Good Quote

"Let's say you are emotionally ready to be a homeowner. You have good credit, plan to stay put for five years and have been waiting for the perfect entry point. It's time to get serious--before an inevitable rise in interest rates wipes out your advantage...Risks always seem most acute when the headlines give you ulcers. But that's exactly when you should think long term--and get off your thumbs."

--"Ignore the Headlines! Except this one," by Dan Kadlec, Right on Your Money, Time magazine, Feb. 25, 2008

Rave Reviews on AHS Home Warranties.

Hey All-

Thought this was a great article on the company I recomend for home warranties. They work!!!!! I have one on my home.


Coldwell Banker Burnet sales associates and
their customers continue to provide positive testimonials
about the American Hold Shield Home
Warranty Plan.

Following are two recent testimonials:


From Paul Kellum, Dakota County/Eagan Office:
“I recommend American Home Shield to ALL my
clients and put a warranty on all our listings.
My wife and I have an AHS policy on our home
and will continue to purchase one every single
year. Since I have had AHS, I have had nearly
a half dozen surprise problems get covered on
my home. Many of my past clients have made
claims on their homes with their AHS warranties
and have all been satisfied. AHS has a low
deductible and covers tons of items that other
warranties will not. Garrett always gets back to
my calls, knows his service package and policies
inside and out, and is a great public speaker and
presenter for his service. I recommend Garrett
to my clients, friends, family, and neighbors.
Thank you.”


From A Customer of Joe Collins, North Suburban
Regional Office:
“Hi, Joe. I hope all is going well with you. I just
wanted to thank you for the AHS Home Warranty
on our house. This past weekend we woke up to
a freezing house; the furnace quit working. AHS
sent out a repair company on Saturday and got
us back up and running right away. Also a while
back, they came out to fix our hot water heater.
I just wanted to let you know that the warranty
has WAY more than paid for itself. They have
also been very easy to work with. Thanks again
American Home Shield Home Warranty Plan
Continues to Receive Rave Reviews
for the security it has provided our family this
year! You will need to swing by sometime and
see the improvements that we have made on the
house. Best to you and your family!”

-Hot Wire Xpress / Coldwell Banker Burnet-

What is a shed style home?

Shed

A subset of the Modern style, including (insert links) Shed homes were particular favorites of architects in the 1960s and 1970s. They feature multiple roofs sloping in different directions, which creates multigeometric shapes; wood shingle, board, or brick exterior cladding; recessed and downplayed front doorways; and small windows. There's virtually no symmetry to the style.

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the Second Empire style of home?

Second Empire

Popular in the Midwest and Northeast, this Victorian style was fashionable for public buildings during Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, but its elaborate, costly detail fell out of favor in the late 1800s for economic reasons. Second empire homes feature windows, molded cornices, and decorative brackets under the eaves. One subtype sports a rectangular tower at the front and center of the structure.

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the Saltbox style of home?

Saltbox

This New England Colonial style got its name because the sharply sloping gable roof that resembled the boxes used for storing salt. The step roofline often plunges from two and one-half stories in front to a single story in the rear. In Colonial times, the lower rear portion was often used as a partially enclosed shed, which was oriented north as a windbreak. These square or rectangular homes typically have a large central chimney and large, double-hung windows with shutters. Exterior walls are made of clapboard or shingles. In the South this style is known as a "cat's slide" and was a popular in the 1800s.

-Realtor Magazine-

Good First Impressions!

Have you recently decided to put your home for sale? If so, then you have to remember that buying a house is the most important purchase that a consumer can make.

When approaching home buyers walk through your house, know that your home will be heavily scrutinized. We all know that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, so think about utilizing the following cost-effective suggestions, before you enlist a real estate agent and entertain any potential buyers.

Think about the view that people see when they first drive up. Think about what real estate agents will tell their clients.

To make certain that you don't send any prospective buyers and their real estate agents running away before they even make it inside the house, make sure the exterior of the home is spick and span. Give your home a fresh coat of paint or give it a thorough wash, but make sure it's clean. And don't forget to cut the lawn and spruce up any outdoor greenery, like bushes or shrubs. Remember, real estate agents work on commission, and the easier you make their job to sell your home to their client, the more the real estate agent is going to try and sell your home for you!

What are real estate agents and their clients going to see upon entering the home?

It's possible that you may have a room that makes a bold statement when you walk in, or say walls that are painted in a very bright color. Maybe the style of your furniture is eclectic. The point is that potential buyers may have a hard time imagining their own furniture and stuff in the room. Recommendation: Apply a fresh coat of paint in a neutral color to the walls in your home. It's an inexpensive, but proven, technique for making any home more attractive to prospective buyers. Additionally, a fresh clean smell is a major ingredient to making a good impression. So place air fresheners in closets to eliminate musty smells, for example. In fact, the smell of freshly baked bread does the trick every time. But, don't go to the extreme! The strong scents of potpourri or incense may attract some real estate agents and their clients, but may repel others. Basically, think bright and clean. This will help you sell your home. So, scrub, clean and wash all of your windows, walls, floors and tiles, and don't forget to shampoo dirty carpets and rugs. Because in the end, you're also making an impression on the real estate agent, who may have other clients. Maybe you won't impress the real estate agent's first client, but he or she make like your home so much, that he or she will tell her other clients.

Don't forget to clean underneath your sinks and fix your leaky pipes. And make sure that you get rid of toilet, tub and sink stains by using a special cleaning agent. If you happen to be a clutter bug, make sure you put away or hide all of your stuff lying around because it's hard for prospective buyers to get a really good look at what their potential future home may look like. Plus less clutter around will make your home seem bigger and more spacious. Real estate agents love selling homes with open space. So go ahead and store your various items somewhere, making sure to keep the garage, basement, attic and any closets tidy. Again, you want your house to look more spacious and clean. Make any and all repairs that you can. For example, if the baseboard around the cupboard is loose, take a hammer and fasten it securely. Do you have closet handles that are wobbly? Then use a screwdriver and tighten them up. Would-be buyers don't want to have to worry about a bunch of minor things when they move in and they may subconsciously be noting all the little repairs they'll have to make.

Potential buyers might reject your house because they'll think that all the tiny repairs will add up to a lot of work. So by following the simple tips here, you can make sure that your house will sell as quick as possible. Your real estate agent will appreciate this also!

This article was prepared with the help of John Carle & Sharon Gregresh.

-myhomecaretips.com-

What is the Regency style home?

Regency

Although they borrow from the Georgian's classic lines, Regency homes eschew ornamentation. They're symmetrical, two or three stories, and usually built in brick. Typically, they feature an octagonal window over the front door, one chimney at the side of the house, double-hung windows, and a hip roof. They've been built in the United States since the early 1800s.

-Realtor Magazine-

Property Next to 'Hollywood' Sign for Sale

Thought this was a fun news article-

LOS ANGELES -- A mountaintop property just west of the "H" in the "Hollywood" sign is up for sale. The asking price: $22 million.

A group of Chicago investors is putting the 138 acres of land — once owned by Howard Hughes, who planned to build a love nest there for then-paramour Ginger Rogers — on the market Wednesday.

The property offers a 360-degree panorama of the Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley, says Fox River Financial Resources, which acquired the land in 2002 for less than $1.7 million.

"We weren't sure at first what we had," Fox River general partner Keith Dickson said Wednesday. "After looking at it, we kind of feel we got a Van Gogh at a garage sale."

Hughes' relationship with Rogers didn't last, and the property remained undeveloped and in the eccentric billionaire's trust for decades.

The land atop the 1,820-foot Cahuenga Peak consists of five legal lots and "the ridges on the top are nice and smooth," allowing for construction of homes, Dickson said.

But Los Angeles City Council member Tom LaBonge said building homes on the peak would ruin one of the city's most famous views.

"That mountain should not be cluttered," LaBonge told the Los Angeles Times. "It's good for the psyche of Los Angeles."

"The city should acquire this land," he added.

LaBonge led the fundraising two years ago, when city officials and conservationists tried unsuccessfully to raise money to buy the property to make the peak a part of Griffith Park. The park suffered two wildfires last year that burned about 950 acres of land.

Associated Press

What is the ranch style home?

Ranch

Sometimes called the California ranch style, this home in the Modern family, originated there in 1930s. It emerged as one of the most popular American styles in the 1950s and 60s, when the automobile had replaced early 20th-century forms of transportation, such as streetcars.

Now mobile homebuyers could move to the suburbs into bigger homes on bigger lots. The style takes its cues from Spanish Colonial and Prairie and Craftsman homes, and is characterized by its one-story, pitched-roof construction, built-in garage, wood or brick exterior walls, sliding and picture windows, and sliding doors leading to patios.

-Realtor Magazine-

Newspaper or no newspaper, that is the question.

One of the biggest myths I’m forced to overcome as a real estate professional is the myth that print advertising successfully sells homes. Many sellers expect their real estate agents to advertise in all of the local newspapers. Is newsprint really an effective means of marketing? The answer is an emphatic no. This type of marketing is said to yield less than a 1% return. To be honest, I have never heard of a home being sold due to a newspaper add.

Most recent research shows that over 90% of all real estate transactions begin on the internet. Modern sellers are using the internet to interview agents before we even have a chance to speak with them. Many buyers walk into my office armed with a list of homes they have found on the web and want to see. A good number have even driven by to get a good look at the exterior and neighborhood.

Successful agents are using personal websites to market themselves and their properties. They are utilizing public sale sites like craigslist, trulia, etc. Many of the larger real estate companies, like Coldwell Banker Burnet, are spending millions of dollars increasing their internet presence. They understand that to get in front of contemporary buyers and sellers they must drive traffic to their website and rank high on major search engines.

We have officially entered a completely new era of marketing. In this new era the more techno savvy, usually younger, agent will have a distinct advantage.

… after all, you're reading this now.

What is the Queen Anne style of home?

Queen Anne

A sub-style of the late Victorian era, Queen Anne is a collection of coquettish detailing and eclectic materials. Steep cross-gabled roofs, towers, and vertical windows are all typical of a Queen Anne home. Inventive, multistory floor plans often include projecting wings, several porches and balconies, and multiple chimneys with decorative chimney pots.

Wooden "gingerbread" trim in scrolled and rounded "fish-scale" patterns frequently graces gables and porches. Massive cut stone foundations are typical of period houses. Created by English architect Richard Norman Shaw, the style was popularized after the Civil War by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and spread rapidly, especially in the South and West.

-Realtor Magazine-

Origin of Subprime Mess Source of Passionate Debate

Dunstan Prial
FOXBusiness



One of the more passionate debates attached to the flameout of subprime mortgages in the U.S. has grown out of efforts to pinpoint its origins.

A particularly contentious argument holds that community activists and others who pushed for an end to discriminatory practices by lenders in minority and low-income communities in the 1970s and 1980s inadvertently contributed to the mess by pressuring banks to loan money to people who could never repay it.

Here’s the crux of the argument: starting with the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, lenders, under pressure from fair housing activists and sympathetic politicians, began looking for ways to increase their presence in minority and low income communities. That was the first step in a long march toward a relaxation of lending standards. Borrowers in recent years could even get mortgages without having to verify income or put any money down.

A significant turning point occurred in 1992, when the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston issued a report that claimed discriminatory lending practices – called “redlining” because bankers allegedly drew red lines around neighborhoods to be avoided – were widespread and deep-rooted. It was a short leap from the release of this report to a dramatic uptick in the number of high interest loans – subprime loans -- made to people who never would have been approved a few years earlier.

Stan Liebowitz, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, has for years been a vocal critic of the Boston Fed report, and now argues that it was a primary catalyst for the current mess.
“Maybe they believed there was discrimination, but they came up with the completely wrong prescription,” Liebowitz said in an interview. “And even if there was discrimination going on, it makes no sense to give people loans that they don’t qualify for and that they will wind up defaulting on.”

Liebowitz published a paper of his own in 1998 refuting the findings of the Boston Fed report and arguing against any slackening of standards. He said his argument was fairly simple: “If you weaken the lending standards you’re gonna wind up with a lot of defaults because that’s what the lending standards were there for in the first place.”

He said he’s hardly surprised that that’s exactly what has happened.

Moreover, Liebowitz argues that weakened lending standards opened the door to predatory lenders, creating an environment conducive for them to ply their risky loans in minority and low-income communities.

But some experts argue much to the contrary.

“The notion that the community reinvestment movement is somehow responsible for the rise in predatory lending is simply flat out wrong,” said Gregory D. Squires, a sociology professor at George Washington University, who has written extensively on fair housing issues.

Squires and likeminded others say the problem got out of hand not when subprime loans began proliferating in low-income and minority neighborhoods, but rather when those loans started being packaged into mortgage-backed securities that would prove extremely profitable (for a while) to investors.

“Because those loans could be sold readily (to investors), the problem wasn’t so much lax underwriting standards as intentional disregard for common sense underwriting,” Squires said.

Indeed, that demand among investors served as a powerful incentive for loan originators to continue approving risky loans because they knew there would be a market for them.

Kathleen Day, with the non-profit Center for Responsible Lending, said the federal government “has always tried to encourage banks to expand the markets they were serving, especially for those who were locked out.” But the government never encouraged banks “to cut corners in those underserved communities,” she said. “The lending industry, which includes the secondary mortgages markets, took it to the next step.”

Day said that as the U.S. housing market boomed earlier this decade demand on Wall Street exploded for subprime-backed securities. That demand, she said, was based on the assumption that housing prices would go up forever.

“They had such an appetite for this stuff – securities with a higher market return, underpinned by real estate,” she said.

At least one activist -- Cathy Mickens, executive director of the Neighborhood Housing Services of Jamaica -- said she hopes the mistakes of the past are used to fix the broken mortgage system. That would entail the government and the lenders working together to reach the million of Americans facing foreclosure.

Subprime loans, she said “helped a lot of people in our communities get homes. But then it just became a weapon and used to victimize a lot of people. It’s not the product itself that should be blamed; it’s the people who misuse the product.”

-Foxbusiness.com-

What is the Pueblo style of home?

Pueblo

Taking its cues from Native American and Spanish Colonial styles, chunky looking Pueblos emerged around 1900 in California, but proved most popular in Arizona and New Mexico, where many original designs still survive.

The style is characterized by flat roofs, parapet walls with round edges, earth-colored stucco or adobe-brick walls, straight-edge window frames, and roof beams that project through the wall. The interior typically features corner fireplaces, unpainted wood columns, and tile or brick floors.

-Realtor Magazine-

The Bail Out - Is it really what we need?

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, trying to deal with a worsening housing slump, is announcing a new initiative that is aimed at helping homeowners about to lose their homes. For qualified homeowners, it will put the foreclosure process on hold for 30 days.

The new program is called Project Lifeline. It will be available to people who have taken out all types of mortgages, not just the high-cost subprime loans that have been the focus on previous relief efforts.

The program was put together by six of the nation's largest financial institutions. These lenders say they will contact homeowners who are 90 or more days overdue on their monthly mortgage payments. They will be given the opportunity to put the foreclosure process on pause for 30 days while the lenders try to work out a way to make the mortgage more affordable to the homeowner.

What is the Prairie style of home?

Prairie

In suburban Chicago in 1893, Frank Lloyd Wright, America's most famous architect, designed the first Prairie-style house, and it's still a common style throughout the Midwest. Prairie houses come in two styles--boxy and symmetrical or low-slung and asymmetrical. Roofs are low-pitched, with wide eaves. Brick and clapboard are the most common building materials. Other details: rows of casement windows; one-story porches with massive square supports; and stylized floral and circular geometric terra-cotta or masonry ornamentation around doors, windows, and cornices.

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the Neoclassical Style?

Neoclassical

A well-publicized, world-class event can inspire fashion for years. At least that's the case with the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which showcased cutting-edge classical buildings that architects around the country emulated in their own residential and commercial designs. The Neoclassical style remained popular through the 1950s in incarnations from one-story cottages to multilevel manses. Its identifying Ionic or Corinthian columned porches often extend the full height of the house. Also typical: symmetrical facades, elaborate, decorative designs above and around doorways, and roof-line balustrades (low parapet walls).

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the National style of home?

National

Born out of the fundamental need for shelter, National-style homes, whose roots are set in Native American and pre-railroad dwellings, remain unadorned and utilitarian. The style is characterized by rectangular shapes with (insert link side gabled roofs) or square layouts with pyramidal roofs. The gabled-front-and-wing style pictured here is the most prevalent type with a side-gabled wing attached at a right angle to the gabled front. Two subsets of the National style, known as "hall-and-parlor family" and "I-house," are characterized by layouts that are two rooms wide and one room deep. Massed plan styles, recognized by a layout more than one room deep, often sport side gables and shed-roofed porches. You'll find National homes throughout the country

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the Monterey style?

Monterey

This style emerged in 1853 when Boston merchant Thomas Larkin relocated to Monterey, Calif. The style updates Larkin's vision of a New England Colonial with an Adobe brick exterior. The Adobe reflected an element of Spanish Colonial houses common in the Monterey area at the time. Later Monterey versions merged Spanish Eclectic with Colonial Revival styles to greater or lesser extents.

Larkin's design also established a defining feature of Montereys: a second-floor with a balcony. At the time one-story homes dominated the Bay Area.

In today's Montereys, balcony railings are typically styled in iron or wood; roofs are low pitched or gabled and covered with shingles--variants sometimes feature tiles--and exterior walls are constructed in stucco, brick, or wood.

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the Italianate style?

Italianate

Italianate homes, which appeared in Midwest, East Coast, and San Francisco areas between 1850 and 1880, can be quite ornate despite their solid square shape. Features include symmetrical bay windows in front; small chimneys set in irregular locations; tall, narrow, windows; and towers, in some cases. The elaborate window designs reappear in the supports, columns, and door frames.

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the International style?

International

Initiated by European architects--such as Mies van der Rohe--in the early 20th century, this is the style that introduced the idea of exposed functional building elements, such as elevator shafts, ground-to-ceiling plate glass windows, and smooth facades.

The style was molded from modern materials--concrete, glass, and steel--and is characterized by an absence of decoration. A steel skeleton typically supports these homes. Meanwhile, interior and exterior walls merely act as design and layout elements, and often feature dramatic, but nonsupporting projecting beams and columns. With its avant-garde elements, naturally the style appeared primarily in the East and in California.

-Realtor Magazine-

What is the Greek Revival Style?

Greek Revival

This style is predominantly found in the Midwest, South, New England, and Midatlantic regions, though you may spot subtypes in parts of California. Its popularity in the 1800s stemmed from archeological findings of the time, indicating that the Grecians had spawned Roman culture. American architects also favored the style for political reasons: the War of 1812 cast England in an unfavorable light; and public sentiment favored the Greeks in their war for independence in the 1820s.

Identify the style by its entry, full-height, or full-building width porches, entryway columns sized in scale to the porch type, and a front door surrounded by narrow rectangular windows. Roofs are generally gabled or hipped. Roof cornices sport a wide trim. The front-gable found in one subtype became a common feature in Midwestern and Northeastern residential architecture well into the 20th century. The townhouse variation is made up of narrow, urban homes that don't always feature porches. Look for townhouses in Boston, Galveston, Texas., Mobile, Ala., New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., and Savannah, Ga.

-Realtor Magazine-