But concerns like "geographical location" sometimes must take a back seat when there's a house that needs hawking, as brokers have proven time and time again with their use of the phrase "the Hamptons of [som...

Northern California’s Wine Country is heavily and magically populated with the most lovely array of tiny cottages. There are entire towns where every home sings a snug, cozy welcome, and they are omnipresent in the surrounding countryside. I’ll be driving down winding roads bordered by lush vineyards and I’ll pass a cottage so charming that I have to slam on my brakes, go into full reverse and jump out of the car to stare and covet. Honestly, I have made it clear to God that I want my home in heaven to be a cottage. With a red door. Or maybe sage green. While the term “cottage” has been used to describe everything from a contemporary faux chateau to the massive seaside sanctums of the uberrich, Merriam-Webster, quite pedantically, calls it “a usually small frame one-family house.” It is, however, so much more than that. Allison Ramsey Architects Save to Ideabook Email Photo If you were to peruse my ideabook titled “Becky’s faves,” this is the first picture you...

[The completed Carrier and Company room. Photos of finished rooms by Will Femia .] In 1987, the New York Times described being chosen for the Kips Bay Decorator Show House as the equivalent of "Harvard Medical School, the Pulitzer Prize, the Baseball Hall of Fame and the New York State Lottery rolled into one." Former Architectural Digest editor-in-chief Paige Rense compared the experience—an exhibition of interior designers' work that draws an estimated 15,000 people each year —to "doing your first show on Broadway." Thanks to digital coverage, the showhouse is the most visible one in the country, says designer, author, and past Kips Bay participant Charlotte Moss. For a young designer, it is, genuinely, an honor—and a guarantee of some career cred—just to be invited. But those who find themselves designing rooms next to the best in the profession—Kips Bay, in its 41 years, has shown off the work of people like Jeffrey Bilhuber, Mario Buatta, Jamie Dra...

Death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin espoused their certainty, but it’s doubtful even he knew how difficult it would be to avoid the latter – especially property taxes. No matter where you live in the United States, if you own real estate, you must pay property taxes. According to a recent study by Zillow, a U.S. property owner pays an average of around $2,800, or approximately 1.4 percent of their home’s value each year in property taxes. Of course, that “average” figure indicates some homeowners pay more while others pay less. The counties with the highest averages are Westchester County, NY ($14,829 per year); Essex County, NY ($12,051 per year) and Bergen County, NJ ($11,172 per year). Do you know how much you pay in property taxes? Look up your home on Zillow – the information is there on your home details page. Deciphering how property tax rates are set is not easy. There is no single formula used by states and counties to calculate property taxes. In fact, more than 13,5...

Survivors Face Foreclosures After Reverse Mortgage Borrower’s Death | Waccabuc Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

The latest real estate results look impressive for seven-figure homes but the story is not as dramatic once you factor out Canada's two most expensive cities and look at three months of falling sales. Prices across the country rose 10.4 per cent in December from a year ago to an average of $389,119, according to the Ottawa-based Canadian Real Estate Association. Once you hack out Toronto and Vancouver, the increase drops to 4.6 per cent. "The 10 per cent number, unless you are a millionaire living in Vancouver, this is not your number," said Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist with CIBC World Markets. Tal says prices are up nationally only 6.5 per cent from a year ago if you create a weighted average that limits the impact of Vancouver and Toronto by factoring out a massive surge in the sale of high-end homes. A year ago, sales were way down, making activity today look that much stronger and allowing expensive markets to skew the national results even more. But h...

What home sellers can expect in the market this year | Waccabuc Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

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Part-time landlords flocking to super-bowl-rentalz.com | Waccabuc Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

14 Predictions for NYC’s Housing Market in 2014 | Waccabuc Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

Housing market could be facing another bubble: Shiller | Waccabuc NY Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

Housing Outlook 2014: 10 Predictions From The Experts | Waccabuc NY Real Estate | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

23 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2013/12/17/frank-lloyd-wrights-winslow-house-finally-listed-for-24m.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/52afdea8f92ea14126032704/16_08504277_0_1387244428.jpg" width="500" height="334"></a><br /><a href="http://curbed.com/archives/2013/12/17/frank-lloyd-wrights-winslow-house-finally-listed-for-24m.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> Frank Lloyd Wright was a young lad in his 20s when he opened his architectural practice in Chicago and received his first-ever private commission, turning the assignment into a grand home in River Forest, Ill. Today, more than a century after its 1890s completion, the William Winslow House has hit the market for $2.4M —just a bit pricey compared the starchitect's wide ra...