Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Is This Really a Buyer's Market?
With falling home prices and higher inventories, most of the public views real estate as a “buyer’s market,” in which buyers hold more of the control and sellers will more eagerly accept lower offers just to sell. Not so fast, say buyers and sellers. More buyers are finding the sellers in the driver’s seat. Buyer Young Hammack gave up looking for homes for a while after being outbid on three properties in California. "It's a false buyer's market," Hammack says. "If you think prices are cheap, wait until you start putting offers in."Many sellers may be unable or unwilling to lower their home prices — mostly because they may be underwater on their mortgage — so buyers are increasingly finding lower offers than list price denied. Buyers, on the other hand, may be reluctant to agree to a deal if they don’t feel like they are getting it at a deep discount, industry insiders say. Traditional buyers also are finding even buying a foreclosure can be difficult as they’re increasingly outbid by investors who are willing to pay cash. "There's a shortage of attractive inventory," says Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin Corp. "Customers just keep getting outbid on the houses that they want." Real estate professional Steve Capen with Keller Williams Realty in St. Petersburg, Fla., says that the homes most in demand among buyers often don’t require much repair work and are located in good school districts and choice neighborhoods near transit hubs."What's selling is the cream of the crop, and they sell fast," Capen says. "If it's not cream of the crop, it's getting hammered."Source: “Buyers' Market? Stressed Sellers Say Not So Fast,” The Wall Street Journal online (April 25, 2011)
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
At Home Simple Tips to Downsize your lifestyle
RISMEDIA, December 7, 2010—(MCT)—David, Christy and Noah Swindlehurst are practicing new math at their Eden Prairie, Minn., town home—minimal addition, maximum subtraction.
While the tradition for most young American families is to acquire more, the Swindlehursts are determined to get rid of as much stuff as they can spare.
“We just worked our way through four dressers, and now we’re down to two,” Christy said, as David reluctantly parted with some T-shirts that held sentimental value.
The Swindlehursts are part of a growing national movement of personal downsizers, people who are simplifying their lives—and spending habits—by paring down their possessions and resisting the urge to buy more.
A natural spinoff of the trend toward living green, replacing the desire to acquire with an urge to purge is catching on everywhere from the blogosphere to progressive-minded neighborhoods.
One subset, “The 100 Things Challenge,” was Christy Swindlehurst’s initial inspiration. By daring people to keep only 100 things, the challenge gives would-be downsizers a solid, if rather drastic, number to shoot for.
Launched by a San Diegoan named Dave Bruno three years ago, the grass-roots effort has picked up a Facebook fan following and a book deal—and yes, there’s a discussion on Bruno’s website about the validity of a guy who advocates shedding everything now producing thousands of books.
“Our consumer culture makes stuff very easy to acquire, but hard to get rid of,” said Bruno, who isn’t a hard-liner on the exact number of things others decide to keep. “Changing your behavior is not going to happen after one weekend of intense purging. The goal is to eventually free yourself from the demands of consumerism, from being stuck on stuff.”
In the Twin Cities, for example, a recent indicator that paring-back fever is growing was the turnout—despite the season’s first sloppy snowstorm—of 250 people at a “Transition Town” event hosted by the Minneapolis nonprofit Alliance for Sustainability earlier this month. A term that originated in Britain five years ago, “transition towns” are a way of bringing together people interested in cutting back on stuff and living greener.
Downsizing has benefits beyond the environmental, from practical, like making housecleaning easier, to psychological—being literally less anchored to material goods is freeing to the spirit as well. The motivation to downsize is usually a combination of reducing carbon footprints, saving money, feeling more organized and passing on these values to future generations.
For Dr. Sheryl Grassie of southwest Minneapolis, the idea is to take up less space in the world. With the three kids she raised now out of her 3,000-square-foot home, she plans to move to a space less than one-third that size. Not unusual for middle-aged empty nesters, but Grassie is taking things much further.
She has sold or given away the majority of her furniture and household goods, including former keepsakes like the good dishes she only used a couple of times a year. She’s gotten rid of three-fourths of her clothes, and no longer needs her huge walk-in closet. “We’ve been so conditioned to buy more, to go bigger,” she said. “I’m not feeling that call anymore.”
Life coach Nicole Lynskey of Minneapolis, who teaches a downsizing seminar called “Overstuffed,” downscaled her possessions primarily for environmental reasons. She says the stress-reducing effect can be equally uplifting.
The same holds true for Christy Swindlehurst, a nurse, who wants to use her family’s downsizing as a lesson for her son. “The clutter stresses me out, and I want to stop making those quick runs to the store that turn into $200 worth of impulse buys,” she said “But I also want my son to learn that you can’t just buy something because you want it. I don’t want him getting into financial trouble down the road.”
While downsizers are nowhere near approaching a majority—retail sales did climb in October, after all—their goals are catching on. Many young adults who grew up sandwiched between two economic downturns are showing signs of feeling very different about what defines success than their parents and grandparents did.
Generation Y is more into making friends than amassing objects, according to a 2010 Study of the American Dream by MetLife.
Nearly 40% of millennials (people born in the 1980s and early ’90s) say they already have what they need, up from 26% in 2008. And the number of them who feel growing pressure to buy more and better material goods has dropped almost 20 percentage points since 2006, from 66% to 47%.
But young adults aren’t the only ones changing priorities. The same study found that 77% of all ages surveyed now see improving quality of life as being less about money than about improving personal relationships. In addition, 58% say they define the American dream as family and children, up from 42% in 2006. That’s a good thing, some advocates say, because future generations may not have a choice in the matter.
“Everybody will be simplifying their lifestyles over the next 20 years, whether we like it or not, so we might as well get ready for it,” said Alliance for Sustainability’s program director Sean Gosiewski. “Our overconsumption has been based on the easy availability of petroleum,” which is not an indefinite given, he said.
Meanwhile, the pioneer downsizers of America continue slogging through their piles of stuff, telling themselves, no pain, no lack of gain. But the art of de-acquisition is not without its challenges.
Downsizing tips
From Dave Bruno, the “100 Things Challenge” guy:
-Start with your closet. Everyone has too many clothes. The process of downsizing your wardrobe is cathartic and empowers you to tackle other areas of the house.
-It’s going to be hard to make a prolonged commitment to refuse to get more stuff. It will take a while to reduce your belongings and it’s going to take a few months of refusing to get new things before you change your habits.
-Most people around you will not be doing this and may react negatively or defensively. Be gracious to them. Set a good example. Whatever you do, stick to it.
From Nicole Lynskey, “Overstuffed” workshop:
-Assess the impact your clutter or your consumption has on you. Think of the size of your home, how much you spend on new stuff, the energy put into acquiring, maintaining and storing your stuff, the time you spend searching for things.
-Get in touch with what you really long for in life. Do you really want to work part-time? Would changing your purchase habits or moving into a smaller space make these things possible for you?
-Start with small areas. The more you declutter, the more momentum you will get and the more you will notice things you don’t really need.
(c) 2010, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
While the tradition for most young American families is to acquire more, the Swindlehursts are determined to get rid of as much stuff as they can spare.
“We just worked our way through four dressers, and now we’re down to two,” Christy said, as David reluctantly parted with some T-shirts that held sentimental value.
The Swindlehursts are part of a growing national movement of personal downsizers, people who are simplifying their lives—and spending habits—by paring down their possessions and resisting the urge to buy more.
A natural spinoff of the trend toward living green, replacing the desire to acquire with an urge to purge is catching on everywhere from the blogosphere to progressive-minded neighborhoods.
One subset, “The 100 Things Challenge,” was Christy Swindlehurst’s initial inspiration. By daring people to keep only 100 things, the challenge gives would-be downsizers a solid, if rather drastic, number to shoot for.
Launched by a San Diegoan named Dave Bruno three years ago, the grass-roots effort has picked up a Facebook fan following and a book deal—and yes, there’s a discussion on Bruno’s website about the validity of a guy who advocates shedding everything now producing thousands of books.
“Our consumer culture makes stuff very easy to acquire, but hard to get rid of,” said Bruno, who isn’t a hard-liner on the exact number of things others decide to keep. “Changing your behavior is not going to happen after one weekend of intense purging. The goal is to eventually free yourself from the demands of consumerism, from being stuck on stuff.”
In the Twin Cities, for example, a recent indicator that paring-back fever is growing was the turnout—despite the season’s first sloppy snowstorm—of 250 people at a “Transition Town” event hosted by the Minneapolis nonprofit Alliance for Sustainability earlier this month. A term that originated in Britain five years ago, “transition towns” are a way of bringing together people interested in cutting back on stuff and living greener.
Downsizing has benefits beyond the environmental, from practical, like making housecleaning easier, to psychological—being literally less anchored to material goods is freeing to the spirit as well. The motivation to downsize is usually a combination of reducing carbon footprints, saving money, feeling more organized and passing on these values to future generations.
For Dr. Sheryl Grassie of southwest Minneapolis, the idea is to take up less space in the world. With the three kids she raised now out of her 3,000-square-foot home, she plans to move to a space less than one-third that size. Not unusual for middle-aged empty nesters, but Grassie is taking things much further.
She has sold or given away the majority of her furniture and household goods, including former keepsakes like the good dishes she only used a couple of times a year. She’s gotten rid of three-fourths of her clothes, and no longer needs her huge walk-in closet. “We’ve been so conditioned to buy more, to go bigger,” she said. “I’m not feeling that call anymore.”
Life coach Nicole Lynskey of Minneapolis, who teaches a downsizing seminar called “Overstuffed,” downscaled her possessions primarily for environmental reasons. She says the stress-reducing effect can be equally uplifting.
The same holds true for Christy Swindlehurst, a nurse, who wants to use her family’s downsizing as a lesson for her son. “The clutter stresses me out, and I want to stop making those quick runs to the store that turn into $200 worth of impulse buys,” she said “But I also want my son to learn that you can’t just buy something because you want it. I don’t want him getting into financial trouble down the road.”
While downsizers are nowhere near approaching a majority—retail sales did climb in October, after all—their goals are catching on. Many young adults who grew up sandwiched between two economic downturns are showing signs of feeling very different about what defines success than their parents and grandparents did.
Generation Y is more into making friends than amassing objects, according to a 2010 Study of the American Dream by MetLife.
Nearly 40% of millennials (people born in the 1980s and early ’90s) say they already have what they need, up from 26% in 2008. And the number of them who feel growing pressure to buy more and better material goods has dropped almost 20 percentage points since 2006, from 66% to 47%.
But young adults aren’t the only ones changing priorities. The same study found that 77% of all ages surveyed now see improving quality of life as being less about money than about improving personal relationships. In addition, 58% say they define the American dream as family and children, up from 42% in 2006. That’s a good thing, some advocates say, because future generations may not have a choice in the matter.
“Everybody will be simplifying their lifestyles over the next 20 years, whether we like it or not, so we might as well get ready for it,” said Alliance for Sustainability’s program director Sean Gosiewski. “Our overconsumption has been based on the easy availability of petroleum,” which is not an indefinite given, he said.
Meanwhile, the pioneer downsizers of America continue slogging through their piles of stuff, telling themselves, no pain, no lack of gain. But the art of de-acquisition is not without its challenges.
Downsizing tips
From Dave Bruno, the “100 Things Challenge” guy:
-Start with your closet. Everyone has too many clothes. The process of downsizing your wardrobe is cathartic and empowers you to tackle other areas of the house.
-It’s going to be hard to make a prolonged commitment to refuse to get more stuff. It will take a while to reduce your belongings and it’s going to take a few months of refusing to get new things before you change your habits.
-Most people around you will not be doing this and may react negatively or defensively. Be gracious to them. Set a good example. Whatever you do, stick to it.
From Nicole Lynskey, “Overstuffed” workshop:
-Assess the impact your clutter or your consumption has on you. Think of the size of your home, how much you spend on new stuff, the energy put into acquiring, maintaining and storing your stuff, the time you spend searching for things.
-Get in touch with what you really long for in life. Do you really want to work part-time? Would changing your purchase habits or moving into a smaller space make these things possible for you?
-Start with small areas. The more you declutter, the more momentum you will get and the more you will notice things you don’t really need.
(c) 2010, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Homes are Safer with a cleaner kitchen 10 new tips
RISMEDIA, April 14, 2011—(MCT)—The first day of spring has come and gone. To get the cleaning season started right, we looked for the best advice on cleaning the busiest—and maybe dirtiest—room in the house: the kitchen.
For a list of what we should clean, how and when, we asked a bunch of germ experts.
The biggest surprise? People with pets are six times more likely to get salmonella-based infections. The culprit is pet bowls, particularly the water bowl. We often dump it in the sink before we start handling food.
Want to sanitize?
Professional kitchens use a sanitizing solution made with one teaspoon household bleach in four cups of water. It’s sprayed on counters and cutting boards. Experts disagree on the need to use it at home, but if you do, do it correctly: Let sprayed surfaces air-dry—drying with dish towels may recontaminate the surface. Always clean before you sanitize. If chlorine comes in contact with dirt or soil, it can no longer sanitize. Don’t use more than one teaspoon chlorine—stronger isn’t better. And change it about every five days. Chlorine dissipates quickly.
1. Microwave
Fill a bowl with two cups water and a whole lemon, cut into slices. Place it inside and microwave for two minutes, then wipe it out with paper towels. The hot water softens food spills and the lemon cuts grease and keeps the microwave smelling fresh
2. Stove and oven
Spray stove spills with an all-purpose cleaner and let stand 10 minutes for easier cleaning. Oven spills aren’t a food hazard if you regularly heat the oven to 400. Cover a fresh spill with salt until you have time to clean it.
3. Counters
Clean regularly with an all-purpose cleaner. Spray with a weak bleach solution and air-dry if needed.
4. Dishes and dishwashers
If you hand-wash dishes, be sure to air-dry them in a rack as dirty or wet dish towels can recontaminate clean dishes. To reduce soap buildup in a dishwasher, occasionally fill the soap dispenser with baking soda or place a small cup of vinegar on the top shelf, then run the dishwater empty.
5. Sink, drain and faucet handle
Clean regularly with household cleanser, especially after washing or rinsing raw meat. Don’t forget to clean the faucet handle.
6. Refrigerator
Every day, wipe down the handles, including the underside. Every week, throw out anything that’s past its date or shows age. Every three to six months, empty shelves and clean the inside with 1/4 cup baking soda in one quart warm water, then spray with a bleach solution and air-dry. Remove drawers and clean under them. Before you return the food, wipe jars to remove drips. Clean the rubber gasket inside the door to ensure a tight seal. Vacuum the coils in the back and empty and clean the drip pan if necessary.
7. Pet bowls
Find a place besides the kitchen to clean turtle or frog habitats and empty pet bowls, or clean and sanitize the sink before you start washing fresh food.
8. Cutting boards
Most scientists believe wooden cutting boards are safest, as long as they are kept clean, sanitized and dry. Studies have shown wood hampers bacteria growth, while bacteria thrive in scars on plastic. Either way, keep them clean by running them through the dishwasher, or sanitize by spritzing with a weak bleach solution. Always change boards or clean with soapy water after preparing raw food—even vegetables. They grow in dirt, after all.
9. Sponges and dish towels
Change dish towels daily, or more often if they’re wet or dirty. You can microwave a wet sponge for two minutes, but the time varies depending on the power of the microwave (and if the sponge is dry, it could catch fire). Instead, put sponges on the top rack of the dishwasher at the end of every day.
10. Cross-contamination
You know you’re not supposed to put cooked food on the same surface you used for raw food. But it’s not just a problem with cutting boards. You touch all kinds of things while you’re handling raw food: Salt and pepper shakers, cabinet handles, etc. Pay attention to what you touch so you can wipe things down. Tip: It’s not necessary to rinse raw meat and chicken—it just spreads bacteria.
Thanks to our sources: Benjamin Chapman, the extension food-safety specialist for N.C. State; David Sweat, foodborne-disease epidemiologist with the North Carolina Division of Public Health; Douglas Powell, professor of food safety at Kansas State University; and Dean Cliver and Linda Harris with the University of California-Davis.
(c) 2011, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
HUD Approves 13.1 Million Emergency Home Loan
HUD Approves 13.1 Million Emergency Home Loan
Idaho Housing & Finance Association is ready to take applications immeditely
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan today approved the State of Idaho's bid to administer HUD's Emergency Homeowner Loan Program (EHLP), a bridge loan program designed to help unemployed families pay their mortgages. HUD determined Idaho's Housing and Finance Association's mortgage bridge loan program is "substantially similar" to HUD's program, thereby allowing the State to begin implementing the program itself.
HUD's Emergency Home Loan Program will work through a variety of state and non-profit entities and will offer a declining balance, deferred payment "bridge loan" (zero percent interest, non-recourse, subordinate loan) for up to $50,000 to assist eligible borrowers with payments on their mortgage principal, interest, mortgage insurance, taxes and hazard insurance for up to 24 months.
Under the program, eligible borrowers must:
1.Be at least three months delinquent in their payments and have a reasonable likelihood of being able to resume repayment of their mortgage payments and related housing expenses within two years;
2.Have a mortgage property that is the principal residence of the borrower; and
3.Demonstrate a good payment record prior to the event that produced the reduction of income.
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