The Jersey Observer-New Jersey Real Estate Blog

With winter just around the corner, taking a few simple steps to winterize your water pipes now can help prevent costly future repairs, as well as save water and energy.

Tennessee American Water offers these tips to get your home ready for the winter:

• Search for pipes that are not insulated, or that pass through unheated spaces such as crawlspaces, basements, or garages. Wrap them with pre-molded foam rubber sleeves or fiberglass insulation, available at hardware stores.

• Before freezing weather sets in, make sure the water to your hose bibs is shut off inside your house (via a turnoff valve), and that lines are drained.

• Nearly 15 percent of an average home energy bill goes to heating water. Wrapping your water heater in an insulation blanket can help reduce heat loss.

• To save wear and tear on your cooling system, drain any hoses and air conditioner pipes and check for excess water pooled in equipment. If your home is heated by a hot-water radiator, bleed the valves by opening them slightly. Close them when water appears.

• If your weather temperature will fall below 32 degrees in the winter, adding extra insulation to the attic will prevent warm air from creeping into your roof, causing ice damage to the roof and gutters.

• Keep water temperature around 120 degrees and install inexpensive low-flow shower heads to reduce hot water use. Lowering the temperature to 120 degrees would reduce water heating costs by 6 to 10 percent.

• Clean out gutters and downspouts to remove debris that could freeze and cause clogs during cold weather. Know where your water main is located in case you need to turn it off during an emergency.

Source: Tennessee American

NEW ORLEANS– Real estate experts, gathered yesterday in New Orleans for the National Association of REALTORS® annual convention, were cautiously optimistic about the current and future state of the industry.

Today’s market shouldn’t be called the new normal because the old market was abnormal, said speaker Margaret Kelly, chief executive officer of RE/MAX. “The spike up and down in the housing market wasn’t normal so we shouldn’t be measuring ourselves against it,” she said to the 20,000 REALTORS® who attended the gathering.

Despite some challenges there are plenty of opportunities in the housing market, she said, adding that low mortgage interest rates, abundant inventory, and stable prices are attracting buyers to the market right now.

Kelly said she hopes the government will incentivize businesses to create more jobs, which is the only thing that will help the housing market fully recover. “Consumers want an instant fix but we need to be patient,” she said.

Panelist Ron Peltier, chairman and CEO of HomeServices of America, Inc., said the nation is in the seventh inning of the housing market correction and compared today’s real estate market to the market in 2000, which many people thought was a good year in real estate.

“The rise in sales and prices during the boom was unrealistic and unsustainable, and all of that nonsense has been pushed out of the market—today buyers need to have jobs and be creditworthy,” said Peltier. “The underlying principles of home ownership are now the same they were 100 years ago; we want a sense of home and community, we strive for long-term, not short-term home ownership; and we have sense of pride for owning a home.”

To achieve a full housing recovery, the market must work through the foreclosure issue, which is dragging down home sales and prices, consumer confidence and the health of housing market and economy, he said.

Source: NAR