It’s officially Winter, and I found a way to heat my apartment for free! Of course it involves coincidence and an overheated restaurant below my apartment, so it’s not scalable. For those of you who don’t live over people unwittingly heating your home, and are interested in conserving energy (and money), below are some resources… Continue Reading Home Energy Use
The headline of this post may lead you to believe that existing-home sales were up again in November for the third straight month. That is indeed true. However, “the streak” I’m referring to is the remarkable fact that existing-sales prices have astonishingly risen year-over-year now for 57 months. That’s nearly five straight years. While the… Continue Reading November Existing-Home Sales: The Streak Continues
It’s Five for Wednesday! Apple’s AirPods are finally out and they’re getting mostly solid reviews, even though there’s usually a “but” in the headline, as there is here. If you’re just not interested in AirPods or any other wireless option, here’s a bunch of suggestions for wired headphones to use with your headphone jack-less iPhone.… Continue Reading Apple’s Wireless Airpods Reviewed, Suggestions for Wired Lightning Headphones, and More in Five for Wednesday
We at REALTOR® Magazine are always looking for tips and insights into the real estate business to share with you in hopes of improving your odds of success. This year, we hit a nerve with a few interesting stories covering topics such as verbal missteps with clients, social media posts that could land you in… Continue Reading 10 Articles You Found Most Useful in 2016
Ryan Fitzgerald By Ryan Fitzgerald With more than 2.5 million blog posts being published every day, it can be difficult to sort through the noise. Now that the year is coming to an end, I thought it it would be helpful to organize some of the year’s best real estate articles into one large round-up post for… Continue Reading 28 Great Real Estate Articles From 2016
Interest rates are inching up and credit can still be hard to get but there is one bright spot for households hoping to buy a home soon: they can get a larger loan now, thanks to recent loan-limit increases for both conforming loans and loans backed by FHA. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) increased… Continue Reading Families Can Get $11,000 More In Loan Funds
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey, REALTOR(R) Magazine You don’t have to go all Clark Griswold to show your holiday spirit. Decorations can be subtle, tasteful and inviting when a house is up for sale during the holiday months. Sure, there are two sides to this: Some staging and real estate professionals assert that you shouldn’t decorate… Continue Reading 10 Staging Tips for Holiday Decor
The following Field Guides have recently been updated in the Library: NEW in the Library at Realtor.org: Foreign Investment Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA) FIRPTA was enacted in 1980 to address perceived abuses by foreign investors, who, unlike US citizens, were not required to pay capital gains taxes, to create equity of tax treatment between… Continue Reading New and Updated in the Library – December 2016
Phubbing, fake news, multitasking, chocolate, crime, tips, procrastination, and lights. How often do you check your phone in your significant other’s presence, and have you thought about how that makes your SO feel? Fake news is a thing, so here are steps to help discern fact from fiction. Now Facebook has a plan to combat… Continue Reading What We’re Reading: December 12-16
The following is NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun’s reaction to today’s U.S. Commerce Department report on November housing starts: “There’s little to cheer about regarding residential construction in November. The fall in single-family housing starts offers zero relief to the housing inventory shortage throughout the country. Moreover, the collapse in multifamily starts assures continued robust… Continue Reading Instant Reaction: November Housing Starts