Tag Archives: real estate appraiser

Homes in Varying Shades of Green

Posted on July 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

As conscious as consumers have become in recent years of the merits of sustainable housing and the drawbacks of having a large carbon footprint, the fact remains that in all of Westchester County today, there are only two LEED-certified residential projects: a two-family market-rate condominium in Hastings-on-Hudson and a 22-unit affordable assisted-living complex in Yonkers.

Will “greening” your home add value?  Contact the appraisers at www.scappraisals.com with your value questions.

By comparison, according to the United States Green Building Council in Washington, which created the certification process and coined the terminology (LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) the village of Cold Spring, in Putnam County to the north of Westchester, has more than 100 LEED-certified units, among them single- and multifamily, market-rate and income-restricted.

Overall state and national numbers remain modest. There are 1,262 certified LEED for Homes units in New York State; 1,658 in New Jersey; 3,043 in California; and a total of 20,000 in the United States, according to the nonprofit council that administers the LEED for Homes program.

read more at; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/realestate/westchester-in-the-region-lagging-in-leed-homes.html?_r=1&ref=realestate

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Bibliochaise – A chair and Bookcase in One

Posted on June 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

Don’t know what to get dad?  Tired of buying books for the avid reader in your life?  Why not buy them something to hold all their books.

With a Bibliochaise, designed by nobody&co in Milan, Italy, your books are as close to your reading chair as they possibly can be. In fact, the shelves are part of the chair.

The company says the chair holds has space for 5 meters (16 feet) of books and comes in assorted colors and finishes. There’s a matching Bibliopouf — also holding books — to go with it.

read more at: http://blog.oregonlive.com/homesandgardens/2012/05/one_cool_or_crazy_thing_biblio.html#repete

Disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only

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How to Figure the Fuzzy Math of Internet Home Values

Posted on November 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Websites may be a good starting place, but when determining the value of your home you need a licensed professional that does not average the sales price of every home within a 1 mile radius.  Imagine you have an ocean front house but the website uses properties across the street (no beach front or ocean view; your property blocks their view, properties blocks away, etc.  How would you figure out the adjustments for your beach front.   Again this is where you need an appraiser.  Contact the appraisers at www.socalappraisalserv.com for you value questions.

Jason Gonsalves worked hard to turn his 6,500-square-foot stucco-and-stone home in the suburbs of Sacramento into the ultimate grown-up party pad, complete with game room, custom wine cellar and an infinity-edge pool overlooking Folsom Lake. When interest rates fell recently, Mr. Gonsalves, who runs a lobbying firm, looked into refinancing his $750,000 mortgage. That’s when he got startling news—the home had dropped more than $200,000 in value while he was renovating.

Or at least, that’s what one real-estate website told him. Another valued the house at only $640,500. And these online estimates left him all the more confused when a real-life appraiser, assessing the house for the refinancing loan, pinned its value at $1.5 million. “I have no idea how those numbers could be so different,” Mr. Gonsalves says.

Right or wrong, they’re the numbers millions of consumers are clamoring for. After years of real-estate pros holding all the informational cards in the home-sale game, Web-driven companies like Zillow, Homes.com and Realtor.com are reshuffling the deck, giving home shoppers and owners estimates of what almost any home is worth. People have flocked to the data in startling numbers: Together, four of the biggest sites that offer home-value estimates get 100 million visits a month, with web surfers using them to determine what to ask or bid for a home, or whether to refinance.

Read the entire article at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204554204577026131448329006.html

Disclaimer: For information and entertainment purposes only.

 

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