Home Improvement
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How to making an existing home GREEN |
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 Over the past few months I have been educating myself about green building techniques (for example: What Is An Earthcraft House?), but I have also been picking up some tips on what existing homeowners can do to make their homes more green, and energy efficient. Here are some low-cost ways to live green around your home:
I'll be posting even more information that I have learned from these Green Building courses over the next few weeks, but if you have specific questions before then, feel free to call (540-578-0102) or e-mail (scott@cbfunkhouser.com) me. | |
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The value (or cost) of pre-inspecting your home |
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 I am currently representing the buyers of a house that was pre-inspected before it came on the market. That is to say that the homeowners engaged a home inspector to inspect their own home before they put their house on the market. Then, going a step further, the homeowners made almost all of the repairs that the inspector suggested. Good for the owner, good for the buyer... Going through the inspection process and making repairs before any buyers even look at the house can be very helpful. You can discover and address significant issues that might otherwise derail a transaction when a buyer conducts the home inspection. In fact, my clients were quite relieved to see how many repairs the homeowners had made on the house they are purchasing. Bad for the owner... If you, as a homeowner, are not willing to make repairs as a result of the inspection, you might not want to pre-inspect your home. Having the information, you would then need to disclose the adverse issues to buyers -- which would just focus their attention on what had previously been unknown to everyone. It is likely the buyers would have conducted their own inspection anyhow, and thus would have discovered the items, but why bring up these adverse facts at the beginning of the process if you aren't willing to fix them. Bad for the buyer... If a homeowner pre-inspects their home, it is often the case that they will be reluctant to make any further repairs at the requst of a buyer. Most homeowners in this situation decide that they have made all of the repairs which are reasonable for a buyer to request --- so if a buyer starts requesting other repairs... Given the good and the bad... I strongly recommend that sellers pre-inspect their home if they suspect there may be some needed repairs and if they are willing to spend the time and/or money to make the repairs. | |
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Innovative Space Heating - With A Ceiling Fan! |
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Are you trying to avoid the potential danger of a space heater? Are you trying to heat a room or garage more efficiently than with a space heater? Have you considered a ceiling fan?  The fan pictured above, the Reiker Room Condition, may be what you are looking for. A heater is housed just above the fan blades, and the heat being generated is evenly distributed throughout a room. These sophisticated fans will cost between $270 and $400 depending on options and finishes, and can be ordered through the Reiker web site, or found at some Home Depot stores. | |
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Don't Miss The 2008 SVBA Home & Garden Show |
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 Be sure to stop by JMU's Convocation Center this coming weekend for the SVBA's 2008 Home & Garden Show. The show hours include:
Award-winning garden designer, author and owner of Rockcastle River Trading Company --- Jon Carloftis (pictured above, to the right) will join us this year at the 2008 SVBA Home & Garden Show. Jon is a contributing editor of Garden Design magazine, and a regional writer for Country Gardens. Jon will be appearing on Saturday, April 5 at 1:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. in Builders Square at JMU's Convocation Center. | |
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Does Remodeling Pay Off? |
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 Each year, Realtor Magazine partners with Remodeling Magazine to deliver a Remodeling Cost vs. Value Report which analyzes the average cost recouped for a variety of home improvement projects. The bottom line of this year's report seems to be that the best place to invest your remodeling dollars is on exterior improvements. However, the thing to notice first is that none of the projects are shown to return the total amount of money invested. As a result, I recommend that my clients carefully consider engaging in these sorts of projects for re-sale purposes. Unless you will experience some interim enjoyment from the upgrade, it is likely not worth investing the money in the project.Here's an overview of the top percentage returns on projects in the South-Atlantic region --- which includes Virginia:
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Garage Prevalence |
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On the air yesterday, we had some questions about garages --- are most houses being built with them these days, are most buyers looking for them, etc. Here are some numbers to answer those questions . . . Garages have become a more frequent occurrence over time. Looking at sales during the past 12 months in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, here's what we get:
Of late, the larger the home being built, the more likely it will have a garage. Looking at sales during the past 36 months, of homes built since 2000, in all of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, here's what we get:
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A Great Time For Home Improvements! |
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As reported today in the Daily News Record, the number of building permits has dropped by roughly 16% in Rockingham County. As Jenny Jones points out, this reflects what has been going on for the past year nationally --- both with building permits and the number of homes sold. David Milstead, of Milstead Construction, also makes a great point that there are still plenty of buyers for mid-priced homes, but upper-end home buyers seem to have disappeared lately. One additional reason for this, is that many of our market's high end buyers were relocating or retiring from larger markets, selling high-priced homes in those markets, and buying high-priced homes in our market. With several of those markets slowing down, the rate of high end buyers entering our market from outside has certainly slowed in the last 12-18 months. With every economic turn (for better or for worse), there exists an opportunity. The current opportunity is for hiring a contractor to do a home improvement project. Over the past few years, this was a tough task --- with the huge demand for new construction housing, it was difficult to find someone to build an addition, or a deck, or to remodel a kitchen, etc. All that has changed --- look in the classifieds section of the Daily News Record and you'll see many contractors and builders seeking customers both to build homes or do home improvement projects. There are lots of options, and I imagine you would be able to obtain multiple, competitive bids. | |
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Scott Rogers
Funkhouser Real
Estate Group
540-578-0102
scott@funkhousergroup.com
Licensed in the
Commonwealth of Virginia
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