These days, many families find themselves in a position where their current home simply doesn’t meet their needs, currently or their future needs. Maybe there aren’t enough bedrooms or bathrooms. Maybe it’s the kitchen that’s too small and hopelessly outdated. Your layout may not fit your personal style. Your home may be no longer be as desirable as it once was.

If you do find yourself in this situation, what’s your next move? Well, you have three options:

• remodel your current home
• move to a home in a new neighborhood that better suits your needs
• design and build a new home

Each option has its own set of pros and cons and your family must consider all of them and their nuances before making such an important decision. The accompanying infographic, Renovate, Move or Build a New Home?, offers a brief list of factors to consider before choosing. Things to consider include your budget, emotional ties to your neighborhood and home, the current real estate market, your tolerance of inconvenience, the amount of available free time, and more.

It all comes down to a balancing act. You must weigh your desire for what you want against your ability to pay for it. A serious consideration of the infographic’s reasons for choosing one
option over the other will help you decide which way to go in pursuit of your dream home. Check it out — the advice is sure to help you hit a home run!

While it may be tempting for buyers to say what’s on their mind while looking at houses, agents should encourage them to pause for a moment. There are some things home buyers should never say on the fly.

Listing agents, sellers, even neighbors may be listening; and they all have motives to keep tabs on the situation.

Casual comments could be used against the home buyer

Saying things like:

• I love it
• The decor is awful
• This house is way over priced

All these things go straight back to the seller.

What are the neighbors like?

That’s another question that should never be asked.

The listing agent has no idea; and do you think the seller is going to tell you that the neighbor’s son has a band that starts rehearsing at 2:00 in the morning?

The buyers have to asses the neighbors on their own.

 

This information is from an article on inman.com
You can read the full article here.

St. Louis in Top Ten Trendiest Cities

Did you know St. Louis MO is in the top 10 trendiest cities in the U.S.?

According to Realtor.com, St. Louis Missouri is one of the top 10 trendiest cities in the United States.

Whether it’s the top notch restaurant and music venues, the Bluesweek Festival every spring, or the median home price of $145,000, St. Louis has much to offer the millennials just starting out, or those already established. They even have Filipino blue crab ceviche in Tower Grove East.

You can read the complete article here.

 

 

Housing needs change as people age

Look around your house. Is there a step at the front door? Are the hallways wide enough for a walker or wheelchair? How about the doorknobs: Do you have to twist them, or can you simply push down on them to open the door? Maybe those home features don’t matter now at this point in life. But what might you need 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now to get around your house? Your housing needs will change as you age.

The Clark County Commission on Aging aims to get people thinking about these forward-looking questions. Aging in place, and other issues related to housing and getting older, will be discussed at monthly talks held by the commission through the end of this year. To start, Alan DeLaTorre, a Portland State University research associate, will talk Tuesday about what housing options are needed for the increasing number of older people.

Modifications

A lot of the new developments Ritchie sees popping up are stacked homes on smaller lots. A multi-story house could work for somebody for a while, but down the road maybe they develop a knee problem, or perhaps they have to use a walker, and the home needs to be retrofitted.

“How do you make those modifications and how do you do it economically?” Ritchie said. Chuck Frayer, a 65-year-old retired accessibility specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, chairs the Commission on Aging’s housing committee. The group has looked into building codes, universal design and what’s being done around the country for those who are trying to age in place.

The Little Details

When Ivan Olin’s pastor at Crossroads Community Church, Ritchie, said he should look into building accessible homes, he listened. Olin Homes has refined its design and has two ADA-compliant homes in its Battle Ground subdivision, Parkview Trails, with two more under construction.

Olin consulted with the Commission on Aging to figure out what basics should be in a home and what could easily be added as people move through different life stages. There aren’t grab bars in the bathroom, but extra backing in the walls means they could be installed later. After all, young families may not like the idea or look of grab bars when shopping for a new home. People can recoil at the idea of buying an accessible home, which comes with the stigma that it’s an “old-person home.”

“People don’t like to talk about it,” Olin said. “That makes it tricky as a builder to do advertising.”

To read the full article, follow this link: https://www.columbian.com/news/2016/feb/15/clark-county-series-talks-offers-tips-aging-in-place/?om_rid=AAB4gB&om_mid=_BWw3-FB9K08jd$&om_ntype=SRESMonthly