Control the Heat at Home – Consider a Humidifier

Posted on March 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

NOT being able to control the heat at home is a problem most New Yorkers have experienced at some point. That might explain why some are so fixated on finding the right humidifier: If they can’t turn down the heat, they can at least put some desperately needed moisture into the air.

Leon Ransmeier has spent a fair amount of time thinking about what makes a good humidifier. Mr. Ransmeier, 32, is an industrial designer based in New York who has worked with companies like Herman Miller and Established & Sons. And although his apartment isn’t overheated, he did design a prototype for a humidifier not long ago.

His criteria for what works? “Something as simple as a humidifier should have a simple interface: an on-off switch and an adjustment switch,” he said. It should be easy to refill, he added, and it should be designed so condensation doesn’t collect around the unit.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/garden/humidifiers-shopping-with-leon-ransmeier.html?ref=realestate

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Is It Better to Buy or Rent? Calculator

Posted on March 11, 2012 | 1 comment

Whether renting is better than buying depends on many factors, particularly how fast prices and rents rise and how long you stay in your home. Compare the costs of buying and renting a home in the calculator below. Click the advanced settings button to change inputs such as your rate of return on investments, condo/common fees and your tax bracket.

Try the calculator at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html?ref=realestate

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What Square Footage Doesn’t Say

Posted on March 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

THE quirks of residential layout dictate that any measurement of square footage in a house will be debatable at best, agents and other experts say.

Assessors, who measure living space as one of many variables in computing home value, follow guidelines set by the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance. These guidelines, to take just one example, automatically exclude the basement from any calculation of living space.

In an appraisal one of the requirements is the appraiser measures all living space and garage and out buildings.  Why is the public record SF of your home different from the actual SF?  Contact the appraisers at www.socalappraisalserv.com for questions or have a licensed appraiser measure your property.

No matter how spectacularly well remodeled that basement may be — lavishly enough, perhaps, to increase the assessor’s ultimate determination of property value — its location in the house makes it irrelevant as square footage.

This may come as a surprise to buyers relying on real estate Web sites like Zillow and Trulia that make a feature of the “price-per-square-foot” calculation. Trulia, especially, considers price per square foot so significant that it highlights it right alongside the number of baths and bedrooms.

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/square-footage-an-incomplete-measure.html?_r=1&ref=realestate

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