1. Not–so-nice DIY projects.
You may have saved thousands by remodeling the kitchen or adding on an entire new room yourself. However, if a potential homebuyer can walk into your house and know immediately that the work was done by the homeowner and not a professional… Read More

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is increasing their upfront insurance premium from 1 percent to 1.75 percent. FHA’s annual mortgage insurance premium will increase by 0.10 percent for loans under $625,500 and by 0.35 percent for jumbo loans over $625,500. Anyone who rolls the upfront… Read More

Not all materials are created equal.
High-end materials might look beautiful… Read More

Spring cleaning sounds like an annual event, but these once-a-year tasks can be scheduled throughout the calendar year. These are the chores you think of when your mother-in-law is coming to visit, or when you put your home on the market and strangers are about to view it very closely. Keep this checklist handy any time you are ready to tackle a whole-house scrub down.

Banish the Dust Bunnies
Dust holds odor, feeds dust mites, and provides breeding ground for mold in dark, damp places. Get rid of dust bunnies on all the forgotten surfaces of your home: inside closets, under furniture, light bulbs (unscrew first!), under and behind all major appliances, and on top of the… Read More

I do a lot of driving. I’ve driven over a million miles in my life, and so I tend to see many things through a driving metaphor. In driving a car, one of the most prominent rules for any driver is this: “Know where you want to go.” Choosing a destination determines your path, your travel time, and on longer trips, where you’ll take breaks or stay overnight.

It’s obvious, isn’t it? When you get on a freeway, you need to know your exit; when you drive down a highway, you want to know where you’re going to turn. It’s the premise behind great mapping systems such as Google Maps, or the ubiquitous GPS mapping systems, which use transmissions coming from a constellation of satellites in order to tell you the best road to take to Aunt Mary’s house.

But for some reason in our individual lives, this simple rule gets lost by the wayside. Most of us don’t know where we are on the path we’ve chosen, because we haven’t a clue where we are going. We don’t know where our destination lies, and that means that all roads are the wrong one (or conversely, all roads are the right one).  We’re like the person who “got up and went off in all directions,” as Earl Nightingale once wrote. It doesn’t make sense to us to think of a concept like that, because it just doesn’t make sense at all.

Far better for us to sit down and dedicate a few minutes to deciding where we want to wind up in the near future. Most of us should have a life goal, but it would be progress if we just had a goal for the next few months — we need to determine where we want to go, and then how we’re going to get there.

Roads stretch on for miles and miles. The freeway I habitually drive would take me to Mexico if I didn’t get off the road (or Canada if I went the other way). But when we get onto the freeway, we have a determined plan for our trip. Too bad that some people make a decision, and never get off that bad decision’s path, unless they’re pushed off by some outside source.

In life, we sometimes do stupid things; we make bad decisions and stay with them, or we refuse to make decisions at all, and go with the flow. Occasionally, our lives are populated with good decisions and excellent follow-through, but more often than not, many people are driving without a destination in mind, happy to just drive along until they finally run out of gas.

Let’s choose our destinations in life, and set a course that will help us achieve those destinations with a minimal delay. It would be great if we could use Google Maps to plan a course to “success,” but until Google implements that feature, we’re just going to have to plan our own lives, ourselves.

Copyright, 2012, by Daryl R. Gibson. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the non-commercial redistribution of this document as long as it remains intact with this copyright and all other lines. This license does not extend to the use of this material in a compilation, whether for profit or non-profit use. Join us at http://www.weekdaywisdom.com.

While you’re trying to find every available reason to be outside this spring, termites are doing the exact opposite—trying to worm their way indoors and devour your walls and floors. And they certainly aren’t feasting for free.

“Termites have an insatiable appetite for cellulose found in wood, eating 24-hours a day, seven days a week. They cause serious and costly damage and can compromise the structural stability of a home,” said Missy Henriksen, vice president of public affairs for… Read More

You can determine what your house is worth, but it is necessary to know how others determine value for your house too.  Check your Zestimate, because, believe me when I tell you the buyer knows your Zestimate and may use it against you!

Your House As  Seen By:

Yourself…

Your Buyer…

Your  Lender…

Your  Appraiser..

And

Your  County Tax   Assessor…



Keep this in mind and you will be able to sell your house much faster and for more money.  Call me for a CMA on your home today.  Let’s see how accurate your Zestimate is.

What Are Contingency Sales Contracts?
“Contingent” simply means that one thing will happen dependent upon another event taking place first. A home inspection is an example of a contingency contract, in that a buyers’ completion of a home purchase is contingent upon the property in question… Read More

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