Friday, April 22, 2011

Friday's Featured Listing

13 Lake Potanipo
Brookline, New Hampshire

03033

$379,900

Brookline NH Real Estate: Fantastic lakefront/waterfront home on Lake Potanipo, 185ft frontage w/private beach & area for dock/slip. Enjoy waterviews from living room, 3-season porch and bedrooms. 2-car garage with large finished room above. Great kitchen with island. Wood stoves in living room & kitchen. Extra space for guests in 4-bed bunk house. Covered storage on left side of garage with shower. Fantastic large yard.

Features

Single Family Property
Status: Active
County: Hillsborough
Year Built: 1970
2 total bedroom(s)
1 total bath(s)
6 total rooms
Approximately 1162 sq. ft.
Type: Modified, Ranch
Style: Modified, Ranch
Master bedroom is 9.5 x 15.5
2 car garage
Attached parking

Parking features: 2 Parking Spaces, Auto Open, Direct Entry, Paved Driveway
Heating features: Hot Water, Electric, Oil Fuel, Wood Fuel
Interior features: Dishwasher, Range-Electric, Refrigerator, Finished Above Grade SQFT: 1162, Bedroom 2 is 9.5 x 12.0, Bedroom 4 is 20x9 3-seasonPch, Water Heater: Oil
Exterior construction: Wood Frame, Clapboard, Concrete Foundation, Crawl Space Foundation
Waterfront property
Waterfront features: Lake
Lot features: Landscaped, Level
Approximately 0.5 acre(s)
Lot size is between 1/2 and 1 acre
Zoning: Residential
Utilities present: Sewer: Private
School District: Hollis-Brookline Cooperative

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Thursday Tips For HomeOwners!

5 Steps to Owning a Home Again After Foreclosure

By: Barbara Eisner Bayer

Foreclosure is just a one-time event—with discipline and perseverance, you can get a mortgage and become a homeowner again.

It won’t be easy to obtain a mortgage after foreclosure. But with enough time, discipline, and desire, you can own your own home again. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Stick with a job after foreclosure

Did you fall into foreclosure because of the lack of a steady job? If you did, the first step toward homeownership after foreclosure is finding and holding one. And if you already have one—stick with it, unless you can move to a better one. Note that potential lenders will require stable employment before they’ll give you a new mortgage loan after a foreclosure. Even if it means taking a lower-paying job, it’s worth it.

2. Rebuild your nest egg after foreclosure

Establish a safety net. Financial planners generally recommend three to six months of living expenses in a liquid account, but since you’re coming out of foreclosure, six is a minimum to show stability and that you’re able to pay your bills—including your mortgage—for an extended period if you lose your job.

3. Raise your credit score after foreclosure

This is the hardest and most time-consuming part. After foreclosure, your credit score, according to myFICO, probably dropped by about 150 points. You’ll need to raise it back up with perseverance.

Pay bills on time and keep your credit card balances below maximum levels. The foreclosure will stay on your credit report for seven years, but if you prove your money management skills have matured, it will become less of a red mark as years go by.

Tip: Consult a housing counselor. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development offers free housing counseling for distressed homeowners with a foreclosure in their past. A counselor can help you with money management and budgeting. Counseling works—an evaluation of a program in Indianapolis discovered that credit scores greatly improved because of education and counseling, and increased average borrowing power by $4,500 per family.

4. Reduce your waiting time for a mortgage after foreclosure

Normally, you would have to wait seven years after foreclosure before you can apply for a new mortgage under Fannie Mae rules. (Fannie Mae changes rules frequently. You can check the latest rules at Fannie Mae’s site.)

However, you might wait only three years if you can show extenuating circumstances for your foreclosure, which are defined as “events that are beyond the borrower’s control that result in a sudden, significant, and prolonged reduction in income or a catastrophic increase in financial obligations.” These include:

Losing a job
Getting divorced
Having unexpected medical expenses

There’s one last alternative if waiting isn’t your thing—you can obtain seller financing, essentially bypassing the traditional mortgage. If both parties are amenable, you can enter into a lease with an option to buy, or take a mortgage directly from the seller. You’ll most likely have to show some hefty reserve funds, but if you’ve turned around your financial situation quickly after your foreclosure, it’s worth a shot to deal directly with the seller.

Keep in mind that sellers may be motivated to agree to this if they need to sell and the potential buyers they’ve met with can’t obtain a conventional mortgage—perhaps because they’ve been through foreclosures, too.

5. Be honest about your foreclosure

When you’re ready to apply for your new mortgage, don’t try to hide your foreclosure. On the contrary, be proactive and reveal the steps you’ve taken to remedy the problems that led to your foreclosure.

Tip: Try a mortgage broker, who can work with a variety of lenders to find you a loan. When you work directly with a retail lender, like a bank, they have a limited pool of loans to offer you. But a good mortgage broker—one with a vast network of lendersóhas many options, and may be able to find a mortgage solution if the foreclosure in your past is creating challenges in obtaining one.

If you stay disciplined and positive, the American dream—obtaining a mortgage and owning a home of your own—can, indeed, be yours again. Even after foreclosure

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Work Together Wednesday!

Boost Your Neighborhood’s Walkability

By: Sacha Cohen

You can’t move your neighborhood closer to shops, restaurants, and offices, but if you can improve its walkability, you might make it more valuable.

The more walkable your neighborhood, the more valuable your home, studies say. To boost your neighborhood’s walkability—how quickly and comfortably you can walk to stores, schools, restaurants, offices, and parks—you can either get more close-by amenities, or make it easier to walk to what you’ve got.

How much is that walkability worth?

Having shops and gathering spots like schools and restaurants located within a quarter-mile to one-mile from the homes in your neighborhood can add from $4,000 to $34,000 to home values, according to “Walking the Walk,” a study from CEOs for Cities, a nonprofit that works to improve cities. The increases were largest in large cities like San Francisco and Chicago and smaller in smaller cities like Tucson, Ariz., and Fresno, Calif.

What are walkable communities?

Dan Burden, founder of Walkable Communities, defines them with his a 12-step checklist, which includes:

Great public places to get together and socialize

Speed-controlled key streets

Pedestrian-centric design

A town center with a wide variety of shops and businesses

Maybe you’ve been to one of the communities he says has high walkability, like:

Bethesda, Md.

Jackson, Wyo.

Madison, Wis.

Savannah, Ga.

How do I make my neighborhood more walkable?

To have great walkability, you have to have something worth walking to, such as restaurants or parks, and a critical mass of people living around those amenities. To make a difference, get your neighbors together and go talk to local officials. Your group can push the planning and zoning board for changes that make your town more walkable, like putting multifamily housing to the town core or allowing home owners in nearby neighborhoods to build a rental apartment in their home.

All those new residents will want to mingle somewhere. So plan to lobby for more welcoming public spaces where you can mix and socialize (think library, park, coffee shop) to increase your neighborhood’s walkability.

How does walkability affect drivers?

To heighten walkability, make the streets kinder to walkers and, possibly, crueler to drivers. Put these items on your city planning list:

More and wider sidewalks

Lower speed limits

Pedestrian-friendly laws, like New Hampshire’s rule that drivers have to hit the brakes for pedestrians in crosswalks even if the light is green

Try applying peer-pressure power to get drivers to ease up on the gas pedal. Pedestrian safety advocates persuaded 6,000 Atlanta home owners to put up yard signs asking drivers to slow down.

If you’re serious about increasing walkability, gather neighbors and town officials for a walking audit, where the group walks along a particular route and stops periodically to discuss how to improve the walking experience with landscaping, safety improvements, or accessibility improvements.

If mixing it up with politicians and planning committees isn’t your bag, try these much easier tips for improving walkability from John Wetmore, producer of Perils For Pedestrians Television:

Trim shrubbery that’s blocking the sidewalk in front of your house.

Pick up trash and litter as you walk along.

Support initiatives in your town to build new sidewalks and repair existing sidewalks.

Be polite to other drivers and pedestrians when you drive.

And maybe the best walkability tip of all? Just get out and walk

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Work Together Wednesday!

Making Fair Housing Laws Work for Your Neighborhood

By: Sue Mellen

By ensuring that your neighborhood adheres to fair housing standards, you can build a stronger, more vibrant community and protect property values.

The nation’s fair housing laws protect groups who often suffer housing discrimination in a range of ways. They may be buyers or renters who are sometimes steered toward or away from particular neighborhoods, or existing residents seeking services from homeowners associations (HOAs) to help them live with their disabilities. But fair housing laws protect everyone in a community, making it important to actively promote fair housing in your neighborhood.

How fair housing protects property

It can happen faster than you can say “segregation.” Suddenly, your once-integrated, multi-ethnic neighborhood is becoming monochromatic. Should you expend your energy working to fight for integration of your community? Absolutely. When your neighborhood is diverse and welcoming, you ensure the widest possible pool of potential buyers for each house that goes up for sale. That helps keep property values high.

“It’s hard to believe that blatant housing discrimination still exists, but it does,” says Shanna Smith, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, a non-profit fair housing advocacy group. All it takes is one housing-related professional making statements about a neighborhood being bad or one insurance company with different underwriting policies based on the racial makeup of the neighborhood to negatively impact property values, she says.

What you can do

As an individual or member of an HOA, there are several things you can do to protect your neighborhood:

Report suspected discrimination. You can do that through HUD, either online, by phone, or by mail. Or you can seek help from HUD’s local Fair Housing offices.

You can also contact the National Fair Housing Alliance, a national umbrella organization for fair housing advocacy groups nationwide. It can refer you to a local fair housing group that may be able to help.
Arrange an educational program in your community. Ask your HUD regional office or the National Fair Housing Alliance to send someone to your neighborhood for an informational meeting. Plan it as a potluck supper or neighborhood get-together, and include neighborhood association members and local real estate agents. Planning the event should take no more than 20 hours, including issuing the invitation to neighbors, asking around to find out which real estate agents are active in your neighborhood, and finding a speaker.

Make sure your community association’s bylaws and its covenants, conditions, and restrictions follow Fair Housing Act guidelines. When residents ask an HOA to make changes to accommodate a disability, for example, widening common-area doorways for a resident using a wheelchair, the association must follow federal fair housing laws. Fair Housing Accessibility First can help your association understand its responsibilities

“Fair housing is the gateway to equal opportunity in education, jobs, and quality of life. It’s up to all of us to protect these rights in our neighborhoods,” said John Trasviña, U.S. assistant secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.