Published on July 15, 2008
by Katherine Boehret
If you’re a BlackBerry user, you’re probably getting tired of hearing about all the things Apple’s iPhone can do. Rumor even has it that a more iPhone-like BlackBerry is in the works. But don’t despond: Your current trusty emailing device has a few tricks up its sleeve that you may not know about.
This week, I gathered up some useful shortcuts that come built into most of the BlackBerrys, even older models, made by Research In Motion Ltd. but not many owners actually use or know about them. Ironically, most of these shortcuts are conducted using a BlackBerry feature that the iPhone lacks: its physical keyboard. (The iPhone uses a virtual keyboard that appears on-screen only when needed.)
Some of these shortcuts are seemingly obvious, like number or capitalization locks, but others are more obscure, like codes that can be entered to display the BlackBerry’s precise signal strength. Some shortcuts are performed with a single keystroke; others work in conjunction with a trackwheel or trackball, depending on your BlackBerry model, and still others work when two keys are pressed simultaneously. BlackBerrys with condensed keyboards that use auto-correcting SureType may require extra or different keystrokes.
Navigation Simplified
A series of keystrokes work in various BlackBerry applications to make navigation much faster. Pressing the Space bar works like Page Down on a computer keyboard, moving down one screen per press. Holding Shift while pressing the Space bar moves in the opposite direction, like the Page Up key. To quickly move to the very top or bottom of a page, press “T” or “B,” respectively. Another way to page down or up through lists is to hold the ALT key while scrolling with the trackwheel.
Users can toggle between the BlackBerry’s running applications without the extra step of navigating back to the Home screen. To do this, press ALT and the Escape key, then release Escape and use the trackwheel to scroll through a display of icons that represent running programs until you reach the desired program, then release the ALT key to select that program.
Messaging Magic
Shortcuts in BlackBerry messaging can be a real boon when you’re trying to get work done quickly. While looking at a list of emails, hit “C” to immediately start composing a new email. When a specific email is highlighted, pressing “R” will reply to that message; “L” will reply to all and “F” will forward it. Hitting “J” while an email is highlighted will jump directly to the oldest message in that email chain.
A list of emails can be more neatly organized from the message screen by holding the ALT key and pressing a letter. “I” will alter the list to show only incoming emails, “O” will show just those emails that were sent. “P” shows a phone log, including dates and times, and “s” displays all SMS messages made or received on the BlackBerry.
In the body of a message, pressing the Space bar twice inserts a period and capitalizes the next word. When the left Shift key and ALT are pressed together, the keyboard’s number lock is on; the right Shift key and ALT work as the caps lock. Holding any letter down will capitalize it, saving users from pressing another key to do so. To type a letter with an accent, hold the letter key down while scrolling up or down with the trackwheel until you find the correctly accented letter.
Type Less, Say More
While composing emails, a series of AutoText codes can be typed in the email body to automatically display certain phrases or information. Typing “mynumber” and a space in the text of an email will automatically display your BlackBerry’s phone number. Similarly, when “LD” is entered the local date is displayed, and when “LT” is typed the local time appears.
If your email inbox is full and you can’t send emails, find out the PIN of your recipient’s BlackBerry and use it to message the person directly. (To find your own PIN, type “mypin” and a space into the body of an email. This code can be used to send PIN messages from one device to another without using the device’s usual email system.)
Geeky Codes
If you’re just dying to know some techie details about your BlackBerry, the “Help Me!” screen will be right up your alley. To view the “Help Me!” screen, press ALT, Shift and “H” simultaneously. This displays data that won’t matter much to the average person, such as the device’s vendor ID, platform and free file space. But it also shows the exact percentage of remaining battery power on the BlackBerry, which could be helpful if you aren’t sure how to interpret the imprecise battery indicator bars at the top of the home screen.
Another way to geek up your BlackBerry is to change its signal strength indicator from bars to numbers that tell how many decibels per milliwatt the device is transmitting. To do this, go to the Home screen and hold down the ALT button while typing “NMLL.” My BlackBerry displayed a minus 75 when I made this change. Strengths of minus 50 to minus 90 are said to be good, while anything higher, like minus 100, isn’t. Though this numerical indicator won’t likely be of any practical use, you could use it to turn to a friend and compare reception during an excruciatingly boring meeting.
One way to impress a technophile on a date is by pulling up a BlackBerry’s Event Log. To do this, go to the Home screen and hold down ALT while typing “LGLG.” This retrieves a long list of numerous confusing codes representing the functions that were performed on your device. The Menu screen in the Event Log gives users the option to clear this log, freeing up some BlackBerry memory, while an Options screen lets people set the log up to record only certain kinds of activities.
Finally, to reboot your BlackBerry without removing its plastic back and taking out the battery, press ALT, Right Shift and Delete simultaneously. More codes can be found in the blogosphere or in a special section of RIM’s Web site: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/blackberry101/tips/. Adopting just one of these shortcuts can significantly change the way you use your BlackBerry.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
How to Sell a House, When You Have to Sell It Now
Seven tips for homeowners who can't wait until the market turns around
By DAVID CROOK
July 14, 2008; Page R1 Wall Street Journal
So you say you're selling your house?
Hey, it could be worse. You could be selling a Hummer.
If you've been waiting for a good offer to come through, this probably isn't exactly big news to you: This is the worst home-selling market since Herbert Hoover was president. In much of the country, prices are already way down and probably heading even further south. Houses are sitting on the market for months longer than sellers expected.
And don't think this is just a momentary lull, a short slowdown before the market recovers and then takes off again. What you see today is the market you have, for now and, quite possibly, for a long time to come.
"At best, I think we're a year away from the bottom," says Sally Bodmer, who has sold Tampa-area real estate for 31 years and has never seen a worse selling climate. She operates mainly in the newer suburbs on the far eastern edge of the metropolitan area. It was a super-hot area in 2005, when developers couldn't build houses fast enough. "Now," she says, "you can't give them away."
To be sure, things are not awful everywhere. Prices in metropolitan areas bypassed by the Big Bubble -- places such as Charlotte, N.C., or Rochester, N.Y. -- have held relatively firm or risen modestly through the Big Bust. And in some of the worst markets, elite properties and houses in the best neighborhoods may still buck the trends.
But even the perennial playgrounds of the upper crust aren't immune. According to Zillow, a real-estate Web site, prices in Palm Beach, Fla., are down about 10% from last year. Prices are down 13% in Santa Barbara, Calif.
So what's a home seller to do? What does it take to sell a house today?
If your job or life circumstances leave you no alternative other than to sell in this market, you must be prepared to go well beyond the usual feints and gimmicks if you want to get potential buyers in the front door and, ultimately, to the closing table. By all means, feng shui the living room, bury a statue of St. Joseph in the front yard and bake brownies before the open house.
But if you really want to sell the place, you need to think and act like a salesperson. Most important, you must separate your emotional attachment to your family home from your financial interest in your family's largest asset. Selling a house is business, and you must approach the sale in a businesslike manner.
Here are seven points to keep in mind:
1. DON'T WAIT AROUND.
Even in the better housing areas, it's taking a long time to sell houses; and in the hardest-hit metro areas, inventories of unsold homes are stretching well past 180 days.
So, don't try to sit out the market. That's what hundreds of other timid sellers are doing, each of them hoping -- somehow, some way -- that hanging on the sidelines will improve prices and, ultimately improve his or her chances for selling success. It won't. Not if you expect to sell anytime soon. If you want your place sold, the best way to make sure that happens is to put it up for sale.
Obviously, you should take advantage of your local market cycles -- early spring is usually better for selling in much of the country -- but otherwise don't try timing the market. You won't have any better luck than a stock trader who's always holding out for the market highs or lows.
2. FIX IT UP AND CLEAN IT UP.
Buyers are taking your house out on a date. It has to make a good impression.
Don't spend a lot of money -- absolutely no big-ticket renovations -- but do see that everything is in good repair. And give the place a new paint job and a general sprucing up. (Caution: This won't necessarily give you any pricing advantage over less fixed-up places, but it will attract buyers and keep them interested.)
As you get closer to the date that the house actually goes up for sale, start moving out by decluttering the place. No buyer wants to see a house filled to the rafters with other people's things. They want to imagine their stuff filling the place. "Stage" the place with only enough furniture to make it look livable; put the rest in storage.
3. PRICE IT CHEAPLY.
Don't fight the market by trying to price your house at bubble-era levels or by factoring in all those improvements you made. It won't fly.
Set a realistic, salable price on day one. Don't let the house hang around on the market as you gradually lower the price. Forget what you think the house should be worth or what it was worth three years ago. That's not what it's worth today.
Smart buyers will be looking for bargains. So you must set your price below comparable nearby properties. Look at the asking prices of neighboring houses, and set your price to beat them. If prices in your area are generally down 20% from where they were at the bubble peak in 2005, then price your house 25% to 30% below its peak bubble value. Your area down 40%? Be prepared to take just half of what the house was worth three years ago. Yes, it's painful. But if you want to sell, you don't have much choice.
And remember: In much of the country, renting is still a better deal right now than buying. As you try to settle on a price, look at rents on comparable properties. Buyers are not likely to be counting on huge price appreciation, as they did during the bubble, so they may be less willing to take on the higher monthly costs of home buying and owning. You must set a price that makes someone's prospective mortgage and home-owning costs look like a better deal than a month's rent.
4. HIRE A TOP REAL-ESTATE AGENT.
Get the best, most aggressive selling (listing) agent you can find.
When everything was selling before it even hit the market, of course, you didn't need the best. You just needed the cheapest. But not these days.
Fortunately, in this market, real-estate brokers are even more anxious than you. They're eager to get whatever work they can, so don't rely on your cousin with the real-estate license or your best friend's wife.
Ask, instead, for the local real-estate office's top salesperson. All offices have one or two sellers who greatly outperform their colleagues. That's who you want.
Interview various agents and insist that they present you with a well-conceived marketing plan that goes way beyond the usual Internet page, one or two open houses and a yard sign. (Think about using a professional photographer for multiple shots on the primary Web listing, your house as the featured "home of the week" in the local newspaper, a decorating segment on a morning chat show, a stop on the local garden club's spring tour.)
Sellers of higher-end properties should be able to negotiate a lower commission percentage, but this is no time to quibble over a couple of percentage points. Also, offer the agent a big bonus if he or she sells the house in 30 days or at your asking price. Offer other agents bonuses if they bring in the ultimate buyer.
5. PROMOTE. PROMOTE. PROMOTE.
Don't rely on the agent to do all the work. The agent should pay the usual marketing costs, but you should be prepared to pony up for extras, especially if you insist on more expensive or untraditional promotions.
You want the house listed regularly in local newspaper classifieds and, if it's a special, high-end property in a desirable location, in national publications, too.
Make sure your house is on the leading real-estate Web sites; Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Eppraisal and Realtor.com are some of the top ones.
Beyond that, get really creative. Advertise in corporate newsletters and intranet listings. Check in with local relocation firms that help transferring corporate executives find new homes. List the house on eBay. Put it on Craigslist. Put it in your church bulletin.
Trophy house in an upscale neighborhood? Hire a string quartet for the open house. Something a bit more midmarket in a family-friendly subdivision? Put a clown on the corner handing out brochures.
6. PLAY THE BANKER.
As bad as things are, there's one big factor in your favor: the tight credit market. If you have no mortgage you have to pay off, your strongest selling point might be your ability to finance all or a substantial part of a buyer's purchase.
You're a lot more flexible than a bank that has the Federal Reserve looking over its shoulders, so you might even be able to charge a higher interest rate than a commercial lender as well as command a higher sale price. (You'll need a real-estate lawyer to make sure everything is done to protect you and an accountant to set up a payment system. Peer-to-peer lenders such as virginmoneyus.com3 have systems to handle mortgage payments.)
Worst case? Your borrower defaults and you take the property back. And sell it again.
7. TAKE THE OFFER.
If any qualified buyer comes in with a reasonable offer, be prepared to accept it.
You don't want to lose the deal by digging in your heels over a few dollars. Every real-estate office keeps records that show the percentage difference between asking and selling prices, so it's easy to figure what's an appropriate offer and what's not.
Negotiate, of course, but recognize that the buyer has a lot more clout than you do. Your house, as wonderful as you think it is, is worth only as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
And that, unfortunately, will probably be a lot less than you think.
By DAVID CROOK
July 14, 2008; Page R1 Wall Street Journal
So you say you're selling your house?
Hey, it could be worse. You could be selling a Hummer.
If you've been waiting for a good offer to come through, this probably isn't exactly big news to you: This is the worst home-selling market since Herbert Hoover was president. In much of the country, prices are already way down and probably heading even further south. Houses are sitting on the market for months longer than sellers expected.
And don't think this is just a momentary lull, a short slowdown before the market recovers and then takes off again. What you see today is the market you have, for now and, quite possibly, for a long time to come.
"At best, I think we're a year away from the bottom," says Sally Bodmer, who has sold Tampa-area real estate for 31 years and has never seen a worse selling climate. She operates mainly in the newer suburbs on the far eastern edge of the metropolitan area. It was a super-hot area in 2005, when developers couldn't build houses fast enough. "Now," she says, "you can't give them away."
To be sure, things are not awful everywhere. Prices in metropolitan areas bypassed by the Big Bubble -- places such as Charlotte, N.C., or Rochester, N.Y. -- have held relatively firm or risen modestly through the Big Bust. And in some of the worst markets, elite properties and houses in the best neighborhoods may still buck the trends.
But even the perennial playgrounds of the upper crust aren't immune. According to Zillow, a real-estate Web site, prices in Palm Beach, Fla., are down about 10% from last year. Prices are down 13% in Santa Barbara, Calif.
So what's a home seller to do? What does it take to sell a house today?
If your job or life circumstances leave you no alternative other than to sell in this market, you must be prepared to go well beyond the usual feints and gimmicks if you want to get potential buyers in the front door and, ultimately, to the closing table. By all means, feng shui the living room, bury a statue of St. Joseph in the front yard and bake brownies before the open house.
But if you really want to sell the place, you need to think and act like a salesperson. Most important, you must separate your emotional attachment to your family home from your financial interest in your family's largest asset. Selling a house is business, and you must approach the sale in a businesslike manner.
Here are seven points to keep in mind:
1. DON'T WAIT AROUND.
Even in the better housing areas, it's taking a long time to sell houses; and in the hardest-hit metro areas, inventories of unsold homes are stretching well past 180 days.
So, don't try to sit out the market. That's what hundreds of other timid sellers are doing, each of them hoping -- somehow, some way -- that hanging on the sidelines will improve prices and, ultimately improve his or her chances for selling success. It won't. Not if you expect to sell anytime soon. If you want your place sold, the best way to make sure that happens is to put it up for sale.
Obviously, you should take advantage of your local market cycles -- early spring is usually better for selling in much of the country -- but otherwise don't try timing the market. You won't have any better luck than a stock trader who's always holding out for the market highs or lows.
2. FIX IT UP AND CLEAN IT UP.
Buyers are taking your house out on a date. It has to make a good impression.
Don't spend a lot of money -- absolutely no big-ticket renovations -- but do see that everything is in good repair. And give the place a new paint job and a general sprucing up. (Caution: This won't necessarily give you any pricing advantage over less fixed-up places, but it will attract buyers and keep them interested.)
As you get closer to the date that the house actually goes up for sale, start moving out by decluttering the place. No buyer wants to see a house filled to the rafters with other people's things. They want to imagine their stuff filling the place. "Stage" the place with only enough furniture to make it look livable; put the rest in storage.
3. PRICE IT CHEAPLY.
Don't fight the market by trying to price your house at bubble-era levels or by factoring in all those improvements you made. It won't fly.
Set a realistic, salable price on day one. Don't let the house hang around on the market as you gradually lower the price. Forget what you think the house should be worth or what it was worth three years ago. That's not what it's worth today.
Smart buyers will be looking for bargains. So you must set your price below comparable nearby properties. Look at the asking prices of neighboring houses, and set your price to beat them. If prices in your area are generally down 20% from where they were at the bubble peak in 2005, then price your house 25% to 30% below its peak bubble value. Your area down 40%? Be prepared to take just half of what the house was worth three years ago. Yes, it's painful. But if you want to sell, you don't have much choice.
And remember: In much of the country, renting is still a better deal right now than buying. As you try to settle on a price, look at rents on comparable properties. Buyers are not likely to be counting on huge price appreciation, as they did during the bubble, so they may be less willing to take on the higher monthly costs of home buying and owning. You must set a price that makes someone's prospective mortgage and home-owning costs look like a better deal than a month's rent.
4. HIRE A TOP REAL-ESTATE AGENT.
Get the best, most aggressive selling (listing) agent you can find.
When everything was selling before it even hit the market, of course, you didn't need the best. You just needed the cheapest. But not these days.
Fortunately, in this market, real-estate brokers are even more anxious than you. They're eager to get whatever work they can, so don't rely on your cousin with the real-estate license or your best friend's wife.
Ask, instead, for the local real-estate office's top salesperson. All offices have one or two sellers who greatly outperform their colleagues. That's who you want.
Interview various agents and insist that they present you with a well-conceived marketing plan that goes way beyond the usual Internet page, one or two open houses and a yard sign. (Think about using a professional photographer for multiple shots on the primary Web listing, your house as the featured "home of the week" in the local newspaper, a decorating segment on a morning chat show, a stop on the local garden club's spring tour.)
Sellers of higher-end properties should be able to negotiate a lower commission percentage, but this is no time to quibble over a couple of percentage points. Also, offer the agent a big bonus if he or she sells the house in 30 days or at your asking price. Offer other agents bonuses if they bring in the ultimate buyer.
5. PROMOTE. PROMOTE. PROMOTE.
Don't rely on the agent to do all the work. The agent should pay the usual marketing costs, but you should be prepared to pony up for extras, especially if you insist on more expensive or untraditional promotions.
You want the house listed regularly in local newspaper classifieds and, if it's a special, high-end property in a desirable location, in national publications, too.
Make sure your house is on the leading real-estate Web sites; Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Eppraisal and Realtor.com are some of the top ones.
Beyond that, get really creative. Advertise in corporate newsletters and intranet listings. Check in with local relocation firms that help transferring corporate executives find new homes. List the house on eBay. Put it on Craigslist. Put it in your church bulletin.
Trophy house in an upscale neighborhood? Hire a string quartet for the open house. Something a bit more midmarket in a family-friendly subdivision? Put a clown on the corner handing out brochures.
6. PLAY THE BANKER.
As bad as things are, there's one big factor in your favor: the tight credit market. If you have no mortgage you have to pay off, your strongest selling point might be your ability to finance all or a substantial part of a buyer's purchase.
You're a lot more flexible than a bank that has the Federal Reserve looking over its shoulders, so you might even be able to charge a higher interest rate than a commercial lender as well as command a higher sale price. (You'll need a real-estate lawyer to make sure everything is done to protect you and an accountant to set up a payment system. Peer-to-peer lenders such as virginmoneyus.com3 have systems to handle mortgage payments.)
Worst case? Your borrower defaults and you take the property back. And sell it again.
7. TAKE THE OFFER.
If any qualified buyer comes in with a reasonable offer, be prepared to accept it.
You don't want to lose the deal by digging in your heels over a few dollars. Every real-estate office keeps records that show the percentage difference between asking and selling prices, so it's easy to figure what's an appropriate offer and what's not.
Negotiate, of course, but recognize that the buyer has a lot more clout than you do. Your house, as wonderful as you think it is, is worth only as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
And that, unfortunately, will probably be a lot less than you think.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
To Sell to Gen-Y, You Have to Meet Them Online
By Ilyce R. Glink with Samuel J. Tamkin
Saturday, July 5, 2008; F06
Real estate agents are used to competing heartily against one another for listings. They're used to competing against other agents who have comparable houses for sale in the same neighborhood. Local Realtor organizations host award ceremonies each year to recognize real agents with the most sales. Heck, real agents are even used to fighting for ad space in the local media.
But on the World Wide Web, the nature of real estate competition is changing -- particularly for those interested in snagging Gen Y-ers, those young and future home buyers who are now in their 20s.
For real estate agents, finding these buyers and interacting with them requires some of the same skills your teenager might have already mastered, combined with a mastery of local real estate and demographic information.
The second iteration of the Internet is known as Web 2.0, and at its core is social networking. Over the past four months, we've been dipping our toes into the social networking world, to better understand how today's teens and those in their 20s interact with one another and the outside world -- and what this means for real estate.
We started by launching Ilyce Glink sites at Facebook, MySpace, Current.com, Friendster, Bebo and elsewhere. These sites feature some of the real estate and personal finance content I've created through the years. The other part of our social networking strategy includes "twittering" regularly at Twitter.com/glink, uploading dozens of videos about real estate and personal finance to YouTube.com/expertrealestatetips, and signing up for LinkedIn.com, a site that allows business colleagues and partners to network, and tends to pitch toward a somewhat older crowd.
There are plenty of real estate agents, brokers, investors, educators and mortgage lenders who are already active on these sites.
Are you a real estate professional who wants to stand out in a crowd? There are fewer than 14,000 members of the "Real Estate Investing" group on MySpace, and fewer than 15,000 members of the top five real estate groups on Facebook. While that seems like a lot of people, there are probably few who live in your own neighborhood. You can also demonstrate your expertise by engaging in a group discussion.
Or, go for the "big fish in a small pond" mentality. There are loads of real estate-related groups to join that have fewer than 100 members. Social networking sites allow you to "friend" members of these groups, and start a group of your own.
You can join or start real estate-related groups with location-specific ties. Brokers with expertise in a specific neighborhood start groups that might provide information about a three-block-square area. Buyers and sellers interested in the happenings of that micro-market will be able to find out information that may be unavailable elsewhere. That can make your group popular.
If you're a broker in a college town with students who may be looking for a home, you might be able to link them into your site so they could get updates about neighborhoods they might want to live in after graduation. Agents are also connecting to one another, setting up relationships that can be profitable by increasing their referral networks.
The person heading up our initiative is our intern Claire Young, a student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Her observation? Although she says she learned about social networking in college, the next generation of kids will have social networking in their blood.
More than that, she confirms recent news reports that suggest people in her age group are using social networking to make many big-picture decisions, including renting an apartment, buying a car, getting married, buying a digital camera or buying a house.
Today's teenagers will grow up using the Internet to connect their social and business interactions. This clock can't be turned back.
Whether you work in real estate or some other business, here are some things to think about if you're going to dabble in Web 2.0:
· Social networking takes time. Connecting online can help build your business, but it takes awhile -- and time generally is in short supply for real estate agents.
· Be flexible. You can start with a plan but be prepared to make changes along the way. Be willing to try out new groups, change your profile and add features and content.
· Stay attuned to new technology and Web sites. New social networking sites pop up all the time. Most of them won't make it. But if you're among the first to sign up, you'll be able to get a jump on making connections.
· The more connections, the better. LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, your other social networking sites and your blog can all be linked together to help you build a strong online community. Create links from one to another. Connect Twitter and your blog so that they automatically upload to the other sites. Try to get your friends, colleagues and online connections to try out your other sites.
You don't have to be a technical genius to make this work. Most of the social networking sites we have joined make it easy to get started, upload written content, photos and video, and get going.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting these are uncharted territories by any stretch of the imagination. There are thousands of real estate agents and mortgage lenders who have signed up for these sites and are spending time trying to forge connections that will bring in business.
What's becoming clear is that you've got to be there, or you may be left behind.
Q I have a Veterans Administration loan and want to do a streamline refinance, which I've done before. I can't find what I believe is a true source of current VA loan rates. I've been to Bankrate.com and don't see the information I'm looking for. Can you help me find this information and choose the best lender? I also have a home equity line of credit that I would like to roll into the streamline refinance. Is this possible?
A Many lenders that offer conventional loans may also offer VA loans. But most VA loan rates are not advertised the same way conventional loan rates are advertised.
To find a good lender with expertise in VA loans, I'd start with the VA regional loan centers ( http://www.homeloans.va.gov/rlcweb.htm). Each of the regional loan centers has a Web site as well as a bricks-and-mortar office, and is set up to help veterans, active duty personnel, Reserve members and National Guard personnel with financing a home.
When shopping for a good lender, it helps to start with a couple of reputable lenders in your area. You should check in with a local bank or savings and loan in your area, particularly if they are active residential lenders who work often with VA loans. You should also contact a mortgage broker in your area and a national mortgage lender.
Ask each of the lenders to quote you the VA rate, and then ask them to tell you what fees they charge in connection with the loan. While VA loans have higher fees than conventional loans, you want to make sure the lender you approach does not add any additional fees to the transaction. If they do add additional fees, then you want to be able to compare the various lenders on equal footing.
If the lender is a good lender for conventional loans and they have experience with VA loans, you should be okay. The key is to make sure that that lender has done enough VA loans to get the deal done, but just because you find a lender that does only VA loans does not mean that the lender will be a good lender.
As far as your equity line is concerned, you should be able to obtain a VA loan to refinance both your loans. Unfortunately, whether the lender will be able to "streamline" your application may depend on your particular circumstances.
While VA loans have not been affected the same way as the rest of the mortgage market by the credit crunch, my impression is that your application for a VA loan will require full documentation.
You may be able to get a streamlined loan, but I don't know if your circumstances or even the general real estate market in your area would affect your ability to obtain a VA loan with limited documentation, particularly when you are paying off the equity line you have and increasing the amount you want to borrow.
Your best bet is to sit down with a lender with extensive experience with VA loans and go over these issues.
How has the residential market been in Albany, N.Y., over the past year or two? I have an investment property there (three-unit), and I am trying to get an idea how badly I will get hit if I try to sell, or if I will escape the worst of the housing slump. Do you know of any reports or studies that would be helpful?
It's difficult to know how any particular real estate market is doing. You can look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight home price index, which indicates that housing in New York state fell just over 4 percent in value in the past year. Or, you can look at the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which are based on 20 top housing markets (not including Albany), and which indicate that home prices are down roughly 15 to 16 percent from their high.
None of these tell you what's going on in a neighborhood. And, when it comes to real estate, the old mantra of "location, location, location" remains valid. It's all about what's going on down the block and in your back yard.
If you're thinking about selling your investment property, you should invite three top neighborhood agents in to do a comparative marketing analysis of the property. This analysis is an agent's calling card. He or she will walk through your property, go back to the office and pull up the comparable sales of similar properties in the neighborhood. Then the agent will come back with a marketing plan and a suggested list price. You'll be able to see the research: what has sold in your neighborhood, when it sold, and for how much.
After reviewing the data, you can make a decision to sell or keep your rental property.
My daughter is buying a house from me with 25 percent down in cash. We can close anytime, and, at age 28, she has excellent credit (over 700). Should she get a mortgage now or should we hold off a few months for a better interest rate, as rates are now climbing again?
I don't think anyone knows where interest rates are going at the moment. But it's true that mortgage interest rates have been on the rise lately, despite the Federal Reserve lowering the short-term federal funds rate. That, in conjunction with falling home values, is making some buyers nervous.
I hope mortgage interest rates don't climb much beyond where they are at the moment. If they go too much higher, first-time buyers may have trouble qualifying for a home.
In your case, it sounds as though you have the luxury of time. If I were you, I would help your daughter find a quality lender and get pre-approved for her mortgage. That way, when you're ready to close, the lender will be ready as well.
If your daughter decides to obtain financing now and rates go down to a level that would justify her refinancing the loan, she can do that later. The interest rate your daughter gets on her loan today is still near a historically low level.
Rates may rise over the next couple of months, and if she waits she will have lost the opportunity to get today's rates. But if she takes today's rates and over the next year or two rates decrease, she can refinance. And, if rates decrease after she applies for the loan, many lenders will give her the ability to re-lock her loan rate once or twice before the deal closes.
My father and I are joint tenants with rights of survivorship on a two-family house. He is 88 and is not well. We went to a real estate lawyer and had the house put in my name.
If Dad goes into a nursing home, what is the lookback period for Medicaid? Would Medicaid be entitled to half of the equity in the property? Would I have to sell the house?
Under new federal rules, the Medicaid lookback period is five years from the date of transfer. In other words, if Medicaid has to pay for your father's stay in a nursing home because your dad is broke, the government could reverse any transfer of wealth from your father to anyone for the previous five years, if they suspect him of trying to hide assets or he transferred assets that could have been used to pay for Medicaid costs.
Would you have to sell the property? Maybe. It's also possible the government would put a lien against the property that would have to be satisfied when the property is sold or refinanced down the line.
For more details, talk to a real estate lawyer or an estate lawyer.
Ilyce R. Glink is an author and nationally syndicated columnist. Her latest book is "100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask." Samuel J. Tamkin is a real estate lawyer in Chicago. If you have questions for them, write Real Estate Matters Syndicate, P.O. Box 366, Glencoe, Ill. 60022, or contact them through Glink's Web sites, http://www.thinkglink.comandhttp://www.expertrealestatetips.net.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
A Quarter Much Like The Last One?
By KAREN RICHARDSON
June 26, 2008; Page C1
It is confessional time in the quarter -- the moment every three months when companies are most likely to come forward to acknowledge their profit shortcomings to investors. So far, no news might be good news.
With just a few days left until the end of the second quarter, 81 companies in the S&P 500-stock index have issued profit warnings. That's included companies like United Parcel Service, Ford Motor and Citigroup. Meanwhile, 41 have preannounced positive results.
The mix of positive warnings and negative warnings is pretty much in line with historical levels, says John Butters, director of U.S. earnings at Thomson Reuters. Just ahead of the end of the first quarter, for example, 88 companies warned they would miss expectations, while 39 companies said they would beat them.
That suggests the second quarter could be shaping up to look a lot like the past few quarters: truly dismal for the likes of banks, auto makers and home builders, but not so bad -- all things considered -- for the rest.
Excluding the battered financial sector, the S&P 500 is expected to report second-quarter earnings growth of 8.1%. That compares with 7% in the first quarter, and 11.7% in the fourth quarter of last year, according to Mr. Butters. Strip out energy, too, and S&P 500 profits are expected to be up 3.9% this quarter, compared with 2.7% in the first quarter.
It isn't great news for bulls, who don't get great earnings to push stocks higher. But it also looks like the bears won't soon get the big bust they've been waiting for.
How Much to Blame Fed For Bouncing Bubble?
There's a bubble theory about the miseries afflicting the economy and financial markets right now. It goes something like this:
Ever since the tech-stock bubble burst at the end of the 1990s, the Federal Reserve has kept the economy from feeling too much pain by using low interest rates to push that bubble from one asset class to another. First it went from tech stocks to housing, keeping consumers spending and the economy more or less afloat. Now, some say, the bouncing bubble has landed in a place that's not so helpful: commodities.
"For 10 years, we've been rolling forward every piece of bad news, and finally we've run out of things to roll forward to," says Howard Simons, a strategist at Chicago-based Bianco Research. "We've kept creating bubble after bubble after bubble. Now instead of asset inflation we have consumer inflation."
The next bubble might also be floating to the alternative-energy sector, which raised nearly $14.8 billion in initial public offerings of stock last year -- more than the $11.6 billion that tech-stock IPOs raised in 1998, according to Dealogic.
To be sure, much about the energy boom is out of the Fed's control. It doesn't drive economic growth in China, India and other emerging markets, a source of commodities demand.
But the Fed certainly could go a long way toward hurting commodity prices by raising rates until the global economy cracks. Wednesday's actions made clear it's in no hurry to do that.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Rigueur, discipline, exigence!
As with Fashion, to succeed in the world, you always have to first succeed in New York. Then there is Europe, then U.S., and then the rest of the world.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Blood Clots/Stroke - They Now Have a Fourth Indicator, the Tongue.
STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters.... S.T.R.
A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke... totally . He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.
Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
(i.e. It is sunny out today)
NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue.. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other , that is also an indication of a stroke.
Friday, May 16, 2008
AngryRenter.com
Mortgage Bailout
Infuriates Tenants
(And Steve Forbes)
'Angry Renter' Web Site
Has Grass-Roots Look,
But This Turf Is Fake
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
May 16, 2008; Page A1
WASHINGTON -- AngryRenter.com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows -- all emphasizing prudent renters' outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners.
"It seems like America's renters may NEVER be able to afford a home," AngryRenter.com laments. The Web site urges like-minded tenants to let Congress feel their fury by signing an online petition. "We are millions of renters standing up for our rights!"
Angry they may be, but the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It's a fake grass-roots effort -- what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign -- that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington.
The housing crisis has sparked broad financial and economic distress. The House of Representatives responded last week by passing a bill that would provide up to $300 billion in federal insurance to help refinance troubled mortgages. President Bush has threatened to veto it, calling the measure a reward for speculators. On Thursday, key Senate Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement in principle on a compromise housing-rescue bill.
This week, officials from FreedomWorks, the organization behind the site, delivered to Senate leaders antibailout petitions signed by 44,500 people who clicked their agreement on AngryRenter.com, at least some of whom thought its grass was real.
AngryRenter.com does get to the center of the housing debate: Who deserves help and who pays for it? The average U.S. home price fell 12.5% between the second quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2008, according to Fiserv Inc.'s Case-Shiller Home Price Index and Moody's Economy.com. Prices are projected to fall another 12.5% by the second quarter of 2009, before they rise again, Economy.com forecasts.
As interest rates on some mortgages rise, many homeowners are unable to make their payments or refinance into cheaper loans. An estimated 2.5 million Americans are expected to lose their homes between this year and next, more than twice the pace during normal times, according to Economy.com.
FreedomWorks officials say the current housing bill is just the beginning of what could be an onslaught of election-year bailout legislation. By providing relief to mortgage holders, the site argues, the government will prop up housing prices and reward people who borrowed more than they could afford to buy more house than they needed. That will continue to freeze out renters who were sidelined as home costs soared.
"We are the class that has been ignored in this debate," the site says.
Heavy Dose of Innocence
FreedomWorks puts its copyright on AngryRenter.com and discloses on the back pages that it is the source of the effort. The site is nonetheless designed to look underdoggy and grass-rootsy, with a heavy dose of aw-shucks innocence.
"Unfortunately, renters aren't as good at politics as the small minority of homeowners (and their bankers) who are in trouble," the site says. "We don't have lobbyists in Washington, DC. We don't get a tax deduction for our rent and we don't get sweetheart government loans."
FreedomWorks and its affiliated foundation took in $10.5 million in revenue in 2006, the last year for which filing data are available. Much of the income came from large donors the group declines to identify. A spokesman described the secrecy as "standard D.C. practice."
FreedomWorks President Matthew Kibbe, a former top aide to a Republican lawmaker, says the site is an effort to "reach out" to renters who share the free-market views of Messrs. Armey, Forbes and others. Mr. Kibbe owns his own home on Capitol Hill in Washington, valued by local tax authorities at $1.17 million. "I'm an angry homeowner who pays his mortgage," Mr. Kibbe says.
Mr. Forbes -- the chairman and chief executive of Forbes, a former Republican presidential candidate and an unpaid FreedomWorks board member -- owns a 7,966-square-foot house on 9.5 acres in Bedminster, N.J., assessed by county tax authorities at $2.78 million. He owns 111.8 more acres next door, registered as farmland and assessed for tax purposes at $45,500. The county lists at least half a dozen other Forbes properties in the area. The Forbes family has sold off its private island in Fiji and palace in Morocco, but still owns a château in France.
Mr. Forbes didn't respond to repeated interview requests through his spokeswoman.
Mr. Armey, FreedomWorks's chairman, left Congress in 2003 and now lobbies his former colleagues as a senior policy adviser at DLA Piper, an international law and lobbying firm. He earns $100,833 a year for four hours a week working for FreedomWorks Inc., the organization's advocacy arm, and an additional $403,333 for 32 hours a week working for FreedomWorks Foundation, its tax-deductible, educational wing, according to federal tax filings.
Mr. Armey owns a house on 78.5 acres in Denton County, Texas, north of Dallas. In response to a public-information request, local authorities revealed that the land and house are worth a combined $1.7 million.
Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the Financial Services Committee and author of the housing bill that passed the House last week, says he finds it amusing that Mr. Armey is portraying himself as a champion of the tenant class. "I worked a long time trying to improve the condition of renters," says the Massachusetts Democrat. "Dick Armey has usually been on the other side."
'Bad Judgment'
Mr. Armey says he's looking out for "the poor devil" who can't afford to buy a house. "From our point of view, we have an industry in which people were very careless, very reckless -- both lenders and borrowers," says Mr. Armey. "What various policy makers are saying is we need to rush in here with a program to protect people from the consequences of their own bad judgment."
As for the site's grass-roots facade, he says, "It's a wholly voluntary thing -- you can either sign up for it or not."
AngryRenter.com does seem to be tapping a vein of genuine public ire. Rich Toscano, a renter who is a financial adviser with Pacific Capital Associates in San Diego, initially thought the site was an authentic, popular enterprise. "It looks like a young person did it," he says.
He was instinctively sympathetic, having started his own blog: Professor Piggington's Econo-Almanac for the Landed Poor, a celebration of foreclosures and other misfortunes suffered by real-estate brokers who he says helped inflate the local bubble. Though Mr. Toscano realized later that FreedomWorks was behind AngryRenter.com, he says the message is more important than the identity of the messenger. Everyone should be angry about any bailout, he says.
Among the renters who work at FreedomWorks is Chris Kinnan, who designed the site. He says he's not in the market to buy a house. "I'm a renter," he says. "I'm not an angry renter."
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
The Housing Crisis Is Over?
Is it time to start house hunting? Cyril Moulle Bertaux opined that April 2008 marked the bottom of the U.S. housing market.
And in his R.O.I. columnWSJ’s Brett Arends makes a similar argument. He looks at the data on housing starts since 1972, which shows that new housing starts slumped below the one million mark in March. Every time that has happened in the last 50 years, Mr. Arends writes, it proved to be the bottom of a recession.
“It’s bottom-fishing time, I think,” says Wellesley College Prof. Karl E. Case in the column. Mr. Arends says that he is one of the leading experts on the housing market in the country. “There’s got to be bargains in Florida, Arizona and Nevada.”
Mr. Arends points out that Bill Wheaton, a legendary real-estate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has also suggested that fears about the real-estate crash were overdone. And he points to a private portfolio manager in London, who said the homebuilding stocks on Wall Street were at last a “buy.”
In the Journal editorial, Mr. Moulle-Bertaux suggests that the housing market will revive, as more first-time buyers are lured in by falling prices and lower mortgage rates. “Homes on average are back to being as affordable as during the best of times in the 1990s,” he writes. “Numerous households that had been priced out of the market can now afford to get in.”
To be sure, as Mr. Arends points out, there is no guarantee that this downturn will follow the patterns of the past. And he notes that prices in many areas are far from a historic bargain. And where there is a glut, prices — obviously — are likely to stay lower for longer. But in many areas, prices are low and buyers may be tempted.
Readers, are you tempted?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
This Churn
Hi Derek, you may already know of the cyclic trend of the below. I have seen the below happen almost every 5-10 years during my lifetime of business. This should be good for your business with "the churn" in properties. You should learn how to take advantage of "this churn" by knowing how to pick up listings and moving properties quickly for people that get hard pressed for cash without their high paying jobs --- secondly, knowing when things to "get better" (what trends to look for) for the banking folks, as they all will be looking to relocate/upgrade their homes sites. Love ya, Dad
Troubled Wall Street firms handing out pink slips
Posted Mar 24th 2008 10:47AM by Zack Miller
Filed under: Management, Citigroup Inc. (C), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Economic data, S and P 500, DJIA, Bear Stearns Cos (BSC), Recession
As investors, we've been bombarded over the past couple of months with negative news coming from Wall Street banks that either underwrote, invested in, or had clients who invested in bad mortgages or some derivative of them. While these firms have written down billions in assets on their balance sheets, investors like Joe Lewis, the Australian billionaire who put $1 billion into Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) and promptly saw his investment drop almost 100%, have been left holding the bag.
Bloomberg is out this morning with an article which details some of the fallout from this process. According to Bloomberg, after the Internet bubble burst, 39,800 jobs at big banking firms were eliminated during the same period. The number climbed to 90,000 in the next two years, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
While not everyone cries over millionaire bankers losing their jobs, there is certainly fallout that hurts everyone dependent on a healthy economy. One recruiter interviewed by Bloomberg predicted that the total headcount reduction could be more than 100,000 in a few years. Lawyers, realtors, and mortgage brokers are feeling the heat.
According to Bloomberg, the biggest cutters have been:
Citigroup 6,200
Lehman Brothers 4,990
Bank of America 3,650
I tend to think that from a cycle point of view, Wall Street cuts harshly only to rehire when things pick up.
Troubled Wall Street firms handing out pink slips
Posted Mar 24th 2008 10:47AM by Zack Miller
Filed under: Management, Citigroup Inc. (C), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Economic data, S and P 500, DJIA, Bear Stearns Cos (BSC), Recession
As investors, we've been bombarded over the past couple of months with negative news coming from Wall Street banks that either underwrote, invested in, or had clients who invested in bad mortgages or some derivative of them. While these firms have written down billions in assets on their balance sheets, investors like Joe Lewis, the Australian billionaire who put $1 billion into Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) and promptly saw his investment drop almost 100%, have been left holding the bag.
Bloomberg is out this morning with an article which details some of the fallout from this process. According to Bloomberg, after the Internet bubble burst, 39,800 jobs at big banking firms were eliminated during the same period. The number climbed to 90,000 in the next two years, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
While not everyone cries over millionaire bankers losing their jobs, there is certainly fallout that hurts everyone dependent on a healthy economy. One recruiter interviewed by Bloomberg predicted that the total headcount reduction could be more than 100,000 in a few years. Lawyers, realtors, and mortgage brokers are feeling the heat.
According to Bloomberg, the biggest cutters have been:
Citigroup 6,200
Lehman Brothers 4,990
Bank of America 3,650
I tend to think that from a cycle point of view, Wall Street cuts harshly only to rehire when things pick up.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
New Developments
A crane towering over a high-rise construction site on the East Side of Manhattan collapsed in a roar of rending steel Saturday afternoon, raining death and destruction across a city block as it slashed down on an apartment building, broke into sections, crushed a town house and cut away a tenement facade.
At least four people were killed and more than a dozen others were injured, and damage was expected to run into the millions of dollars in what the authorities called one of the city’s worst accidents — a calamity that turned a neighborhood near the UN into a zone of panic, pulverized buildings, wailing sirens, evacuations, searches in the rubble and covered bodies in the streets.
Many residents of the neighborhood around the site of the collapse — 51st Street between Second and First Avenues — said they had been worried for months about the possibility of a collapse, calling the crane, looming higher each week, a menace, particularly because so many residential buildings were being put up in the area with remarkable speed: several floors a week at times.
Christopher Bianchi, 40, of Manhattan, owner of Crave Ceviche Bar on Second Avenue, said he saw three bodies on stretchers in the street. “Their heads were covered,” he said. “One of the police was giving last rites.”
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg arrived at the scene hours later, surrounded by an army of police officers, firefighters, city officials and reporters. “It’s a sad day,” he said, as the lights of scores of emergency vehicles revolved and flashed. “Our thoughts go out to those who were killed, and we pray that those who were injured will recover.”
As people were evacuated from a half-dozen buildings and rescue workers using dogs, listening devices and thermal imaging cameras searched the rubble for victims — taking care to cause no further collapses — the mayor said the four known dead were believed to be construction workers on or near the crane. The injured included at least three civilians taken to hospitals in critical condition.
One man was pulled from the debris nearly four hours after the collapse.
The dead, all believed to be members of Local 15 of the Operating Engineers Union, were identified as Brad Cohen, Aaron Stephens, Anthony Mazza and Wayne Bleidner.
The cause of the accident on a sunny, windless day was unclear and under investigation by city, state and federal agencies. But Stephen Kaplan, an owner of the Reliance Construction Group working at the site, told The Associated Press that a piece of steel had fallen and sheared off one of the girders holding the crane to the building.
A construction worker on the 15th floor, Ismael Garcia, said he saw something fall and strike one or more of the girder ties, weakening or breaking the connections. “Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a piece falling,” he said, and then the crane pulled away.
The collapse occurred, the mayor said, as workers attempted to jack up the crane, raising its height to enable work to continue above the 19th floor of a planned 43-story building. Builders had city permission to raise the crane, and the crane had been inspected on Friday, with no violations found.
The collapse occurred at 2:22 p.m. as the crane, about 22 stories tall and attached by girders to the apartment tower under construction at 303 East 51st Street, east of Second Avenue, broke away from its anchors and toppled south, across the block between 51st and 50th Streets, as workers at the site and people in high-rises for blocks around looked on, stupefied.
Witnesses told of a rising, thundering roar and clouds of smoke and dust as the crane — a vertical latticed boom for its base, topped by a cab and jib, the swinging arm that lifts building materials — fell across 51st Street and onto a 19-story apartment building at No. 300, demolishing a penthouse and shaking the building with the force of an earthquake.
Mike Shatzkin, a resident of the 17th floor, said he was talking on the phone when it hit. “All of a sudden, I felt a very violent shake, and stuff fell off the walls, and my wife said a bomb went off.” After discovering that their building had been struck by the crane from across the street, he said, “We worried about this crane every day.”
The upper reaches of the crane — including the cab and the extended swinging arm — broke away from the boom, which was left leaning against the facade, and hurtled southward across the block toward 50th Street, tumbling in the air, some witnesses said.
The crane’s blue cab and white jib, itself a latticework of steel, made a direct hit on a four-story town house at 305 East 50th Street, a modern stucco structure with apartments upstairs and a bar called Fubar on the ground floor. The building, on the north side of 50th Street, was demolished.
The bar was not open, and the owner, John P. LaGreco, who had been the proprietor for a decade, said that Juan Perez, 38, a Queens resident and the father of three children, was in Fubar at the time, preparing to open about 4 p.m.
Mayor Bloomberg said one or two people were in the building at the time. The fire commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta, said that a man, apparently referring to Mr. Perez, was taken alive out of the collapsed town house shortly before 6 p.m. He said there had also been reports of a woman in the building, and search efforts continued late into Saturday night.
In addition to the collapsed town house, the toppling crane jib sheared away the side of a six-story gray tenement building at 301 East 50th, just to the west, exposing tiers of apartments and haunting images of shattered homes: a pink suitcase dangling from the sixth floor, a mattress, a rack of shoes, broken bookshelves.
Debris also damaged buildings on the south side of 50th Street, and bricks demolished parked cars — a dark blue BMW flattened, a Mini Cooper battered with debris.
In the immediate aftermath of the collapse, stunned people rushed into the streets from restaurants and shops, from apartment buildings in the surrounding blocks, many of them unaware of what had happened and fearing the worst.
Within minutes, an armada of fire engines, police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles converged on the scene. Water from broken mains was gushing into the street, and an odor of gas was in the air. City and Consolidated Edison workers quickly moved in to cap the leaks and prevent explosions. Throughout the afternoon and evening, traffic was blocked off for blocks around the site.
Some residents of the area saw or heard the collapse from their apartments. Bruce Silberblatt, a retired building contractor who lives at 860 United Nations Plaza, said: “I heard this big double bang. Bang! Then, bang! The first bang must have been the crane hitting the first building, then the second must have been everything else going into the street.”
Scores of evacuated residents from at least a half-dozen damaged or imperiled buildings were offered shelter at the High School of Art and Design, at 228 East 57th Street, the mayor said.
A Fire Department spokesman said that 13 people were injured and taken to area hospitals. Three had critical injuries and two were listed in serious condition, while the rest, including five firefighters, had minor injuries. Four other people were treated at the scene, the spokesman said.
Mayor Bloomberg identified the site’s principal developer as James P. Kennelly, a former firefighter, and the construction company as RCG, an apparent acronym for Reliance Construction Group. He said the crane owner was the New York Crane & Equipment Corporation. The manufacturer, he said, was an Australian company known as Favco, which makes a tower crane with an eight-ton lifting capacity.
“There are no words to describe the level of devastation we feel today as a result of this tragic event,” Mr. Kennelly said in a statement. While the mayor and other city officials said that there had been a relatively small number of violations issued against the construction site in the more than two years since work began, many residents questioned the safety record at the building site.
“We had been very unhappy with the way he was doing his work,” said Mr. Silberblatt, a member of the Turtle Bay Association, a civic group. He cited debris in the streets, a lack of a sidewalk bridge, and other faults.
According to records from the New York City Department of Buildings, the agency has issued 14 violations against contractors doing work at the site, 10 of them against RCG. The citations were issued between Jan. 17, 2006, and Feb. 8 of this year. The violations included failure to safeguard the public and property and failure to provide roof protection on adjacent property.
A Buildings Department spokeswoman, Kate Lindquist, said that of the 14 violations, 13 remained “open” — meaning that a court date is pending or the company did not appear at a scheduled court hearing and the violations are in default status.
Ms. Lindquist said that Buildings Department inspectors performed an inspection of the site Saturday morning in preparation for predicted high winds. Upon inspection, she said, a partial stop-work order was issued to halt all concrete operations at the site. The order was issued because inspectors found material stored too close to the building’s edge on several floors. The order did not apply to the extending of the crane, which was under way at the time of the accident, she said.
The last major crane collapse at a construction site in New York occurred in September 1999, when a 383-foot crane fell at 24th Street and the Avenue of the Americas, crushing a carpenter and injuring three other people.
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