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...

Gazing upon celebrity homes can be even more compelling than gazing upon the stars themselves, as this batch of celebrity homes for sale demonstrates. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen New York, NY For sale: $4,495,000 This 1-bedroom apartment where John Legend has clearly played a few tunes is small by celebrity standards — just 2,000 square feet — but big on charm. It’s in an old carriage house with exposed brick, big windows and a deep cast-iron soaking tub. Read more about  the couple’s listing , and see more homes for sale in  Manhattan . Michael Jordan Highland Park, IL For sale: $14,855,000 The gate to the 7-acre property says “23” — and so do the listing numbers when you add them up. His Airness lived here for almost 20 years, and has been trying to unload it for three. Read more  about the estate outside Chicago , and check out more listings in suburban  Highland Park . Denise Richards Hidden Hills, CA For sale: $7,749,000 If you’re...

When you inquire about home insurance, one of the first questions an agent will ask is, “Is this for your primary residence?” It might seem like an odd question, but they ask because policies differ greatly when they’re for second homes — particularly for those in vacation spots. In many cases, you could pay more to insure your second home than your primary residence. There are at least three reasons for this: A second home in a traditional vacation spot — for example, at the beach, in the mountains or near a lake or river — can come with additional risks. By its very nature, a vacation home can stand vacant much of the year, which is a sore spot for insurers. If it’s not vacant, that could mean it doubles as a rental — another potential red flag for providers. Let’s look at why each point matters to providers, and how you can deal with each issue. Your second home is in a vacation spot Obviously, a home on the coast or along a lake or river faces a gre...

Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell for the third straight week, with the benchmark 30-year rate again marking its lowest level since May 2013. The average for a 15-year mortgage, a popular choice for people who are refinancing, dipped below 3 percent for the first time since then. The ongoing decline in rates lured a crop of prospective buyers, as applications for mortgages marked their biggest weekly gain last week in over six years. Applications jumped 49.1 percent, the biggest weekly increase since November 2008, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Mortgage company Freddie Mac said Thursday the nationwide average for a 30-year mortgage slid to 3.66 percent this week from 3.73 percent last week. The rate for the 15-year loan declined to 2.98 percent from 3.05 percent last week. A year ago, the 30-year mortgage stood at 4.41 percent and the 15-year mortgage at 3.45 percent. Mortgage rates have remained low even though the Federal Reserve in October ended its mo...

New data out this morning showed new home sales rose 0.2% to 467,000 in September. That may seem like a small number, but it’s the highest rate since July 2008. The government also revised down August’s blockbuster number from 504,000 to 466,0000. Joe Brusuelas, Chief Economist at McGladrey is not impressed by the number. “It’s the same old, same old,” he said. “What we have is... a problem in the housing market that has to do with tight credit conditions. Even though the provision of private financial credit is up, it’s not translating to effective increase in loanable funds to people who are interested in a home.” Still, that doesn’t mean he agrees with the  administration’s new push  to help people buy homes. Recently, CEO of Fannie Mae Timothy Mayopoulos said the housing giant would go back to its previous policy of buying home loans where buyers put as little as 3% down. “I really think that they oughta re-think this 3% down idea,” said Brusuelas. He worries that t...

US pending home sales slow a tick from July boom - Yahoo News

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...

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...

After rising at the end of 2013, for-sale inventory has fallen for four straight months to begin 2014. Inventory remains tight nationwide, with the number of homes listed for sale on Zillow down 0.4 percent annually in April and more than half of metros in the U.S. currently seeing a similar downward trend. In many metros, inventory is tightest in the lower-end of the market, which represents the homes most commonly sought by first-time home buyers. According to Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries this shortage of inventory is driven by a couple of factors, most notably by stubbornly high negative equity , particularly at the lower end of the market, which is preventing many sellers from listing their homes. National home values in April were also down 0.1 percent from March to a Zillow Home Value Index of $170,200, marking the first monthly decline in more than two years. Among the 35 largest metros covered by Zillow, home values in a dozen were down on a monthly basi...

[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...

11 images <div class="gallery loaded"><a href="http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/04/27/san_remo_corner_apartment_wants_25_million.php"><img src="http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/535bfcf4f92ea143ef0138ff/74713038.jpg" width="500" height="334"></a><br /><a href="http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/04/27/san_remo_corner_apartment_wants_25_million.php" style="font-size: 9px; text-align: center;">Click here to view the full photogallery.</a></div> This three-bedroom corner apartment in Emery Roth's San Remo just hit the market for the first time in 35 years, and it's asking an impressive $25 million . The views of Central Park and the Boat Pond from the wraparound terrace are pretty spectacular, and despite its modern furnishings, most of the original details have been preserved, including Roth-designed master baths, plaster walls with bas-relief insets,...

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...

With the help of low interest rates and inventory levels, the rebound in home prices has attracted a significant amount of attention in recent years. In fact, the housing market is posting the best appreciation gains since the bubble years. However, some states are clearly witnessing more strength than others. In February, home prices across the nation surged 12.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest report from CoreLogic. That is the 24th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains. On a month-over-month basis, home prices increased by 0.8 percent in February compared to January, but remain 16.9 percent below their April 2006 peak.   “As the spring home-buying season kicks off, house price appreciation continues to be strong,” said Dr. Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Although prices should remain strong in the near term due to a short supply of homes on the market, price increases should moderate over the next year as home equity rel...