The Pointing You Home Real Estate Blog

A key to protecting the investment you’ve made in your home is by following a regular maintenance schedule. By performing preventative maintenance on an on-going basis, you’ll avoid many of the big ticket repair items that can lower the value of your home.

Here is a helpful checklist for fall maintenance:

Smoke Alarm/Carbon Monoxide Detector
- Test your smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector.
- Change the batteries in both. This should be doen twice a year.

Furnance/Heating System
- Have your system services by a qualified service company.
- If you have electric baseboard heaters, cavuum them to remove dust.
- Remove the grills on fored air syustems and vacuum inside the ducts.
- If you use a portable humidifier, it’s time to clean it.

Water Heater
- Extend its life expectanvy by draining a gallon or two of water from your hot water heater at least twice a year.

Windows and Doors
- Put up storm windows.
- Remove screens from the inside of casement windows to allow air from the heating system to keep condensation off window glass.
- Ensure windows and skylights close tightly.
- Make sure all doors to the outside shut tightly.
- Renew weather stripping as required.

Outside
- Check your chimney for obstructions, such as bird’s nests.
- Clean gutters and test downspouts to ensure proper drainage from the roof. – Make sure the ground around your home slopes away from the foundation wall. Remove mulch from the foundation wall as well. This helps prevent water damage.
- Drain and store outdoor hoses. Prepare your outdoor faucets from winter freezes.
- Protect young trees and bushes for winter and winterize.

Gardens
- Trim shrubs and trees so that they clear the foundation, exterior walls, and roof of the house.
- Fertilize lawn grass to ensure strong root formation and growth.
- Store outdoor furniture.

Well Water/Septic Tank
- If you have well water, test the water quality.
- Testing for bacteria twice a year is suggested.
- If you have a spetic tank, measure the sludge and scu, to determine if the tank needs to be emptied before spring. As a general rule, septic tanks should be pumped out at least once eveery three years.

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What is a “Short Sale?”

A “short sale” is an agreement between the seller and their mortgage lender, allowing the home to be sold for less than the existing loan balance. The mortgage lender agrees to accept less to cut its losses and accepts a reduced payoff amount and relieases its lien on the real estate. The lender may or may not release the homeowner from the remaining balance due on the loan.

Why would a lender accept a “Short Sale?”

-To avoid the cost of foreclosure

-To avoid the cost of taking back the property as an REO – carrying/selling costs

-To keep their liquidity ratios in line with federal regulations. Federal regulations require that lenders maintain a certain ratio of bad loans to cash/liquidity. The fewer bad loans on the books, the less funds the lender has to have.

Under what conditions would a lender accept a “Short Sale?”

- Financial situation of the homeowner – the homeowner must pass the lender’s “hardship test.” Some examples:

• Divorce or death
• Serious illness of homeowner or member of immediate family
• Active military duty
• Lack of employment as verified by local economic conditions
• Job related relocation and homeowner cannont sell or rent property

- Conditions of the property – does it need significant repairs to be marketable?

- Conditions in the local real estate economy

- The transaction must be ” arms length” – purchaser cannot be family member

- Homeowner cannot receive any proceeds from the sale of the property

- Miscellaneous considerations:

• Effect on Sellers credit – the short sale will likely be reported as “paid settled for lass than originally owed.”  This is better than reporting a foreclosure.
• The amount of the debt that is forgiven by the lender is taxable as “ordinary income” and will be reported by the lender on Form 1099. Congress has temporarily eliminated this negative tax treatment.

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How can rightsizing your Maryland, North Virginia and Washington DC area home can help alleviate common fears in older adults?

Fear 1: Developing Alzheimer’s

- Rightsizing simplifying and organizing your life can help make you less dependent on your memory, make it easier to put your hands on things that are important to you, and reduce overwhelm and confusion which will make it easier to recall.

Fear 2: Falling

- Rightsizing reduces clutter, reduces trip hazards, and reduces the changes of you falling into something and injuring yourself.

Fear 3: Losing Hearing or Eyesight

- Rightsizing can help by:

1. Making social opportunities more readily available

2. Easy access to entertainment and other activities

3. Transportation may be provided

4. A smaller space may be easier to manage and maintain. (Single level living might be a better alternative to stairs if you have failing eyesight.)

Fear 4: Losing Independence

- By being proactive you can maintain your independence far longer than you can if you simply allow things to happen on their own.

- By Rightsizing on your own terms, you can plan in advance to have our needs met in the area of: Physical, Intellectual, Vocational, Emotional, Spiritual, and Social.

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Why was the wellness program successful?

Did the program or campaign meet the goals you set when you launched it? Have you increased participation or retention at your organization or in the community?

The show (Rightsizing Your Home) is heard by over 15,000 listeners per week, and the producers have received more than 500 requests for the program’s Rightsizing Guide, a comprehensive how-to handbook  that shows listeners how to  go through the entire process of rightsizing their lives.  In addition,  in 2008 Rightsizing Your Home officially became an award-winning radio show when it received a bronze Mature Media award in the radio category.

The Rightsizing Your Home has also led to the development of the Lifestyle and Financial Planning Workshop, a 5-hour workshop for older adults that focuses on both their financial and lifestyle wellbeing.  Asbury’s Andrew Morgan, facilitates a session called Managing Your Lifestyle Portfolio, in which participants evaluate their lives in all six areas of wellness and determine the areas in which they need to improve.  Participants then engage in exercises that help them to identify what they can do to increase activity in the areas in which they are lacking.  The workshop, which is an offshoot of the radio program, has been attended by 126 people.

The program has also had a positive impact on the Asbury Methodist Village Priority Member Program.  The Priority Member program allows future residents of Asbury the opportunity to maximize their wellbeing by participating in the wellness program prior to moving to Asbury.  Members are encouraged to tune-in weekly to listen to the show to get tips on how to simplify and organize their lives so that they are free to engage in more meaningful and purposeful pursuits. As of this writing we have 342 Priority Program Members of which 138 are actively participating in our wellness program.

Another positive outcome from Rightsizing Your Home is that it has increased attendance at marketing events by 15%.  Our marketing messages reinforce the connection between being fully engaged and having a high quality of life.  This is our primary message.  Our secondary message is that Asbury is a place that provides easy access to opportunities to for full engagement at all stages of wellness.  By focusing on the wellness needs of older adults we have found that the occupancy needs of the community are met.

Imagine more than 15,000 people inviting you into their homes to talk about wellness and their level of engagement.  There are not many opportunities to do this, and yet we have been able to accomplish it with the radio program over 60 times in the last 15 months.  The reach of this program continues to grow and the message continues to have a positive impact on the listeners.  We often tell listeners that the quality of life is determined by the quality of each moment.  How you spend your days therefore defines your life today. The message seems to be working as evidenced by a  listener who shared that she was completely overwhelmed and felt that things were out-of-control in her life until we turned on the light and provided hope and encouragement.

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A question you may have about Rightsizing Your Home aired on 630WMAL.

How is your wellness program innovative?

What was the need of the older adults? What was the innovative solution to meeting that need?

In May 2008, Eric Stewart co-hosted the broadcast of the first episode of Rightsizing Your Home, a weekly radio program heard on Washington DC’s 630 WMAL.  The program was developed as an educational resource to reach older adults whose level of engagement had decreased due to internal and external commitments that may no longer be life enriching.  The message is simple, “By putting down the unnecessary you free up time, money, and energy for more meaningful and purposeful pursuits.”

The idea came from a lifestyle survey, conducted by the marketing department, of more than 525 older adults between the ages of 78 and 89, in which 97% of respondents listed “downsizing” as the number one reason why they would not consider transitioning to a more maintenance-free, activity-rich lifestyle sooner.

The show uses six components of wellness (physical, intellectual, vocational, spiritual, emotional, and social) as a frame-work for discussions on everything from how to find one’s purpose to how to eliminate clutter. Using a highly entertaining and almost Zen-like format, co-hosts Eric Stewart and Andrew Morgan have produced shows such as “Letting Go of Clothes Pins,” “Understand the Rightsizing Bill of Rights” and “What to Do with Your Stuff When Your Stuff Stops Loving You.”

Each week listeners are guided through a self-evaluation process designed to increase awareness of their current level of engagement. Tips and ideas are shared about what they can do to reconnect, reengage, and revitalize their lives at this stage.  Special guests are brought in from time to time to share their expertise on various topics related to rightsizing, simplifying, and organizing one’s life.

The intent is to approach the topic of living a fully-engaged life from a place of familiarity to the listener, the need to possibly right size or simplify their lives, and then to educate them on the benefits of living a balanced and active life in all six components of wellness.

The show is co-hosted and co-produced by Eric Stewart, one of the top realtors in Montgomery County, Maryland with over 21 years of experience in selling homes, and the host of the radio show Pointing You Home also heard on 630WMAL and Andrew Morgan, Director of Sales and Marketing for Asbury Methodist Village and the former host of Senior Focus: Radio for Today’s Retiree.

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“Pointing You Home with Eric Stewart” is the real estate radio show that talks about all the important issues relating to residential home ownership.

The show covers a variety of topics including:

• What, where and how to buy real estate.
• How to sell your home fast and for top dollar
• What pitfalls to be aware of in your real estate transaction
• How to maintain and improve your most important investment …your home.

To listen to live shows tune into 630WMAL on 630AM from 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., every Sunday to hear expert advice from one of the Washington DC region’s top REALTORS® and 18-year real estate veteran, Eric Stewart. Each week Eric and the Point You Home team, talk about the issues you care about pertaining to your home or investment.

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As one of the most affluent and educated counties in the United States, Montgomery County Maryland is an important business and research center as well as a bedroom community for government employees and ambassadors to Washington D.C. Although the county seat is Rockville, the largest municipality, downtown Bethesda and Silver Spring MD real estate are the largest urban business hubs in Montgomery County.  The eastern part of the county centers around Silver Spring and Olney, the western part around Bethesda and Potomac, and the northern portion is more agricultural.

Montgomery County was one of the first counties in the country to adopt an affordable housing plan, which combines multi-family housing with neighborhoods of single-family homes.  Master-planned communities mingle with historic districts.  Real estate features architecture ranging from Plantation to Colonial to Contemporary designs.

Approximately one million people reside in the spacious 507-square-mile county.  Incorporated cities include Gaithersburg, Rockville, and Takoma Park.  Incorporated towns are Barnesville, Brookeville, Chevy Chase, Chevy Chase View, Chevy Chase Village, Garrett Park, Glen Echo, Kensington, Laytonsville, Poolesville, Somerset, and Washington Grove.  Incorporated villages include Village of Chevy Chase, Martin’s Additions, and North Chevy Chase.  Additionally, there are 33 unincorporated areas, including Potomac and Silver Spring, and 5 unincorporated places—all without local governments.

Classic Maryland beauty, with wonderful parks and special features such as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, the Clara Barton National Historic Site, and the George Washington Memorial Parkway, presents a lush country feel to the scenic county.

Montgomery County is a national epicenter for biotechnology, boasting institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Maryland, Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Large firms such as Discovery Communications, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Robert Louis Johnson Companies, Choice Hotels, Med Immune, Chevy Chase Bank, TV One, BAE Systems, Hughes Network Systems, and GEICO operate in the county.  Federal government agencies are also based here including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Several effective transportation corridors assist residents to places of employment and to cultural, civic, and sporting events.  Along with several important highways, there are three passenger rail systems including Amtrak to Rockville, the MARC commuter rail system, and suburban arms of the Red Line of the Washington Metro.  The county also operates a bus public transit system known as Ride On, and the area is served by the Washington Metro bus service.

Feel free to contact Eric Stewart of Llewellyn Realtors at (301) 424-0900 for more information about real estate in the metropolitan areas.

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With prices for real estate in Potomac, Bethesda, and Rockville going down, most smart buyers and investors are bargain hunting—albeit cautiously.  Buyers are finding great real estate values in the entire Washington DC region, including urban homes in Rockville, estate properties in Maryland, and beautiful Northern Virginia homes.

Why is this year even better than last year?  Sellers are tired of waiting out the market.  They are slashing prices aggressively.  More people are in financial trouble because of risky mortgages coming due.  Also, more properties in the process of foreclosure are ripe with the foreclosure moratoria set by banks and state governments having expired.  Another factor is that banks are finally deciding to allow larger numbers of properties to go to auction.

As unemployment rates increase, we can expect more of the above to create even more inventory.

According to Standard & Poor’s October 2008 Case-Shiller home price index, home prices fell by a record 18 percent between 2007 and 2008 in 20 US cities.  We know that interest rates have also gone down. So why, when we see great deals, do we need to be cautious?

Some of the least-expensive homes are on sale by banks that foreclosed on the properties.  Banks now want to sell what they refer to as “shadow inventory.”  However, they sell these properties “as is.”  In the news, we have heard that some homes have retaliatory owners who have trashed their homes as they moved out.  Other properties have been vacant for extended periods of time.

Another common trap is the overpriced property purposefully offered at a discount.  The price per square foot can be deceptive. So, how can buyers find out the real value of properties?  A real estate agent can offer valuable assistance, providing information such as the depreciation of the property.

In this market, buyers need to know what they are getting into when buying foreclosed properties.  Unless a buyer has experience with contracting, remodeling, and homer repairs, they’d best shy away from run-down foreclosed homes.  The best way to get involved with these types of “bargains” is under the guidance of a reputable real estate agent.

Sometimes it costs less in the long run to buy a home from an investor who purchased the “as is” property from an auction.  The investor may have fixed up the property and raised the price a bit.  The property may still be a better deal and will definitely be quicker than purchasing directly from a bank or from an auction.

Feel free to contact Eric Stewart of Llewellyn Realtors at (301) 424-0900 for more information about real estate in the metropolitan areas.

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Our Maryland, Northern Virginia & Washington DC Photo Slide Show:

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