Want to sell your house? Before putting it on the market, you’ll probably want it to look as good as possible. So, you’ll do a few things like paint the gutters, fix that leaky faucet, and finally throw away all those piles of papers you’re never going to look at. But that’s the old-fashioned way. Today, the business of getting a house to look as good as possible before you sell it is much more sophisticated. In fact, there are professionals you can hire to do this for you called “home stagers.”

They’ll toss your old furniture in storage and rent you better looking stuff. They’ll place beautiful plants all over the house and they’ll hang impressive paintings on the walls.

When I first learned about this, it seemed a bit excessive, but I figured “business is business.” That was until I heard about the latest thing that home stagers will do to make your house seem more appealing — they’ll hire actors to be a fake happy family in your home. Since I live in the city built on fantasy, I assumed that this “home staging” was just an L.A. thing. But it’s happening all over the country. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but if it’s going on in Tupelo, Miss., can Paris be far behind? (more…)

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With the number of U.S. homes on the market swelling and sales falling, how could it be that median prices are increasing? “Deal sweeteners” offered by anxious home sellers and builders are the reason, according to an article published by the New York Times. To avoid cutting asking prices, homeowners and developers are throwing in perks for buyers — like new cars, and free upgrades on landscaping and kitchen countertops, the paper says.

Vacation mecca Hilton Head has seen average sales prices for single-family home decrease 1.9% for the first seven months of this year from the same period last year, says an article published by The Island Packet. But while area housing is generally cooling, there are strong pockets in the local market, the article says. Sales are the swiftest for residences priced under $400,000 and for luxury houses at the high end of the spectrum, the paper says. Sales are especially strong in the town of Blufton, located on the mainland and just across the bridge from Hilton Head Island, the article says. On the island, buyers have plenty of homes to choose from, giving them “choices in any neighborhood,” The Island Packet says. Whether the market improves or continues to slow may depend on the upcoming hurricane season, with a “quiet” season helping local sellers, the paper says. (more…)

search for : homeowners, landscaping, kitchen countertops

Up in the mountains, a ridge or two behind the Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, there is section of the Appalachian Trail located between Route 325 and Route 443 that seems to be a little more remote than other sections of the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. Perhaps it seems to be deeper in the wilderness because of the mountains it traverses. From the road crossing on Route 325, the trail immediately crosses Clark’s Creek and climbs up Stony Mountain, crosses Sharp Mountain, passes through Rausch Gap and climbs Second Mountain before dropping down into Swatara Gap at Route 443.

When a hiker follows the Appalachian Trail as it heads north from Route 325, the trail climbs over 1,000 feet in the first three miles to the top of Stony Mountain. At the highest point, the white-blazed Appalachian Trail intersects the northern terminus of the yellow-blazed Horseshoe Trail. My friends and I paused at the plaque on a rock monument that stated the Horseshoe Trail begins in Valley Forge 121 trail miles away. We hiked on. In three miles we came to the location where the 1800s coal mining village of Yellow Springs once stood on Sharp Mountain. Iron compounds in the creek give the spring its name and color. Five miles past the village site we reached the Rausch Gap Shelter, built in 1972 by the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club. Thru-hikers use this three-sided shelter for the night on their long journey to Georgia or Maine. Directly in front of the shelter, a pipe carries water from a nearby spring. (more…)

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Pre-construction investing is like MySpace.com, gold-capped teeth and Brangelina. They’re all just so last year. After all, it was only last summer when buyers were practically breaking down builders’ doors trying to write contracts whenever a “for sale” sign appeared on an empty lot. With price-appreciation rates running at double-digits in many parts of the country, investors knew that in nine months or a year, when the project was finished, they could flip the unit to a new buyer at a sweet profit.

Oh, how the world has changed. Year over year in July, new-home sales were down 21.6%, housing starts decreased 13.3% and permits were down 20.8%. Inventories of unsold new homes are now at a 6.5 month supply — an 11-year high. The picture isn’t any prettier in South Carolina. Along the coast, which includes Myrtle Beach, July sales of new and existing homes were off 42.7% from the same period last year, according to the South Carolina Association of Realtors. And what about prices? The National Association of Home Builders says that nationwide, the median price of new homes was $230,000 in July, virtually unchanged from a year ago but down 9.4% from the April peak of $253,800. The median sales price of new and existing coastal South Carolina properties was up 17.1% over last year, but Vienna, Va., economist Tom Lawler calls that a “wacky number” because high-end home sales have not fallen as fast as lower-end sales, skewing the median price higher. (more…)

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The people who settled the Appalachians were generally of three ethnic origins: Scots-Irish, English, and German .Primarily farmers and skilled craftsmen, they were used to hard work and not intimidated by the intense labor that was mountain life. Many Ulster-Scots left the British Isles and came to America in the early 18th century. They came to Maryland and Pennsylvania but found the lands along the Delaware and the Chesapeake taken by earlier settlers from England; therefore, they moved west following the Great Appalachian Valley, moving southward into the piedmont and mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

Many English immigrants migrated from the Tidewater regions of Virginia and North Carolina and were the sons and grandsons of original settlers; or were late comers who found most of the best land taken and prices for existing homesteads ever increasing. Some were also of dissenting faiths, such as Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers, and were leaving eastern Virginia and North Carolina in order to escape discrimination, persecution, and taxes levied to support the Anglican Church. As had the Scots, these English settlers brought with them an intense devotion to the legitimate principles of liberty, law, and justice. In their heritage was the story of a long struggle for individual rights against centuries of oppressors. (more…)

search for : Appalachians, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers, Anglican Church

This is not a typical travel piece, but rather a peek into a personal vacation journey that includes tips you will not find in the Chamber of Commerce brochures. Recently I spent six days motoring around Sapphire Mountain, Highlands and Asheville, North Carolina, with some friends. Let’s start with Highlands and Main Street where bookstores, clothing, shoes, antiques, hardware, restaurants, art galleries and more are spaced so closely that one foot can be in front of the bookstore and another in front of a clothing store. It’s crowded, but you just have to hold your ice cream cone close to your chest.

The Ann Jacob Gallery on Main St. was a delightful area filled with wonderful and absorbing art in all genres from artists all over the United States. There was a surprise, the work of Pensacola artist, Elie Barnes, was clearly visible. Elie works in acrylic on canvas with lots of color. She calls it contemporary American. Her work can also be seen closer to home: Destin and Grayton Beach. Her father lives in a cabin nearby in Cashiers and her mother, Diana Barnes, is a wellknown painter living in Pensacola, too. Elie was just finishing up a series of paintings to take to Highlands that represented a trip she took to Egypt. (more…)

search for : Sapphire Mountain, Highlands, Asheville, North Carolina

Licensed real estate professionals bring state-mandated training and knowledge to the table for buyers and sellers. In fact, agents have to get as much, or more, training than what it would take for some college degrees before being given permission by the state to represent buyers and sellers in the transaction. By the time a transaction is over, it is chock full of legally-binding documents controlling the transaction, pulling two parties together to exchange hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete a transaction that they may be involved in only a couple of times in their life.

Nearly half of the buyers are purchasing for the first time, according to the National Association of Realtors. They only think agents are there to usher them into houses and that’s it. And that’s because hundreds of thousands of agents make that tooth extraction look so easy. Why should you have a real estate agent on your investing/buying/selling team when it comes to building wealth? There’s talk on Capitol Hill of how the real estate industry has a “strangle hold” on the business. It makes me want to, not so much defend, as much as bring to the forefront what licensed professionals actually bring to the table for consumers. (more…)

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