Category Archives: Uncategorized
Have you researched your home value lately?
The past year has been a good one for home values in the US. Values of homes across the country have finally begun increasing after going into a free fall in 2007. Increasing home values is not necessarily great news for home buyers but it is terrific news for folks who would like to refinance to a lower interest rate. Homeowners who currently have mortgage insurance (pmi) with their mortgage stand to benefit the most from rising home values. When a homeowner has at least 20% equity in their homes they can refinance into a conventional Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage with no mortgage insurance. It behooves anyone who has mortgage insurance now — including folks with FHA loans — to investigate the current value of their home and see if they can refinance and drop their PMI entirely.
Contact us in the sidebar to get more information on the current value of your home. Our
Mace Security International, maker of pepper sprays, will move its headquarters to Cleveland’s Midtown
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A small company behind a big brand is moving to Cleveland, where executives hope to rebuild Mace Security International, Inc., on the back of its signature product: Pepper spray.
Mace, formerly based in Pennsylvania, has signed a 10-year lease on a building in Cleveland’s Midtown neighborhood and plans to house its headquarters and manufacturing operations there. The move comes after years of tumult at the publicly traded company, whose stock trades for pennies despite its household name.
Since 2007, Mace has ousted a chief executive officer who stretched the company beyond the security business, into car washes and other investments. A $4 million severance payment to that former executive nearly killed the company, which survived thanks to support from a Cleveland-area hedge fund. Adding more complications, Mace ran afoul of the U.S.
Confignon House by LOCALARCHITECTURE
Confignon House in Switzerland
Designed by Local Architecture and located in Confignon, Switzerland, this new dwelling occupies the totality of the constructible area on an elongated plot. Benefiting from the mild natural grade of the orchard, the house is formed by three spaces which shift down the land. Each unit is a volume which varies in height and which opens sideways towards the garden on both sides.
Confignon House Rooms
The daylight space (living room and kitchen) occupies the central area, while the guest room is located in the upper level of the house. The rooms of the children are distributed in the lower part of the volume. Another room completes the ground-floor. Two utility cores dissociate the main living spaces, while a peripheral passageway cadenced by the changes of levels connects them.
Structure and Windows
The structural concrete shell that ensures protection against the noise pollution coming from the road bellow, expresses the uneven shape resulting from the height variations of the interior spaces.
Housing Market: Double-Dip in 2011?
A few months have passed since I last offered an update on the state of the housing market. Since then, there have been a number of developments which suggest that 2011 could witness double-digit declines in housing prices, and that the long-awaited double-dip will finally materialize.
In an analysis of the housing market, it’s difficult to know where to begin. So much has been written on this topic over the last month and a trove of new data [Gary Shilling has dutifully compiled all of this data in a must-read research report] has been released, to the point that I experienced an acute case of information overload when researching this article. Here’s where we stand: the bellwether Case Shiller Housing Index “has risen 4.4 percent from its April 2009 bottom. But it remains 29.6 percent below its July 2006 peak.” According to some measures, this is already a larger decline than that which transpired during the Great Depression. While t
Join us for Jerry Epperson’s ‘State of the Industry’ webcast
Furniture Today will broadcast an exclusive webcast on June 5 by Jerry Epperson on the “State of the Industry” in 2013, sponsored by Nationwide Marketing Group. .
“2013 began with lots of challenges, mostly out of Washington, D.C. regarding higher withholding taxes, sequestration and later tax refunds,” said Epperson. “Even so, the main drivers that create furniture demand will be much stronger in 2013 than in any year since 2007 with more household formations, higher employment and a much stronger housing market both in new and existing home sales”"Thus, while housing and home furnishings lagged the economic recovery in 2010 and 2011, the home sales last year will yield better home furnishings sales this year, as will improved home sales early this year.”
This timely webinar will discuss the external factors driving our industry and the changes that we see coming this year and next.
Registration is now open.
DIY Home Improvement Projects and Why I Hate Wainscoting
The other day I shared two accounts of friends of mine sharing their first DIY home improvement project. Every home owner has one and Id be hypocritical if I didnt share mine.
Its a cautionary tale of how inexperience can potentially turn to disaster and that DIY is not for everyone. But this tale also has given me a bad taste for wainscoting.
I had done other home improvement projects before. Small jobs that required little skill and mainly just the ability to use a hammer and screwdriver. Other larger projects I had the assistance of my father-in-law who would put Al Borlands home improvement skills to shame. So my first major home improvement project was to put wainscoting up in spare room that we were prepping for our first baby boy.
My wife loves the look of wainscoting, especially in a babys room, and after an initial trip to Home Depot I discovered that theres actually a wainscoting kit.
City Manager: Dodgertown Golf Course could be tough sell
VERO BEACH — It could be even tougher to sell the old Dodgertown Golf Course than City Manager Jim O’Connor originally envisioned.
The property the city paid $9.9 million for several years ago comes with deed restrictions that limits its use to a golf course or green space, unless the county and the Los Angeles Dodgers issue waivers.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, we bought $10 million worth of green space,” O’Connor said when he learned about the deed restrictions last week.
There “must have been a different school of thought at the time that I wasn’t aware of,” he said. O’Connor wasn’t w