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How much can a rooftop deck increase the value of your home? This MarketWatch article from Daniel Goldstein gets to the bottom of the rising popularity of rooftop decks this year.
When it comes to improving your home’s value in 2016, homeowners (and property managers) are finding one way that’s going through the roof, literally.
Additions of rooftop decks have been accelerating for the past several years, said Pete Reeb, a principal at John Burns Real Estate Consulting in Irvine, Calif. He said about 5% of projects he’s seen currently have rooftop deck plans, but said that number is likely to grow. Builders are finding great success in attracting buyers and beating the competition by offering thoughtfully designed and integrated rooftop decks in new home projects,” he said.
Roof decks work best in high-density areas where there isn’t a lot of usable outdoor space, and there’s actually something worth seeing from the deck, like a lake, or an ocean or a city skyline, and have been popping up in the Southwest, Texas, the Pacific Northwest, Southern California, and even the East Coast, said Reeb.
And it’s not just residential rooftop decks that are growing in popularity, commercial properties, apartments and hotels have been adding them as well, alongside features such as dog-walking parks, pools with waterfalls and even basketball courts.
For a homeowner to add one, the typical cost for a rooftop deck is $25,000 for a basic deck, and a more elaborate deck with an integrated grill, bar or kitchen has to be built in to the framing of the home as well as the foundation.
Adding a wood deck to a home in a real estate market like San Francisco, where it often can be enjoyed year-round, yielded a 147% return, meaning a nearly 50% profit on a $10,000 deck investment, according to an analysis of more than 30 popular home improvement projects published last year in Remodeling Magazine.
Before you spend money on a new area rug for your home, here’s some helpful advice from a textile designer and rug collector, as highlighted in this New York Times article by Tim McKeough.
It wasn’t until a friend invited him to design a collection of rugs that the textile designer Zak Profera found his true calling. Before that, Mr. Profera was working in music marketing.
“I thought, ‘This is what I need to do to be happy,’ ” said Mr. Profera, 32, who started his New York textiles company soon after creating those rugs for Decorative Carpets in Los Angeles. “I knew I couldn’t afford to do rugs,” he explained, “and thought fabric would be similar.”
His company, Zak&Fox, makes graphic textiles for designers like Robert Stilin and Workstead. But Mr. Profera still can’t resist a good rug, so he also collects and sells vintage Turkish and Persian carpets, and Overland, the fabric collection he introduced this month, was inspired by those designs.
It’s easy to be seduced by pattern, he admitted, but when you’re choosing a new rug there are other, equally important, things to consider:
New services and technologies could make the ride to work very different, according to this MarketWatch article by Alejandro Lazo.
The modern commute may be heading for a big upgrade, thanks to carpool ride-sharing services and advances in automotive electronics and smart transportation systems.
Ride-sharing firms Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. are experimenting with carpooling services that are changing how people get to work. Both companies, best known for providing a fleet of private drivers that can be matched to individual passengers through their smartphones, have introduced technology that groups strangers as passengers – thus saving commuters money – by using algorithms that match distances and times of trips with other people going to similar places or in similar directions.
Early results have encouraged public-transit experts to start considering Uber and Lyft apps as potential means for reducing congestion. A recent study by the American Public Transportation Association suggests that ride-sharing trips using Uber and Lyft are replacing trips made with personal vehicles more than trips using public transport. The report recommended that public-transit officials start working on ways to make ride-sharing part of their services.
Some have already begun. In Late March, Lyft launched Lyft Carpool, a pilot program in the San Francisco Bay Area, to address a heavily congested section of Highway 101 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. That program matches commuters with other commuters rather than private drivers. The company also is working with the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission to expand carpool lanes along that route, says Emily Castor, director of transportation policy for Lyft. The company also is working with transportation agencies in Nashville, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver and other places to provide more connections from homes to mass transit.
Susan Shaheen, a researcher at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley, says ride-sharing carpool services could help fix some of the “first-mile, last-mile” issues with U.S. transportation grids, meaning they can provide the shorter trips to and from public transportation that currently aren’t well served. Just as happens now, commuters would pay through mobile apps and the services would take a percentage of the money charged.
The new apps have “really ushered in a new opportunity, new ways of thinking about people getting around,” Shaheen says.
Moving everything you own from your old home to your new one can end up becoming an expensive endeavor if it’s not carefully planned. This article by Devon Thorsby of U.S. News offers some helpful tips on how you can reduce your costs on moving day.
Moving is complicated for just about anyone, but if you’ve lived in the same place for years, you typically discover you’ve accumulated more than you imagined as you try to pack up your life to resettle it elsewhere. How do you begin to cut down what’s coming with you, and how do you get it from one place to another without eating ramen for the next three months?
Moving.com, an online real estate and moving service provider, estimates a full-service move – meaning a moving company takes care of loading, transporting and unloading – in Austin, Texas, could cost as little as $640 for a studio and as much as $4,440 for a four-bedroom home.
But it doesn’t have to cost so much to move. Rather than looking at moving as a single action, break it into the various parts of the process, and weigh the options to dramatically reduce the overall cost of setting up in your new home.
Moving gives you the opportunity to start from scratch when it comes to interior decorating, and often you’ll find yourself shopping for a couch or bed while you wait to close on your new home.
If that’s the case, don’t waste time and money moving the old stuff to your new place. A sure way to cut moving costs is to eliminate unnecessary belongings – especially larger furniture – from the equation.
To streamline the process of a long-distance, full-service move, consider hiring a national brand. This should reduce the need to work with two different moving companies, and by including representatives in each area, you’ll lower the possibility the moving truck gets lost trying to reach your new home because the movers are unfamiliar with your new city.
The key to saving money in your move is to know what parts of the planning process can lead you toward cheaper rates. Here’s what the pros recommend:
Research, and research early. It’s best to start your research early to determine the best method for you – full-service move, DIY or hybrid. And reserve any necessary equipment far in advance to make sure you don’t find yourself up the creek without a moving truck on the last day of your lease or hiring the only guy available.
Get three different quotes. As with any service you hire, you should always weigh your options and speak with multiple companies to not only find the best deal, but also to ensure who you choose to work with is reputable.
Consider the off-season. Summer is the most convenient time to move, but it often brings the cost of renting equipment and labor up due to higher demands.
Move on a weekday. Moving on a weekend isn’t very original, either. If you can take a day off work at least for the movers to come or to use the rental truck, you’re likely to find lower rates.
If you’re planning to sell your home, you might want to consider staging it. Whether you should stage your home or not depends on a variety of factors – where you’re located, for instance – and this article by Daniel Goldstein of MarketWatch offers advice from real estate professionals from around the U.S.
Plastic surgery might improve one’s looks. But so might a little makeup. When it comes to making your house more attractive to prospective buyers, home staging is definitely in the makeup category.
What is home staging? Just like makeup, it’s an on-the-surface solution. Staging can help your place look its best during the sales period without the cost or expense of a renovation. For about $3,500 to $4,500 a month, the home you’re about to put on the market can be filled with great-looking furniture, well-considered accessories and tasteful art.
Don’t expect home staging to conceal your house’s flaws, says Shell Brodnax, chief executive of the Real Estate Staging Association (or RESA) in Valley Springs, Calif., southeast of Sacramento.
“Staging doesn’t conceal anything, but it accentuates what’s already there,” Brodnax says.
While home staging is in part about showing a property in its best possible light, it can also help potential buyers imagine themselves in the space. Particularly after a move-out, or before a property has ever been occupied, many buyers like to see what a room really looks like, how it lives. “Buyers have a hard time envisioning themselves if it’s empty,” says Scott Leverette of McGuire Real Estate in Berkeley, Calif. “I think also a home looks smaller if it’s empty.”
So does staging really result in higher sales prices, multiple bidders and quicker sales? In a 2013 study looking at nearly 170 staged properties valued at $300,000 to $499,000, RESA – which obviously has a vested interest in the matter – said that those homes were sold in 22 days, compared with an average on-market time of 125 days for unstaged properties.
Staging isn’t always necessary, however. “In a hot area, where listings don’t last on the multiple listing service [for] long, spending the money to stage may not be necessary,” says Bruce DarConte, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker in Washington, D.C. “One size doesn’t fit all.”
And it’s not entirely clear that staging contributes to higher selling prices. Staging made no difference in terms of the final selling price, according to a 2012 study by several real estate professors and researchers published in 2015 by the Journal of Housing Research.
According to a recent study of residents in the U.K., the way people choose to commute is linked to how long they’ve lived in their home, with newer homeowners being less likely to commute by car. Here are the details from Laura Bliss of CityLab.
Whether you drive, bike, walk, or take the train, the way you get to work each day is more of an automatic response than it is a conscious choice. So long as other patterns in your life are constant, there’s no signal telling you to ditch your car in favor of the bus – even if you know it’s the cheaper, more environmentally friendly thing to do.
To trigger changes in commute habits, studies have shown, a shift in context is key. For example, workers are particularly open to changing up commute habits when their offices relocate – and they’ll stick with them, if their companies hit them up with the right incentives at the right moment.
Now, research published in PLOS ONE in late April by Cardiff University researchers provides new evidence that changing residences can encourage a change in travel norms. But to make those new habits last, commuters may still need an extra push from policymakers.
Using data from a multi-year survey by the Economic and Social Research Council on the daily lives of nearly 20,000 U.K. residents, the researchers measured how long it had been since residents had moved homes, their normal mode of travel to work, and the relative strength of their environmental attitudes. The researchers hypothesized that eco-minded folks would be more likely to choose environmentally friendly modes, such as trains and bikes, over cars.
The results were these: The length of time that a person had lived at his or her current address was indeed linked to their commute mode – independent of age, gender, income, and geographic location. Specifically, a person’s chances of commuting by car were lowest immediately after moving to a different residence. Those chances sharply increased over the first two years in the new home, then rose slowly and gradually thereafter. Eco-mindedness was indeed a predictor of lower car usage after a change in address. But, just as with everyone else, that link faded over time.
That means that there may be a window of opportunity for policymakers who want to encourage the use of transit.
Many consumers understand the basic circumstances that can negatively affect a credit score. But there are a few concerns on the list that actually won’t damage your credit. This Bankrate article by Mike Cetera highlights the results of a recent Financial Literacy Survey by Equifax, pointing out some common misperceptions we have about credit.
The 2016 Equifax Financial Literacy Survey showed 3 key things consumers think will damage their credit that won’t:
Being denied credit. When you apply for a mortgage or an auto loan and are rejected, that negative mark doesn’t get placed on your credit report, so it won’t damage your credit, as 58% of the survey respondents believed. But FICO says asking for new credit can temporarily damage your score. If you get rejected, your score may fall, but it’s not because you didn’t get the loan; it’s because you tried to get the loan.
The interest rate on your loans. About one-third (30%) of the survey respondents indicated that the interest rate on their loans could hurt their score. Not true. But if your interest rates are so high that you can’t pay your bills on time or you build your balances too high, that could damage your credit.
Checking your credit report. Experts recommend you check your credit report often. It won’t hurt your credit as 30% of respondents believe; in fact it may help. If you find mistakes or unauthorized accounts, report them to the bureaus.
Being a homeowner means being responsible for protecting your investment, and for protecting all who live inside your home. This article from BrightNest offers a few simple steps we can take to avoid some of the more common bad homeowner habits.
We’re all guilty of a few bad habits here and there. Slouching or biting your nails won’t have any major consequences, but when it comes to homeownership, one bad habit can really set you back!
Breaking a habit can be tough, especially when you aren’t aware it’s “bad.” Not everything harmful for your house is obvious – some bad habits are easy to miss!
Here are a few homeowner habits to kick to the curb:
Keeping your shoes on. Want to reduce the amount of dust, toxins and allergens in your home by as much as 85 percent? Leave your shoes at the door. That’s all you have to do to save your family a lot of sneezing and sniffling come cold and flu season.
Hiding your spare key in an obvious spot. Where is your spare key right now? If it’s under a mat or in a fake rock, it’s not very hidden! Easy to find keys leave your home susceptible to a break-in, which is never good.
Neglecting your gutters. “I love cleaning my gutters!” said no one, ever. It’s a slimy, nasty job, but it’s important to do it twice a year. Otherwise, you could be dealing with a waterlogged basement or roof damage caused by clogged gutters. Learn how to tackle gutter cleaning on your own or hire a professional cleaner to help before the season changes. While you’re at it, give your downspouts a good once-over, too.
How does your state – or the state you’re considering a move to – rank for environmental friendliness? Personal finance site WalletHub recently ranked each state in the U.S. to determine which are the most committed to the environment. This Builder article by Lauren Shanesy explains how WalletHub determined the greenest states in the nation by comparing factors such as air and water quality and energy consumption.
Conserving resources has become a priority of many builders, as climate change, droughts, and fuel prices affect both the environment and economic conditions of some major home building markets.
Some states have been more successful than others when it comes to conserving the environment. WalletHub ranked all 50 states based on 17 key factors to find which states in the nation are the most “green” and committed to the environment. The site examined metrics such as air, water, and soil quality, number of LEED-certified buildings per capita, energy consumption and its percentage that comes from renewable sources, gasoline consumption, and percentage of waste including trash and recycling.
Overall, Vermont was considered the most green state for its high air quality and minimal solid waste per capita. Washington, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Minnesota followed Vermont as the top five most green states. Washington and Minnesota had some of the highest water and soil quality among states in the country.
Location of markets plays the most essential role in determining where environmental efforts should be focused, according to Nancy Engelhardt Furlow, professor of marketing at Marymount University. “For example, in California, lowering water consumption is a high priority, but in states near the Chesapeake Bay, responsible use of pesticides and fertilizers is a high priority. Solar panels may be a great option in the West but not as popular in other areas. The activity may differ depending on the location, but environmental education is essential.”
