Real Estate Information Archive

Now that we have opened the vents to the house, its time to tend to the rain gutters.  Due to the ice damming we have had, a lot of rain gutters were damaged.  Its no fun to have water dripping on your head and a good rain gutter system diverts water from the foundation.

Spring is here and even with the easy break up we have had this year, the ground is still wet and saturated.  It’s time to open the foundation to circulate air under the house.  

Here it is Sunday October 31, 2010.  Next week Sunday, November 7^th at 2am daylight savings time begins.  However, you may have noticed that several of your clocks changed by themselves today.

Back in 2007 the government decided to move daylight savings time to the 1^st weekend in November, however many electronic items are programmed to change automatically on the last Sunday of October.  Items such as wrist watches, computers, vcr’s, alarm clocks, oven timers, coffee pots and a whole array of electronic are an hour out of sync.  For this week check your coffee pot to make sure it doesn’t come on an hour before you want it to and all those other gadgets we take for granted.

This would be a good time to make a note in your calendar to monitor the items in advance during the spring forward change of daylight savings time.  The time change right now will get you to your appointment an hour early, however this little glitch in your wrist watch and car radio time will have you an hour late during the next change.

It is that time Anchorage.  We are officially frosted!! Snow is just around the corner and we should all start winterizing our homes.  First make such all hoses are disconnected from the outside faucets.  Now is the last chance we have to lay out the hoses and blow the water out of them.  Hoses should be rolled up and stored with no weight on them, top stack only.  Even better hang them on an inside garage wall if you can. If you have a crawl space close the outside vents. 

I'm often asked if this is a good time to buy a home. Some clients are concerned that home prices may fall further than they have already. They are assuming that the best course of action is to wait for the bottom in the market and then buy. The problem with this approach is that you don't know where the bottom is until you see it in the rear view mirror, meaning until you've missed it!

Home prices are one factor in determining your cost of ownership, but so are interest rates and financing availability. Even though interest rates have gone up in the last six months, they are still near historic lows. Since your monthly mortgage payment is a combination of paying down your principal and paying the interest owed, if home prices come down a little further but interest rates up, it could cost you even more to service a mortgage on an identical home!

While a home is a major investment, it is also the center of your personal life. It's important to live in a home that reflects your taste and values, yet is within your financial "comfort zone." To that end, it may be more important to lock in today's relatively low interest rates and low home prices, rather than to hope for a further break in prices in the future.

Please give me a call if I can be of any assistance in determining how much home you can afford in today's market.