A friend of mine over at Blommit.com (a hilarious blog, by the way) made a, ahem, modest proposal to get ahead in real estate. Check out their blog this week for a humorous take on our very subject at hand: Real Estate.
Archive for the 'Online Resources' Category
The acting CFO of Freddie Mac (this is where CNBC notes that Freddie stock is in the red) was found dead this morning in his suburban Virginia home. While it’s on the books as a “suicide” right now, nobody knows for sure what happened yet:
This is one of the better parodies I’ve seen in awhile on the real estate, ahem, “adjustment”:
I love my local neighborhood blogs. I even read the ones that aren’t close to my neighborhood. There’s something about extremely local (like, more local than the local news) that is bringing a whole new idea of community to the sparse, isolated communities in which many of us were raised.
From Cincinatti to individual neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the rise in local blogs shows an increasing demand to 1) know exactly what’s going on around you and 2) to build a community online that actually reflects your outside physical surroundings. The neighborhood of Park Slope , for example, has a listserv for Park Slope Moms that has enraged thousands of stroller-pushers when they asked for a $25 yearly subscription fee. Obviously, these moms got angry because they really, really need and rely on their online community. Maybe they will eventually forfeit a few lattes to keep it going.
Why do I love my own neighborhood blog? I get all the news about the latest crimes, restaurant and bar openings, community events, and bargain real estate. I always know what’s going on over the weekend. Essentially, this service is a catalyst for me to spend my money in my own neighborhood (and, say, avoid the large metropolis that is 20 minutes away). Local blogs, basically, help keep your community going.
Isn’t that nice?
People have been saying it, and I’m starting to believe it. The catch-all social networking site is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. If Facebook’s new face and sad Twitter stories are any indicator, it’s that there are few messages we really want to send to 800 people at a time.
I use the term ‘censorship’ loosely in this case, since we censor our personal lives in broader networks and censor our ‘marketable’ selves to our close networks. As the lines between personal and public lives are being blurred by Twitter-esque bits of what I ate for lunch, where I’m going for drinks tonight or how I have a case of the Mondays, I realize that there is a wealth of strangers I do want knowing what I saw on the train today, and a slew of stranger’s I don’t want knowing how many Swiss almond cookies I ate on Friday afternoon.
Niche networking makes it easier for me to send the right message to the right people. Only because you don’t care that it’s very cold today and I’m not wearing a hat, or that I watched a game of bike polo in Chinatown yesterday afternoon. I want cycling friends to hear one message, and my mother to hear the other. I want my real estate buddies to know about the luxury condos going up in Bushwick, and I want my friends in theater to know that Hedda Gabler was terrible.
Now that you’ve all learned a little too much about me, you understand why niche social networking is important for us all.
Got a McMansion whose mortgage you can’t quite afford?
Here’s an idea that will help you meet your mortgage payment and put all that extra space to use, too. It’s called Homstie.com and markets itself as a “community marketplace for storage space.” In other words, instead of paying a storage facility $100 a month or more to rent storage, you just pay your neighbor to use his basement. You may help him keep his home and you get a place to stash your stuff.
It works like this: you go online and create a profile of yourself and then sift through listings looking for someone in your neighborhood or town whose got some space to rent out. You “apply” for their space, giving the “landlord” two days to accept or decline your application. If you’re the person with extra room in the basement, the unused guestroom, bedroom or attic space, you list it on Homstie and wait for the right person to come along. Listing for and searching for a space is free, although the site offers a customized lease agreement for $19.
Hmm…. interesting concept. And certainly, we can say that it brings two needy types together. (That is, homeowners in need of extra cash and people who own lots and lots of stuff with no place to put it.) But you might say that this whole idea is a symptom of one big American illness: owning too many things to begin with. If you’ve got so much unused space in your house that you need to rent it out, then you’ve probably got more house than you need. And certainly, if you’re searching for storage, you probably own more objects than you need.
What’s the real cure? How about not buying so much stuff? Swap sites of all kinds are all over the net, allowing you to swap toys, books, music, DVDs, clothes, furniture, and just about anythine else you can think of.
Buy less stuff. Buy less house. Now that’s a great way to solve both sides of the problem.
Ashton Kutcher has a dickweed neighbor. So you probably heard. After enduring four months of 7 am construction noise from his neighbor, Ashton let loose in a regrettable, foul-mouthed video tirade, ranting on that his neighbor has been “pounding on steel and welding right next to my frickin’ house.” Seriously irked, Ashton signs off, “I’m gonna lose it on this guy. I’m gonna lose …I’m gonna lose it…I’m gonna lose it. It’s been going on for four months now. This guy’s got another thing comin’.”
Later that afternoon, after he’d broken out of his sleep deprived frenzy (goodness forbid he wakes up at 7 am like the rest of us working Joes), Kutcher apologizes to the Interweb in his sequel video, “In light of reflection, I just want to say I pledge to be more tolerant of my neighbor’s hammering in the morning as he tolerated the construction of my home.”
Ashton’s problem is a temporary one, gone as soon as the ga-zillion dollar construction job is complete, but what about the rest of us, whose problems are here for the long haul? For us, neighbors can make or break any home. A bad set can make your life miserable. Are there other methods of messaging your neighbors?
Certainly, posting a video to YouTube or to your blog is one way to let loose about those obnoxious neighbors but there are a couple of other methods as well. For example, you can join Facebook groups such as I Have Some Loud-Ass Neighbors or pinpoint their location on Google Maps and comment on them accordingly at RottenNeighbor.com. The site currently hosts some crowd-pleasing neighbor reviews such as “meth on the porch,” and “Ms. Brown breath in her presence and chances are she will find a county entity to ‘deal’ with you.” Originally conceived to provide home seekers with more “relevant market information,” RottenNeighbor has become more of an outlet for frustrated neighbors than anything. But like Ashton, don’t let the heat of the moment get the best of you. At the end of the day, keep in mind that badmouthing your neighbor is badmouthing your neighborhood– not necessarily an ideal electronic trail to have when the day comes to sell your house.
Instead, think more direct and less public. How about messaging your neighbors by renaming your wireless router connection to ShutYourFreakingDogUp or PutYourUglyBoatAway instead? You get the point.
I married a numbers freak. It’s not that he likes to count random objects or anything like that, but he has an affinity for spreadsheets. He likes to forecast, project, graph, and speculate on all things financial.
On second thought, “numbers freak” isn’t entirely accurate. Maybe “obsessive compulsive planner” is a better description. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. In fact, I feel exactly the opposite. I am lucky to be married to one, simply because it means that I don’t have to be one. Actually, it’s very prudent to have one in the family, and you’re lucky if you have (or are) one too.
But just in case there are some wanna-be-planners out there, who don’t have the time to build your own mega spreadsheets, this one’s for you. You can ease yourself into the process by starting with some pre-fabbed online calculators to do the job. Here is a small collection of nifty little planner thingie-ma-bobs to get a grip on your finances.
On the web, you can estimate:
- Your net worth. Add up your assets, subtract your liabilities and that’s your value in a nutshell.
- How long it will take you to become a millionaire. Get a look and figure out if you need to change the game plan.
- How much it would cost to live in another state. Hawaii? Do I hear Hawaii? Homes, utilities, groceries, and health care costs differ by state. Determine how another state differs from your own.
- How much you need to save to retire at age 65? A lot of assumptions go into this one, but this one is good for order of magnitude calculations.
- How much another kid is gonna cost you? Assign a $ sign to that precious, little, chubby face, and figure out if economies of scale apply to kids!
- How much Fluffy gonna to cost you? Family pets cost the bucks too. Before you click, you should probably decide if you really wanna know how much.
- If you’re gonna live long enough to be a millionaire or retire anyway. Determine your life expectancy to see if any of this makes sense anyway.
If you still want more, Bloomberg offers a whole collection of useful investment related utilities to keep you going, but remember to keep the results in perspective. In the end, you’re the best judge of your household finances, so dig in and obsess away!
Bartering is where it’s at. Just check out your local Craig’s List and you’ll find a long list of people offering to trade some object or service for another object or service. Real life CL examples: a bunny for a puppy, a Rolex watch for a SUV, carpentry skills for a satellite dish installation.
And yeah, it makes sense when you’re talking about carpentry skills or a Rolex watch (not so sure about the bunny). But what kind of sense does it make when you’re talking about swapping a house?
Judging from the mushrooming numbers of permanent houseswap websites (not the vacation houseswaps we wrote about last week), it’s making a lot of sense for some. After all, if you can’t sell your home, why not exchange it? Home exchange sites include goswap.org, domuswap.com, besthouseswap.com and onlinehousetrading.com , to name just a few. And it’s easy to see how these desperate times could lead to these fairly desperate measures. Certainly, bartering a house is better than giving it away for free.
After spending some time surfing these sites, however, I have to wonder at the viability of it all. How likely is it to find someone who wants to live in your city, in your neighborhood in your particular home where you’ll feel just as enthusiastic about moving into their digs? I also notice that many house swap homes fall into three categories: 1) They are out in the boonies. 2) They are in markets so deep in trouble that you would hardly want to swap into them. 3) They are NOT in highly desirable cities —like New York, San Francisco or Boston — likely because the housing markets in these places isn’t bad enough for folks to resort to bartering. So if you hope to get to one of these cities, either you’ll have to make some major concessions or just forget the whole idea.
So when can house swapping work?
Well, just as in online dating, attempt house swapping only if:
1) You have lots of patience. Finding the exact right house for a trade isn’t going to be easy.
2) You are tremendously flexible. You can’t expect to find everything you want on your wishlist and you’ve got to be prepared to make some compromises.
3) You do your homework. Just like you’d “google” a prospective online date, you’d better visit the house you want to exchange for AND hire a home inspector.
4) You look at the financial implications. You’ll still need a new mortgage on your new place and you’ll still have to go through closing. Make sure you do the closings on both homes simultaneously so you’re never carrying two mortgages.
5) You get professional help. You’ll need an attorney and/or realtor to help you through the process.
House swapping can work for some, but just as in online dating, you’ve got to approach the whole thing with caution and a sense of humor.
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