Housing Trends 9 Options to Remove, Hide or Play Down a Popcorn Ceiling Don’t love your popcorn ceiling? You’re not the only one stuck with some unwanted stucco overhead. There are many options for moving on from it, but not all of them are equally effective — or equally easy. To help you decide how to address your popcorn problem, here are some top ways to remove, cover […]
Housing Trends 4 Simple Steps to Painting a Wall Faster Many books about painting will tell you to paint a small strip along the baseboards, doorways, trim and other edges of the room with a brush before breaking out the paint roller to paint the rest of the wall. But before you do this paintbrush work, called “cutting in,” consider paint expert Shauna Gallagher’s method: Roll paint […]
Relocation Make Your Move Moving is stressful, whether it is across town or cross-country.  Once you have closed on your house, the reality of packing, moving, and setting up a new home can become overwhelming. While no list can make a move “stress-free”, planning ahead and staying organized can help make your move a little smoother.  Here is our […]
Housing Trends How to Plan a Renovation That Matches Your Budget When working with a contractor, you may feel like you have little influence over whether your remodeling project stays on budget and hits the finish line on time. But you have more control than you might think. Remember, the scope of your project and the specific materials are up to you. The key to keeping […]
Relocation Should I Move or Remodel? There are a number of things that can trigger the decision to remodel or move to a new home. Perhaps you have outgrown your current space, you might be tired of struggling with ancient plumbing or wiring systems, or maybe your home just feels out of date. The question is: Should you stay or should […]
Housing Trends How to Reduce Noise in an Open-Plan Design Open-plan living spaces have many advantages for family life and entertaining, and they increase the opportunity to bring lots of natural light into your home. But they can end up being quite noisy. You may be surprised, however, at how easy it is to reduce sound travel with a few key additions to your furnishings. There […]
For Sellers Selling Your Home? Go Through This Safety Checklist With Your Real Estate Agent Selling your home can be stressful for many reasons. Not only are you trying to get the best financial return on your investment, but you might also be working on a tight deadline. There’s also the pressure to keep your home clean and organized at all times for prospective buyers.  One thing you can be sure of when […]
Housing Trends How to Reduce Noise in an Open-Plan Design Open-plan living spaces have many advantages for family life and entertaining, and they increase the opportunity to bring lots of natural light into your home. But they can end up being quite noisy. You may be surprised, however, at how easy it is to reduce sound travel with a few key additions to your furnishings. There […]
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Housing Trends Great Design Element: Why Awnings Are Making a Comeback Awnings are a valuable home design element that our grandparents knew all about. In the days before air conditioning, they were used to shade interiors and help keep homes cool. With the focus on sustainable design today, there’s renewed interest in the power of awnings. They block the sun from entering the house and warming it […]
For Buyers Do You Have ‘Average’ Credit? If so, Getting a Mortgage May Be Tough This article originally appeared on Inman.com  In the early 2000s, getting a mortgage was hardly difficult thanks in great part to lax lending standards. This practice eventually led to a bubble forming in the nation’s housing market — which, as we all know, subsequently burst. Since that time, the pendulum has swung the other way — to an extreme. […]
For Buyers Investing in Rental Property: The Risks, Rewards, and Benefits of Owning Rental Property One area of the real estate market that is thriving right now is rental property. All indications suggest that the rental market will continue to improve because of low vacancy rates and rising rents. In fact, the demand for rentals is predicted to far exceed supply through 2016, with 4.5 million new renters expected to […]
For Sellers Six Key Factors That Affect the Sales Price of Your Home Pricing a home for sale is not nearly as simple as most people think. You can’t base the price on what the house down the street sold for. You can’t depend on tax assessments. Even automatic valuation methods (AVMs), while useful for a rough estimate of value, are unreliable for purposes of pricing a home for sale. […]
For Buyers & Sellers Relocating Your Home to Advance Your Career Many of us dream of getting a better job. But when a promotion or new job opportunity comes with a request to relocate, the result can be very disruptive to your home life. There’s a lot to consider when making this kind of move, such as do you have a home to sell? Are you planning […]
Housing Trends 8 Ways Your Kitchen Renovations Could Break Your Budget When you begin planning a kitchen renovation project, you may have no idea how much your ideal vision might cost. The answer will likely depend on several factors, including the size of your space, what you will do to it, and your budget. In the end, the price of a renovation should largely be driven […]
Housing Trends How the American Home has Evolved Owning a home has been an American tradition from the start. But the home itself has changed dramatically over the years. For example, you may be surprised to learn how much the size of the average American home has increased since the turn of the 20th century—especially when you compare it to the size of the […]
For Buyers & Sellers Why So Many Americans Are Either Upsizing or Downsizing According to two recent surveys that took industry watchers by surprise, many family homeowners are putting frugality aside and up-sizing to new houses that average as large as 2,480 square feet (an increase of as much as 13 percent from the year before), and sometimes exceed 3,500 square feet in size. Meanwhile, millions of baby boomer homeowners […]
Housing Trends How Long Is Your Contractor Liable? Constructing or remodeling a home is a complex, expensive endeavor. Ideally, everything goes as planned, and when the dust clears, the homeowner can settle in and enjoy the new home — and never think about the building process again. But what happens when, nine months after the owner moves in, the floor develops a crack, […]
Housing Trends 25 Ways to Make the Most of Small Spaces Suburban homes—with their large spaces, big yards, and separate bedrooms for every child—will always be popular with families, especially families of four or more. But there’s also a contingent today that’s eager to live in a dense urban setting: a high-rise condominium in the downtown core, a small home in an urban neighborhood, a small […]
Housing Trends 6 Alternative Flooring Solutions to Refresh Your Home Feeling ho-hum about classic hardwood floors? Here are six alternative floor solutions that can give any room in your house a fresh sense of personality, whether you’re starting from scratch or looking for an inexpensive DIY update. 1. Rubber. Often associated with commercial interiors, industrial rubber flooring can also be a sleek and smart solution for homes. Rubber […]
For Buyers & Sellers Refinancing: What you need to know Thanks to all-time-low interest rates, the number of homeowners refinancing their mortgages is at an all-time high. Of course, no one should refinance just because everyone else is doing it. But, for many homeowners, the benefits are simply too hard to ignore any longer. Save money each month. According to Freddie Mac (The country’s largest purchaser of home mortgages), the average […]