What do George Pataki and Mel Gibson have in common? Peekskill, NY. Gibson was born here, and Pataki was once the mayor. 

I have blogged about Peekskill’s market activity previously. We are talking about a historic river town with a lot of charm for those who dig pre war architecture. The place is teeming with activity and forward movement. Many of the old buildings have been restored, and the once dreary downtown is an eclectic mix of Bohemia and commerce. One thing that struck me when I was taking photos the other day was how many people and cars got in the way of my getting a clear snapshot. Then it struck me. That is the picture. 

The history goes back to the pre colonial era when the place was a valuable riverfront trading spot. Named for Jan Peeck’s Creek, (“kil” is dutch for stream), Both Washington and Lincoln spent time here. While the colonial army was here before moving to West Point, Lincoln’s time was brief; just a short train stop which was memorialized by a half-forgotten statue about a block from the current train station. I only mean half- it is maintained, but fenced off and hard to get a good look without a zoom lens.  

Being a river town, the view of the river is breathtaking whether you are up the hill or down by the station. It was an apt setting for the 9-11 memorial. That day did not leave the city unscathed.  

The architecture of the place is especially attractive if you like classic old buildings. I happen to love them. 

OK- so I guess you sort of get that I like the photos I took of the place.

Here’s the snapshot of 2009 market activity.

In all, 65 single family homes sold in the city this past year. The median price was $305,000, down from the peak of $368,000 in 2005. That year, 137 homes were sold. That represents an 18% decline in prices from the height of the market, which is in line with the region. This makes Peekskill, on top of everything else I’ve gushed about, something else- affordable. 

In June of 2008, prior to the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac crisis, I wrote this blog posting asserting that the president who would most impact progress in the housing market was not the winner of the 2008 election, but the winner of the 1932 election. I began as follows:

With the problems facing the real estate and mortgage industries, I look to the Oval Office to be the catalyst in the recovery of the nation going forward. I am not referring to President Bush, nor am I referring to the hypothetical Presidents McCain, Obama, or Clinton.

The president who will make the biggest difference in solving the current crisis is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It is hard to conceive that a free market, right leaning capitalist who abhors government bureaucracy like myself would invoke FDR. However, a realist with a rudimentary understanding of what makes our industry work will understand.

If you haven’t guessed already, I would go on to refer to the FHA mortgage, which languished in obscurity in my market during the housing boom, only to be a lifesaver for countless deals after the crash. If you’ve done an FHA deal in 2009, or 20 FHA deals, you shouldn’t thank Obama, Bernanke, or the mortgage goddess. You should thank FDR. The FHA was his baby, and it saw the country through the depression in the 30’s and every decade until the last one, when the idiots who should have been the guardians of the money markets decided to play poker with our money. In other words, the lending industry decided to re invent the wheel with sub prime. I guess 70 years of success was boring.

I closed more FHA deals in 2009 than any year since 1999, when I was in another market. FHA used to be as rare as a hen tooth in Westchester. Now people breathe a sigh of relief when they hear those 3 letters. Not only is it back in vogue, it is the belle of the mortgage ball. And rightly so. Many of us had our bacon saved by the program the past 18 months. 

There are those who disagree, but that is a discussion for another day. I’m with Tom Kelly, who said that the FHA rescued us in 2009. I expect more of the same in 2010, which is a good thing. We don’t need to reinvent the mortgage wheel, we had the answer all along. Thanks to Mr. Roosevelt. 

Happy New Year.

Late last year I posted my 2 Goals and 5 Resolutions for 2009.  I am going to review how I did then state my 2010 goals and resolutions. 

The goals were pretty simple:

• Make more money;
• Work less.

Quite frankly, I reached neither. I worked really hard in 2009, perhaps as hard as I ever worked, and for pretty much the same money. Here is the silver lining of the cloud, however: we cut expenses by almost 30%, and in the last 90 days I have become far better at entrusting things to my agents that I used to be a control freak about. Many of these things were done better than I would have done them, because I didn’t have the time or inclination.

This was actually the best lesson I learned in  2009 going forward: empower my people if I want to build my company. I can’t do everything myself, and I need to be better at team building to be truly successful. Thanks to Elayna Fernandez for getting me to reflect on this lesson. I will use it well in 2010. 

On to my 5 resolutions:

1. Take one day off per week no matter what. F. I failed miserably. I took more days off, but that’s not saying much. 
2. Create specific goals. C-. Too much working in my business and not enough working on my business. 
3. Plan my work. D. See #2
4. Blog more. A+. Over 330 blog postings in various places changed how I do business. My blog got me found by some news producers who put my clients on CNBC 4 times,  and landed me on ABC World News, AP, and other print media. This was enormous in helping with credibility, recruiting and sales. Magical and unpredictable.  
5. Laugh more. B.  

1. Double my income. 
2. Have 25 licensees with the company by Thanksgiving 2010. 
3. Make Magic Occur Regularly.

I’m not going to be hung up on how much I work, but I will make sure I have fun at work or play. And I mean to double that income. I now have 14 licensees with 3 good new ones joining in January. I want to grow the team with quality producers.  Regarding magic: I consider the opportunities that came about from blogging to be beyond my wildest dreams. Utterly unpredictable and inspiring. I will make more of that, and leave it up to God as to how it manifests itself. 

5 Resolutions:

1. Blog as consistently in 2010 as I did in 2009, and get better at it.
2. Create a Cyber Empire. I have some ideas for pursuing niches that I will implement the first quarter of 2010 with new and better web marketing. 
3. Stand on the shoulders of the best lesson of 2009 and empower my growing team more as a coach and mentor and less like a guy who does everything himself and gets burned out in the process. 
4. Plan and set goals more consistently and systematically.  I am going to focus more on listing more properties and giving more buyers to the team to service. I can adhere to this if I empower the team with things I am inclined to handle myself, but ought not, like buyers.  
5. Appreciate and support Ann more in 2010. This is more rooted in attitude and consciousness than just doing things differently. Simply put, It shouldn’t be about me laughing more. I want Ann to laugh more. 

Here’s to a magical 2010. 

Some of the comments in this story prompted me to write one of my own. The jist of the piece is that all real estate appreciation from the past 10 years is nullified by inflation. Now, I don’t know if I should go outside, stand in the street and scream 

DUH

at the top of my lungs, or just put my face in a pillow, and scream

DUH

at the top of my lungs in the privacy of my living room. 

Stories like this bring out the haters, and several commenters lamented at how a $200,000 house actually costs three times that much in total payments (wrapping it up with a lament about the failure of capitalism) and another said that the stock market is a better investment than real estate. 

There is a really really large fallacy some people fall into with when they start comparing buying a home with buying a stock, and here it is: 

You can’t live in your 401k. It gets drafty.

I really don’t care if the stock market outperforms real estate or if it doesn’t. It is an apple and orange comparison. I don’t care how many charts, graphs and algorythms you show me about how much more money you’ll have in 30 years if you took the money you would have put into a house and bought Berkshire Hathaway instead, and here’s why: Where ya gonna live Einstein. 

To take advantage of the so called “better investments” than real estate, you either have to live in a box, or be a HUGE camping enthusiast, because I haven’t figured out how to invest my housing money elsewhere and avoid eviction. A dollar can only go one place.

If you pay 2000 per month rent for 30 years, you’ve laid out $720,000 to someone else and accomplished two things: avoided being homeless and paid the maximum in taxes possible. If you pay a mortgage over 30 years, you’ve paid tens of thousands less in taxes and you have an asset of considerable value that you own, even if it hasn’t appreciated a dime. 

So, here is my question for all the bar graph guys who think they’ll have more money in 30 years playing the market while avoiding the pox of home ownership: where will you live while you’re being an investment genius? In a pile of stock certificates with no plumbing or cable? A box? Your car? 

Ann has started her own blog, focusing on Gregory, who is on the spectrum for autism. G-man is, thank God, extremely communicative and affectionate, and as this video shows, he loves to be tickled. This is one of Ann’s favorite videos, and she figured out how to put it on her sidebar.  The “Dugga Dugga” game, as Gregory calls it, sends him into hysterics, and has been used to transition him from frustration elsewhere a number of times.

Given our schedule, especially with the time I spend in the field, times like this are special. Our children do inspire us, and they make the challenges the business sometimes pose more bearable. There are things I never would have done as a single guy that I embrace as a dad. But embracing Gregory tops it all.

This article in the Real Deal caught my attention. According to the NY Times, foreclosure filings in New York State for 2009 are up 17 percent from the prior year, with just over 48,000 cases. Not all filings automatically become bank repossessions, but the number of those spiked enormously. Earlier this year I worked quite a bit in Queens and I was shocked at the high percentage of the places I was showing that were short sales and bank owned properties.  

Many of those filings will become short sales, loan modifications or get pulled back by the homeowners through other means (like paying the arrearage if at all possible). But even if that happens, the sheer raw volume of filings will end up with more REO properties hitting the market, as I first noticed earlier this year. Not surprisingly, the recession has caused other reasons for the courts to be busy- evictions, domestic violence, divorce and business disputes are all signs of an economy that is buckling from enormous stress. 

Stress is the operative word. It describes the people and the conditions. 

Russell Shaw of AgentGenius passes on a powerful email being sent to agents on how to deal with Bank of America’s difficulty with short sales- don’t send them any new mortgage business.

My comment was as follows:

Well, it isn’t surprising that this letter is being distributed. I haven’t gotten one but you reap what you sow. There was a time when Countrywide was the Grinch of short sales. When they were acquired by B of A people thought things might get better, but they didn’t. It should only take as much time to approve a short sale as it takes to underwrite a mortgage- the process is analogous. That we have to drag the lender, kicking and screaming, to get more money than they’d get if it went to REO explains how this industry thinks. It also explains how we got into this mess.

I have blogged about how lame the banks are about short sales here. 

Bryant Tutas was a frequent commenter on the story and pointed out that an organized boycott would be illegal collusion. He made some other good points here. Yes, part of the problem is lame agents. But it is hard even for a good agent when the lender won’t cooperate. I have dynamite people ( a NY law firm) doing my short sales and we get frustrated with all the stonewalling, red tape and delays. 

Are you, like me, just a little burned out on networking websites?  I Tweet, do Facebook, and LinkedIn ; there are dozens of others. I’ve been hyperactive on on Active Rain lately.  I have a YouTube channel. A Technocrati profile. Digg. Reddit. In real estate I’m on Zillow and Trulia, and that is just the tip of the iceburg. We don’t do this because it’s fun by and large. It is work, and we labor to maximize search engine optimization, to get found,  cultivate readership, and develop clientèle. Writing the blog is fun and relaxing. The other stuff is work.

Enter this morning’s email from Plaxo. I registered there years ago at the behest of a former co worker. Since then they’ve spammed emailed me for years. I ignored it until this morning when I broke down and linked Plaxo with my Facebook to minimize my efforts (I hope). Will it help? I sure hope it will. It can’t hurt. 

When I see other people who seem to have the whole networking widget universe set up with aplomb I must admit that I get a little jealous (Damn you Somers team in Philly! Damn you!). I just don’t want to do all the work. And don’t get me started on Typekey, WordPress, signing into things with my Yahoo!, Google, AOL, or other established account. I know the importance of this stuff, but I have to earn a living. And these children want to play with Daddy. 

Of course, when I finally get my act together with all these buttons, widgets, profiles and other cyber paraphernalia, it will go the way of Friendster or LiveJournal. A pimp’s work is never done.

If you’ve ever driven on any of the Westchester County Parkways, perhaps you’ve seen a quasi-official looking blue and white truck with the initials H.E.L.P. on the side. That stands for Highway Emergency Local Patrol, and they go around aiding people with car trouble. I have no idea what the cost is the the taxpayer; I do know that I ran out of gas Tuesday. 

I was driving down the Sprain Brook Parkway, right next to the reservoir when I saw I was on fumes. Just as my mind began to race about the next exit, I felt that hesitation. I coasted to a stop, dry as a bone. I was angry with myself. Trying to do too much for too many in too short a time, I was supposed to meet with a client at a construction site. And it was really cold out. 

After calling Ann & Ronnie (our admin), we found that there was no number for these guys. You have to call 911 and they send them. So I did. And the guy came. Two gallons of gas, courtesy of the taxpayers of Westchester county (the friendly snickers were free), and I was back on the road. I would have taken better photos, but I was too much of a wimp in the cold, so everything was from the drivers seat.  

One of the most common questions I get from buyers about an area they are considering is the following:

How good are the schools? 

It is a fair question. It factors in to their quality of life, the future welfare of their children, and resale value of the home they are considering. I also can’t answer the question. It is a fair housing issue, and licensees who recommend one town or district over another may in engaging in illegal steering.

So what are we to do? Well, silly as it may sound, while licensees ought not compare school districts, we can give our clients sources of the information they seek. It actually makes some sense; we don’t answer legal questions either, but we can refer people to a lawyer.

Here are some good sources of information on school districts: 

• Westchester School District Report Cards– published by the State of New York.
• National Center for Education Statistics– published by the US Department of Education
• Westchester School District Profiles– map based, put out by the Westchester County government. Mostly census data. 

• School Digger
• Public school review
• New York Public school rankings

If you Google school rankings there are lots of results, but I’m not sure of their data source. Caveat emptor. I’d start with the first three.