Well, how about a 2700 square foot contemporary with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths on almost an acre and a half in the Croton Colony Community? This home closed last Wednesday, October 13. It has a fireplace, large eat in kitchen, sliding doors to the deck, dining room, and a bright airy feeling thanks to the skylights. It is in the Lakeland school district. The homeowners association membership includes a swimming pool and clubhouse. It was on the market only 22 days before going under contract and closed in 98 days. Clearly, the dollar buys more these days in Cortlandt Manor than even a year ago.
The home was listed by Vivian Morales-Guerrero and sold by Ellise DiRoma, both of J. Philip Real Estate. .
I am going to bang a drum I have been banging since the sub prime crisis in 2007 began to erode the equity of so many people, and it is simple: if the housing market is going to recover, we have to have to do better than a 20th century solution to our 21st century problem. We are facing the largest liquidation of property in the history of the republic, yet banks are doing nothing differently to dispense with their toxic assets than they were in the 1930’s, which is to foreclose, repossess, and dump.
I would strongly assert, having worked with default properties a chunk of my career, that short sales are the answer to restoring the market to equilibrium and recovery, and yet lenders still have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the closing table when they ironically net far less after far longer on the REO side, where they are suddenly in a ridiculous hurry.
The advantages are enormous:
In a short sale, the bank doesn’t have to take 1-2 years to repossess the home. They avoid having a non-performing asset any longer than they have to. They get their money faster.
In a short sale, there are no legal fees associated with a foreclosure. They save money.
In a short sale, the bank does not have to manage the property, put the utilities in their name, or winterize the property except in rare cases. No preservation company expenses, property management overhead, winterizations or utility costs. They save carrying costs.
No evictions. Short sales are seldom boarded up, vandalized, or vacant. They therefore net the lender more money.
No sheriffs deeds, no right of redemptions headaches.
No title ambiguities, which is a big concern in the wake of the foreclosure moratorium.
The short sales help the borrowers as well, because they are able to dispense with the property with dignity, avoid the credit catastrophe of a foreclosure, and re-enter the pool of buyers far sooner and with less shell shock and trauma the rest of their lives.
Sadly, the architecture of lenders is still that of 15, 25 and 50 years ago: None of the brighter bulbs work in liquidation or loss mitigation, and the staff on the REO side is the only part of their workforce motivated to sell and close. That is fine when foreclosures and distress are rare and relegated to deadbeats, but the USA didn’t become a nation of deadbeats in the last 18 months, we had our bank accounts raided. We lost our jobs. We lost our equity. And folks deserve better than hourly grunts who lose faxes, watch clocks, and treat red tape like a badge of honor.
Moreover, the American people deserve executives who can show a modicum of remorse or contrition for their royal screw up, are willing to change their corporate culture to adapt to the need for more short sales in a shorter time frame, and, maybe, just maybe, stop referring to the property in abstract terms like “assets” when they should instead understand that these are their lifeblood customers, and the “asset” is that lifeblood’s home.
It is a shame that there is no political will on either side of the isle to hold lenders feet to the fire to affect meaningful change, and defaulted homeowners must contend with a mad race to work a miracle with an uncaring, unresponsive monolithic entity before that monster forecloses, repossesses their home, wrecks their credit and crushes their dreams. This is not progress.
I have just listed three great homes for sale in the city of White Plains.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.”
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Sadly, the architecture of lenders is still that of 15, 25 and 50 years ago: None of the brighter bulbs work in liquidation or loss mitigation, and the staff on the REO side is the only part of their workforce motivated to sell and close. That is fine when foreclosures and distress are rare and relegated to deadbeats, but the USA didn’t become a nation of deadbeats in the last 18 months, we had our bank accounts raided. We lost our jobs. We lost our equity. And folks deserve better than hourly grunts who lose faxes, watch clocks, and treat red tape like a badge of honor.
Since I have Croton on the mind, I’ll share a recent “date night” Ann and I had recently.
