How to go Green with your house

It seems everybody knows you can help the planet—and save yourself some cash—with big changes: adding spray-foam insulation to open walls, say, or installing a tankless water heater. But there are lots of simpler, lower-cost ways to improve your eco-scorecard, too. Here are some low-stress steps to take around the house to reduce your carbon footprint, create a healthier home, and lower your monthly bills to boot.

WORKSHOP
1. Unplug your power tools. Figure out which cordless tools (like drill/drivers) get the most use, then unplug the chargers on all the rest. Most cordless tools have nickel cadmium (NiCad) batteries, which will hold some charge for up to a year. They lose 15 to 20 percent of their juice each month, but only take a couple of hours to power up again. Newer tools with lithium ion batteries lose just 2 to 5 percent of their charge each month, so they’ll be ready to go even if you haven’t charged them in ages.

2. Spread sawdust on your floor. Take the superfine shavings captured by your dust collection system, wet them down, then push them around with a stiff broom to sweep your concrete garage or workshop floor. The mix is as good as a power-guzzling shop vac at picking up dust but doesn’t swirl it into the air.

3. Up the wattage on lights. Where you still use incandescent bulbs (with dimmers or three-ways) on multiple fixtures in a room, try consolidating. One 100-watt incandescent emits more light than two 60-watt bulbs combined but requires 17 percent less power. The 100-watter also uses the same energy as four 25-watt bulbs, but pumps out twice as much light. Just be sure your bulbs don’t exceed the maximum wattage recommendation for each fixture.

4. Eat your leftover take-out. Then save the plastic containers it came in—which can’t be recycled in most municipal waste systems—and use them to organize your nails, screws, and leftover paints. Not only does their tight seal help preserve solvents, but the see-through containers stack neatly and display contents clearly. For added strength, double up the thin ones.

5. Save used paint thinner. After cleaning oil-based finishes from brushes and tools, allow the dirty solvent to sit overnight. The sludge will settle to the bottom of the jar, leaving a layer of clear thinner on top. Carefully decant the clear thinner into a clean jar, and reseal it for future use. Be sure to dispose of the leftover sludge at a hazardous-waste-disposal site—never down a sink drain or into a street gutter.

6. Mix it up in the garage. Combine all those cans of leftover white paint that inevitably collect after you decorate the house and use them to paint the garage or workshop. (Make sure only to mix latex with latex and oils with oils.) You’ll keep the stuff out of the trash, and by adding the semi-glosses to the flats and eggshells, you’ll end up with a sheen that’s easy to clean.

7. Turn things on their heads. Store paint cans upside down so the solvents—which separate and rise to the top—get trapped under the bottom of the can. Not only will paint last longer, but solvents won’t be able to slowly seep out through the lid this way.

8. Take charge of your charges. Invest in an inexpensive battery tester, then set up a “battery center” where you can store new cells, check used ones for power, and set aside those that have burned out and have to be recycled. A designated collection spot will deter you from throwing bad batteries in the garbage. Once or twice a year, you just take the pile to your town’s recycling center.

KITCHEN
9. Take your fridge’s temperature. Stick an appliance thermometer in a glass of water in the center of your refrigerator, or between frozen goods in the freezer, overnight. Your fridge temp should be between 37 and 40 degrees F (no more, to keep bacteria at bay); your freezer between 0 and 5 degrees. If either compartment is too cold, adjust the setting, since keeping them just 10 degrees colder than necessary can boost your energy consumption by up to 25 percent.

10. Freeze your assets. Slip a dollar bill between the rubber gasket on your freezer and fridge doors and the frame, then close the door and tug on the buck. Notice any resistance? If not, the seal’s not tight enough and cold air is probably leaking out, making your fridge work harder to stay cool. Try this on all four sides of the door. If necessary, call the manufacturer’s service department to find out how to replace the gasket.

11. Throw a dinner party. And clear out that second fridge or freezer in the garage or basement. Then banish the appliance to the recycling center. Getting rid of either one can save you more than $200 a year, especially if it’s an old, inefficient model.

12. Invite your biggest buddy over. Ask him to help you move your fridge out of direct sunlight or away from the range. The heat from either will force a refrigerator compressor to gobble up more energy than necessary. A fridge uses up to 2.5 percent more power for each degree the surrounding temperature is above 70 degrees. So moving it out of a 90-degree spot can save you as much as $70 a year. If you can’t move it, at least block any sunny window with curtains and put as big a buffer as you can between it and the range.

13. Use the dishwasher. Doing a full load in your machine is far more efficient than washing the same number of dishes by hand. This is especially true if you have an Energy Star dishwasher, which requires an average of 4 gallons of water per load, compared with the 24 gallons it takes to do them in the sink. Using one will save you 5,000 gallons of water, $40 in utility costs, and 230 hours of your time each year.

BATHROOM
14. Turn your toilet tank blue. Or green or red. Pour food coloring into the water in the tank, wait two hours, then check to to see if any color has seeped into the bowl. If it has, your tank’s flapper is leaking, either from mineral buildup or worn parts. After you flush the dye away so it doesn’t stain, head to the hardware store for a replacement flapper assembly (then go to thisoldhouse.com for instructions on how to install it). Toilet leaks waste up to a gallon of water per minute. That’s more than 43,000 gallons a month.

15. Run the shower. Place a 1-gallon bucket under the running water, then see how long it takes for it to fill up. If it’s less than 20 seconds, replace the showerhead with one that sprays 1.5 gallons per minute. That could save as much as 14,600 gallons of water a year—especially if you limit your showers to 10 minutes. It will also save you $22 on your annual water bill, and $150 per year on water heating.

16. Go from scalding to just hot. Turn your water heater’s temperature setting down from the standard 140 degrees F to 120 degrees. Not only will this save you some bucks, it’ll also slow down mineral buildup and corrosion, prolonging the life of your tank. Since a new water heater costs about $900 installed, each additional year of use saves you money as well.

17. End the water torture. One drip per second from a leaky faucet or pipe can waste up to 5 gallons of water a day—and 1,800 gallons a year. While you won’t notice much of an increase on your water bill (around $3 annually), if an overlooked leak soaks through your kitchen floor, you could wind up with a $1,000 repair job—money that could have been saved by simply replacing a 50-cent washer.

ENTRIES
18. Wipe your feet. Equip your exterior doors with a series of mats—or one long “walk-off” mat—so everyone enters with clean shoes. As long as there’s room for five steps on the mats, you’ll drastically reduce the amount of grime tracked in. That means fewer pathogens that cause disease and less chemical cleanup. It will also mean improved indoor air quality, since dirt embedded in a carpet can become airborne when it’s tromped on or agitated by a vacuum.

BASEMENT/LAUNDRY
19. Reach behind your clothes washer. Turn down the hot water tap for the washing machine so less goes into the warm-water cycle. Perspiration and most other dirt dislodge best at body temperature, so you don’t need water that’s warmer than 100 degrees. Since most washers simply open both the hot and cold taps to make “warm” water, it may take longer to fill the machine. But you’ll save about $40 annually on your water-heating bill.

20. Spend more time in the basement. Make sure furnace filters in forced-air systems are clean. Dirty furnace filters restrict airflow and increase energy use. Cleaning them, or swapping them out each month during the winter, can save you up to 5 percent on your heating costs. Also schedule an annual checkup before the heat comes on to see that the furnace is properly calibrated.

LIVING AREAS
21. Listen to your mother.And put on a sweater. That way you can turn down your thermostat this winter. Adjust it by just one degree for eight hours a day, and you could save 1 percent on your monthly heating bills. Do it for 24 hours and save 3 percent. Try setting the temp at 70 degrees during the day and 62 at night during winter (and 78 or higher come summer). Heating and air-conditioning account for nearly half the energy used in our homes, so every little bit less you use makes a dent.

22. Worship the sun. Or at least use it to your advantage. Open blinds or drapes to let in natural solar heat on cold days, then close them once the sun sets, and you can reduce your heating bills by 10 percent. You can also cut your cooling costs by up to 33 percent in the summer by blocking out sunlight with exterior blinds, shutters, or awnings. To keep rooms bright, paint or paper with light or reflective colors.

Source: This Old House

Things to know when buying a house

Buying a house is definitely one of the biggest decisions you and your family make in life.  Having the right mind set and having the right agent are some of the important things to remember.  Her are some things to know when buying a house.  If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Eric Hollis / Champion realty Inc. whom I highly recommend and here is his site that includes his contact info!   www.houseinannapolis.com

1. Don’t buy if you can’t stay put.

If you can’t commit to remaining in one place for at least a few years, then owning is probably not for you, at least not yet. With the transaction costs of buying and selling a home, you may end up losing money if you sell any sooner.

2. Start by shoring up your credit.

Since you most likely will need to get a mortgage to buy a house, you must make sure your credit history is as clean as possible. A few months before you start house hunting, get copies of your credit report. Make sure the facts are correct, and fix any problems you discover.

3. Aim for a home you can really afford.

The rule of thumb is that you can buy housing that runs about two-and-one-half times your annual salary. But you’ll do better to use one of many calculators available online to get a better handle on how your income, debts, and expenses affect what you can afford.

4. Don’t worry if you can’t put down the usual 20 percent.

There are a variety of public and private lenders who, if you qualify, offer low-interest mortgages that require a down payment as small as 3 percent of the purchase price.

5. Buy in a district with good schools.

In most areas, this advice applies even if you don’t have school-age children. Reason: When it comes time to sell, you’ll learn that strong school districts are a top priority for many home buyers, thus helping to boost property values.

6. Get professional help.

Even though the Internet gives buyers unprecedented access to home listings, most new buyers (and many more experienced ones) are better off using a professional agent. Look for an exclusive buyer agent, if possible, who will have your interests at heart and can help you with strategies during the bidding process.

7. Choose carefully between points and rate.

When picking a mortgage, you usually have the option of paying additional points — a portion of the interest that you pay at closing — in exchange for a lower interest rate. If you stay in the house for a long time — say five to seven years or more — it’s usually a better deal to take the points. The lower interest rate will save you more in the long run.

8. Before house hunting, get pre-approved.

Getting pre-approved will you save yourself the grief of looking at houses you can’t afford and put you in a better position to make a serious offer when you do find the right house. Not to be confused with pre-qualification, which is based on a cursory review of your finances, pre-approval from a lender is based on your actual income, debt and credit history.

9. Do your homework before bidding.

Your opening bid should be based on the sales trend of similar homes in the neighborhood. So before making it, consider sales of similar homes in the last three months. If homes have recently sold at 5 percent less than the asking price, you should make a bid that’s about eight to 10 percent lower than what the seller is asking.

10. Hire a home inspector.

Sure, your lender will require a home appraisal anyway. But that’s just the bank’s way of determining whether the house is worth the price you’ve agreed to pay. Separately, you should hire your own home inspector, preferably an engineer with experience in doing home surveys in the area where you are buying. His or her job will be to point out potential problems that could require costly repairs down the road.

Provided by Money.CNN.com

Condo Financing

Could designations of Zip codes, metropolitan areas and entire states as “declining markets” hinder a real estate recovery and hurt minority groups and moderate-income buyers disproportionately? Growing ranks of critics say yes.

Since late 2007, most lenders, insurers and mortgage investment firms have compiled lists of markets that they regard as higher risks because housing values are dropping. In those areas, borrowers are charged higher rates and loan fees and are required to make bigger down payments — costs that can rise significantly when applicants have credit scores below designated minimum levels.

In some cases, the extra fees can add more than two percentage points to the interest rate and require much more cash up front. At their extreme, declining-market designations remove entire categories of real estate from financing eligibility. Some private mortgage insurers, for instance, won’t touch second homes or rental-home investments anywhere in large swaths of Florida and California.

Industry estimates on affected Zip codes range from 8,000 to more than 12,000 across the country. Many parts of the Washington area are included.

But now a broad reaction against such policies is taking shape. Some groups are demanding that lenders and investors abandon or modify their approaches and are urging mortgage insurers to loosen up on theirs.

An alliance of three real estate trade groups representing Hispanics, blacks and Asian Americans recently asked the mortgage industry to get rid of its patchwork of proprietary — and often contradictory — lists and replace them with a single, more flexible and transparent policy for assessing the “true risk” on real estate in local markets.

Timothy Sandos, president and chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, said current policies have the effect of cutting out or penalizing huge geographic areas that contain many smaller sub-markets where values are relatively stable or do not pose exceptional risks. Sandos wants greater emphasis on what appraisers find and document about the direction of local markets, rather than computer-generated statistical models.

This “would allow homes to be evaluated as individual risks,” Sandos said, rather than painted wholesale as “declining” when they are not. Minorities and moderate-income households may be disproportionately affected by such broad-brush designations, he added, and they are often less able to come up with the higher down payments and extra fees demanded. That makes selling and buying tougher in their neighborhoods, lowers demand and prices, constituting what Sandos calls “a circular, self-fulfilling prophecy,” with the designation fueling further decline.

Sandos’ group wrote the critique with the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, which represents black real estate professionals, and the Asian Real Estate Association of America.

The biggest real estate lobby, the 1.3-million-member National Association of Realtors, also has weighed in on the issue. In April 11 letters to the chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Richard F. Gaylord, the group’s president, asked the two companies to “discontinue the policy of stigmatizing entire Zip codes” and metropolitan areas as declining markets because they “typically include widely differing” neighborhood conditions.

Although Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s policies permit lenders to make exceptions to declining-market designations, Gaylord said “the reports we hear are that [lenders] are extremely reluctant to do so” — for fear that they’ll be forced to buy back loans if borrowers default.

Steven Brooks, executive vice president of Flagstar Bank, a lender based in Troy, Mich., confirmed that, as a general rule, if Fannie Mae’s automated underwriting system identifies an area as declining, “we typically will follow that” in underwriting and pricing a loan application.

However, he said, “on a case by case basis” — when an appraisal comes in with a strong, well-documented valuation — “we do make exceptions” and override Fannie’s automated advisory.

Spokesman Brian Faith said Fannie Mae has “sought and received input” from consumer and industry groups on the issue, “and we take it seriously.” Faith said Fannie is “considering making changes and refinements” in its policies but has no specific details. Freddie Mac spokesman Brad German said “we are always reevaluating” policies, including this one.

For the time being, if you own a property or plan to buy in any of dozens of metropolitan areas and thousands of Zip codes dubbed declining, expect to pay extra when you apply for a loan: at least 5 percent extra on down payments, a higher interest rate and maybe a more limited menu of loan options.

That’s the case even if the property is gaining in market value and sales in your neighborhood are on the upswing.

Post provided from Washington Post

Looking for a house to sell, buy or rent?

Annapolis real estate is always a great investment. You will find that real estate in Annapolis holds its value quite well and is always in demand.

Having the right real estate agent means having an agent who is committed to helping you buy or sell your home with the highest level of expertise in your local market. This means also to help you in understanding each step of the buying or selling process. If you are in the market or thinking about being on the market, please visit my friend’s site http://www.houseinannapolis.com/

Great places to eat in Annapolis

Annapolis is a great place to walk around, dine and shop. I do my best trying to eat different places when I eat out. Here are some of the great restaurants I have tried and liked so far.

Harry Browne’s

66 State Cir, Annapolis, MD 21401 : 410-263-4332

Located across from the Maryland State House in Historic Annapolis, Harry Browne’s is the place to “see and be seen.” The restaurant’s elegant main dining room is reminiscent of a 1920’s supper club and is the perfect backdrop for its award-winning cuisine including Rockfish Maryland and Classic Maryland Crab Cakes. Whether for lunch, dinner or a private party in the exclusive Wine Cellar Club, Harry Browne’s is an Annapolis mainstay.

Sly Fox Pub at Reynolds Tavern

7 Church Cir, Annapolis, MD 21401 : 410-295-9555

Situated on Church Circle in Historic Annapolis, Reynolds Tavern is the oldest tavern in town. The gorgeous 1747 Georgian inn is brimming with colonial charm and offers a full, traditional English tea with a variety of brews as well as decadent scones and desserts. The menu also features light lunch options and uncomplicated, but fantastic dining in the evening.

Phillips Seafood Annapolis Harbor

12 Dock Street , Annapolis , MD 21401 : 410-990-9888

The best place in Annapolis to crack some crabs.  Harbor views and a great family atmosphere.  Phillips is a traditional Maryland seafood institution.  A full menu of seafood and other fare.

Chart House

300 Second St , Annapolis , MD 21403 : 410-268-7166

A well known restaurant with locations in some of the most attractive waterside cities and island resorts, the Annapolis Chart house features the absolute best view of Annapolis Harbor with a dockside setting surrounded by boats.

El Toro Bravo

50 West Street , Annapolis , MD 21401 : 410-267-5949

A wide variety of Mexican dishes at very reasonable prices in the heart of Annapolis on West Street.