Real Estate Information

This years Knickerbocker Ice Festival the fifth, is sure to be a wonderful day out for all ages and with all our recent snow the scenery is going to be especially beautiful.

Created to celebrate Rockland Lake’s “frozen” history when In 1835, three businessmen came upon a frozen lake in Rockland County, cut out a sloop load of ice and sold it for a profit beginning the 80 year history of ice harvesting at Rockland Lake. Restaurants, hotels, fishmongers and butchers throughout the NY Metro area were clients with the business reaching its peak during the 1880s.

This years festival includes an “Ice Gallery”  with historic images of Rockland Lake frozen into huge blocks of ice, a KIDZ Ice Park with bowling, igloo building and snowball throwing. Four ice-carving artisans will compete for a “Best In Snow” trophy voted by the public. Rob Patalano, one of the festival’s founders, will be creating a large sculpture that pays homage to Rockland Lake.

Open to the public on Sat Jan 29 from 11a until dark and on Sun Jan 30 from 11a to 4p. Admission is free but there’s a $6 fee for parking. Visit KnickerbockerIceFestival.com for a full calendar of events.

Commuters will be interested to hear that Rockland County’s Department of Transportation will be holding hearings in February to discuss proposed service cuts and possible fare increases to the Tappan Zee Express (TZx) and Transit of Rockland (TOR) bus routes. The county wants to  increase the one way fare on the Tappan Zee Express from $2 to $3 a ride. The TOR price hike is proposed to go up to $2 a trip.

For current schedules and fares click here.

The FHA has just come out with new guidelines to help more potential homebuyers buy a home: These new guidelines do come with safeguards so that we do not repeat the errors of the past but at the same time give opportunity to those that can meet these new criteria:

Here it is in a nutshell: 

• Loan Score 500-579
  • Allowed with 10% down payment
  • The full down payment cannot come from a gift or grant and  must be the borrower’s own funds
  • Seller contribution is limited to 3%
  • Debt to income ratio’s are also lower then standard
• Loan Score 580-599
  • Permitted with 5% down payment
  • Same rules as above apply
• Loan Score above 600
  • Not impacted by above requirements
  • Max financing is 96.5%

While there is no guarantee that you will be approved if you meet all the above guidelines, you should work with a knowledgeable loan officer that has the ability to preflight your profile. In other words, all the information is put together and submitted to an underwriter to confirm or deny financing would be available to a potential buyer.

This way you know up front how much of a home you can buy and if your mortgage will likely be approved.

For more information call  John Naclerio 914 329 1261- Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

Springtime is traditionally the time of the year thought of as the peak buying and selling season for real estate.  As a Realtor I frequently receive the question, should we put our property on the market now while there’s snow on the ground or wait till spring? Attempting to “Time the Market” is as outdated these days as open houses! (And that’s a whole other subject for another time!)

It only takes one buyer, and there are buyers ready willing and able to buy which are in the market place at all times.  Thanksgiving week 2010 was the busiest I have experienced in two years! Agents didn’t want to bother their sellers with showings over the holiday, inventory was down (It traditionally is as most sellers don’t feel buyers are looking over the holidays and colder months!) However, I put three of my own listings under contract, two of them had multiple offers! At the same time my buyer agent specialist Marcella was working with three sets of international buyers. All of them made their decisions, got accepted offers and will be moving in early February 2011. Quite a lot to give thanks about I’d say!

Another example is that yesterday an agent representing buyers relocating from outside the area are looking for a home to buy before the end of January and the agent wanted to know if I have anything new coming on the market as they seem to have “passed” on all the current listings.  I’m delighted to say my answer was an enthusiastic YES!  That is another strong reason to stay on the market, a seller just needs one buyer AND a seller doesn’t ever know when that one buyer may happen to come along!

In the book “Blue Ocean Strategy:  How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, they assert that to compete head-on with the market is like swimming in a red ocean – one full of shark infested water.  Rather the authors suggest swimming in the blue ocean -- to operate in a marketplace of less competition.   In the case of real estate, that would be NOT competing with all the sharks in the spring but rather select another time of the year to be active in the marketplace. 

Or better yet, do not try to time the market at all.  But rather decide when is the right time for your own particular situation to buy or sell, and then compete in the marketplace of the moment.

How to know whether to sell or buy now?  The best guidance is obtained from a professional Realtor that is actively involved in your marketplace.  If you are in the Rockland & Orange County New York areas, please contact Vanessa Saunders of the V Team at Baer & McIntosh Real Estate of Nyack Direct: 845 598 5083 as we would be delighted to be of assistance.  Or visit our website for more information at www.weSELLny.com

As a seller of real estate, we all want to get the highest possible price for the sale of our home. A Professional Realtor is critical to assisting you in determining the value of your home through a comparative market analysis of recent sales in and around your neighborhood. Just because a contract price is agreed upon by the buyer and seller, does not mean that there is clear sailing ahead. If the buyer’s attorney has delivered a contract that fully protects his or her client’s interest, the sale of the home will be contingent on an appraisal coming in at or above the contract price.

If the appraised value comes in below the contract price then the buyer is not obligated to purchase the property. In addition the lending institution is going to base its underwriting decision off of the lower appraised value, not the contract price. So at this point, the buyer and seller would have to negotiate a new contract price to the property which is consistent with the appraised value.

There are times where the buyer wants the property so badly and is willing to pay above the appraised value, however in many cases, they would have to come up with extra funds needed for the down payment, required to meet the banks lending guidelines.

Let’s look at an example.

Contract Price of Home                      $400,000

Appraised Value                                 $380,000

Borrowers’ Original Mortgage            $320,000

Loan to Value                                     80%

In this example if the contract price was NOT renegotiated to $380,000 the borrower would now have to either:

• Have the loan re underwritten with a loan to value of 84%. The loan would now have private mortgage insurance added to the monthly payment and the borrower could now not qualify for the mortgage and the deal could terminate. The buyer may not want the increased payment, private mortgage insurance brings, even if they could qualify.
• Put down the extra $16,000 to keep the loan to value at 80%. If the buyer does not have the funds to do so, the loan could be declined and again the deal could terminate.

If the Seller and Buyer agree to the lower price then the transaction could move forward after approval from the Bank. 

As you can see pricing your home consistent with the market value is so critical to insure a quick sale of your home at the best possible price with the least possible issues.

Want more information about a loan for your new home? Contact John Naclerio of Wells Fargo Home Loans.

Need to know what the True Market Value of your home is? Contact Vanessa for a Current Market Analysis.

Interesting article by Paul Jackson of Housing Wire discusses the average time it takes for a bank to actually foreclose on a home...

Worth a read!

So the expression goes, "Once in a Blue Moon." The saying expresses the most unusual of occurrences.  Tell it to your neighbors in Staten Island, brought to the forefront once again in Friday's New York Post article by Tom Topousis and Ikimuusa Livingston, as they recount the paper's 2008 report of "Staten Island's Block of Broken Dreams: Foreclosure Street".  It’s a neighborhood decimated, ruined and victimized by over anxious buyers, sellers and lenders, leaving behind a trail of victims.

 It’s a neighborhood that cannot recover from itself.   Read the article:  2006, sale of $445,100...2006, sale of $450,000....2007 sale of $377,265. No guessing games now. What are these homes worth in today's new values? $170,000 or maybe $172,000 or maybe, well, with a bit of imagination, you too can make an offer. 

 Is TARP a Red Herring?

TARP, Troubled Asset Relief  Program, is our nation's equitable and fully implemented foreclosure mitigation program, designed to modify the defaulted mortgages of our owner occupied, one to four family dwellings for those whose homes are their principal residences, with loans of under $729,750 and purchased prior to January 1, 2009.   Where was TARP for these Staten Island families?   Where were the not-for-profit organizations and the housing counseling agencies for these families? 

  But more importantly, is TARP a red herring?   We know for sure it is only successful "Once in a Blue Moon" but, is it a red herring? This term comes from the sport of fox hunting, where as the internet sites explain, a dried, smoked herring, red in color, is dragged across the trail of a fox hunt to throw the hounds off scent. 

 Many of the clients in our law firm have shared frustratingly similar experiences of long months of loan modification submissions, over and over again.  Some of the most personal financial documents faxed and emailed to non-descript and anonymous sites and phone numbers that could not be traced down if your life depended on doing so, only to be met with familiar tales that your file is missing or the documents are not here or we have no records of your loan modification requests and you must re-submit.  

 Does this entire process come about as a result of TARP, our nation's "red herring"?  Was it nothing more than a dead fish, tossed to a starving nation of foreclosed and undervalued property homeowners on the verge of disaster to throw us off the scent? 

 Signs seemed to offer hope.

We believed that something was now going to be accomplished.  We believed that our homes, neighborhoods and families might be salvaged, despite the deceptive lending practices, our own bad judgments and looming mortgage foreclosure proceedings.  And then, we turned to our Courts.  New York State laws were enacted specifically to bring lenders and servicers into compliance with "due process" and civil rights protections. 

 A well publicized decision by the Honorable Justice Spinner, ordering a mortgage "canceled, voided, avoided, nullified and set aside", would only be reversed by the Appellate Division with an admonition that long established principals of contract and loan provisions must be adhered to, without activist judges to protect our homeowners. For those new clients to our law firm, the strategy is to look ahead.  The Staten Island Foreclosure Street, maybe could have been avoided by the single handed strength and determination to keep your home and fight against mortgage foreclosure.

 Sweeney’s decision: A familiar case.

For those new clients, the Honorable Justice Sweeney’s published decision took on the case of a New York City police officer and his family.  Trial loan modification payments, hardships, loss of income, HAMP; the case involved all the characteristics and traits that each one of you readers are personally familiar with and know so well, because this is your life. 

The record of that case demonstrated that this police officer accepted the trial modification, made all the monthly payments after which the lender then denied the permanent modification, without justification or explanation.  Does this sound familiar?  Are you waiting with baited breath?  The decision:  "ORDERED, that the plaintiff (the bank) is directed to execute a final modification based upon the terms of the original modification proposal, and it is further ORDERED that the complaint to foreclose the mortgage is dismissed." 

To our callers, clients, and new clients in our law firm, a decision like this, even if only "Once In a Blue Moon" is not a "Red Herring", but is a call for our clients to fight against mortgage foreclosure and to Keep Home Your Own.

 Contact Richard Rubin direct

A good post was spotted on Lux List about our very own castle in Piermont that is currently on the market. Would love to see professional photography with better lighting on this one...

A true antique home, with a lot to offer someone with a treasure chest of gold coins and an imagination to match...

If you would like more information on this property please contact me direct.