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Selling something? Maybe trying to sell your house? Here is the fifth of our top 5 projects to boost your home’s value for resale.

August 9th, 2010

Have you already decided to move rather than remodel only to realize, like so many others in the same boat, you are still thinking about remodeling anyway? Why? To make your house more appealing to would-be buyers, cut the time it takes to sell it and maybe even get more cash in hand when you sell is why. While you’re remodeling that other part of the house why not tuck in a new master bedroom suite above the addition? You’ll get all of your money back when you eventually sell your house, right?

Not so fast. While many home-remodeling projects are a great way to add value to your home, not all of them are ironclad cash-back guarantees. Before you invest a significant amount of your precious home equity into remodeling projects, it’s wise to do a little homework on what kind of payback you can expect for various home projects in your area.

A good place to start is the Cost vs. Value report published annually by the National Association of Realtors, or NAR, and Remodeling magazine. The report provides a synopsis of the top projects, the average costs of the projects and their average rate of investment return at resale. It also gives you a city-by-city guide on what various home projects will pay back at resale. Real estate experts caution that these numbers can differ significantly depending on your state, city or even neighborhood. So use these numbers as a starting point, but consider getting the advice of a Realtor and/or remodeling contractor before you commit to a big home project. These experts can familiarize you with remodeling payback figures tailored to your state, city., or town.

The fifth project of five to potentially boost your home’s resale value is an attic bedroom remodel. This entails converting unfinished attic space in a two- or three-bedroom house into a finished bedroom and bathroom with shower. It includes a new shed dormer, new windows and closet space in the eaves.

Average payback: 93.5 percent of cost
Estimated job cost: $39,188
National average resale value: $36,649

Because this is a relatively expensive undertaking, real estate experts suggest you do an attic renovation only if you’re going to live in the house for a while (preferably five to 10 years) and enjoy the reclaimed space yourself. Over the long haul, this project adds significant value to your home because it creates brand-new living space and isn’t just a cosmetic improvement. Keep in mind, though, that attic remodels don’t make sense in every neighborhood and part of the country. For example, in Florida, most of the attics aren’t big enough to stand up in, so remodeling them wouldn’t make sense at all. Plus there’s the heat issue — these rooms would be sweltering hot and very expensive to cool.

This is a good example of a remodeling project that would be wise to discuss in advance with a Realtor who’s familiar not just with housing in your area, but in your specific neighborhood. Good Realtors are always happy to spend time talking with you about the wisest renovation projects for your home — even if you’re not planning to sell your home anytime soon.

Other top resale projects from the Cost vs. Value report ranked by percentage of cost recouped at resale, include:

  • an upscale bathroom remodel: 93.2 percent.
  • a major kitchen remodel: mid-range, 91 percent; upscale: 84.8 percent.
  • a deck addition: 90.3 percent.
  • basement remodeling: 90.1 percent.
  • window replacement: 89.6 percent.
  • a bathroom addition: mid-range: 86.4 per cent, upscale 85.8 percent.
  • roofing replacement: 84.7 percent.
  • a family room addition: 83 percent.
  • a master suite addition: mid-range 82.4 per cent; upscale 80.1 percent.
  • a home-office remodel: 72.8 percent.

While a good return on your investment is important in every remodeling project, experts say that the most important factor in your decision should still be whether the project improves the way you live in your home now. The fact of remodeling is that you never get your money back instantly. If you’re undertaking a project because you’re going to stay in your home awhile, and it will enhance your lifestyle, then great — do it. It’s tough to put a price on the happiness many young families get from fixing up their house and truly enjoying it for the next 20 years.

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Selling something? Maybe trying to sell your house? Here is the first of our top 5 projects to boost your home’s value for resale.

July 21st, 2010

Have you already decided to move rather than remodel but you still find yourself thinking abut remodeling anyway to make your house more appealing to would-be buyers, cut the time it takes to sell it and maybe even get more cash in hand when you sell? Well while you’re expanding, why not tuck in a new master bedroom suite above the addition? You’ll get all of your money back when you eventually sell your house, right?

Not so fast. While many home-remodeling projects are a great way to add value to your home, not all of them are ironclad cash-back guarantees. Before you invest a significant amount of your precious home equity into remodeling projects, it’s wise to do a little homework on what kind of payback you can expect for various home projects in your area. A good place to start is the Cost vs. Value report published annually by the National Association of Realtors, or NAR, and Remodeling magazine. The report provides a synopsis of the top projects, the average costs of the projects and their average rate of investment return at resale. It also gives you a city-by-city guide on what various home projects will pay back at resale. Real estate experts caution that these numbers can differ significantly depending on your state, city or even neighborhood. So use these numbers as a starting point, but consider getting the advice of a Realtor and/or remodeling contractor before you commit to a big home project. These experts can familiarize you with remodeling payback figures tailored to your state, city, or town.

Our first suggestion in the list of the top five projects to boost your home’s value for resale is to do an upscale siding (new fiber cement) replacement. Here is what you can expect this project to cost and yield:

Estimated job cost: $10,393 for 1,250 square feet
Average payback: 103.6 percent of cost
National average resale value: $10,771

Siding makes a huge difference in a house’s resale value, because it’s one of the first things you see. It really defines the condition of the home.  If other houses around you have old aluminum or vinyl siding and your siding is nicer and newer, buyers will notice you. With this project, you make your house more attractive — you’re not just improving your insulation value.

Next up on out list is a mid-range bathroom remodel but that will have to wait until the next time we meet here.

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We need more door to door cheese salesmen like James L. Kraft to help the struggling economy.

June 28th, 2010

Throughout history somebody comes up with a novel idea and, for whatever reason, it fails perfectly. Then, almost without fail, somebody else takes arguably the same concept, turns it inside out or repackages it, and boom, a huge breakthrough that achieves notoriety, success, and usually some significant financial reward. But most of us go through life thinking of success as a sort of supernatural event, a preordained occurrence that only happens to certain people. However, this is simply not the case.  We look at the careers of Albert Einstein, Warren Buffet, Michael Jordan, and Bill Gates as if that sort of thing can never happen to us. We are incorrect.

Surely those are tough acts to follow but even these individuals are mere mortals who likely use their mouth to drink the way most of us do. The fact is that the vast majority of successful ideas, people, and companies don’t occur as magically or spontaneously as one might imagine. Here are five common ways in which relatively small changes can produce major breakthroughs:

  1. Timing. Reintroducing an idea when conditions are more favorable.
  2. Opportunity. Capitalizing on another’s idea because they couldn’t, for whatever reason.
  3. Perspective. Looking at the same thing differently, i.e. turning an idea on its side.
  4. Standing on the shoulders of giants. Adding a relatively small component to the great works of others.
  5. Luck. Just plain luck.

Einstein was indeed a genius but he did not just bang out a few equations to come up with E=MC2. He developed this maxim of the notion of matter and energy being related in some way by using conclusions and data that had been around for some time. The difference, was that Einstein had a passion for light. It was actually his notion of the invariance of the speed of light that led to the special theory of relativity and then to E=MC2. More than anything, Einstein had a unique perspective. He saw the same things others saw, but he saw them differently and the rest, as they say, is history.

Johannes Kepler, whose laws of planetary motion are famous, actually came very close to deriving the theory of gravity more than 50 years before Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Unfortunately, Kepler was a crazy, a religious zealot, often ill, and lived in a politically and religiously charged era. He had a lot working against him. Not to diminish Newton’s role in discovering universal gravity, but he definitely stood on the shoulders of giants, as others later stood on his.

Moving on to the business world, if you explore the origins of famous companies, you’ll find that most of them had anything but grandiose beginnings, and they often began as one thing and ended up as another:

  • The first McDonald’s was a hot dog stand
  • Nokia was initially a paper mill
  • Sony began as a radio repair shop
  • James L. Kraft, founder of Kraft Foods, sold cheese door-to-door
  • Toyota originally made looms

The point is that great inventors, leaders, and companies aren’t like step functions in real life. They don’t go from zero-to-great in a heartbeat. More often than not, they stand on the shoulders of giants, see things a little bit differently, or benefit from timing, opportunity, or luck.

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Super Bowl ratings poised for all-time high this year!

February 8th, 2010

Super bowl

Super Bowl ratings poised for all-time high this year!

Super Bowl XLIV may be one for the record books as some early estimates from CBS show the viewership from the game Sunday night rising from last year’s all-time high.

The New Orleans Saints vs. Indianapolis Colts showdown drew a 46.4 overnight metered-market household rating and an impressive 68 share. That set of measures is up 10% from the household rating of last year’s Pittsburgh vs. Arizona epic battle, which was seen by a record 98.7 million viewers. In fact this Super Bowl could be the first sports program ever to eclipse the 100 million viewers threshold in the USA. If last night’s sporting event sets a new record, it will likely rank second in viewership only to 1983’s final episode of “M*A*S*H,” which holds the title of the most-watched TV event of all time with 121.6 million viewers.

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Making a splash in Los Angeles by capturing and reusing rainwater runoff.

February 1st, 2010

In Los Angeles, CA all new homes, larger developments and some redevelopments will be required by law to capture and reuse water runoff generated by any rain producing storms. This ordinance will require such projects to capture, reuse or infiltrate 100% of runoff generated in a .75″ rainstorm or to pay a storm water pollution fine that would offset the cost of funding  low-impact public developments. This is an interesting and novel approach to offsetting the negative effects of large scale urbanization by minimizing runoff at its source with small, cost-effective natural systems instead of large and very costly treatment facilities. The process of reducing runoff improves water quality and recharges groundwater while in Los Angeles it will prevent 104 million gallons of polluted urban runoff from ending up in the ocean. The quality of the runoff water can be greatly increased by utilizing gutter protection systems that also act as filtration systems such as GutterBrush simple gutter guards. Clean runoff water can be used in ways that greatly reduce the usage of fresh water. Will the splash in LA be enough to carry over to other states, cities, and towns?

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