Occasions That Call for a Handwritten Note

Occasions That Call for a Handwritten Note

As society operates more and more online, handwritten notes are becoming a rarity — which is why sending one to your clients could help you stand out from your competition.

“A thank-you note can stand out from the seemingly dull and impersonal style of digital communications, such as emails and texts,” Keller Williams Realty notes on its blog. “With mailing lists and newsletters coming at your clients from nearly every business they visit, a thank-you note is a tasteful and sincere demonstration of your gratitude.”

Here are some occasions that may call for a personal handwritten note:

• Thanking new clients for listing with you.
• Anniversaries of the purchase of a home.
• Special occasions, such as birthdays and graduations.
• Thanking clients for sending you a referral.
• Following up after a listing appointment.

As for how to write one, KW recommends simply including the date, a salutation that addresses your recipient’s name, an opening line specifically mentioning your gratitude, and your signature. A thank-you note needs to be only three to four sentences long, the KW blog notes.

Source: “Say It Like You Mean It: The Power of Handwritten Notes,” Keller Williams blog (Jan. 23, 2017)

First-Time Buyers Face More Tough Times

First-Time Buyers Face More Tough Times

Many first-time buyers are starting to feel like they just can’t catch a break. The continued limited inventories of homes for sale in the entry-level market and a number of other factors are pressing harder on first-timers who are trying to break in to home ownership.

“Constrained inventory in many areas and climbing rents, home prices, and mortgage rates means it’s not getting any easier to be a first-time buyer,” says Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of REALTORS®. “It will take more entry-level supply, continued job gains, and even stronger wage growth for first-timers to make up a greater share of the market.”

First-time buyers represented 32 percent of nationwide sales in all of 2016, NAR reported Tuesday.

The biggest problem facing first-time buyers is the low inventory of homes for sale in the entry-level price range, says Nela Richardson, chief economist for Redfin.

“That’s a real problem,” Richardson says. “Just because you got financing doesn’t mean you get a home. It’s a hard market. … We haven’t seen an increase in the starter-level inventory since 2009. That’s been the biggest problem in the housing market recently.”

Inventory woes are stemming from fewer single-family homes being built by builders, people staying in their homes longer, and investors holding onto starter homes they purchased during the housing crisis for a longer time to profit off of what they turned into a rental.

As such, the message for first-time buyers is: “You’re going to lose out on a few homes,” says Ray Rodriguez, regional mortgage sales manager at TD Bank in New York. “You might have to temper your wants. … I think you just have to be more patient and know that it could be a frustrating process.”

Nearly a quarter of homes for sale at the end of 2016 were in the starter price range, which is defined as the lower third of all home values per market, according to an analysis by Trulia. That is 12 percent lower than it was at the end of 2015.

NAR officials say the Federal Housing Administration’s mortgage insurance premium cut would have helped. NAR is pushing for its reinstatement. A 0.85 percent to 0.60 percent annual cut in premiums was announced by the outgoing Obama administration on Jan. 9 and was set to take effect Jan. 27. However, one of President Trump’s first acts after being sworn in as president was to halt the reductions “indefinitely.”

“Without the premium reduction, we estimate that roughly 750,000 to 850,000 home buyers will face higher costs and between 30,000 and 40,000 would-be buyers will be prevented from entering the market,” says William E. Brown, NAR’s president.

Source: National Association of REALTORS® and “First-Time Homebuyers Are Ready to Test the Market. Can They Find a Home?” U.S. News & World Report (Jan. 19, 2016)

Architects Give Home Design a Bold New Spin

Architects Give Home Design a Bold New Spin

Some architects worldwide are building a select few homes that can rotate, allowing for a change of interior views from a room throughout the day or programming a home to follow the direction of the sun to help maintain inside temperatures.

In New South Wales, Australia, the Everingham Rotating House is an 5,812-square-foot, octagonally shaped home that can rotate 360 degrees. It sits on a diameter steel platform that allows for it to turn in both directions at 525 feet per hour. The house can make two complete rotations per hour.

“You can’t really tell if the house is turning unless you focus on an outside object that is stationary,” owner Luke Everingham, an electrician who completed the home, told CNN. He’s also built a replica of the home on Prince Edward Island in Canada for a client.

The home features a touch-screen control panel that allows the owner to program one of its eight rooms to follow the sun. This allows owners to use the sun to heat rooms during the winter or move away from the sun to cool certain spaces on the inside during the summer. The home cost about $243,000 to build.

Some architects believe rotating homes are not just a gimmick but offer greater sustainability.

“Creating buildings that can adapt (to their environment) is a much more sustainable way of living,” UK-based David Ben-Grunberg told CNN.

In Germany, The Heliotrope became the first building in the world to capture more energy than it uses and it also rotates. Architect Rolf Disch says the four-story home is connected by a spiral staircase and built around a central column. That column can rotate 15 degrees per hour and follow the direction of the sun.

“I see transformable homes becoming a trend in the future,” says Michael Jantzen, an artist who has designed several transformable home concepts, including the Rotating Radius House. “If designed right, they can be very eco-friendly and provide a new and exciting way to live.”

Source: “Will These Houses Make You Dizzy? Architects Build Rotating Homes,” CNN (Jan. 22, 2017)

Renovations Uncover Secrets Behind Walls

Renovations Uncover Secrets Behind Walls

Homeowners are finding that as they renovate and walls are removed, they’re uncovering tokens from the home’s past. They’ve found everything from ritual objects placed behind the walls to ward off evil spirits to time capsules with notes enclosed for future owners to find.

Michelle Morgan Harrison, an interior designer, recently found a skull buried beneath an old white oak beam while renovating her 1816 New Canaan, Conn., home. She was relieved to discover it was a dog’s skull, and not a human one.

“I’ve seen a bit of everything” while renovating, contractor and carpenter Patrick Kennedy told The New York Times. He’s renovating Harrison’s home. “But the skull was unique, and there’s no way it could have fallen in there the way it was buried. It was placed almost exactly in the center under the doorway, and there were no other bones with it. I immediately thought it was something superstitious.” As such, he plans to rebury it in the same spot once the home’s renovations are complete.

Indeed, “the practice of burying or concealing items in the structure of a house is called immurement,” says Joseph Heathcott, an architectural historian who teaches at the New School in New York. “It is actually an ancient practice that cuts across many cultures and civilizations.”

For centuries, archeologists have discovered ritual objects tucked inside walls from the Egyptian pyramids to Roman villas to ordinary houses. Often times, the tucked away objects are believed to bring good luck to the inhabitants of the home. For example in Ireland, it was once customary to bury a horse skull in the home’s floor or ground. In England and Ireland, many regions would bury dead cats in the walls or under the floors to ward off bad spirits, Heathcott says.

“In my 30 years of architectural practice we’ve found many different things under floors and inside of walls, most left there inadvertently,” Marvin J. Anderson, a Seattle architect, told The New York Times.

In fact, Anderson says that when they renovate homes, “we encourage clients and their families to create and leave time capsules inside the house somewhere, something to be discovered when walls and ceilings are opened up in 50 to 100 years.”

Source: “The History Hidden in the Walls,” The New York Times (Jan. 20, 2017)

Trump Puts a Halt to FHA Mortgage Cuts

Trump Puts a Halt to FHA Mortgage Cuts

Just hours after being sworn in, President Donald Trump moved to suspend a plan to reduce the Federal Housing Administration’s mortgage insurance premiums that was set to go into effect on Jan. 27. The plan had been announced just a few days ago by the outgoing Obama administration and Housing and Urban Development head Julian Castro.

The reduction in premiums by 25 basis points, or a quarter percentage point, “has been suspended indefinitely,” according to an FHA news release. “More analysis and research are deemed necessary to assess future adjustments,” according to FHA.

National Association of REALTORS® officials say they are disappointed by the decision. The association estimates that about 750,000 to 850,000 home buyers will face higher costs, and 30,000 to 40,000 new home buyers will be left on the sidelines in 2017 without the cut. FHA originally had estimated that borrowers could save an average of $500 per year with the reductions in place.

“We’re disappointed in the decision but will continue to make the case to reinstate the cut in the months ahead,” NAR President William E. Brown said.

Source: “Trump Already Suspends Obama-Era FHA Mortgage Insurance Cuts,” MarketWatch (Jan. 21, 2017) and “FHA Suspends Planned Mortgage Insurance Cut,” Scotsman Guide (Jan. 20, 2017)

Where Foreclosure Backlogs Remain a Problem

Where Foreclosure Backlogs Remain a Problem

Banks continue to clean out the pipeline of loans that were originated during the housing boom days that have since turned sour.

Most of the homes that are still being foreclosed on are from loans originated between 2004 and 2008, known as “legacy foreclosures,” according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ 2016 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.

The following markets are seeing the biggest cases of backlogs with legacy foreclosures:

• District of Columbia: 76% (share of legacy foreclosures)
• Hawaii: 66%
• New Jersey: 64%
• Nevada: 63%
• Delaware: 61%
• Massachusetts: 61%

On a county level, the highest number of legacy foreclosures are occurring in:

• Nassau County (Long Island), N.Y.: 8,632 representing 74 percent of all loans actively in foreclosure
• Cook County (Chicago), Ill.: 7,357 representing 53 percent
• Kings County (Brooklyn), N.Y.: 6,207 representing 68 percent
• Miami-Dade County, Fla.: 5,262 representing 64 percent
• Los Angeles County, Calif.: 4,956 representing 64 percent

While foreclosures are elevated in some areas, nationwide they mostly are continuing to drop. ATTOM Data Solution’s report showed that overall foreclosure filings – which include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions – dropped 14 percent in 2016 from 2015 to the lowest level since 2006. There were 933,045 foreclosure filings in 2016.

“The national foreclosure rate stayed within an historically normal range for the third consecutive year in 2016, even as banks continued to clear out legacy foreclosures from the last housing bubble, particularly in the final quarter of the year,” says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. “Foreclosures completed in the fourth quarter had been in the foreclosure process 803 days on average, a substantial jump from the third quarter and indicating that banks pushed through significant numbers of legacy foreclosures during the quarter. Despite that push, we still show that more than half of all active foreclosures nationwide are on loans originated between 2004 and 2008, with a much higher share of legacy foreclosures in some markets.”

Source: RealtyTrac