May 2007
Monthly Archive
12 May 2007 07:06 am
Restoring an Old House and Putting Down Deeper Roots
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Many North Carolinians enjoy buying, restoring and occupying older homes. Today’s NYTimes home section contains an interesting story about Bob Weinstein, a happy homeowner in Sag Harbor, in the little gray house on Suffolk Street he had owned for a decade. It was a quiet second home on a lot thick with old-growth trees, away from the busiest parts of the roughly 260-year-old former whaling village on the South Fork of Long Island, but a short walk from a downtown lined with restaurants and small shops. |
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11 May 2007 06:26 am
Tax Relief Available for Hurricane, Tornado Victims
| The first place to go to after a natural disaster is to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s online listing of Federal Disaster Areas to see if your area has been declared as a disaster area. This announcement is what gets the ball rolling on whether you can declare deductions on your taxes from loss of uninsured property and for losses not covered by your homeowner’s policy. There have already been 26 Presidentially-declared disaster areas in 2007. These are locales where damage to property and life exceeded the normal damage from natural disasters. |
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search for : Federal Emergency Management, uninsured property, homeowner’s policy
10 May 2007 06:48 am
Negotiating the Right Protection For Your Home
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During the home-buying process, there’s more to negotiation than just price and terms. In the market of the past, buyers had nothing to go for except the highest price as possible, no home inspection, and a home warranty if they wanted to buy it themselves. Today, buyers have a lot more negotiation on their side, but even if the seller balks at some of your requests, it still makes sense to put certain protective clauses, warranties and insurance policies in place to protect your most valuable asset. |
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search for : home-buying, home inspection, home warranty
09 May 2007 06:20 am
Mixed Messages For Real Estate Buyers
| Increased real estate ownership is a national goal which has produced helpful and useful national policies. For instance, we encourage homeownership by tilting the tax system to favor owners. As a property owner you can write off property taxes, you can deduct mortgage interest in most cases and when you sell you can shelter profits of up to $500,000 if married and $250,000 if single from federal taxes. We do these things because we believe that ownership gives people a greater stake in local communities and because owning a home affords individuals a certain ego, status and financial standing. We also encourage ownership for a very simple reason: Money. In addition to all the good qualities associated with ownership, each real estate transaction generates substantial transfer taxes, brokerage commissions, loan fees, insurance charges and legal fees. |
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search for : real estate ownership, homeownership, mortgage interest
08 May 2007 06:17 am
Window of Opportunity
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As anyone who’s ever tried to sell a house will tell you, bad weather can definitely affect your ability to sell a home. If the weather is terrible, nobody comes out to shop, nobody makes offers, and sales numbers fizzle. Well, we’ve just witnessed the “bad weather” impact on a national scale. After three straight months of steadily rising home sales nationwide, the stretch of stormy and frigid weather that hit many parts of the country in the early Spring took a chunk out of home sales numbers for the month — they were down by 8.4 percent. The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, Dr. David Lereah, said the sharp decline was not a total surprise. “For months,” he said, “we’ve been expecting a weather ‘hit’ on home sales” — and it finally arrived with a solid punch. |
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search for : sell a house, home sales numbers, National Association of Realtors
07 May 2007 06:52 am
Counteroffer is Rejection Of The Earlier Offer
| A counteroffer is a rejection of the offer (or a previous counteroffer) to which it is a response. This is an important point for sellers to remember in this “normal” market in which we now find ourselves. Of course, it is an important point for buyers to remember as well. A recent memo from the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) legal department emphasizes the point that, when one makes a counteroffer, that constitutes a rejection of the earlier offer. |
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06 May 2007 07:15 am
Ways You Can Decrease Recurring Household Bills
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If you’re looking to cut back on household expenses, a good place to start is with those nagging bills that never go away for good. We’re living in the age of surreptitious bill-creep. Rising energy prices and our growing collections of gadgets gradually push utility bills higher. And extras like text-messaging on cellphones, digital cable and credit-card rewards programs add little fees that nevertheless add up. At the same time, the Internet, with sites like LowerMyBills.com, is supposed to make it easier to hunt down deals and comparison-shop for low prices. |
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05 May 2007 07:54 am
5 Things Every Home Buyer Should Consider
| As the start of the home buying season kicks into gear, there are five things every first-time home buyer should think about before actually purchasing a new home. The first thing you should do is to check your credit report and find out what your score is. Knowing what your credit looks like will give you an idea of what kind of terms you’ll get from lenders. The higher your credit score, the better loan terms and interest rates you’ll be able to get. If your credit is low, say in the 620 and below range, it may be wise to take steps to improve your credit score before getting a mortgage for a new house. |
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search for : first-time home buyer, credit score
04 May 2007 06:50 am
Friendlier Skies to a Home Abroad
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Owning a second home in Europe is surely many people’s idea of a dream come true. Problem is, the commute can be a nightmare. But a new crop of airlines may offer a solution for second-home owners willing to shell out a couple of thousand dollars for a quick trip to their weekend getaway. There are now four all-business-class airlines operating primarily between New York and Paris or London, with some flights to London from Washington and Las Vegas as well. |
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search for : Owning a second home, second-home owners
03 May 2007 05:48 am
How to protect a home against lock bumping
| If you watch local news or spend time on the Internet, you may have heard alarming stories about a new way of lock-picking called “lock bumping” or “key bumping.” Security experts in Europe and, more recently, the United States have declared lock bumping a clear and present danger to anyone who secures their valuables using pin-tumbler locks, which happens to include the vast majority of American houses. But what is lock bumping? And will the possible proliferation of lock bumping really affect the average American, or is it just one more bogus, media-fueled boogey man a la killer bees and Y2K? |
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search for : lock bumping, key bumping
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