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San Diego: Interior design pros offering $99/hour consultations now until end of June for charity

Posted on May 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

If your home’s interior could use a professional refresh, the San Diego chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) chapter has a solution.

From now through the end of June, members will conduct in-home design consultations during the ASID “Spring Spruce Up” fundraiser. The discounted fee of $99 per hour (minimum one hour/maximum two hours) is a donation to the local ASID chapter; the designer volunteers their time.

ASID can provide experts in all aspects of design, including space planning, staging, color selection, kitchen design, aging in place, art and furniture placement, outdoor rooms, historic preservation, media rooms, multigenerational living, universal design, window treatments and commercial design. Designers are chosen to meet each client’s specific needs.

How to Understand and Reduce Taxes When Selling Your Home

Posted on May 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

If your home’s value has soared, congratulations. If you decide to sell, beware.

How Tax rules have changed:

Until 1997, home sellers didn’t have to pay taxes on their profits if they bought another home of equal or greater value within two years. In addition, people 55 and older could use a one-time exclusion to avoid paying taxes on up to $125,000 of home sale profits.

The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 changed the rules so that instead of rolling profits into another home, homeowners could exclude up to $250,000 of home sale profits from their income. To qualify for the full exclusion, home sellers must have owned and lived in the home at least two of the five years prior to the sale. Married couples could shelter up to $500,000.

Those exclusion limits haven’t changed in 25 years, while home values have nearly tripled. The median home sale price when the law passed was $145,800, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The median was $428,700 in the first three months of this year. Median means half of homes sold for less and half for more.

Why your tax basis matters: Let’s say you realized $600,000 from your home sale. You originally bought it for $200,000 and remodeled the kitchen for $50,000. You’d subtract that $250,000 from the $600,000 to get $350,000 in capital gains.

Going Green May Help Sell Your House Faster

Posted on April 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

A new report from Zillow finds that updating your home with eco-friendly or eco-resistant features may help sellers get a better price for their house on the market as well as sell it up to 10 days faster.

At the top of the list are electric vehicle charging stations (9.5 days faster), double pane windows (6.9 days faster), and seismic-resistant features (19 days faster) that all help sell a home faster than homes without. Also on the list are tankless water heaters (2 days faster), drought-resistant landscaping (9.2 days faster), and smart sprinkler systems (4.9 days faster).

According to Zillow, their research found that buyers are also seriously considering the possibility of flooding (55%), tornadoes (41%), hurricanes (35%), and earthquakes (29%) when choosing a home. The increasing frequencies at which these events, along with other natural disasters, are occurring means buyers are paying a premium on homes that have these features to protect themselves and their investment.

San Diego: Interior design pros offering $99/hour consultations now until end of June for charity

How to Understand and Reduce Taxes When Selling Your Home

Going Green May Help Sell Your House Faster

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