the blog

By: Vera Mosley, August 30, 2010

If you’re like many Americans, you move homes fairly regularly. In fact, more than 40 million Americans move every year, according to the Census Bureau. For many folks, moving is about getting into a bigger or better home. Whatever the reason, moving always brings stress and extra expense.

This month, I’m organizing my family’s move from Phoenix to Texas. We’re a family of re-locaters. With a husband in the service, I’ve gotten used to moving on a moment’s notice. But, with each move comes the task of organizing our junk much-treasured belongings, getting all the members of our family ready, scheduling appointments with Realtors, calling ahead to turn on utilities, figuring out car licensing, etc.

With each move I’ve made, I’ve learned a few things. Here are five helpful moving tips that will hopefully make your next move a little easier:

Read more…  quizzle.com

By Matthew Amster-Burton

“Stop throwing your money away on rent.” You see the phrase in Realtor junk mail and hear it from new homebuyers who are immersed in the nightmare of paperwork, points, and plastering.

The logic is simple: renting is just flushing money down the toilet; buying a house gives you a piece of something to call your own. You earn home equity and end up with something tangible to pass down to your heirs–or to sell or refinance when you retire.

There is a kernel of truth to all of this. But it’s mostly crap. I’ve been a renter all my adult life, and I have plenty of home equity. My home equity is called “cash,” and it’s the accumulated difference between what I pay in rent and what a comparable homeowner pays for their mortgage, maintenance, property taxes, and utilities. (Sure, I pay for all of those things indirectly, but that’s the point: they’re rolled into my rent, and they’re not rolled into your mortgage.)

Unlike a homeowner, I can choose to invest my equity in something other than real estate. I can spend my equity without taking out a line of credit. I might squander my equity, but I’ll never be “underwater” due to the vagaries of the market. And I accumulate home equity more quickly than the average homeowner.

Yes, thirty years from now, when your mortgage is paid off, you will own a home, free and clear. You know what I’ll own? Enough money to pay cash for your home.

Sure, I’m making a big assumption: I’m assuming the value of your house won’t rise much faster than inflation (or, at least, not much faster than the performance of my investments). Harvard professor Ed Glaeser, writing on the New York Times’s Economix blog, thinks this is an excellent assumption:

Houses are assets, too, but it’s a mistake to expect them to offer a regular rise in price. Houses pay hefty dividends to their owners in the form of living space–that’s the real return on housing investment–and the basic economics of housing doesn’t point to perpetual price growth.

Indeed, the Case-Shiller index, the most respected measure of housing prices, shows that they’ve barely outpaced inflation since 1890.

I’m also assuming that I have the discipline to keep saving the money. So far so good. Homebuying is often lauded as a “compulsory saving scheme.” I guess that’s true: it’s a scheme that compels you to invest a large proportion of your money in real estate. How is this better than simply increasing your 401(k) contribution?

Two kinds of renters

We’re not so different, Joe Homeowner and me. I rent property from a landlord. He rents money from a bank.

Every month, I write my landlord a check. The money gets spent on orthodontia for the landlord’s kids, and I will never see it again.

Every month, Joe writes his banker a check. The interest portion of the payment–for Joe, that’s well over half the payment, more than I spend on rent for a similar home–gets spent on polishing the banker’s yacht, and Joe will never see it again.

For this analogy, I’m indebted to David Crook of the Wall Street Journal, who wrote a landmark 2007 column on the topic:

Mortgage interest is rent that you pay to your lender for the use of its money rather than to a landlord for the use of his house…most of your monthly payment neither builds equity nor is deductible. It just goes down the same black hole that sucks up any other renter’s money. And it takes 20 years before a typical borrower pays more principal each month than interest.

Oh, but what about the mortgage interest deduction? It’s not for Joe. It’s for my landlord and Joe’s banker. Only half of homeowners take it–the rest are better off with the standard deduction–and the average tax savings for those who do is $2000, according to Roger Lowenstein of the New York Times. (The big winners in the mortgage interest deduction game are homeowners who make over $250,000 a year but not so much that they can afford to buy a home with cash.)

Trapped in the closet

Home ownership, it has long been said, leads to financial and community stability. The last three years should have taught everyone that “owning” (that is, financing) a home is no protection against financial upheaval.

As for community stability, be careful what you wish for. If you lose your job, the worst place to find yourself is trapped in an underwater house. I could move with two weeks notice and get my security deposit back.

This isn’t just anecdote. As Tim Harford reported in Slate:

English economist Andrew Oswald has shown that across European countries, and across U.S. states, high levels of home ownership are correlated with high levels of unemployment…. Renting your home and staying flexible do wonders for your chances of always finding an interesting job to do.

As for high levels of homeownership creating community, I’m not sure how you would measure that. All I know is that my family lives in one of the safest and most desirable census tracts in Seattle; as of the 2000 census, it consisted of 85% renters.

Why buy?

Am I saying nobody should buy a house? Of course not. There are plenty of situations where you would want to do so:

* You live in a place where the total monthly cost of renting is similar to borrowing. This is true in a lot of non-housing-bubbly places, outside of big cities and off the coasts. In that case, sure, why not?

* You really want to be able to renovate. Yes, this requires ownership. But be careful: renovation costs are almost never recouped when a house is sold. Also, people talk about the ability to customize as if this should be important to everyone. I just don’t care to get my hands dirty.

* The kind of house you want in the neighborhood you want isn’t available for rent. (This is unlikely to be the case in the present market, however).

* There’s a specific house you want, and you can afford to buy it with a big down payment and a boring 15- or 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

Just because a house isn’t a good investment, in most cases, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy one. A steak isn’t a good investment, either. The problem is, houses cost more than steaks, and a lot of people are convinced that everyone should own one, whether they can afford it or not. If you can’t afford to buy real estate, or just don’t want to, don’t. It’s okay. You’re still a grownup.

Me? There isn’t anything I want out of my financial, social, or family life that requires me to own real estate. So I rent.

Hungry Monkey out now: http://hungrymonkeybook.com/

10 Important Safety tips for Apartment Living

1. Make sure all windows and doors are locked, all the time.

2. Place a broom stick in the gutter of the patio door. They cost about $9 at Home Depot.

3. Make sure your smoke detector has new batteries and works. A 9 Volt costs about $6.

4. Always park in a lighted area. Report any outages to the property office.

5. Take in mail and newspapers daily or have a friend do it when you are gone.

6. Keep lights on a timer, so people think you are home when you are not. Cost of timer, about $12.

7. Stay alert when walking to and from your apartment, burglars are always looking for easy targets. Don’t be distracted. You really can wait to see that text when you are safely in your apartment.

8. Practice the buddy system, go with a friend to the club house and pool, do laundry with a friend, pick up your mail and drop trash during daylight hours and always be alert while doing so, again, don’t be distracted by your cell phone.

9. Always carry your cell phone, but don’t be on it. Keep it in case you need to call 911.

10. Get to know your neighbors, attend neighborhood watch meetings if they are available. Neighbors can watch out for each other and help prevent crime.

Just like mom used to say, “It is better to be safe than sorry”. True words, now put them into action. Be Safe!

via www.multifamilyinsiders.com

PlanningAlerts, an Australian website for property development proposals, is extending its service to mobile using Layar augmented reality.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald:

The new app could soon become the weapon of choice for those looking at buying or renting an apartment to find out if the location could become undesirable due to a new development.

It could be used, for example, to learn whether prospective views might soon be obstructed.

The app demonstrates the disruptive nature of open data and anywhere access. With information flowing like water, organizations are being forced to rethink the way they act. From personal online identities to the retail space, transparency is the new norm.

[via textually]

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow him on Twitter.

I can’t claim that my home is completely minimalist, but it surely isn’t cluttered, and most people I know would call it a pretty minimalist home.

One recent visitor saw my kitchen and remarked, “I’ve never seen a kitchen that looked so clean, so clear of stuff!” Well, I do my best to keep it clean, but the key is to remove the unnecessary stuff.

For example, on the floor of my kitchen/dining room area are just a few essentials: dining table (clear of any clutter), chairs, some counter stools, a high chair, a step stool for the kids. On the counters are only the toaster, coffee maker and microwave.

Is this kind of minimalist home devoid of character and fun and life? Some might think so, but I get a strange satisfaction, a fulfillment, at looking around and seeing a home free of clutter. It’s calming, and liberating, and just nice.

Benefits of a Minimalist Home
I could probably go on for awhile about this, but let me just list a few key benefits:

1. Less stressful. Clutter is a form of visual distraction, and everything in our vision pulls at our attention at least a little. The less clutter, the less visual stress we have. A minimalist home is calming.
2. More appealing. Think about photos of homes that are cluttered, and photos of minimalist homes. The ones with almost nothing in them except some beautiful furniture, some nice artwork, and a very few pretty decorations, are the ones that appeal to most of us. You can make your home more appealing by making it more minimalist.
3. Easier to clean. It’s hard to clean a whole bunch of objects, or to sweep or vacuum around a bunch of furniture. The more stuff you have, the more you have to keep clean, and the more complicated it is to clean around the stuff. Think about how easy it is to clean an empty room compared to one with 50 objects in it. That’s an extreme example, of course, as I wouldn’t recommend you have an empty room, but it’s just to illustrate the difference.

What a Minimalist Home Looks Like
This would vary, of course, depending on your taste and how extreme of a minimalist you want to be. I am a minimalist, but not to any extreme. But here are some characteristics of a minimalist home:

• Minimal furniture. A minimalist room would only contain a few essential pieces of furniture. A living room, for example, might only have a couch, another chair or love seat, a coffee table, a minimalist entertainment stand (not a huge one with a bunch of shelves), a television, and a couple of lamps. It could even contain less (couch, chairs, and coffee table, for example). A bedroom might have a simple bed (or even just a mattress), a dresser, and perhaps a night stand or book shelf.
• Clear surfaces. In a minimalist home, flat surfaces are clear, except for one or two decorations (see next item). There are not a whole bunch of knick knacks, and definitely not stacks of books or papers or other items.
• Accent decorations. A home completely clear of things would be a bit boring, actually. So instead of having a coffee table completely free of any objects, you could have a simple vase with a few flowers, for example. Or a clear desk might just have a family photo. An otherwise empty wall might have a tasteful piece of art (I use my dad’s artwork, as he’s a great artist).
• Quality over quantity. Instead of having a lot of stuff in your home, a minimalist would choose just a few really good things he loves and uses often. A really nice table, for example, is better than 5 pieces of press-board furniture.
• Examples. The photo at the top of this post is a nice example of a minimalist home (it’s not my home, but I wish it were). See more photos of that lovely home. Traditional-style Japanese homes are another great example of minimalism, as is this nice spread.

How to Create a Minimalist Home
There are actually no set steps to making your home minimalist, except to change your philosophy and shoot for the ideals in the previous section above. But here are some tips that I would offer to anyone trying to shoot for minimalism:

1. One room at a time. Unless you’re just moving into a place, it’s hard to simplify an entire house at once. Focus on one room, and let that be your center of calm. Use it to inspire you to simplify the next room, and the next. Then do the same outside!
2. Start with furniture. The biggest things in any room are the furniture, so you should always begin simplifying a room by looking at the furniture. The fewer pieces of furniture, the better (within reason, of course). Think of which furniture can be eliminated without sacrificing comfort and livability. Go for a few pieces of plain, simple furniture (example of a minimalist coffee table) with solid, subdued colors.
3. Only the essentials. Whether looking at your furniture or anything else in the room, ask yourself if the item is truly essential. If you can live without it, get it out. Try to strip the room down to its essentials — you can always add a few choice items beyond the essentials later.
4. Clear floors. Except for the furniture, your floors should be completely clear. Nothing should clutter the floor, nothing should be stacked, nothing should be stored on the floor. Once you’ve gotten your furniture down to the bare essentials, clear everything else on the floor — either donate it, trash it, or find a place for it out of sight.
5. Clear surfaces. Same thing with all flat surfaces. Don’t have anything on them, except one or two simple decorations (See Tip 9 below). Donate, trash or find an out-of-sight storage spot for everything else. It will make everything much, much more minimal-looking.
6. Clear walls. Some people hang all kinds of stuff on their walls. No can do in a minimalist home. Clear your walls except for one or two simple pieces of nice artwork (see Tip 8 below).
7. Store stuff out of sight. This has been mentioned in the above tips, but you should store everything you need out of sight, in drawers and cabinets. Bookshelves can be used to store books or DVDs or CDs, but shouldn’t have much else except a few simple decorations (not whole collections of things).
8. Declutter. If you are clearing flat surfaces and the floor, and storing stuff in cabinets and drawers, you’ll probably want to declutter your storage areas too. You can do this in a later stage if you want. See How to Declutter for more.
9. Simple artwork. To keep a room from being boring, you can put a simple painting, drawing or photo, framed with a subdued, solid color, on each wall if you want. Leave some walls bare if possible.
10. Simple decorations. As mentioned in the above tips, one or two simple decorations can serve as accents for a minimalist room. A vase of flowers or a small potted plant are two classic examples. If the rest of your room has subdued colors, your accents could use a bright color (such as red, or yellow) to draw the eye and give a plain room a splash of energy.
11. Plain window treatments. Bare windows, or simple, solid colored curtains, or simple, wooden blinds are good. Too much ornate stuff around the windows is clutter.
12. Plain patterns. Solid colors are best for floor coverings (if you have any), furniture, etc. Complex patterns, such as flowers or checkers, are visual clutter.
13. Subdued colors. As mentioned in Tip 9 above, you can have a splash of bright color in the room, but most of the room should be more subtle colors – white is classic minimalist, but really any solid colors that don’t stress the eyes is good (earth colors come to mind, such as blues, browns, tans, greens).
14. Edit and eliminate. When you’ve simplified a room, you can probably do more. Give it a couple of days, then look at everything with a fresh eye. What can be eliminated? Stored out of sight? What’s not essential? You can come back to each room every few months, and sometimes you’ll discover things you can simplify even more.
15. Place for everything. I’ve discussed this in other posts, but in a minimalist house, it’s important that you find a place for everything, and remember where those places are. Where does you blender go? Give it a spot, and stick with it. Aim for logical spots that are close to where the thing is used, to make things more efficient, but the key is to designate a spot.
16. Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Once you’ve simplified a room, take a moment to look around and enjoy it. It’s so peaceful and satisfying. This is the reward for your hard work. Ahhhh. So nice!

via zenhabits.net

Nothing is more liberating than ditching “stuff.”