Friday, July 22, 2011

Report shows continued spring bounce for U.S. home prices

From a Real Deal article:

U.S. home prices appear to have turned a corner this spring after a year's worth of declines, but whether the housing market has truly bottomed out remains to be seen.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said today that prices rose by 0.4 percent nationwide in May, which follows a slight uptick reported in April by multiple research firms. As of the end of May, home prices had fallen by 6.3 percent over the 12 months prior and stood at 19.6 percent below their April 2007 peak -- approximately even with home prices from January 2004.

The FHFA's numbers show a 0.2 percent increase in home prices in April, so it's possible that the gradual acceleration in the May data could indicate the beginning of the end of the bleeding for U.S housing. However, analysts often note that housing data tends to improve only temporarily during the spring homebuying season.

As David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's, noted last month when the Case-Shiller Home Price Index for April showed modest gains, "it is much too early to tell if this is a turning point or simply due to some warmer weather."

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Friday, July 8, 2011

8 Home Buying Secrets Your Real Estate Agent Won’t Tell You


An article from Mint.com on 8 Home Buying Secrets Your Real Estate Agent Won’t Tell You

1. Your agent is your agent
2. Only fools fall in love
3. Be willing to walk away
4. Time is on your side
5. Your agent is not your friend
6. The listing agent just might be your best friend
7. There is no such thing as an embarrassingly low offer
8. Online real estate companies can save you money

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Friday, June 10, 2011

8 Home Buying Secrets Your Real Estate Agent Won’t Tell You

An Article from Mint.com. 


When they’re finally ready to make the jump from renting to home ownership, most first time homebuyers enlist a real estate agent to help them through the process. No wonder: buying a home is complicated and when it’s your first time, you feel like you could use some hand-holding.
Real estate agents provide a valuable service and are generally well-paid as a result. There’s nothing wrong with that. But money does have a way of distorting relationships — even when honest people are involved.
Here are some tips that will help you, as a first time homebuyer, take full advantage of today’s real estate market and get the most out of your relationship with your real estate agent.

1. Your agent is youragent

When you’re new to the process, it is easy to believe that the guy with 20 years’ experience calls the shots. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Your real estate professional is your agent: he or she works for you, gives you advice and negotiates on your behalf. He doesn’t make decisions for you and you should not expect him to.

2. Only fools fall in love

After you’ve looked at a few houses that weren’t quite right, your agent will probably tell you not to get discouraged, and that eventually you will “fall in love” with the right property.
Love makes you do stupid things. Stupid things like paying too much or looking past costly repair items. As a first-time homebuyer, you should develop a healthy ‘like’ for a property, but keep the relationship open, see other houses. There will be plenty of time for “love” after you’ve put in the 300 hours of sweat equity to make your house a home.

3. Be willing to walk away

If you never fall in love with a piece of real estate, you’ll never cry when you have to walk away from it. Real estate agents often use the phrase “my client will walk away” and some use it quite loosely to stress the importance of a point for negotiation. If you want to retain the full strength of your position as a buyer, you’ll need “I’ll walk away” to mean that you are done if your demands aren’t met.
For your agent to communicate this correctly to the seller, he needs to know that you mean what you say. And yes, if it reaches that point, you will need to walk away from a property. Not to worry: there are others out there. But don’t be surprised if you hear back from the seller a week later that he is willing to work with your demands.

4. Time is on your side

Your agent is going to tell you that you have to move quickly and make the best offer possible when you find the right property. This is not always the best advice. As a first time homebuyer, you are in a unique position of strength in terms of the real estate transaction. You aren’t selling your home, so you don’t have to move. You can look at and make offers on many properties. You can start with a low offer and negotiate upwards if the seller balks. You can table a counter-offer and look around a bit before deciding to pay more. The opposite is generally true of sellers in a buyer’s market. They need to sell the property and are motivated to move as quickly as possible. Use time to your advantage.

5. Your agent is not your friend

Your agent performs valuable services in the real estate transaction, but he really doesn’t make anything until you buy a piece of real estate. That makes him a salesman. Being a salesman, he wants you to feel like he is a friend who has your best interests at heart.
The reality is that your interests and your agent’s may not be aligned. He is actually better off financially if you make a quick decision and pay too much for a property. This is, after all, likely the largest business transaction of your life. Make sure that your agent, regardless of how personable he is, understands that you are a customer and that you need him to drive the best business deal for you.

6. The listing agent just might be your best friend

In the New York Times best-selling book Freakanomics, authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner point out that real estate agents typically market their own homes for 10 days longer than they market their clients’ homes. Is this because they are so busy with their clients that they don’t have time to market their own homes?
No, it really comes down to how we incent real estate agents with commission. When an agent is selling his own home, he enjoys the full benefit of any increase in sales price so he is extremely motivated to market for as long as possible to get the best sales price possible. But when it comes to a client’s home, an extra week on the market might lead to a higher sales price for the seller — but the agent will only enjoy a very small amount of that increase in the form of marginal increase to commission. Meanwhile, marketing a home for another week would take him away from marketing someone else’s property. As such, the listing agent is highly motivated to convince the seller that your offer is the best offer he is going to receive. Use this to your advantage and make offers that are good for you.

7. There is no such thing as an embarrassingly low offer

When it comes to a property that has been sitting with no action, there is no such thing as an offer that is too low. Some agents will tell you that that you could offend the seller or that your offer is embarrassing. A good agent will encourage you to make strategically low offers. Offers are really not a lot of work and the worst thing that can happen is that your offer is not accepted. Often, however, in a buyer’s market a low offer will turn into a counter-offer. Think of the first offer as the starting point for negotiations and be prepared to consider counter-offers.

8. Online real estate companies can save you money

Over the past decade, online real estate companies have started to take market share away from traditional brick-and-mortar agencies. They’ve grown by offering discounts and rebates on the traditional 3% real estate commission. RedFin, one of the leading online real estate companies, offers buyers a rebate of up to 50% of the commission at close. RedFin also compensates their agents with salary as opposed to commission, which alleviates some conflict of interest issues. Granted, the service may not be as extensive or personalized — but the extra cash may offset the drawbacks.

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

57% Believe Homeownership is a Good Investment, Higher Than Others



Fannie Mae's latest national housing survey finds that Americans expressed newfound optimism about home prices, the economy, and personal finances. 57 percent of Americans still believe that buying a home has a lot of potential as an investment – ranking higher than other investments, such as buying stocks and putting money into and IRA or 401(k) plan. In addition, 30% of Americans expect home prices to strengthen over the next year, up four percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2010.

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Monday, May 23, 2011

Tax Planning for Life's Major Events


Excerpt from Tax Planning for Life's Major Events
By Kiplinger.com


The voluminous Internal Revenue Code now reaches into nearly every nook and cranny of our lives, from cradle to grave. A newborn brings tax breaks to his or her parents; death brings a series of tax repercussions; and the IRS has something to say about almost everything in between. After all, the tax bill you owe each spring is based on the saving, investing, spending, business and other personal decisions you make during the year.

As your life changes, so does the set of tax rules that affect you. That's why this compendium of life events is so important -- to alert you to new opportunities to embrace and pitfalls to avoid as your life as a taxpayer evolves.

The fact that federal income taxes are among most families' biggest annual expenditures trumpets the importance of tax planning. Shake off any notion that this is a game for the wealthy. Instead, draw your inspiration for this comment from a high-priced tax attorney: "The best and finest tax planning is done by people who have more money than they'll ever spend or be able to give away. The worst tax planning is done by nice middle-class people who have middle-class virtues, those who have to work hard and save and sacrifice." Tax planning will save you money. We're here to help.

Visit this article online to learn more about tax planning for the following major life events:
- Graduating from college
- Getting your first job
- Getting married
- Birth of a child
- Buying your first home
- Sending your child to college
- Changing jobs
- Working at home
- Selling your home
- Buying a second home
- Getting hit with a major illness or injury
- Getting divorced
- Retiring
- Death of a spouse

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Friday, May 20, 2011

Too Big To Fail



A little plug for HBO: Watch the premiere of their movie Too Big To Fail on Monday, May 23rd. A good portion of it was filmed on location here in Staten Island!


http://www.hbo.com/movies/too-big-to-fail/index.html#/movies/too-big-to-fail/index.html

The movie is about the financial crisis of 2008 that lead us into the current recession and is based on Alan Sorkin's book of the same name. The movie stars some pretty big names including William Hurt, Ed Asner, Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti, Topher Grace, Matthew Modine, and Cynthia Nixon among others.

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

57% Believe Homeownership is a Good Investment, Higher Than Others



Fannie Mae's latest national housing survey finds that Americans expressed newfound optimism about home prices, the economy, and personal finances. 57 percent of Americans still believe that buying a home has a lot of potential as an investment – ranking higher than other investments, such as buying stocks and putting money into and IRA or 401(k) plan. In addition, 30% of Americans expect home prices to strengthen over the next year, up four percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2010.

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Monday, May 16, 2011

Five Signs That Say 'Buy'


The Wall Street Journal had an article recently that suggests five reasons that now is a good time to buy a home:

Jobs. Some parts of the country were less affected by the recession than others. Prospective buyers should review job-growth data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, at www.bls.gov. Unlike many backward-looking economic statistics, jobs data are only about a month old and can "clearly show the direction of the local economy," says Carolyn Beggs, chief operating officer of real-estate data provider Local Market Monitor Inc. The National Association of Home Builders also posts state and local employment data, at NAHB.com.

You also want to see a brightening personal-income picture for the previous six-month period. Those numbers are available via the U.S. Dept. of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, at www.bea.gov.

Recent sales

activity. Three factors should be taken together: housing inventory, sales volume and prices.

A large inventory of homes with few actual transactions are negative indicators, according to Jeffrey Jackson, chairman of Mitchell, Maxwell & Jackson Inc., an appraisal company in New York. On the other hand, if inventory is falling and transactions are picking up, that is a good sign.

State and local boards of realtors often publish monthly inventory statistics. Inventory breakdown by metro area also can be found at the U.S. Census Bureau's website, in the American Community Survey (www.census.gov/acs/www/). Be sure to compare current inventories with long-term averages.

Also, check out the rental vacancy rates in your area, and judge them against historical rates, which you can find at the Census Bureau's website (www.census.gov) or via local real-estate professionals.

Construction.While not as reliable as jobs or sales-trend data for getting a read on a local housing market, the number of permits recently issued for local builders is useful for gauging builder sentiment and, by extension, future housing activity.

You can get recent permit information from your county or municipal building department, or via the National Association of Home Builders (www.nahb.com).

Mortgage

availability. If you live in an area where most people use mortgages, it is especially important now to gauge local lending patterns. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, most national banks tightened lending standards. But some local banks haven't been hit as hard by the housing crash and are more willing to lend, even for higher-priced homes.

For instance, some smaller lenders in the New York and New Jersey area, such as Lake Success, N.Y.-based Astoria Federal Savings, are actively courting new "jumbo"-mortgage customers. Astoria Federal says it believes jumbo-loan borrowers pose less risk than other borrowers because they can demonstrate ample income and often opt for hefty down-payments.

Anecdotal evidence. It might sound old-fashioned in an era of electronic data, but driving around neighborhoods, checking out open houses and talking to local agents still are good ways to gather local-market intelligence.

The key is to do this kind of research only after you have gathered hard data, so that you don't misread the signs. For example, foreclosed homes can generate multiple bids and quick sales, often in all-cash deals—but that doesn't mean the market is healthy.

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Friday, May 13, 2011

Save Money on Homeowners Insurance


Excerpt from Save Money on Homeowners Insurance
By Kimberly Lankford, Contributing Editor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance


The market value of my home has declined over the past few years. Can I save money by reducing my homeowners coverage?

No. You should never lower the amount your house is insured for just because housing prices have dropped. That’s because cutting the amount of your insurance could leave you with insufficient coverage in the event of a disaster.

The market value of your home and its insurance value can vary widely because they are based on different assumptions and calculations. The insurance value is based on what it would cost to rebuild the house -- not on what you paid for it. And although housing prices have dropped, rebuilding costs have not. (On the other hand, the sales price takes into account the value of the land, which isn’t factored into the insurance value; the land could still be valuable, even if your home were to burn down .)

To calculate how much it might cost to rebuild based on your home’s size, building materials and any special features, try the calculator at AccuCoverage.com. For $7.95, you’ll get an immediate estimate of your home’s insurance value from Marshall & Swift/Boeckh, which provides building-cost estimates to the insurance industry. It’s also a good idea to rerun the numbers after you make any major home improvements, and notify your insurer if you need to increase your coverage. You can usually boost your insurance limit by tens of thousands of dollars without making your premiums go through the roof (see Upgrade Your Home Insurance for more information about calculating your insurance needs).

To save money on your homeowners insurance, however, you could increase your deductible. Increasing your deductible from $500 to $1,000 could lower your premium by as much as 25%. And increasing your deductible will discourage you from filing small claims that could jeopardize your insurer’s claims-free discount or get you dropped by your insurer altogether (boost your emergency fund to make sure you have enough money to cover the deductible). See Slash Your Insurance Costs for strategies to help you save money on all kinds of insurance.

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

10 Smart Uses for Your Tax Refund


Excerpt from 10 Smart Uses for your Tax Refund
By Kiplinger.com


So you got a refund check. Chances are it's for thousands -- the average refund is nearly $3,000 this year, according to the IRS. That's a nice chunk of change. Here are ten good things you could do with the money.

1. Pay Off Credit-Card Debt
Using your refund to pay off a balance with an 18% interest rate is like earning 18% on your investments -- an incredibly valuable use of the money. And if you pay off your balances, you can afford to close some cards that are now charging high fees.

2. Rebuild Your Emergency Fund
Many people had to raid their emergency fund over the past year and had little extra money to restore it. You could use your refund to start rebuilding that fund, which can help you avoid landing in credit-card debt if you have an emergency. Keep the money easily accessible in a money-market account or savings account that earns interest.

3. Boost Retirement Savings
You can take up to $5,000 of that check and put it toward an IRA for 2011 (or $6,000 if age 50 or older). If your modified adjusted gross income is $122,000 or less if you’re single, or $177,000 or less if you’re married filing jointly, then you can contribute to a Roth IRA, which lets you withdraw the money tax-free in retirement. If you earn too much for a Roth, you can contribute to a nondeductible traditional IRA, then convert it to a Roth.

4. Fund a Taxable Account
Already maxing out contributions to your tax-deferred retirement account? Consider opening a taxable account and using your refund cash to buy stocks or funds. There are no restrictions (such as early-withdrawal fees) on tapping taxable accounts. Plus, when you sell a winner you are taxed on the profits at the maximum 15% capital-gains rate. Traditional-retirement-account distributions, however, are fully taxed at ordinary rates as high as 35%.

5. Fill Gaps in Your Insurance
For less than $1,000, you can plug menacing holes in your homeowners policy: coverage for flooding and liability. Flood-Insurance Policy. If you live in a low- to medium-risk area, it costs about $350 to $600 per year from the National Flood Insurance Program with the maximum $250,000 in dwelling coverage and $100,000 for possessions. Get a price quote at www.floodsmart.gov. Liability Insurance. Cover your legal expenses if someone is hurt in your home or by your car. It generally costs just $150 to $300 to buy a personal umbrella policy that provides $1 million in coverage over the limits or your auto- and homeowners-insurance policies.

6. Build Your College Savings
It’s always hard to juggle saving for college and retirement. Here’s an opportunity to use your extra money to contribute to a 529 account. You’ll be able to use the money tax-free for college bills, and you could get a state income-tax deduction for your contribution.

7. Help Your Kid Save
You can use the extra money to contribute to a Roth IRA for your child. Your kid is eligible as long as he or she has earned income -- from mowing yards or babysitting, for example. Your child can contribute up to $5,000 or the amount of his or her earned income for the year, whichever is lower, and you can give him the cash to do it. See Roth IRAs for Kids for details.

8. Improve Your Home's Energy Efficiency
You can lower your utility bills -- and get a tax credit -- for installing insulation, energy-efficient windows, central air conditioning and more.

9. Spruce up Your Yard
A little cash can go a long way to improve your home's curb appeal. If your house will be on the market, you can't afford not to spend some money and time on landscaping that will distinguish your house from others.

10. Give to Others
If you have your financial bases covered, consider using your refund to make a charitable contribution to help others in need. You’ll feel good -- and you’ll be rewarded for your good deed when you file your tax return in 2012 (charitable contributions are deductible if you itemize).

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