For everyone out there looking at homes right now, there are three little letters that could make or break your purchase decision. They are “H,” “O” and “A.” Three of the most frightening letters of the alphabet, imposed over the largest purchase you’ll ever make -- it’s a recipe for high anxiety.
Things seem to be getting smarter and smarter these days. From smartphones to smart pressure cookers, anything that can be built with a brain or an internet connection seems to be being bulked up. Some items that are getting brains don’t necessarily make a lot of sense (smart toothbrushes?), and others seem like they should have gotten smarter sooner.
It’s finally spring! Time to break out the grill and the patio set and spend your evenings cooking out under the stars. Except, you don’t have a patio, you have a backyard that’s currently a soppy, muddy mess from spring rainstorms. You’d love to get outside, but it’s just so mucky and sticky out there.
It’s almost spring in much of North America, which means it’s time once again to tune up your air conditioner or send it to the big home improvement store in the sky. Even an older A/C unit that's still functional may need to be replaced simply because of how inefficiently it's running.
Your garage is a big deal. Even if you totally ignore that your garage doors themselves can take up a significant portion of your home’s street facing surface, there’s all that (often unfinished) space inside that you’re just leaving to its own devices (and possibly growing lots of brown recluse spiders).
As the snow starts to melt, revealing the brightly colored flowers of crocus, and robins bop merrily around the yard, another cycle of the real estate market begins. If you’re considering listing your home this year, it’s definitely not too late to get started. March and April can be great months for putting your house in front of prospective buyers, but the summer months are also great times to sell.
Understanding how your property taxes are calculated can often feel like unraveling one of the deepest mysteries of the universe. However, it’s vitally important that you get your arms around this tax, if you are subject to it, as it’s often a large expense that you may be saddled with for a lifetime.
If you’re a gardener, or at least want to be one, there’s no time as amazing as early spring. This is when your plants are starting to wake from their long winter’s sleep. The white snow and frost flowers are giving way to green grass and emerging vegetation that seems to multiply like magic day after day.
Owning a home means having a place that’s safe and secure to come back to after a long day at work, every day, forever, until you decide it’s time to buy a different home. In exchange for all this homeiness, all you have to do is keep all the broken bits together, maintain the grass and track home-related expenses.