One way to help pare down your belongings is to go room by room, boxing up anything you haven’t used or worn in at least six months. What’s that you say? There’s nothing you’re not using? Try anyway. You’ll probably be surprised by the stuff you won’t miss. (Bonus: You’ll have less to move later.)One area where you’ll want to be merciless is your kitchen counter: Remove everything but your coffee maker, so people will think, “Wow, such a huge kitchen!” And to allow home buyers to really envision themselves living there, you’ll also want to pack up personal items such as the framed photos, report cards on the fridge, or your kid’s collection of “Star Wars” snow globes.
But don’t just stuff those things in the closet. “Closets often end up being the dumping ground to store all the clutter that was visible,” says McGlone. “Which is never good, because closet space is an important buying consideration. You want potential owners to be able to see the true amount of space in each closet.” Instead, stack boxes neatly in the attic, basement, or, best of all, a storage facility—the perceived extra space you add to your home could be worth the rental cost and then some. Stage to sellThese days, home staging is all the rage: On average, staged homes sell 88% faster and for a whopping 20% more than ones where home sellers just kept their furnishings in place. And while you can hire a professional stager, you can also cop a few of their tricks for free. For instance, hanging curtain rods higher can give the illusion of taller ceilings. Well-placed mirrors can make rooms appear bigger and brighter. Want to go the extra step? Paint your walls white, layer in neutrals, then add pops of color with pillows or a cashmere throw on the couch for a cozy glow. “I always think to move the furniture toward the walls to make it feel like there is more space,” McGlone says. Push furniture out and away from each other to open up floor space, but be careful to keep window space clear. Conceal flaws whenever possible; if the view out a window isn’t great, put up sheer curtains so the light comes in but the scenery stays hidden. And as with all your possessions, think “less is more,” although stagers do sometimes strategically add furniture (such as a cozy reading chair in a bedroom corner) to give the illusion of more space. Go figure! Click here to read more
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With Super Bowl excitement building, anyone who’s managed to snag tickets—which cost an average of $6,000 a pop—must consider themselves pretty lucky. Still, more than a few considered giving them up in exchange for what appeared to be a far sweeter deal: a 2,100-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Erie, CO.The ad, which appeared in local newspapers, cut to the chase: “Getting divorced; leaving her with nothing. Will sell home for 2 tickets to the Super Bowl with airfare and lodging.” It also shows a photo of the home and lists the phone number for homeowner Brian Lusk, whose line has been jammed with phone calls ever since.
The catch? The ad was a prank. “I have a buddy who’s a good Pittsburgh Steelers fan,” Lusk told 9NEWS, adding that he is definitely not getting a divorce. “We had some bets going for the Steelers game, and, of course, the Broncos won, so I rode him pretty hard for two or three days and gave him a lot of heck.” Well, it looks like his pal hecked him back pretty good. But the bigger point is this: Tongue-in-cheek real estate ads seem to be popping up more frequently than penalty flags in a high-stakes scrimmage. Not surprisingly, they often crop up on Craigslist, which recently listed a handful of four- and five-bedroom homes in Vancouver for under $100,000. However, as the photos made clear, they were “a little snug,” meaning homes only a doll could love.Home rental ads are equally prone to pranking, as was made clear recently when an igloo went up for rent on Airbnb during snowstorm Jonas for $200 a night. Because, hey, “igloo” is a legitimate category on Airbnb, although the site did eventually shut the ad down for not meeting “occupancy standards” for amenities such as, say, heat. Click here to read more Something about being in your 30s just gets your clock ticking.
No, not your biological clock. Your homeownership clock. My conversations with friends these days tend to revolve around our real estate fantasies. Take, for example, a recent convo I had with my friend Kat. She asked about my dream home, I asked about hers. We quickly discovered we had much of the same criteria: two or three bedrooms, lots of natural light, a small yard for grilling and chilling on warm California nights. There’s only one problem: In this crazy-hot real estate market, neither of us can afford it on our own. You see—despite living within the orbit of Silicon Valley’s “Man Jose”—we’re both single. But why should we single millennials be penalized for not having the dual income needed to make a down payment on a home in our area? Then it hit us. What if we combined forces, pooled our money, and bought a place together? Our friendship is bound to last longer than 50% of marriages—oops, make that 40%—right? And we’d both get equity in the place, making it easier if we wanted to buy on our own next time. Our collective mental wheels were turning, but before I started shopping for our new patio furniture, I reached out to our stable of experts to ask how this might go down. The good news? It can be done. The bad news? It probably shouldn’t be. How it worksApparently, Kat and I aren’t the first pals to have this idea. Lots of friends (and more than a few siblings or cousins) try their hands at buying a home together. If you’re thinking about going this route, you’ll definitely want to consult with a real estate attorney, because these arrangements can be tricky. “Having a lawyer draft such an agreement should cost under $1,000 and is well worth the money if you can afford it, especially if you get into a conflict while in the agreement,” says Bruce Ailion, a Realtor® and attorney in Atlanta. Who holds the title?This determines who can sign documents and how the property is transferred in case of an owner’s death (buzzkill, I know). Co-buyers who aren’t married to each other may share a title as tenants in common or as joint tenants with right of survivorship. You can also look into creating an LLC, but that’s usually most advantageous if you’re buying a rental/vacation property. Click here to read more Purchasing a bare lot in an inspired (and beautiful) location such as this one in Honolulu, HI, is the easy part. Building on that same lot is where difficulty kicks in.
“It was quite an undertaking,” listing agent Dawn Soderquist Okano says. A rock-hard coral bed made it challenging to break ground back in the early ’60s, but the results are spectacular. This six-bedroom Mid-Century Modern home, now on the market for $3.6 million, is located in the lively Diamond Head neighborhood. The property offers scenic 180-degree views and is just six blocks from the beach. “To start the house, they quarried the coral rock and used that coral rock to build the rock walls that surround the home,” Okano adds. The rocky detail is just one of the quirky facts of this 1963 gem that’s just come on the market for the first time. The family has decided to sell it, after three generations lived in the house. The current owner’s father, who built the residence, “was a developer and a businessman,” Okano says. The original owner even enlisted his brother, local architectHoward Wong, to design the place. While the home has been beautifully preserved, it hasn’t been updated, leaving the new owner a chance to do a custom remodel.But there are plenty of timeless details that won’t need to be touched (in our opinion), including the terrazzo flooring and counters, locally sourced Ohia wood exterior cladding, and Italian Bimini lights out front—plus walls and walls of windows. Click here to read more Those who love babbling on about millennials’ narcissism, sense of entitlement, or ungodly love of selfie sticks are missing out on the big picture: These are the people forever transforming the world of home ownership.Older millennials, in fact, are now the biggest group of first-time buyers. It’s a brave, new world! If you’re part of it and thinking about buying your own place, you might naturally turn to Mom and/or Dad for advice. Good call. But be aware that things have changed quite a bit since they bought their first home—you know, the one you grew up in, stealthily sneaked into at 2 a.m. as a teen, and finally escaped as an honest-to-God adult.
But exactly how much have things changed, really? To find out, we decided to compare the home-buying and ownership experience today with back when your parents bought their first place in the ’80s—a time when twee floral patterns were all the rage, “Sesame Street” was still on free TV, and Apple’s best-known product was … applesauce. Let’s jump into the realtor.com® DeLorean and go Back to the Real Estate Future: 1985 versus 2015. Buckle up! Fact 1: Millennials rule, but more buyers are olderCompared to the good (?) old days, Americans are delaying homeownership, just as they are delaying marriage. Sure, older millennials may be making their impact felt on first-time home buying, but the overall age of homeownership is steadily rising. The median age of home buyers was 33 in 1985, and now it’s 44, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Having a more mature career salary also helps in buying a home at today’s prices. Fact 2: It’s not just Mr. and Mrs. SmithThree decades ago, the home-buying club was almost exclusively married couples, who made up 81% of all owners. Now that number has declined to 67%; single females (15%), single males (9%), and unmarried couples (7%) are steadily on the rise. Fact 3: Prices keep going up and up and upHome prices have been steadily increasing, much to buyers’ dismay. Your parents probably paid around $80,000 for your childhood home in 1985; you’re facing about 1.75 times that price. NAR data show that the median sale price of existing homes was $222,400 in 2015. Over the same time frame, household income increased 127% from $23,618 in 1985 to $53,657 in 2014 (the latest data available), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That combination of factors has led to low homeownership rates. In the third quarter of 2015, the Census Bureau reported that the homeownership rate, not seasonally adjusted, hit 63.7%—the lowest level since 1989. Stringent mortgage standards are another hurdle for would-be home buyers, says our chief economist, Jonathan Smoke. Fact 4: Bigger homes, more bathroomsIn 1985, a typical home purchased was 1,610 square feet. That number has grown to 1,900 in 2015, according to NAR. At the same time, American families are shrinking, from 2.69 people per household to 2.54. (What does a 2.54-person household look like? We’ll save that for a future article.) How do people make use of that extra space? More bathrooms, mostly. Say goodbye to the days when the whole family crammed into one tiny loo in the morning. Most for-sale homes on the market now have two bathrooms, and newly constructed homes are usually built with more than three bathrooms, according to the NAR and the Census Bureau. This is a positive development. Fact 5: Luxe features are more plentiful, and disco is deadThe standard of living has improved over the years. Central air conditioning and dishwashers—things you can hardly picture your home, much less your life, without—only made it into half of households 30 years ago, reveals the American Housing Survey. Aesthetics have also shifted. The ’80s taste for mauve is now a turnoff for home buyers, as are brass, track lights, and Laura Ashley floral comforters. And, perhaps saddest of all, disco-influenced decor has gone the way of … disco. Click here to read more In today’s home-buying market, interest rates are so low that many financing offers may seem too good to be true. Well, guess what? Sometimes they are! And they could seriously mess with your savings.
To help you separate the real deals from the rip-offs, we’ve spotlighted a few terms you may have seen that could be —how do we put it--misleading. Here’s a reality check behind those ever-so-enticing words. Low fixed rates!You think: The interest rate will remain low over the life of the loan. The truth: Some lenders advertise “low fixed rate” mortgages that are really adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs)—in which case, that low fixed rate refers to just the initial term (e.g., five or seven years) before the rate adjusts. Usually upward. “The thing that troubles and worries us right now,” says Thomas Martin, president of the Homeowners Consumer Center in Washington, DC, “is that rates are at around 4% for a 30-year fixed mortgage. There are lots of ads touting 3% rates, but they’re for ARMs.” Translation: a rate that starts at 3% could end up at 5% after a few months. Consumer watchdogs and government agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the states of Washington and Colorado, have gone after lenders who intentionally use vague and misleading language to advertise ARMs as fixed rate products when they’re not. But that still hasn’t stopped many mortgage brokers from taking linguistic liberties. Tax free!You think: As a homeowner you won’t have to pay property taxes or any taxes, period.Sounds awesome, right? The truth: If you’re looking into getting a reverse mortgage—an increasingly popular option for seniors looking to tap their home equity in retirement—the advance you receive is not taxed. But that’s it. When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau conducted a focus group on mortgage advertising earlier this year, one of the most common misconceptions it saw among the participants was the idea that homeowners would not have to pay property taxes at all on reverse mortgages. That’s a potentially expensive misunderstanding. In fact, one of the stipulations for many reverse mortgages is that owners must stay current on property taxes. Failure to do so could result in foreclosure. Also, the fees for missing tax payments can add up very quickly. Government-backed!You think: Woo-hoo, this is a really awesomely safe product because the government gave its super-special stamp of approval! The truth: Nearly all mortgages are backed by the U.S. government, because they are held by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. A slew of late-night infomercials for reverse mortgages, for example, have even featured elected officials (such as former Sen. Fred Thompson) to emphasize the fact that the government is A-OK with these products. In the CFPB focus group, participants thought the reverse mortgages advertised were part of a “program.” One participant even said, “I feel more comfortable if the government is behind it. Otherwise it is just business,” while another said that if a “former congressman” endorses the reverse mortgage, “it makes it sound like a good idea.” Unfortunately, it’s probably a better idea to be wary of any lender that touts the government’s involvement too enthusiastically. Click here to read more Anyone feel like catching some real estate from a former Golden Glover? FormerPittsburgh Pirates outfielder and current MLB free agent Nate McLouth is selling his lakefront estate in Louisville, TN, for $1.6 million. McLouth bought the house in 2011 for $1.1 million.The charming brick and stone home certainly has style, which is evident right from the unusual stone archways built into the two-story entry room.
The 7,493-square-foot house has five bedrooms and five full bathrooms. It features hand-scraped hardwood floors, coffered ceilings, an open kitchen, a wet bar, and a media room. A brick wine cellar with a wood-paneled ceiling complements the elegant design of the house. The 10-year MLB veteran had his best season with the Pirates in 2008, when he was an All-Star and a Gold Glove recipient. He signed a two-year, $10 million contract with theWashington Nationals after the 2013 season, but he had a rough go in the nation’s capital. After playing sparingly in 2014 and managing a meager .173 batting average, he missed the entire 2015 season with a shoulder injury. Click here to read more Sales of newly built U.S. homes rose last month, capping the best year for new home sales since 2007.
Purchases of new single-family homes increased by 10.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000 in December, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a December sales pace of 502,000. New home sales in 2015 reached an estimated 501,000, not seasonally adjusted. That marks their highest annual level since 776,000 new homes sold in 2007, underscoring the long slog back from the housing bust. Nationwide, the pace of new-home sales growth in December was up 9.9% from a year earlier, the Commerce Department said. Purchases of new homes are only about a tenth of all home sales, and the data are choppy. However, the construction sector added jobs in December as rising consumer confidence, low mortgage rates and low inventory helped spur new-home sales over recent months. Home builder D.R. Horton Inc. on Monday said its profit and revenue rosein the latest quarter as orders climbed.Although the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate from near zero in December, borrowers are yet to feel the pinch from higher mortgage rates. A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.81% in the week ending Jan. 21, Freddie Mac said, down from a 3.92% rate a week earlier. There were 5.2 months’ supply of newly built homes in December, down from 5.7 months in November. The median sales price of new homes was $288,900, down from $305,000 in November. Data on new-home sales are volatile and subject to frequent revisions. In Wednesday’s report, the margin of error on December’s 10.8% monthly sales gain was plus or minus 17.1 percentage points. There was a margin of error of 25 percentage points for the annual gain of 9.9%. Sales of previously owned homes—the bulk of the market—reached their best sales level in eight years in 2015. Sales of previously owned homes rose 14.7% in December, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. That market has been challenged by rising prices and low inventories. The market for new homes is hardly robust, with new-home sales still far from their July 2005 peak of 1.4 million annualized. But the latest pickup in demand, along with low inventory levels, is boosting hopes that builders will ramp up construction this year, a development that would likely lift the broader economy to stronger growth. U.S. home builders continue to report high levels of confidence. The National Association of Home Builders’ sentiment index stayed at 60 in January, unchanged on the month at a high level, the group said last week. Click here to read more Here’s what you won’t see when you view fashion designer Bob Mackie’s sleek home in Los Angeles: lots of color. The seller’s decor has been toned down just a touch on the advice of his agents.
“Bob is very much about colors,” says co-listing agent Michael Collins of Coldwell Banker Previews International. The property, on the market for $2.18 million, is also listed withGreg Harris of Compass. While the walls of blue, green, and purple hues have been redone in a more neutral palette, Mackie’s signature flair can be seen in smaller doses throughout this Ranch-style home in Laurel Hills.There’s the remodeled kitchen with cheery tangerine-hued Caesarstone. The bright blue and green planters outdoors were hand-picked by the Emmy-winning designer (naturally, they match the pool tile). The stripes of color on the wall next to the pool are also Mackie originals.The 75-year-old Mackie, who bought the home in 2006, updated the en suite bathrooms and added storage cubbies in the dining room for his hundreds of design books, according to the agent. Built in 1962, the 3,500-square-foot, five-bedroom home has two master suites, a living room with high ceiling, a rock fireplace, and french doors that open to the outdoors—perfect for large, celebrity-filled parties. “It has a wonderful entertaining flow,” Collins notes. There’s also a less formal family room, and the kitchen is adjacent to a sunny breakfast nook. “It’s a lot of house,” Collins says. Click here to read more After a frighteningly warm December, winter is finally here with a vengeance—and homeowners across the U.S. are desperate to ward off the season’s wicked chill. We can’t think of a better way to get warm than to sit in front of a cozy fire.Sure, there are fireplace haters out there, but even the most ardent critic might fall prey to the charms of a crackling log in the fireplaces we’ve selected.
We found hearths for every taste—from extravagant to rustic and every ember in between. So put another log on the fire and take a look at these nine fabulous fireplaces. We won’t even make you sweep up the ashes. 6883 Alydar Corte, Rancho Santa Fe, CAPrice: $10,998,000 Feel the burn: Opulence in full effect. Taking cues from the Palace of Versailles, this Southern California mansion might be the perfect place to become an absolute monarch. Curl up in front of the flames and read a good book. We recommend “A Concise History of the French Revolution.” 101 Rolling Hill Rd, Greenville, NYPrice: $299,900 Feel the burn: This enormous fireplace is sure to keep dinner guests toasty warm. You can also roast your dinner in the fireplace. Built expressly for cooking in 1793, it’s survived over two centuries of use. 4940 Marietta Ave, Marietta, PAPrice: $1,299,000 Feel the burn: The fireplace in this classic Victorian appears as if it stepped straight out of the 1870s. Take your tea and discuss the day’s events in front of a crackling fire. 1032 Broadway, San Francisco, CAPrice: $12,000,000 Feel the burn: In the City by the Bay, foggy nights (and days) are common. This massive fireplace in a vintage Russian Hill mansion will ward off the chills of the city. 2829 Fairview Rd, Camp Hill, PAPrice: $324,900 Feel the burn: We couldn’t let a look at fireplaces go by without a nod to the ’70s. This cool circular design (with accompanying conversation pit!) will encourage your guests to gather ’round the hearth and share deep thoughts. 170 Shonnard Ter, Yonkers, NYPrice: $4,950,000 Feel the burn: Anyone for brandy? This mansion features a grand stone fireplace, which looks like the perfect place to retire for an aperitif. If this fireplace doesn’t speak to you, don’t sweat it—there are 10 (!) others in the house. Click here to read more |
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February 2016
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