Test your knowledge of the housing market, and identify which of the following can be a deal breaker for many family buyers with young children: A. Not enough Bedrooms on one level. B. Dated Kitchen and/or Bathrooms. C. Busy street. D. No view of the backyard from the Kitchen. Answer: all of the above. While choices A, B,...Read More
Cost-Benefit Criterion “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it lots of times.” OK, so refinancing isn’t completely painless — there are some fees involved, and some paperwork to fill out (natch). But, the operative question to ask isn’t, “how long has it been since I refinanced?” or even “how much will it cost?” Rather, it’s...Read More
Table for Two Fifty Given that the Kitchen in this home measures 27′ x 10′, I suppose the longest the table (above) could be is 27 feet (make that 23′ or 24′, assuming you actually wanted to walk around it). Now, ask yourself whether that’s how long it looks. Nope, not to me, either.Read More
Not a Bad Tornado Shelter, Either (Assuming You Can Get Into It) After showing, I dunno, 5,000 homes over a decade, the surprise isn’t how much is familiar by now, but how much is (still) new. Like the home with a rather massive basement cistern I showed earlier this week. At first, it was a...Read More
Save for a certain plumbing fixture, you’d scarcely know that the room pictured above is actually a Bathroom. In fact, it’s rare to use one of the 18 allotted MLS photos to showcase a home’s Bathrooms, if only because other rooms are usually, well, more photogenic. However, when a home has a Bathroom as appealing as this...Read More
Quick Alternative to House Cleaning A thorough housecleaning can involve weeks of sorting, discarding, cleaning, etc. Not that ambitious? I recommend a “key chain cleaning” instead. Orphaned Keys As practiced by yours truly, it can be accomplished in less than 30 minutes, and involves these three steps: 1. Take all the keys off your key...Read More
