‘LARGER THAN LIFE’
Interesting how many really think so…
In any event, for those who follow things of this nature, the Elvis Presley Charity Festival is on this weekend at the Ramada Resort on U.S. #192 and I-4. (Feb 26-28, 2010)
Certainly should be a bit of fun.
After a year of steady declines in home remodeling, the Spring 2010 U.S. Remodeling Sentiment Report reveals a 13% increase in the number of homeowners who say they will remodel in the next 12 months. This increase follows a 5% increase in last year’s Spring 2009 report. The continuing upward swing in remodeling sentiment indicates that 2010 will show a strong increase in remodeling activity.
The Spring 2010 Sentiment Report, a survey of 5,000 homeowners in the U.S. who are considering remodeling, also shows that the recession has had several impacts on U.S. homeowners. These include:
- The most popular projects in the past – remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms – have decreased in popularity, as adding a bathroom has taken the honors of the most popular project. This makes sense since, for many homeowners, updating an existing room can be put off because it is often seen as a “luxury,” while for many, the addition of a bathroom is a necessity due to changes in the needs of the family.
- Interest in do-it-yourself projects, both the actual building as well as acting as their own general contractor, has remained steady throughout the economic downturn.
- Economizing on the cost of materials is growing in popularity at the same time, as fewer homeowners are reporting they will use expensive materials for their remodel. The percentage of homeowners reporting they will use average costing materials remains the same.
- The number of homeowners reporting they are “excited” about remodeling has climbed to an all-time high of 54%, which is primarily due to homeowners who aren’t excited about remodeling choosing to put their plans on hold to wait until the recession is over. This may be a costly choice for homeowners since the cost to remodel now is as much as 20% lower than in 2006, according to a special cost to remodel study published earlier this year.
Summary Results from the Report
Homeowners who report they: 2008 2010
Plan to hire a general contractor 66% 64%
Plan to do some of the remodeling work 67% 66%
Are excited about remodeling 48% 54%
Plan to remodel a bathroom 49% 42%
Plan to remodel the kitchen 55% 48%
Plan to add a bathroom 49% 53%
Source: RISMEDIA, January 30, 2010
For more information, visit www.remodelormove.com
A swampside walk leads to a close encounter with a 10ft alligator at the Everglades National Park.
The alligator has the most powerful jaws in the world, snapping shut with a force of about 3,000lb per square inch, or PSI. (To get some idea what this means, consider that an African lion has a PSI force of a trifling 970.) I am given this detail by Graham Mitchell, a wilderness guide, while I’m standing up to my thighs in a swamp – in shorts and open-toed sandals – with an alligator sunning itself on a log about 10ft away. The local cottonmouth snake, continues Graham airily, is so called because the inside of its mouth is bright white, although you wouldn’t necessarily want to get close enough to see this detail for yourself. If bitten by this snake, a human being will die in agony within a few hours.
The flat, grassy landscape of the Everglades National Park in Florida is so full of these snakes that Graham calls it cottonmouth dome. Still, I reasoned, if he was wading through the swamp waters with bare legs and only his knowledge and a walking stick for protection, then I could, too. But I followed his footsteps religiously, nervous that any deviation could be fatal. I’d been given fair warning. The motto of Graham’s walking tour through the Everglades is: “Never safe, always fun.”
A million people visit this area every year, usually by airboat, which roars across the marsh like a tiny hovercraft. But I wanted to try a quieter, greener way to get close to nature. We had waded carefully around the bulging trunks of the cypresses, barely rippling their reflections on the surface of the water. Just a few feet above us pink-feathered spoonbills and a red shouldered hawk perched. Ibis and herons fished silently. An orchid sprung from a branch, waiting patiently to flower. I felt as if I were in a primordial wilderness.
And the alligator sunbathing on the log? “The trick is not to get too close,” said Graham, as if I needed any encouragement to keep my distance. Alligators, he says, are misunderstood. They don’t set out to attack you, but if you stumble across one in the garden, on the golf course or in water where you have inexplicably decided to take a swim, it will bite to defend itself. Then, if it’s exceptionally upset, or particularly large and hungry, it may drag you underwater and twist you into the infamous death roll.
That morning, as we’d driven into the eastern Everglades on one of the few roads though the national park, Graham pulled over next to a small bridge. We got out so that I could have my first reptilian encounter on foot. A 10ft alligator sat on the swamp side just below. It was marvellously gnarled and primitive-looking, staring at us with beady eyes and a toothy grimace. It moved suddenly like a flash. I squealed and grabbed Graham’s arm. But the monster’s quick motion had been one of escape – away into the deep water under the bridge. We had frightened it.
Encounters with such wild animals made the tour incredibly special. So did simple methods of transport: walking and wading in cypress forest and punting through mangrove swamps at sunset on a pole boat. These craft have pointed bows like a kayak to cut through overhanging undergrowth, but their square stern platforms and propulsion method could have come straight from the River Cam.
We glided soundlessly up a wide, glassy creek, past ghostly Spanish moss dangling from tall trees. Butterflies and dragonflies coasted through the steamy, still air. We drifted past a 6ft alligator floating lazily in the water. I held my breath. It dived silently under the boat, leaving only a trail of bubbles. It should have been terrifying, but it was beautiful. This was far more stirring than an airboat ride. And it felt far safer than Miami.
Getting there:
Everglades Wilderness Tours: walking and canoeing tours of eastern and southern Everglades National Park, based at Everglades Hostel (tel: 305 248 1122 or www.evergladeshostel.com ). Day tours cost $80pp for hostel guests, $100pp for non-guests, packed lunch included.
Everglades Adventure Tours (tel: 561 985 8207 or www.evergladesadventuretours.com ). Offers pole boat eco-tours of western Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve or Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. Three departures daily; $99pp two-hour tour, $169pp half-day tour (packed lunch included), $115pp two-hour full moon trips. Reservations by e-mail or phone, or just turn up.
Source: Joanna Walters. The Times : February 13, 2010
RISMEDIA, February 6, 2010. If you have a good job and good credit, the next few months might be a good time to go house hunting. Fence-sitters take the risk that Congress may let a rich tax credit expire, and that interest rates may rise. Buyers and sellers should consider the following factors as they consider jumping into the housing market.
- Mortgage rates are blissfully low, and that may not last. The rate on a 30-year mortgage averaged 5% last week, according to Freddie Mac. Rates are low in part because the Federal Reserve has been buying up about $3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and mortgage agency debt. The aim is to hold down interest rates and keep mortgages available. But the Fed is slowly removing that financial crutch as the economy improves. It has no plans to buy any more past March 30, 2010. The likely result is an uptick in rates. Meanwhile, the recovering economy by itself should raise rates as the year goes on. Economists at the Mortgage Bankers Association expect to see a 6.1% rate by year end. Such a rise would add about $104 to the monthly payment on a $150,000 mortgage
- The home buyer tax credit expires on April 30, 2010 and no one knows if Congress will renew it a second time. Expect a clash between the real estate lobby and fiscal conservatives worried about the $1.35 trillion federal deficit. To qualify for the credit, you must sign a purchase contract by April 30, 2010 and close by July 1, 2010. First-time buyers get up to $8,000. “First-time” is defined as someone who hasn’t owned a home in three years. Move-up buyers get up to $6,500 when they purchase a new primary residence. To get the credit, you have to have lived in the old home for at least five out of the last eight years. The credits start phasing out at $125,000 in adjusted gross income for singles and $225,000 for joint filers.
- There are indications that home prices are near a bottom in some areas and may actually be rising a bit. That statement is dicey, because conditions vary by neighborhood and the data can be tricky.
Things might look different if you’re a seller though. Do you want to put your house on the market near the bottom of a price cycle? Homeowners who have a choice in the matter – those who can still pay their mortgages – are largely saying no. Inventories of homes for sale are down about 10% from this time last year, and 30% from the mid-decade peak of the housing boom, says Kevin Cottrell, chief economist at Kelsey Cottrell Realty Group. On the other hand, if you’re planning to move up to something grander, you might find a bigger bargain when you buy. And that $6,500 tax credit could swing a close decision.
Home sales peaked in some areas October and November, as buyers raced the expiration date of the original first-time home buyer’s credit. Congress later extended and expanded it. That rush satisfied some pent-up demand, but real estate agents are hoping for another rush around April. “People will wait to the very last second,” said Mike Travaglini, a vice president of Coldwell Banker Gundaker’s office in south St. Louis County.
Mortgage lenders have been tightening credit standards, which means fewer eligible buyers, says John Frank, president of Paramount Mortgage in Creve Coeur. Mo. “It’s getting tighter and tighter,” he said.
Lenders are insisting on credit scores of 640 to 660 for loans sold to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and 620 for FHA guaranteed loans. Those standards are higher than the federal agencies themselves insist on. FHA – which guarantees loans for people with low down-payments – has been raising its own insurance charges to borrowers and demanding higher premiums from people with poor credit scores.
Source: Jim Gallagher. (c) 2010, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Distributed by McClatchy – Tribune Information Services.
Centerline Homes is working diligently toward the ‘build out’ of this community on SR #535 north of the Walt Disney World complex. During one of the slowest building periods in recent memory it’s interesting to see how many units this company has sold.
Just continues to show there is always a market for good quality at a good price point.
RISMEDIA, January 28, 2010 (MCT). New-home buyers responded to the tough times in 2009 by opting for smaller houses, driving down the average size of a house built in the United States for the first time in 27 years.
Data recently released by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) found the average size of a new home that was completed in 2009 fell to 2,480 square feet from 2,520 square feet in 2008. The last time the average completed-home size fell by a statistically significant amount was 1982.
“You’ve heard the mantra ‘downsize me’ and ‘small is the new big?’ Well, last year was definitely a downer,” said Carol Lavender, president of Lavender Design Group, a residential design firm in San Antonio, Texas.
Homeowners surveyed by Better Homes and Gardens magazine said downsizing was becoming a bigger priority: 36% said in November 2009 that they expected their next home to be “somewhat smaller” or “much smaller” than their current home versus 32% who said that in 2008. “Not surprisingly, we see a ‘cents and sensibility’ approach when it comes to buying or improving a home, with practicality and price being the top priorities,” said Eliot Nusbaum, the magazine’s executive editor of home design.
While the small-house movement in the United States has been gaining steam for a number of years, the recession has accelerated it and home builders have responded.
“The era of easy money is over. You really have to think before you go out and decide you need that five-bedroom, five-bath home,” said Rose Quint, the NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research. “Couple that with the energy cost concerns of consumers today and I think we will continue this trend. Houses will not shrink drastically, but they will shrink.”
Although actual square footage of homes didn’t fall until 2009, the percent of homes with four or more bedrooms in them has been falling since 2007, NAHB data show. And in 2009, the number of homes with three or more bathrooms fell for the first time since 1992.
Two other trends in home construction are contributing to the declining square footages: The prominence of first-time buyers in the housing market and the increasing number of households with members 55 and older who are buying homes.
First-time buyers, driven into the market in good part by the availability of an $8,000 tax credit, are more likely to compromise on home size in exchange for a lower price. And the 55-plus crowd tends to purchase single-story homes, which generally are smaller because of the land costs that favor the more-efficient two-story plans.
“Barely over half of new homes today are built with two stories or more,” Quint said. Two-story homes peaked at about 55% of the market in 2006. For 2010, home builders say they will focus on lower-priced models and smaller homes. More than 95% of builders surveyed by NAHB in January said that was the way they saw their business evolving this year.
The penchant for smaller homes will necessitate some design changes. Builders, attempting to respond to those consumer demands as well as hold the line on prices, told the NAHB surveyors that they were most likely to include these features as standard in their houses this year:
- Walk-in closets in the master bedroom.
- Laundry rooms.
- Insulated front doors.
- Great rooms.
- Energy-efficient windows.
- Linen closets.
- Programmable thermostats.
- Energy-efficient appliances and lighting.
- Separate shower and tub in master bathrooms.
- Nine-foot ceilings on the first floor.
Among the things that builders said they were least likely to add to houses in 2010:
- Outdoor kitchens.
- Outdoor fireplaces.
- Sunrooms.
- Butler’s pantries.
- Media rooms.
- Desks in kitchens.
- Two-story foyers.
- Eight foot ceilings on the first floor.
- Multiple shower heads in the master bath.
- Smaller kitchens.
“You can see that builders are concentrating heavily on energy-saving features,” Quint said. “But a lot of the luxury items are on the chopping block or on hold as builders try to lower costs.”
By Steve Kerch
(c) 2010, MarketWatch.com Inc.
Distributed by McClatchy – Tribune Information Services.
NUMBER #6
With good elevation change, and scenic fairways, it’s easy to see why the Southern Dunes course is so popular with visitors and residents alike.
Nice to see this much green at this time of year.