Tax Credit Extension for Service Members

Daily Real Estate News  | April 28, 2010  | Share

Service Members Get Extra Year for Tax Credit
Members of the U.S. military, foreign service and intelligence communities have another year to purchase a home and claim the home buyer tax credit.

Any service member who is or has been on extended duty for 90 days or more between Jan. 1, 2009 to April 30, 2010, has until April 30, 2011, to sign a sales contract and until June 30, 2011, to close on the property. Both the $8,000 first-time and the $6,500 repeat home buyer tax credits are included in the extension.

The rule that requires buyers to repay the credit if they move out of their home within three years has also been waived for qualified service members if they receive government orders to move.

Source: The National Association of Home Builders (04/26/2010)

Forbes.com 10 Ways To Raise the Value of Your Home

click the title below to read the entire article.

TenWays To Raise The Value Of Your Home
Betsy Schiffman

“I’ve recommended some people move half their furniture and belongings out of the house,” says Bruce Taylor. “The house is much more sellable the less stuff there is in it. Clutter is an easy thing to attack. The goal is to make the house look like a model home.” It’s hard for homeowners to imagine living without their personal or sentimental belongings, but the idea is to make the home as unemotional or personal as possible so that potential buyers can imagine themselves living there.

Forbes.com 10 Ways To Raise the Value of Your Home

click the title to link to the article

Ten Ways To Raise The Value Of Your Home
Betsy Schiffman

#3 – The Kitchen

The most important thing to buyers about the kitchen, say brokers, is that it appears spacious. If, for example, your kitchen counter is full of appliances, you may choose to leave one or two appliances there, but the rest have to go. Lend them to friends, put them in storage; it doesn’t matter how you get rid of them as long as they’re not visible. “The kitchens and the bathrooms often sell the house,” says Bruce Taylor of ERA Key Realty Services. “Structural problems could block a sale, but the kitchen and the bathrooms alone could sell it.”

Forbes.com 10 Ways To Raise the Value of Your Home

Click the title to link to this article…

Ten Ways To Raise The Value Of Your Home
Betsy Schiffman

#2 The Bathroom

Real estate brokers say the two most important rooms in the home are the kitchen and the bathroom. According to Remodeling magazine’s annual cost versus value report, home owners who undertook major bathroom-remodeling jobs saw between 88% and 91% of their costs recouped. Beyond major renovations, brokers say that simply replacing towel racks, light fixtures or the sink can make a major difference to potential buyers.

Forbes.com 10 Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home

Ten Ways To Raise The Value Of Your Home
Betsy Schiffman

#1

The first thing home buyers see is the outside of your home. In rural or suburban areas, home sellers need to make sure the shrubs are trimmed, the lawn is mowed and the landscape is neatly manicured. “Don’t expect the buyer to imagine new shrubbery or flowering plants. You could get fresh mulch and flowers, which isn’t a huge cost,” says Kathleen Kuhn, president and chief executive of HouseMaster, a Boundbrook, N.J., home-inspection organization. “And it gives a good first impression.” Sellers may want to replace the front door or add a fresh coat of paint to the existing door. Also, you can’t overestimate the importance of neutral colors. If sellers choose to have the exterior repainted, they should make sure it’s a neutral, inoffensive color.

Raise Your Home Value Tip: Clean up the

Raise Your Home Value Tip: Clean up the curb, it’s the first thing your neighbors and home buyers will see. http://ow.ly/1JxXw

Landscaping On a Budget

Are you interested in landscaping but on a tight budget? Here is an article published by Yuwanda Black that might give you some guidance.

How to Landscape Your Front Yard for Less Than $200

And Add Value to Your Property!

Landscaping can get expensive – quick! But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Following are eight things you can do to spice up your front – and for less than $200.

1. Make it Neat: Like the inside of your home, the neater it is, the prettier it appears. Even lawns devoid of any fancy landscaping look good if they’re well

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manicured.

So, how do you achieve a neat, manicured look?

2. Edge & Trim: As in, edge and/or trim driveways, around mailboxes, around flower beds, etc. While mowing a lawn to make it look neat is a given basic, the trimming/edging is what gives it that “finished” look.

If you’re a man, imagine having a haircut without the barber “lining you up.” Get the picture?

Cost: $0 (this assumes that you have an edger/trimmer).

2. Enclose Flower Beds: As in, put down some type of border around them. This can be rocks, bricks, wood and/or plastic borders. See my article, Choices for Edging Flower Beds, for more on this.

Enclosing beds make them stand out more. It draws the eye to a defined area.

Cost: $0 to $50 per bed (although you can spend way more than this, $50 per bed for a normal-sized bed (6′-10′ feet long x 3′-5′ feet wide).

As stated in the aforementioned article, you can get free rocks and bricks from wooded areas close to your home and/or recently excavated construction sites (with the permission of the construction company).

If you buy them, choose alternatives that are within the stated budget.

3. Add Color: This can be done very inexpensively with cost-effective flowers like annuals and perennials. They usually come in trays of 6 and cost anywhere from $1.50-$3.00/per tray.

In vivid purples, reds, yellows and pinks, these will liven up any greenery that’s already in your yard.

Landscape tip: Plant flowers close to the dwelling itself and around the edge of beds that contain shrubs to really make them pop.

Imagine a bunch of colorful flowers popping out against red brick, white vinyl and or weathered stucco. Annuals and perennials are easy to plant and require very little upkeep.

Cost: $50. This amount will get you a good many of these gorgeous plants to liven up existing greenery.

To read the rest of the article, click the link…http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/186777/how_to_landscape_your_front_yard_for.html?cat=32

Hot Denver Neighborhoods

Here is a list of some great neighborhoods in the Denver Metro area, courtesy of Think Realty Advisors.

Baker
Baker is one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods. Baker is a beautiful neighborhood, with fine old homes, many of them built more than 100 years ago, but now starting to be remodeled and updated to today’s standards.

Belcaro
Belcaro has been a popular neighborhood for developers to scrape older homes and replace with brand new homes. The large lot sizes allow developers to build some high end homes with more square footage than other surrounding neighborhoods.

Bonnie Brae
The quaint neighborhood of Bonnie Brae was designed to resemble a Scottish village complete with curving streets, a circular central park, a winding boulevard and a collection of small shops where residents could congregate and mingle.

Cherry Creek
Centered by the fashionable Cherry Creek mall and surrounded by nearby luxury housing, the upscale Cherry Creek neighborhood is a thriving, self-contained oasis for residents.

Cherry Creek Country Club
In Denver, there may never be another opportunity to part of a brand new gated, exclusive country club community like Cherry Creek Country Club.

City Park
Located just East of Downtown is Denver’s City Park. This neighborhood, comprised primarily of Denver Square style

Highland
The Upper and Lower Highland neighborhoods are experiencing a resurgence in home values because of their proximity to downtown Denver. The shopping district at 32nd Avenue is filled with some of Denver’s best restaurants and boutique shops.

Lodo / Downtown
Denver’s exciting 26-block Lower Downtown neighborhood, commonly referred as LoDo, is one of the most popular hang-out spots in the city. Warehouse Lofts, urban condos and more await the LoDo resident.

Lowry
Moving to Lowry isn’t like moving to the suburbs — you don’t have to lose the excitement and energy that you loved about the city. Once a working Air Force base in Denver, Colorado, Lowry transformed into a forward-thinking, mixed-use community.

Observatory / University Park
University and Observatory Park are close to the University of Denver and are seeing a major revitalization with high end developers building $1 million plus mansions.

Platt Park
Quiet streets with mature trees and craftsman architecture abound south and west of I-25. Nearby, the “Old South Pearl” business district where residents may walk to restaurants and bars instead of driving to nearby Cherry Creek and South Gaylord.

Park Hill
Magnificently landscaped parkways, oversized lots with wide sidewalks, mature shade trees and lawns, some of Denver’s most beautiful churches, and one of the city’s richest tapestries of early 20th-century architecture distinguish Park Hill.

Riverfront Park
Near Denver’s Historic Lower Downtown district, Riverfront Park offers condominium and loft buildings with upscale residences above and boutiques, restaurants, and cafes at ground level.

Link here to the website to read more about these areas.

Louisville Colorado, Top Place to Live

Living in Colorado, I’m always happy to see one of our towns listed in any top ten or higher rating for the healthiest, best, or fittest places to live.

Again, here were are at #1 according to CNN Money.
Below is an excerpt from their article.

Click here to link to the article on CNN Money.com

1. Louisville, CO

Louisville, Colo., is No. 1
WINNER
Top 100 rank: 1
Population: 18,800
Unemployment: 6.0%*
Compare Louisville to Top 10 Best Places
Some towns nestled along the Rockies are full of pretentious eco-hipsters. Not Louisville. Ice cream shops dot the historic downtown. Families grab burgers at the cozy Waterloo Café. A Friday-night street fair, with a beer garden, live music, and games for the kids, runs all summer. No wonder this down-to-earth town has appeared high on Money’s Best Places list before–and on many others.

It’s also weathering the economic downturn well. Robust industries in the area, such as high tech, energy, and health care, make county unemployment among the lowest in the state.

But the top reason residents give for moving here? The great outdoors. Louisville is laced with nearly 30 miles of trails, Rocky Mountain National Park is less than an hour away, and eight world-class ski resorts are within two hours. The town’s schools are highly rated as well.

Add in dry, clear weather, little crime, good health care, and low taxes, and Louisville is pretty tough to beat.

Great article from Reader’s Digest on Vitamins

This is a great article from Reader’s Digest entitled, 5 Vitamin Truths and Lies. I’ve also included the link below to their site. They review the top 5 Vitamin myths and give a detailed explanation.

5 Vitamin Truths & Lies

By Christie Aschwandend
5 Vitamin Truths and Lies

Are you still relying on vitamins to keep you healthy? Learn the truth about which supplements help and which ones you can toss. Plus, find out the 25 foods that you can eat to get your vitamins.

Once upon a time, you believed in the tooth fairy. You counted on the stability of housing prices and depended on bankers to be, well, dependable. And you figured that taking vitamins was good for you. Oh, it’s painful when another myth gets shattered. Recent research suggests that a daily multi is a waste of money for most people—and there’s growing evidence that some other old standbys may even hurt your health. Here’s what you need to know.

Myth: A multivitamin can make up for a bad diet
An insurance policy in a pill? If only it were so.

Last year, researchers published new findings from the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study of more than 160,000 midlife women. The data showed that multivitamin-takers are no healthier than those who don’t pop the pills, at least when it comes to the big diseases—cancer, heart disease, stroke. “Even women with poor diets weren’t helped by taking a multivitamin,” says study author Marian Neuhouser, PhD, in the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.

Vitamin supplements came into vogue in the early 1900s, when it was difficult or impossible for most people to get a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Back then, vitamin deficiency diseases weren’t unheard-of: the bowed legs and deformed ribs of rickets (caused by a severe shortage of vitamin D) or the skin problems and mental confusion of pellagra (caused by a lack of the B vitamin niacin). But these days, you’re extremely unlikely to be seriously deficient if you eat an average American diet, if only because many packaged foods are vitamin-enriched. Sure, most of us could do with a couple more daily servings of produce, but a multi doesn’t do a good job at substituting for those. “Multivitamins have maybe two dozen ingredients—but plants have hundreds of other useful compounds,” Neuhouser says. “If you just take a multivitamin, you’re missing lots of compounds that may be providing benefits.”

That said, there is one group that probably ought to keep taking a multi-vitamin: women of reproductive age. The supplement is insurance in case of pregnancy. A woman who gets adequate amounts of the B vitamin folate is much less likely to have a baby with a birth defect affecting the spinal cord. Since the spinal cord starts to develop extremely early—before a woman may know she’s pregnant—the safest course is for her to take 400 micrograms of folic acid (the synthetic form of folate) daily. And a multi is an easy way to get it.

Myth: Vitamin C is a cold fighter
In the 1970s, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling popularized the idea that vitamin C could prevent colds. Today, drugstores are full of vitamin C–based remedies. Studies say: Buyer, beware.

In 2007, researchers analyzed a raft of studies going back several decades and involving more than 11,000 subjects to arrive at a disappointing conclusion: Vitamin C didn’t ward off colds, except among marathoners, skiers, and soldiers on subarctic exercises.

Of course, prevention isn’t the only game in town. Can the vitamin cut the length of colds? Yes and no. Taking the vitamin daily does seem to reduce the time you’ll spend sniffling—but not enough to notice. Adults typically have cold symptoms for 12 days a year; a daily pill could cut that to 11 days. Kids might go from 28 days of runny noses to 24 per year. The researchers conclude that minor reductions like these don’t justify the expense and bother of year-round pillpopping (taking C only after symptoms crop up doesn’t help).

Myth: Vitamin pills can prevent heart disease
Talk about exciting ideas—the notion that vitamin supplements might help lower the toll of some of our most damaging chronic diseases turned a sleepy area of research into a sizzling-hot one. These high hopes came in part from the observation that vitamin-takers were less likely to develop heart disease. Even at the time, researchers knew the finding might just reflect what’s called the healthy user effect—meaning that vitamin devotees are more likely to exercise, eat right, and resist the temptations of tobacco and other bad habits. But it was also possible that
antioxidant vitamins like C, E, and beta-carotene could prevent heart disease by reducing the buildup of artery-clogging plaque. B vitamins were promising, too, because folate, B6, and B12 help break down the amino acid homocysteine—and high levels of homocysteine have been linked to heart disease.

Unfortunately, none of those hopes have panned out.

An analysis of seven vitamin E trials concluded that it didn’t cut the risk of stroke or of death from heart disease. The study also scrutinized eight beta-carotene studies and determined that, rather than prevent heart disease, those supplements produced a slight increase in the risk of death. Other big studies have shown vitamin C failing to deliver. As for B vitamins, research shows that yes, these do cut homocysteine levels …but no, that doesn’t make a dent in heart danger.

Don’t take these pills, the American Heart Association says. Instead, the AHA offers some familiar advice: Eat a varied diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Myth: Taking vitamins can protect against cancer
Researchers know that unstable molecules called free radicals can damage your cells’ DNA, upping the risk of cancer. They also know that antioxidants can stabilize free radicals, theoretically making them much less dangerous. So why not take some extra antioxidants to protect yourself against cancer? Because research so far has shown no good comes from popping such pills.

A number of studies have tried and failed to find a benefit, like a recent one that randomly assigned 5,442 women to take either a placebo or a B-vitamin combo. Over the course of more than seven years, all the women experienced similar rates of cancers and cancer deaths. In Neuhouser’s enormous multivitamin study, that pill didn’t offer any protection against cancer either. Nor did C, E, or beta-carotene in research done at Harvard Medical School.

Myth: Hey, it can’t hurt The old thinking went something like this—sure, vitamin pills might not help you, but they can’t hurt either. However, a series of large-scale studies has turned this thinking on its head, says Demetrius Albanes, MD, a nutritional epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute.The shift started with a big study of beta-carotene pills. It was meant to test whether the antioxidant could prevent lung cancer, but researchers instead detected surprising increases in lung cancer and deaths among male smokers who took the supplement. No one knew what to make of the result at first, but further studies have shown it wasn’t a fluke—there’s a real
possibility that in some circumstances, antioxidant pills could actually promote cancer (in women as well as in men). Other studies have raised concerns that taking high doses of folic acid could raise the risk of colon cancer. Still others suggest a connection between high doses of some vitamins and heart disease.

Vitamins are safe when you get them in food, but in pill form, they can act more like a drug, Albanes says—with the potential for unexpected and sometimes dangerous effects.

Truth: A pill that’s worth taking
As studies have eroded the hopes placed in most vitamin supplements, one pill is looking better and better. Research suggests that vitamin D protects against a long list of ills: Men with adequate levels of D have about half the risk of heart attack as men who are deficient. And getting enough D appears to lower the risk of at least half a dozen cancers; indeed, epidemiologist Cedric Garland, MD, at the University of California, San Diego, believes that if
Americans got sufficient amounts of vitamin D, 50,000 cases of colorectal cancer could be prevented each year.

But many—perhaps most—Americans fall short, according to research by epidemiologist Adit Ginde, MD, at the University of Colorado, Denver. Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin: You make it when sunlight hits your skin. Yet thanks to sunscreen and workaholic (or TV-aholic) habits, most people don’t make enough.

How much do you need? The Institute of Medicine is reassessing that right now; most experts expect a big boost from the current levels (200 to 600 IU daily). It’s safe to take 1,000 IU per day, says Ginde. “We think most people need at least that much.”

So here’s the Reader’s Digest Version of the truth about vitamins: Eat right, and supplement with vitamin D. That’s a no-brainer coupled with a great bet—and that’s no lie.

From Reader’s Digest – April 2010