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Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Contractor Tears Siding Off Wrong House
An Iowa homeowner was surprised when he looked at his house and half the siding on it was gone, leaving an exposed underbelly of bare white plastic. No other nearby houses were affected. Had a highly localized tornado swept through and targeted just the side of his house? Nope. A local contractor got the address wrong and taken the siding off the wrong abode. The timing was pretty poor, too, as the homeowner had just put it up for sale. And because of insurance bureaucracy, it may be a while before the siding goes back up.
"We just found out they got the wrong house," the contractor, Rausch Companies, told KCRG. The goof also put the damper on some kids' hopes that day. "We were supposed to have a birthday party, but there were nails all over, electrical exposed, so obviously we couldn't take the kids outside," the man renting the house said.
The landlord has had to pay himself to get the outside walls patched up to prevent against water damage. Rausch said that the matter was being handled by insurance. "It seems that they are in the process of coming up with an offer or something that I am not aware of," the landlord told TV9. Rausch's insurance company said they would get to it as soon as they could, but many of their adjusters were occupied assessing recent storm damage in the county.
Meanwhile, the house sits waiting, an eyesore on the market.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Are You Spending Too Much Money On These Household Products?
Forbes.com knows where we're hitting our pockets the hardest, and highlights a few items consumers could either cut back on or find a cheaper alternative for, in order to save some big bucks.
Name-brand medications: The recipes for aspirin and other pain relievers like acetaminophen and ibuprofen are pretty basic, and buying a name brand version can be up to 40% more than generic. That's just silly. Compare labels and active ingredients when making your choice of over-the-counter meds.
Buy refills for replaceable products: Is your liquid soap out? Don't buy a whole new bottle and pay for that packaging — grab a big refill of your favorite detergents, soaps and cleaners and fill the dispenser back up.
Ft. Monroe Residential Units to Be Up For Grabs
For almost 200 years, occupancy of these stately homes - shaded by live oak trees, with sweeping views of the Chesapeake Bay - has been limited to an august circle of Army brass and their families.
You needed at least a couple of stars on your Army uniform and a prestigious assignment to Fort Monroe to live on what's known as Generals' Row.
Not anymore. With the Army about to pull up stakes and move to Fort Eustis in Newport News, scores of homes previously occupied by soldiers and their families are now available to the public.
"We've got great product available, and we're open for business," Jerry Moore, real estate director for the Fort Monroe Authority, said Thursday after a board meeting.
The authority, which will manage the 570-acre property when the Army departs in September, has been leasing more than 100 of the fort's 272 residential units to military members and civilian defense workers. The bulk of them are in crumbling buildings from the 1950s.
As of Aug. 1, the coveted residences inside the stone fort, on Generals' Row and in a Victorian-era village are available for lease to the general public. Most of them are brick, some date to the 1830s, and one was occupied by Robert E. Lee as a young Army officer.
Rents will range from $1,350 to $4,500 a month, plus utilities.
More Would-Be Home Buyers Backing Out Before Closing
Real estate agents don't have it easy these days — well, these years — and their jobs have become even more maddening lately thanks to the recent trend of home buyers canceling sales at the last minute. The rate of home sale cancellations rose from 4 percent in May to 16 percent in June.
CNBC reports the National Association of Realtors' chief economist says he's befuddled by the spike:
“I think it's the broader, very slow economic activity. The economy is expanding at a very slow pace, job creation is very slow, the consumer confidence has certainly taken hit in the second quarter, so there could have been some buyers who had some second thoughts and just decided to pull out of the contract, but at the moment it's still unclear as to why there was a measurable rise in cancellations."
Why do you think more home buyers are backing away just before closing?
Cancellations Roil Realtors [CNBC]
Monday, July 18, 2011
How To Save Money For A House
If you want to scrape together as much money as possible for a down payment on a home, you'll have to cut your usual expenses. The trick is deciding exactly what you can and can't do without.
Blonde & Balanced offers a primer for how to chip away at your budget and cobble together some extra scratch.
Suggestions from the post:
*Shop for clothes as little as possible. If you can make your clothes last twice as long as you'd usually wear them, you'll cut your clothing budget by 50 percent.
*Find cheap hobbies to eat up your free time. Run outside rather than join a gym. Hit the library rather than a bookstore. Watch movies at home rather than at a theater.
If you've cramped down on spending with a goal in mind, how did you cut costs?
Buying Our First Home: How To Save Money For A House [Blonde & Balanced]
Places in Homes That Breed Germs
A house may look clean, but looks can be deceiving. Bacteria and other dangers could be building up in certain areas, poised to make your life difficult.
Popular Mechanics identifies several spots inside homes that can serve as breeding grounds for germs.
Included are dishwashers, which tend to lull people into a false sense of security, given all the hot water and soap that swirls around in them. It turns out species of fungi that can infect humans can fester in dishwashers' rubber seals.
Also ripe for germ orgies are shower heads, which can contain staphylococcus, legionella, among other gunk, that comes from public water.
What cleaning rituals do you use to keep bugs at bay?
5 Places in Your Home That are Breeding Superbugs [Popular Mechanics via Boing Boing]
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Recession Turns Homeowner Association Fights Brutal
Florida is full of condo complexes run by homeowner's associations. After you've bought and paid for your condo, all you have to do is pay the monthly maintenance fees and you get trim lawns, a snappy billiards room, and a clean shuffleboard area. But as the economy stews in its own juices, the AP reports, some seniors living on a fixed income are having trouble making these monthly payments - and no wonder, with special assessments of $6,000 - and are getting foreclosed on by their own neighbors for as little as being 60 days past due on their fees. Some of them have also stopped making payments in protest over things like the rats, and the sewage raining on their head:
To wit, from the article:
Not to mention that the condos they bought for $79,000 are now selling for $3,000, and for less than what they're paying in monthly fees they could rent a nicer place down the road. It's war out there.But that was Inlet House before the rats started chewing through the toilet seats in vacant units and sewage started seeping from the ceiling... [and] before the homeowners' association levied $6,000 assessments on everyone — and then foreclosed on seniors who couldn't pay the association bill, even if they didn't owe the bank a dime.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Harm Yourself With These 5 Dangerous, But Useful, Cleaning Products
Here are 5 ordinary household cleaners that Consumer Reports says should be handled with care:
- Undiluted ammonia can burn skin on contact. Do not mix with products that contain chlorine bleach—it makes a poisonous gas.
- Undiluted chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite) is very irritating to eyes and lungs.
- Drain, metal, and oven cleaners with sodium hydroxide (lye) can burn eyes, nose, and throat tissue on contact.
- Toilet bowl cleaners with hydrochloric acid can cause serious eye damage and skin burns.
- Furniture and floor polishes, and glass cleaners with naptha can cause headaches and nausea.
Our frugal cousins at CR have also provided an extensive list of non-toxic alternative cleaners that you can mix up yourself. Vinegar, is there anything you can't do?
How to make your own (less-toxic) household cleaners [Consumer Reports]
Five everyday cleaning products that can cause you harm [Consumer Reports]
Options For Those Who Are Underwater On Mortgages
Credit.com is two parts into a six-part series about options for underwater homeowners. The first two moves outlined are the most basic:
*Stay and pay. Just keep your head down and make your mortgage payments as usual. It's the simplest and most convenient option, but financially questionable if your mortgage payment far exceeds what you'd pay for rent.
*Refinance. Sub-5 percent interest rates are widely available for those with solid credit, and the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which was extended through June 2012, is another option.
If you're underwater on your mortgage, how are you dealing with your finances?
Underwater On Your Home? Your Six Options [Credit.com]
Monday, July 11, 2011
Homeowner’s Association Hit By Sting of Abandoned Houses
With a sea of homes left empty by erstwhile homeowners who couldn't afford the mortgage, a number of homeowner associations around the country have are stuck having to pay for the upkeep on vacant properties lest the value of the remaining homes be harmed any further.
And these HOAs must find ways to pay for this maintenance without collecting any dues from the former tenants. That means higher dues for the remaining owners.
"There was a foreclosure unattended for such a long time with a pool so dirty it could have created a haven for West Nile virus. So we had to get a pool service to come treat it," one HOA president tells the Atlanta Journal Constitution about his organization's ordeal. Just two vacant homes in his neighborhood have cost the HOA $23K in labor and lost dues.
Friday, July 01, 2011
Organize Your Spray Bottles Under the Sink
Hang the bottles by their grip handles to the rod and voila! The bottles stay in place. By moving them up in the air - the number one rule of space-saving organizing is to go vertical, even if it's just a few inches - you create room below for your other cleaning supplies. Neat!
Under my sink [jengrantmorris.blogspot.com]
Thursday, June 30, 2011
New Federal Program Offers Underwater Homeowners Loans They May Not Have To Repay
The Emergency Homeowners Loan Program is targeted at people who are not terribly far behind on their payments but who need that short-term boost to get them back on track with making payments.
From SmartMoney.com:
Rolled out by HUD and the nonprofit housing advocacy group NeighborWorks America, the program is making loans with far better terms than anything on offer at a local bank. The loans are interest-free. Payments go directly to the lender for a portion of the borrower's monthly mortgage, including missed payments or past due charges. And when the assistance period — which runs for up to two years — ends, 20% of the loan is forgiven with each passing year. In other words, for qualified borrowers who stay in their home for at least five years after the assistance period and who don't fall behind on their mortgage again, this money doesn't have to be paid back.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Retiree Loses Everything When Bank Mistakes His House for Foreclosure
An eighty-two year old Tampa Bay man has lost everything he owns, including pictures of his dead wife, after a clean-out crew hired by Bank of America mistook his house for the foreclosure next door.
The St. Petersburg Times reports that Benito Sr. came back from vacation to find that his house was padlocked and everything inside was gone. A sign outside taped to his window was for a company that cleans out foreclosed houses.
When he first called the number, an employee said it was probably their fault, saying, "It had to be us. We had a work order to go out to 4255."
Thursday, June 23, 2011
More People Getting Their Clothes Mended or Altered
Instead of throwing away clothes that have a rip or don't fit, more of his customers are asking for work done. His customers are telling him, "Let it out, let it in," he says, getting pants that are too tight adjusted, dresses that are too wide cinched up.
It seems the "everything is disposable" mentality has gone in for alterations.
"People are holding onto stuff longer," says Ed.
And not to put Ed out of a job, but if you want to save even more money than just repairing clothes rather than buying new ones, here's a complete guide to mending your own clothes.
Are you a small business owner? How have you noticed your customers' behaviors changing in response to harder times? Sound off in the comments.
How to Mend Clothes [HowStuffWorks]
Sunday, June 19, 2011
The Other Side of the Housing Crisis
The house features a giant kitchen, master bedroom suite with a Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom, bamboo floors and cathedral ceilings.
"We weren't looking," Lindsey Blackmon said.
She and her husband, Adam, are a working-class family in their late 20s, with an 18-month daughter. "It's almost like we skipped a step in housing. We have already found our 'forever' house. It's fantastic"
It's the other side of the housing crisis, the people buying up foreclosed property, often first-time homebuyers, young couples and investors, real estate experts say.
While the Blackmons weren't looking to buy a house, they couldn't help but notice the spacious house for sale on Deep Creek Road in Newport News a few blocks from where they lived in their 1,600 square-foot starter home. They inquired about it, and almost didn't make an offer. They were surprised when they offered $250,000, and the bank counter-offered at $261,000.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Jiffy Lube’s New Oil Change Frequency Schedule
One of the great myths of car maintenance — that vehicles need oil changes every 3,000 miles — has taken a significant hit now that Jiffy Lube has changed its policy and will no longer recommend oil changes to customers on that schedule.
USA Today reports franchisees will use a computerized system that takes factors including severity of driving into account to provide a tailored service schedule for each customer.
Beat the Heat with DIY AC
Portable 12V Air Conditioner —Cheap and easy!
Homemade "air conditioner" (uses a closed loop of copper tubes to run water around the fan)
Home Made Air Conditioner II This one is ridiculously easy to make.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Paint Cans As Coat Hooks
Nailing paint cans to your wall is not necessarily a sign that you're suffering mental confusion or own an Applebee's. Thanks to their storage capacity, cans tend to make better coat hooks than coat hooks themselves, argues Instructables.
The post reasons you can still drape jackets, scarves and what have you over the cans, but can also utilize the can openings to shove gloves, coat keys and whatever else you'd like. Depending on your tastes, metal cans might not work with whatever setup you've got going, but with some creativity you can apply the concept to something that looks good and provides the extra convenience.
What other odd things make a surprising amount of sense when attached to walls?
High Functioning Coat Hangers [Instructables via Lifehacker]
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