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com Friday Real estate market slows: enter remodel juggling act We all have the urge for home improvement, especially with all those television shows on: The Learning Channel, Discovery Channel, Arts & Entertainment, Home and Garden Television (HGTV), PBS, and even NBC. Home prices are showing signs of leveling off or at least slowing their meteoric rise. No longer can you count on recouping what you spend on remodeling, and that means charting a fine balance between keeping your home sale-ably up-to-date versus over-improving -- spending significantly more money than you'll ever realize when selling your home.
They live in Hastings on Hudson, NY, in a home built in 1925. They don't care if they over-improve and seem to agree that they have spent more remodeling their home than they are likely to recover if they sell any time soon. The Hirshfeld family wants what it wants to make the family comfortable.
The GMC PAD, a diesel-electric hybrid vehicle that doubles as a home. And commuting is what other people do," according to a Web site description. The Web site also refers to the PAD as "an urban loft with mobility." The PAD is designed to be a "media rich environment unlike any other," with "electronically variable exterior glazing" to selectively shield windows from public view. And the vehicle is equipped with a "teraflop" of computer memory, which in non-technical terms is enough to store a heaping portion of digital data.
Puts me in mind of that old Cindy Lauper song, "Tine after Tine." Janis Mara, Inman News Finally, a solution to the toothpaste-tube-squeezing dilemma Think of the marriages that will be saved by this handy household device - a toothpaste-tube squeezer that eliminates the endless bickering over whether to squeeze from the bottom, the middle or (the most exotic approach) by smooshing the top up against the nozzle (only useful when almost every drop of toothpaste has already been extracted).
Seventeen homeless alcoholics were allowed up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day -- a glass an hour from 7 am to 10 pm After an average of 16 months, the number of times they got in trouble with the law fell 51 percent, and hospital emergency room visits were down 36 percent. "Once we give a 'small amount' of alcohol and stabilize the addiction, we are able to provide health services that lead to a reduction in the unnecessary health services they were getting before," said Dr. Janis Mara, Inman News No thanks banks, I'll pay cash Last night I watched a program on HGTV called "What You Get for the Money." In half an hour, viewers saw homes valued at "two large," that's $2 million or so, in hot markets throughout the country. About one-third of million-dollar-plus home buyers pay cash for their homes.
Wednesday Mature golf course for sale The Arrowhead Golf Club in Western Kentucky is for sale for almost $3 million. The club is "mature," we are told, from which we assume that the only views are over the hill (though there are a lot of spectacles) and the members are constantly raising cane. Very well, I contain multitudes It's cooling off, it's correcting, it's "the barely audible hiss of a deflating balloon." It's the incredible American housing market, and if it can survive this relentless onslaught of vivid verbiage, God help us, it can survive anything. Earlier this year, you will recall, it was frothing, bubbling, overheating and spilling over. But now, it's simmering down, according to David Seiders, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders. James Glassman, senior economist for JP Morgan Chase, says it's creeping down. It's a "slowdown, not a meltdown," according to Union Bank of California Senior Economist Keitaro Matsuda. Kevin Robert of Coldwell Banker in Maine, says it's correcting. My favorite: It's tightening, according to Joseph Perkins, president of the Home Builders Association of Northern California; and it's easing, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. Do these people know something we don't, like where the whoopee cushions are hidden? Actually, despite this somewhat unfortunate beginning, the book sounds like it's probably okay overall - it also includes advice like "Be open and truthful with your employees, no matter how difficult it may be." The book: "Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference," by Quint Studer. Janis Mara, Inman News California developers feeling their oats Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "home stretch," the former practice track at Bay Meadows racetrack in San Mateo, Calif. has been converted into a mixed-use development with single-family homes and apartments, as well as offices and a retail center. No word as to whether the venerable "Mr Ed," the talking horse from a '60s sitcom, will be moving in, but it turns out that the development project nabbed a prize from the Sierra Club as one of the nation's 12 best. com promises simple solutions for easy living (dual concepts that have eluded me all my life), and, to some extent, it delivers, giving ideas on cooking, decorating, cleaning and organizing your home - a true gold mine for the Domestically Impaired. however, beneath the cheerful exterior lurks Guerrilla Marketing, you betcha by golly, in the form of advertorials for Procter & Gamble products like Swiffer dusters (shown in the photo). Nonetheless, if you turn on your Hype filter, the site has much to offer. Janis Mara, Inman News You only think you want to live in the country Some people suffer from the mistaken belief that they want to live on acreage far from city life, a la Green Acres. She sold her home and bought another home in the desert. Communing with nature was fine until a country coyote ate her city dog - that took a lot of the glamour away from the rural life. I've recently made friends with a couple who emigrated to Tucson as retirees from Florida. They, too, thought they wanted the romance of the rural home life away from it all. There is nothing to do at home in the country, they say, and even as retirees, they dislike the commute to do fun stuff in town. They are far enough out that even grocery shopping is an expedition. In a time of huge confusion and complicated legislation in real estate services it's time to apply the old Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) rule folks. Disclosure is the key to varied levels of service - tell them what they are getting and what they must do themselves - no more and yes, no less. If the DOJ and the FTC really care about the consumer why not promote full disclosure at every listing presentation or as a part of every real estate service offering? Fiduciary agency, no agency, just help advertising, for sale with nothing, only in the MLS - whatever. I suggest it might just be the time for a consumer "Truth in Real Estate Services" policy - certainly rather than wasting all this time fighting legal turf battles between State and the Federal governmental agencies. Ken Jenny - RBSC Tuesday Pulling the rug out from under you Is this cool or what?
Second, it will keep your feet warm in the winter, cuz it's wool. And it will finally make it possible for you to live out that grandiose fantasy about walking on water.
headhunter pillow, the "your" refers to a possession as opposed to part of one's own body. Janis Mara, Inman News A home called Nitt Witt Ridge For the seventy-first time, no, we don't make these up. There is an elaborately detailed, eccentric home in Cambria, Calif. named Nitt Witt Ridge, designed by Art Beal, the creator of California's landmark Hearst Castle, the San Diego Union Tribune reports. Beal used pipes for stairway rails, hubcaps in pillars, and toilet seats as picture frames, and the outdoor stair and walls are ornamented with abalone shells, we are told. If this sounds interesting to you, Michael and Stacey O'Malley, who own this California Historical Landmark, run tours of the place (Stacey took the photo at left).
com, features a grid representation of the United States. Realtors can purchase one or more squares in this grid, which each measure 10-by-10 pixels, to advertise their services. A pixel is the tiny building block for images on a computer s...
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