In Ireland and Scotland hollowed-out turnips with embers or candles inside became a very popular Halloween decoration a few hundred years ago. Tradition held that they would ward off “Stingy Jack” and other malevolent spirits on Halloween, and they also served as representations of the souls of the dead.

Irish families who immigrated to America brought the tradition with them, but they replaced the turnips with pumpkins. Soon people began to carve frightening faces and other designs into their jack-o’-lanterns. And despite its origins, today it has nothing to do with evil, devil worship or satanic forces. It’s just good clean fun!

Have a Safe and Goulish Halloween!

News for Buyers

Fast Fact >>>> As of mid September 2009, 1.4 million homebuyers have taken advantage of the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit. (source: IRS.gov)

News for Sellers

Home Design Turnoffs

Before putting your home up for sale, it pays to take a good look around. Is your home décor out of date? Will it appeal to prospective buyers, or send them running out the door?

Barbara Ballinger, architecture coach and columnist for the Style, Staged and Sold blog, says that while vintage features may appeal to some buyers, they could cost you a sale. Here are a few designs that could turn off potential buyers.

• Excessively bold or dark paint or tile colors, such as deep plum or jet black

• Walls painted with lacquered or high-gloss finish, faux- and sponge-painted walls, and wallpaper

• Worn, cracked laminate countertops and backsplashes

• Outdated bathrooms with small sinks, short toilets, squat bathtubs and tight shower spaces

• Stained and worn wall-to-wall carpet or worn linoleum

• Bedrooms decorated with a theme that is incorporated through the carpeting, walls, ceilings, light fixtures and furnishings

• Too many mirrored walls, ceilings and doors in a single room

• Ceilings with too many recessed lighting spots

Fall Home Projects

Under Lock and Key

While many homeowners say home security is a priority, they may not be taking the necessary precautions with their keys and locks. A recent survey by Kwikset, which manufactures locks and hardware for residential homes, finds that 47 percent of homeowners did not change or re-key their locks when they first moved in to their home, and nearly one-third have never changed or rekeyed their locks. More than half of homeowners surveyed also say they routinely loan house keys to friends or contractors, increasing the chance that the keys could fall into the wrong hands and be copied.

Home security experts at American Lock and Key offer several tips to help you secure access to your home.

• Don’t hide keys in obvious places, such as under an exterior floor mat or a planter. Most burglars know the most common places to hide keys. If you must hide them, keep keys stored in a secured key box.

• Keep keys separate from your address, so if they are ever lost or stolen, no one can identify where they belong.

• Immediately change or re-key the locks when you move to a new home. A locksmith may charge $40 to $100 or more to re-key locks or, if you prefer to do it yourself, re-key kits are available at hardware stores for less than $20.

• Keep garage doors secure, especially those that connect to the house from inside the garage and doors leading to the garage from outside. Use a padlock to secure the inside of the garage door.

• Keep windows locked, especially on the home’s lower level where they can be an attractive target for criminals.

I am always available to consult with you before you take on any home projects. Give me a call today!

If you or any of your friends, relatives or business associates are worried about your current mortgage situation, please know that you’re not alone.  I am proud to be associated with RE/MAX where we, along with other real estate industry leaders, are working hard to help homeowners in our marketplace avoid the trauma of foreclosure.

RE/MAX has joined with Heart Financial Services to help homeowners avoid foreclosure with a unique Short Sale strategy.

Please contact me if you would like more information, or use the “Sign up for my Email Newsletter” link at the bottom of the page to start receiving my newsletter.

~Tracy

Well, our beautiful, H-O-T Summer is coming to an end. We have been busily trying to complete our summer home projects and you’ve probably been doing the same! With the Fall weather coming, I know we need to do our home prep for Winter. My hope is that this Winter is a bit easier on us than last year, but I guess we’ll hope for the best and prepare for the worst!

“Nature is, above all, profligate. Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place?” – Annie Dillard

This great Fall Home Maintenance Tips list comes from State Farm Insurance and I hope it gets your mind going in the preparation mode.

• Check all window and door locks for proper operation

• Check your home for water leaks

• Review your fire escape plan with your family

• Make sure there are working nightlights at the top and bottom of all stairs

• Protect your home from frozen pipes

• Replace your furnace filter

• see more …

As always, if you have any maintenance or real estate related needs or information I can provide you, your friends or family members, give me a call or send me a quick e-mail …I’m always happy to help!

News for Buyers

First Time Home Buyers – There are Only 2-1/2 Months Left!

Although they (whoever they are!) have been talking about extending it, the First Time Home Buyer Credit is currently scheduled to end November 30, 2009.  So, if you are a first time home buyer, know of someone considering buying for the first time OR if you have not owned a home in 3 or more years you may qualify to take advantage of the $8,000 First Time Home Buyer Credit if you close on a primary residence by November 30th.  This is a really great incentive for you as a buyer, but please make sure you talk to your tax advisor about how this might affect you.

If you have already purchased your home, you may be in project mode and looking for some way to take advantage of the Energy Credit available to us as home owners.  Owen and I are going to be replacing windows before the winter hits this year (yay!) and will be able to take advantage of the energy credit there.  You may be looking at doing a home project that would allow for that as well, so take a look at the home credit information and see if this works for you this year.  You can also check with Washington Natural Gas or PSE to find out whether they match the credit on any of the qualified credits:

Energy Efficiency Tax Credits for Homeowners by Danny Lipford.

News for Sellers

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words!

If you’re currently a seller or going to be a seller soon in today’s market, you’ll be competing with a lot of “Short Sale” sellers (meaning the home owner’s property will not bring in what is owed to the bank due to the loss in property values) or REO properties (Bank Owned Real Estate).  These property values are hard to compete with unless you are at the top of your game.

There are many ways I can help you prepare your home for sale, and one is to make sure we have great pictures, and lots of them, on line for buyers to review.  This recent article in the Seattle Times is a great reminder of the importance of those photos. As your Realtor®, I work with you to get your home ready for the market, and will get the best photographs we can put on line so that we draw a buyers’ attention and get you SOLD as soon as possible!

The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” rings so true when you list your home.  Don’t sell you and your home short by lack of preparation in this area!  Give me a call or send me an e-mail if you have questions about what you should and shouldn’t get done before listing your home in today’s market.

Fall Home Projects

Check Your Energy

Hiring a professional to conduct a home energy audit is a great way to determine how much energy your home consumes and what you can do to make it more efficient – but it also can be expensive. You can, however, easily conduct your own. Use the following guidelines from the U.S. Department of Energy and keep a checklist of areas you inspect and problems you find.

Air leaks. You might be able to save 5 percent to 30 percent a year on your energy bills by finding and fixing leaks. Start by checking for obvious leaks. Inspect windows and doors. If you can rattle them, chances are there’s an air leak. Caulking or weather stripping is an easy fix. Also check to see if air flows through less-obvious places such as baseboards and electrical outlets. Then head outside the house to inspect all areas where two different building materials meet: where siding and chimneys meet and where the foundation and the bottom of exterior brick or siding meet. Plug and caulk any holes you find and seal other cracks with appropriate materials.

Insulation. Check the attic hatch to see if it is as heavily insulated as the attic and is weather-stripped and closes tightly. In the attic, determine whether openings for items such as pipes, ductwork and chimneys are sealed. Seal any gaps with an expanding foam caulk or other permanent sealant. Also check to see if you have a vapor barrier under the attic insulation. If not, paint the interior ceilings with vapor barrier paint to reduce the amount of water vapor that could pass through the ceiling.

Heating and cooling equipment. Check to see if it’s more than 15 years old. If so, you might want to consider switching to a newer model. Also check your ductwork for dirt streaks; these indicate an air leak and will need to be sealed with duct mastic.

Lighting. Check the wattage of your light bulbs. You might be using a 100-watt bulb when you could be using a 60-watt. Consider switching to compact fluorescent lamps for lights that are on for hours at a time.

Source: www.energysavers.gov

I am always available to consult with you before you take on any home projects. Give me a call today!

If you are interested in knowing how the market is progressing in your neighborhood, or if you have any friends, relatives and business associates with real estate needs, give me a call!

~Tracy

Is it April or May showers?  We’ve had a lot of both!  I’m definitely seeing the flowers start to bloom though – hope you’re stopping to smell the flowers along your way as well!  If you are like Owen and me, this spring has been full of gardening projects…so here’s hoping your May showers turn into beautiful flowers soon!

Consider the wheelbarrow: It may lack the grace of an airplane, the speed of an automobile, but its humble wheel marked out the path of what civilization we still have.  Particularly that phase of civilization which leads down Main Street, through the front gate, around the house into the back garden.” ~ Hal Borland, New York Times, 1947

Here are some All Time Favorite Tips for your gardening projects:

• The secret to a care-free lawn that requires less water, fertilizer, and mowing is all at the roots. Work on improving the soil by aerating and using organic-base fertilizers and your grass roots will dig deep to find their own water and nutrients.

• Don’t dig up and store your tender bulbs of glads, dahlias, and cannas. Try covering them with a tarp and a 6-inch mulch of leaves instead. This insulation will keep the moisture from rotting and the cold from freezing your tropical bulbs. In the spring, just roll back the protective tarp and watch for new growth.

• Raise the beds, lower the maintenance. Raised beds warm up sooner in spring and you can sit on the edge to plant and harvest. (I always wondered about those raised beds … now I know

• Put the right plant in the right place. Any plant demanding more than its fair share of time deserves the shovel solution. Is wisteria swallowing the house? Are shrubs blocking the windows? Do roses need constant chemical treatments to keep healthy? Move ‘em or lose ‘em; you don’t have to stick with them – -no matter how pretty – -when they get out of control.

News for Buyers

First Time Home Buyers Alert!

If you are a first time home buyer, know of someone considering buying for the first time OR if you have not owned a home in 3 or more years you may qualify to take advantage of the $8,000 First Time Home Buyer’s credit toward your down payment….this is great news!  (Make sure you talk to your tax advisor about how this might affect you)

HUD Secretary Announces Monetization of Tax Credit at NAR Real Estate Summit
WASHINGTON, May 12, 2009

Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said that the
Federal Housing Administration is going to permit its lenders to allow homeowners to use the $8,000 tax credit as a downpayment … read more

News for Sellers

In the Green Zone:
How Would Your Home Rate?

As a Member of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) I keep track of current laws and/or potential laws that may affect us as homeowners.

Do you know what your home’s energy rating is? If this bill to require our homes to be “labeled” with an energy rating is passed how will it effect you?  How much would it cost to bring it up to a standard that would allow you to sell easily?  Or … would you lose thousands of dollars by having to disclose your rating at the time of sale?

Let me know what you think … you can read this article online in a recent issue of REALTOR Magazine.

I’ll be staying abreast of this potential change in law and keeping you informed as we are given more information.  I’d love to hear from you regarding this proposed bill!

Spring Home Projects

Cost vs. Value Online Report
This year’s Cost vs. Value report lays out the average return on investment on the most popular home improvement projects.  This is a valuable tool in helping you decide which projects to undertake and how much, on average, you’ll spend.

Hartman Home Inspections
Don Hartman, owner and certified inspector, has over twenty years of construction and residential remodeling experience. Hartman Home Inspections encourages their clients to use them as an ongoing resource for home maintenance and improvement questions after they move in!

Repair Cost Estimates
Here is an online tool that shows the estimated costs to upgrade or replace the major systems and components in a typical home.

I am always available to consult with you before you take on any home projects. Give me a call today!

If you are interested in knowing how the market is progressing in your neighborhood, or, if you have any friends, relatives and business associates with real estate needs, give me a call!

Happy Spring! 
(now if Mother Nature will just cooperate!)

~ Tracy