real estate

Designing and renovating your home can be confusing and overwhelming. It helps to have some professional help when making the big decisions. Check out the South Minneapolis Housing Fair, Saturday, April 13th, from 10:00 to 3:00. Check out the details and meet us there. We can answer your questions and enter you into a drawing for some great prizes.

When buying or selling a home, you should always perform a radon test. Many homes have radon which can be dangerous to your health. You can neither see nor smell radon. Radon is a radioactive gas that comes from the natural breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water. It can then get into the air you breathe.

Radon moves up through the ground into the air above and into your home through cracks and holes in your home’s foundation. Indoor radon gas is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the United States and breathing it over long periods can present a significant health risk.

So how do you know you have radon in your home and if so, what should you do? We’ll outline what steps you need to take to test and eliminate radon in your home:

The process of buying your first house can sometimes be confusing. There are many questions which may go through your mind, such as, ‘How do I start the home buying process?’ or ‘Am I really ready to take on purchasing a home?’

Not too far away from us the Suburban World Theater sits vacant. This beautiful, historic building was built in the 1920’s and has been reincarnated over the years to be a movie theater, a cinema grill and an event space. It is now looking for a new tenant to take over. We ran across this article written by Thatcher Imboden for ouruptown.com about why the theater might still be vacant and what it could take in order to get it leased again. Take a moment to read the article and let us know, what do you think could be done to bring life back into the theater?

With the rising price of local rentals, does it make more sense to rent or buy? MPR’s The Daily Circuit talks to Chip Halbach, executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership, to get answers to this very important question. Click here to listen to the interview. What do you think? When should you rent and when should you buy?

Image by yomanimus's flickr page

Image from nickcname's flickr page

One of the biggest questions pertaining to eco-friendly housing is: what is a ‘green’ label worth? It turns out the answer to the question isn’t as cut and dry as one might expect. According to an article by Kenneth Harney that was originally published by tricities.com, there are a lot of factors which determine if a green home sells for more than one that doesn’t have energy-saving features. Arecent study of 1.6 million homes sold in California between 2007 and 2012 documented that a house with a green certification label adds an average 9% selling value. Another point of interest is that green homes’ reselling value seems to be dependent on the ‘Prius effect’. This means that buyers in areas where consumers generally support environmental conservation and areas where hybrid auto registrations are higher tend to pay premiums on green-certified homes than areas with lower hybrid registrations. All in all, whether you are selling your home or looking to upgrade to energy saving appliances, there are a lot of savings to be had by investing in green homes.

Image from ehkohler's flickr page

The Hennepin County Environmental Response Fund grant program expires in January, which means that home buyers in the Hennepin and Ramsey county area will no longer pay an extra fee when closing on their home. The grant program has funded $37 million in site cleanups since 2011. Previously, the money for the grant program has come from mortgage and deed tax, which home buyers would pay with their purchase. For example, if you purchased a home for $200,000, you would currently have to pay a one-time fee of 0.02% of the home price, or $40. With the elimination of this fee in January, how do you think the grant program should be funded? How would you feel if the fee was added to yearly property taxes? Click here to read the full article from the Minnesota Association of Realtors.

Image by Bri WeldonRecently, the online newspaper, MinnPost, posted an article on a calculator from the Urban Land Institute Minnesota, which helps you estimate the costs of housing and transportation for a given area. By entering in a few numbers, including a property’s address, the commute distance for each of the property’s residents, the annual household income and gas mileage, the calculator estimates the percentage of the household income that would go toward housing and transportation costs. Traditionally, we are told that our housing and transportation costs should not exceed 45% of the combined annual income. Before you start looking at neighborhoods for your next residence, make sure you use this calculator for some number crunching. You may be surprised on what areas make the most sense from a housing and transportation cost to live in.

Samantha Strong was interviewed for daily5remodel.com's article 'For Realtor Referrals, the Rules of Reciprocity Apply', by Leah Thayer. Sam talks about how to make realtor-contractor relationships work. Check it out on our Media page.