Archive for April, 2008
The Gold Standard of Green
April 29th, 2008 categories: Around the House, Going Green
Here are a few of the “Greatest New Green Products” featured on This Old House:
Velux Skylight — You can now get hot water for free anywhere you can mount a skylight using the turn-key collector kit made by skylight manufacturer Velux. This kit comes with a electronically controlled pump, two collectors encased in the company’s weathertight frames, and a 60-gallon hot-water storage tank.
Fibertech Fencing — Fibertech’s composite fencing is made entirely from recycled materials—plastic and cardboard—destined for landfills. And when the time comes to replace it, it can be ground up and recycled again.
Earth To Air Geothermal — Al Gore Installed the Earth To Air geothermal heat pump in his house, boosting his energy efficiency beyond his greenest dreams. Compressed refrigerant pumps heat into his Tennessee home during the winter months and carries it out in the summer through a circuit of copper piping buried 300 feet in the ground.
Bosch 800-Series Dishwasher — Bosch’s top-of-the-line 800 series dishwashers, the most efficient on the market, use 190 kWh of energy per year. To put that in context, a dishwasher can use up to 330 kWh/year and still get Energy Star certification. Bosch says: “If every American purchased a Bosch dishwasher this year, the water saved would be enough to fill the U.S. Capitol Building 430 times.”
Kohler High-Efficiency Toilet — The old commode is the biggest water consumer in your home, sucking over one fourth of the average home’s H2O down the drain. Kohler’s High-Efficiency toilets, which use only 1.28 gallons per flush, reduce consumption by over 20 percent when compared to the average, 1.6-gpf standard.
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Downtown Living vs. the Suburbs
April 23rd, 2008 categories: Buyers, Dormont, Downtown Living, Mt. Lebanon, Peters Township, South Side, Upper St. Clair
There are some great benefits to living closer to downtown — proximity to food, entertainment and shopping, as well as access to the amazing cultural scene. There are also wonderful aspects of living in the suburbs, like owning a bit more land and having a larger house as well as enjoying community pools and having barbecues in the cul-de-sac.
Some people want to live downtown because they can walk to everything. But keep in mind there are suburbs that also are considered to be very “walkable.” If you’re looking for a house where you don’t have to get in your car every time you want a gallon of milk, then check out Walk Score.
You enter an address or zip code, and it finds the distance to the nearest grocery stores, post offices, restaurants, libraries, movie theaters and other useful destinations, and then assigns a score based on the walkability of your location.
Here are how 4 local areas rank at keeping you near the hustle and bustle:
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Downtown – 86 out of 100
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South Side – 80
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Mt. Lebanon – 63
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Dormont - 60
Upper St. Clair, I’m sorry to say, scored a 12. Peters Township wasn’t much better with 28. Walk Score is a great tool for anyone looking to find a home in a walkable neighborhood.
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Upper St. Clair’s Newest Retail Development
April 23rd, 2008 categories: Buyers, New Developments, Upper St. Clair
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that the new development along Route 19 in Upper St. Clair should be completely open by June 2008.
“The 13,000-square-foot, one-story complex, named The Shoppes of Upper St. Clair, is on the redeveloped site of a former Chi Chi’s Mexican restaurant and has a Fifth Third bank that opened last month. The two other businesses there will be a StonePepper’s Grill and Acqua Blu Medical Spa & Plastic Surgery Center. StonePepper’s plans to be open this month and Acqua Blu in June.”
So if you’re thinking of buying a new house, here’s one more reason you may want to look in or near Upper St. Clair.
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Selling Your Home in Today’s Real Estate Market
April 21st, 2008 categories: Mt. Lebanon, Sellers
When people find out I’m a real estate agent the first question they ask me is ‘What can I sell my house for?’ It’s so funny, since most of the time I don’t even know where they live! So naturally I ask were they live, they tell me, and then immediately want me to throw a price tag on their home. I feel so bad for my friend’s brother in law who’s a dermatologist……
Six years ago, my husband and I bought a major fixer-upper on a nice little street in Mt. Lebanon. The homes on the street were modest, but we knew this particular home had great potential. We completely over-invested in this house, which was fine, since we intended to live there for the next five to 10 years. A couple of years later we purchased another fixer-upper for the sole purpose of restoring it and selling it to make a quick profit. Little did we know our precious little puppy would fall in love with the enormous back yard and well, you know how the story goes. This was before we were licensed Realtors, although we knew the market inside and out (and probably better than some of the Realtors). We had an agent friend of ours come to our house to give us a price opinion. We told him the price we were thinking, he laughed and told us we were crazy. After he left, we agreed there was no way we could sell our house for the price he gave - we would absolutely lose our shirts. The visions of our puppy romping and running in the enormous yard were quickly fading. To our benefit, we were inexperienced and hard headed. We had been to an open house a few streets over a week or so prior to the agent’s visit. We believed the house to be very comparable to ours and it was listed (and actually went contingent almost immediately) at a price closer to what we thought ours was worth. We had another agent to our home, told her where we wanted to price it and BOOM two days later it was sold. The moral of the story? Sometimes you just get lucky…..
Anyone who is familiar with the Mt. Lebanon real estate market knows not only do home prices vary by neighborhood and street, they also vary from house to house. Just because your neighbor’s house sold for $450,000 does not make your house worth $450,000. A home’s value is not based solely on square footage or number of bedrooms/bathrooms. The level of finishes and overall decor are what truly entice buyers, even though the only part of the decor that remains is the paint on the walls. And for the love of everything that is holy, will everyone please stop trying to determine a home’s value from information on the county assessment site. Short of inviting the assessment company into your home (although I know some of you did), I promise you the building information is not correct. There is no way for them to determine how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have or the overall value of your home just by measuring the outside walls (you know that’s all they do). At least 96% of the time the listing price of a home will be significantly higher than the assessed value. Check out the assessed value of your home on the site - would you sell it at that price? So why do you expect someone else to sell their home for the assessed value? Don’t lie, you know you all do this!
But I digress, in this ever changing market, having your home priced correctly is critical now more than ever. So how do you price your home correctly? Contact a licensed Realtor. I know I’m contradicting my own story, but we really were the exception and we were VERY lucky. It only takes one buyer, but our home could have easily sat for months, and then it becomes known as ‘that house’. You know, the charming house that has been on the market forever - there must be something wrong with it, right? Not necessarily. Unfortunately, when a home starts out priced too high, a negative stigma becomes attached to it, and it ends up selling for less than what it’s worth. As realtors we tour homes week after week, year after year. We know the market, after all, it IS our job. Some agents I know who have been in the business forever (or so they say), claim to have seen almost every home in Mt. Lebanon - now that’s a lot of homes! Before you list your house for sale by owner and price it well over where it should be priced, contact a Realtor. It will cost you between six and seven percent of your selling price, but it’s well worth it. If you think that’s high, consider what your holding costs are every extra month you own your home. Let your agent deal with the phone calls, scheduling and confusing contracts and let them use their knowledge of the market to accurately price your home. Your Realtor will sell your home for a higher price and in less time than you could yourself. After all, time and money are two things we could all stand to have more of……
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