I have just listed three great homes for sale in the city of White Plains. 

1. 35 Manor Ave, White Plains NY 10605. Over 3000 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, Full finished basement, 2 car garage, huge updated kitchen. $599,900.  
2. 8 Harwood Avenue, White Plains NY 10603. Gorgeous pre war Tudor styled ranch with a fireplace, deck, patio, fantastic woodwork, den, garage and neat as a pin. $475,000.  
3. 15 Stewart Place, White Plains NY 10603. 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath duplex condo at Heritage Towers with a fantastic location, balcony, parking space and patio in move in condition. $399,000.  

Located in northwest Westchester County, the Hendrick Hudson School district is in the town of Cortlandt and encompasses parts of Croton, Cortlandt Manor, Peekskill, and all of Montrose, Verplanck and Buchanan, which is where Hendrick Hudson High school is located. All information is from the Westchester Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 

Transaction totals are the same as 2009, with 9 closed sales each month; Median price is up from $430,000 to $535,00; and 13 homes are under contract for sale at a median asking price of $489,900, all of which are a positive movement up. The market area is quite healthy given the times we face. 

83 homes are actively for sale, giving the area ample consumer choice.

Previous posts on the Hendrick Hudson School District real estate market. 

Find a home in the area by opening a free Listing Book account. 

Since I have Croton on the mind, I’ll share a recent “date night” Ann and I had recently.

Hey. Get your mind out of the gutter. That’s my job.

We went to Memphis Mae’s, a terrific Barbecue Restaurant right in the heart of the village with fantastic ribs, wings, pulled pork, Cajun food, and plenty more. 

The decor is very nice: tin ceiling, nice, clean bar (no TV. This is not a pub, and they don’t push for a bar crowd. They are about the food), and Mardis Gras beads adorn the fixtures. 

You can get anything from a snack of wings all the way up to a nice steak dinner with all the side dishes you can think of. They have all the things you might expect, like chili, catfish and brisket, but they are creative as well: we had barbecue calamari and fried oysters. As a matter of fact, the choices and combinations were mind boggling. Click on the link and check out their menu. Or, you can check out the menu here, as modeled by the lovely (and shy) former Ms. Lee. 

The prices were very reasonable as well. 

Memphis Mae’s is located at Croton Commons, 173 South Riverside Ave, Croton on Hudson, NY 10520. They can be reached at 914-271-0125. 

Westchester residents have long known the strategic role our county plays in the New York City water supply. Our network or reservoirs, dams and aqueducts provide the lion’s share of water to the largest city in the country, but they also give us some fantastic parks and pieces of scenery. Today I had the opportunity to drive through Cortlandt Manor and Croton on Hudson, and the reservoir views with autumn here were breathtaking.

Croton Gorge Park is the site of the Croton Dam, which along with Kensico Dam helped create the whole reservoir system. The park is open from 8am to dusk, has plenty of parking and greenery, and the view of the gorge waterfall is awe inspiring. We brought the kids today and they absolutely loved it. I saved it to the GPS favorites so Ann can bring them back whenever she wants. It is 10 minutes from our home and worth a drive far longer. If you are ever near Croton or north Westchester, this is for the bucket list. 

Croton Gorge Park is just off Route 129, north of the village of Croton on Hudson. It is about 5 minutes from Route 9A. 

I thought I’d do something different and compare the 3rd quarter of 2010 with the previous years going back to 2005 to see if there was anything helpful that could be concluded. This is for single family homes sold in Westchester, and all data is taken from the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 

Two things jump out immediately:

1. 2009 median price was deplorable. Way down. And just to double check, I did the mean price, and it too, was also down about $100,000. 
2. After the sub prime crisis of 2007, transaction totals were way down. 

Even if you consider 2005 abnormally high and 06-07 to be more “normal,” there are 300-500 sales not happening in the years 2008-2010. More than price, that lower transaction total is where the current housing depression lives. 

Therefore, the 2010 $730,000 median price is not nearly as robust as the 2005 $710,000 median price. 800 fewer deals X $700,000 is $560,000,000, or over half a billion, less commerce. One county, no matter how affluent, cannot sustain a recovery with those numbers. All it means is that the upscale market rebounded some, buoying the lower cost market statistically, but if you didn’t sell, the only number that matters is “zero.”

While we do not know what the future holds with the foreclosure market in limbo, the numbers would indicate that we are past the nadir. 

Buy and hold. Or, buy and live. 

I wrote this as a comment on a post on defaulted mortgages, and I deemed my thoughts worth posting on their own. 

There is a difference between strategic defaults and true distress. Buy and bail strategic defaults, in other words, people who move from their $300,000 home to an identical one for $180k, say they are renting out their old home and then just mail the keys back to the lender, are not the same people stripping the copper pipes in disgust in my experience.

I speak with people facing foreclosure and short sales daily. It is a big chunk of my business. 

Many of the people who are in default were promised they could refinance out of an option ARM or exotic loan they were sold by loan officers who are all too often in another industry now.

Many are honest folks who called their lender earnestly asking for a refinance or loan modification and were told they had to default to get their loan mod…and after a year of red tape hell, outright lies and complete indifference by the merry go round of bank grunts, they face losing their homes.

You also have legions of people who lost their jobs and have scratched and clawed back to employment who can resume payment but can’t write a fat check for their arrears.

There is no simple mechanism to help these people. All we have is bank fiat, government lip service, and snark from people  pointing their bony fingers at a contract which is probably in a shredder or storage facility in India. 

That’s not the blueprint for recovery.

When will we wake up and realize that cutting the banks slack is cutting our own throats? 

Inman News published a column today entitled “Robo Scandal” Lacks Substance, Victims. Craig Swan at Bloodhound Blog opines Foreclosuregate? A scandal? If you want to sue for damages, it behooves you to have suffered a real, actual, material injury. And lastly (but probably not for long) our fellow ‘Rainer Cody Hayworth offers the solution to the economy’s woes to be allowing banks to foreclose faster. If I have one more person repeat “Ya pay ya stay ya don’t ya won’t” I’ll kick my dog. Or barf. Maybe barf on my dog. 

Perhaps we’ve lost our minds, or our hearts, or both. Foreclosure is a capital case. It involves the death of a home. It should be treated as such, with no margin for error, and reverent respect for every detail. Why? Because someone’s home is involved, that’s why. Because someone’s kid may have to be yanked out of a special education class. Because someone may need to live near, or with, their 85-year old mother. Because a pet may have to go to a shelter. Because it is their MFing home, that’s why. 

You don’t need a little old lady with a paid off house getting erroneously foreclosed to find a victim. When a judge is handed 15 files for foreclosures with the same name signed in 12 different signatures, that’s bad. Sorry. Call me crazy. Due process is what makes this country what it is. Take that away and we are a banana republic. Are 99.9% of the people in foreclosure in default? Yes. 

But are 99.9% of people in foreclosure trying to live rent free? Hardly. I have had short sales get foreclosed on with the short sale in process because the bastards at the lender wouldn’t wait a few weeks. They never got as an REO what they would have gotten in the short sale. But they did it anyway. There are legions of people in America right now who fell behind on their payments who could probably resume paying but can’t cure their back payments. You mean to tell me a forbearance on the arrears is an inferior choice to foreclosing on them? Anyone who is trying to do the decent thing by their lender and is foreclosed on 30 seconds too soon is a victim. Period. 

If so-called “procedural laxities” thwart earnest efforts to modify or do a short sale, no denial of bad intent on the banks part absolves them of wrongdoing. We live in a society where mailing a mortgage check to the wrong PO box or making the check out with a typo can cause 6 months of abject hell on good, decent people who are left to fend for themselves to fix the problem with uncaring, monolithic banks and credit agencies who execute death by red tape. These same entities can’t be held to the lawful standards in their own paperwork filings? 

Seriously? 

I cannot imagine being self employed and never reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. I first read it when I was about 22 and it is one of about half a dozen books (most of which have been in print longer than I have been alive) that I consider to be Rosetta Stones of success. It was published in 1937 and over 30 million copies later remains one of the most widely read books of its kind, ranking in the top 10 business paperbacks sold 73 years after its initial release. That is staying power. 

The period the book came out was far worse than our own; the country was still in the Great Depression and people were hungry to figure out how succeed and better their lot in life. Hill, who was already an advisor to President Roosevelt, wrote the manuscript at the behest of Andrew Carnegie, one of the nation’s wealthiest men at that time. Few books maintain relevance 8 decades after publication. One might think that there is little we might relate to from 1937, what people faced, and how they lived. However, the message is timeless, and that is what makes Think and Grow Rich a classic that will probably be as important in 50 years as it was a half century ago. And to think that I first thought the title to be specious and belie a gimmick. Silly me. 

The copy I first read has long since disintegrated- my current version isn’t even dog eared. Given the times we are in, I am going to dive back in. I recall being very inspired after my first reading – I felt as if I controlled my destiny. True wealth begins in the mind. What an idea. There were many others. Read it and find out. 

If you have not read it, do so. Especially in this day and age, the message is fresh, relevant and timeless. The principles of success have no expiration date. 

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

(Si prega di perdonare il mio italiano)

Dopo il 1900, mio nonno Salvatore Faranda è venuto negli Stati Uniti d’America alla ricerca di una vita migliore. Egli è venuto a Ellis Island, come molti italiani e si stabilì a New York. Aveva solo circa 16, e non avrebbe mai vedere i suoi genitori. Ma ha lavorato duro e con mia nonna ha sollevato mio padre e zio. Nonno servita nel servizio del nostro paese nella prima guerra mondiale e ha lavorato come barbiere per molti anni.

Il nonno non è mai diventato un uomo ricco, ma aveva un cuore gentile ed era amato teneramente dai suoi figli e nipoti. Non ho mai conosciuto mio nonno. E ‘morto prima che io nascessi, ma so che sognava una vita buona per i suoi figli e nipoti. Non è stato facile per gli italiani nel 20esimo secolo, ma hanno lavorato duro per il sogno americano. Non ha mai posseduto una casa. Era un uomo semplice e pieno di speranza per i suoi figli. Mio padre ha parlato di suo padre, con amore e rispetto.

Su questo Columbus Day del 2010, voglio ringraziare mio nonno per venire in America e di iniziare una buona vita per la sua famiglia. Il nonno Salvatore, guarda dal cielo e vedere il tuo pronipoti! Vogliono per niente, dormono in letti caldi, giocare in un grande cortile e vivere senza paura o la fame.

Grazie nonno per essere venuti qui con le tasche vuote, ma un pieno di sogni nel tuo cuore! Il tuo nipoti e pronipoti vi ringrazio per averci aiutato a vivere il tuo sogno si avvera!

Traduci in inglese (non perfetto, ma avrai l’idea)

This is for single family home activity in the Pleasantville school district for September of 2010. All information is derived from the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. Pleasantville is right next to Briarcliff Manor and has one of the best downtowns in North Westchester bar none. It is also the home of Pace University. 

Compared to September 2009, Pleasantville sales volume increased from 2 to 5 closed transactions. The median price is up about $65,000, which bodes well for the strength of values. The 9 homes under contract have a median asking price of $579,000 which is also very robust. 

It is no wonder. Pleasantville is aptly named- a gorgeous little village with beautiful homes right on the Harlem line of Metro North.  If you’d like to search for a home in Pleasantville, get yourself a free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent.

Previous postings on Pleasantville.