Once More, With Savings

On a sizzling Saturday, inside a toasty warehouse, Eunice Youmans walks past the vintage fireplace mantels, unhinged doors and light fixtures at Community Forklift, a nonprofit store in Prince George’s County that peddles reusable housing materials.

In one hand is her 10-month-old son, in the other a tape measure. Her two young daughters trail behind her like ducklings. She zeroes in on a used 48-by-17-inch kitchen cabinet.

It needs some work. It has been sitting for months. One door is chipped. The white paint is old. She plans to fix it up, refinish it and put it in her dining room.

The price is $50. She gets it for $30.

“It’s much cheaper and good-quality stuff,” the Cheverly resident says of the store’s products, extolling the benefits of buying used rather than going to the large home stores. “I come here all the time.”

In a disposable society, where new is often equated with better, where big-box stores such as Home Depot have become the temple of home improvers, a growing number of homeowners are turning to reclaimed or reused products. In the past five years, the number of reused-material stores around the country has doubled, from 150 to 300, according to the Building Materials Reuse Association.

Read the rest at Washingtonpost.com

7 landscaping tips

If prospective buyers looked at your house today, what would they see outside? A giant evergreen that looks as if it might swallow the station wagon, perhaps, scraggly old foundation plants or maybe a kitchen-table view of the neighbors’ kids’ trampoline?

If so, you have a truly inexpensive opportunity to boost your home’s curb appeal.

By spending $500 to $3,000 on plants and materials and a few hours of time, you can achieve a well-landscaped look without shelling out for professional help.

Besides the personal enjoyment you’ll get from a prettier yard, landscaping adds more value than almost any other home renovation.

A recent Michigan State University study found that depending on where the house is located, high-quality landscaping adds 5 percent to 11 percent to its price.

If you have no immediate plans to move, all the better: Landscaping is the one home improvement that actually appreciates over time.

So how do you decide which projects to tackle? That depends on how long you think you’ll be around to enjoy the results.

Will this renovation project pay off?

Cruising the web I found this neat tool.  CNNMoney, has teamed with Remodeling Magazine to create a renovation estimate tool.  For example, I am always wondering what it would take to finish out a basement.   The average cost in 2005 was $56, 724.00.  This webpage shows you the average cost of 25 common projects.  More importantly, it shows what you get back. 

 Click here to play: CNNMoney Renovation Wizard

Home Sales on a ‘Staircase to the Basement’

Sales of existing homes fell in June for the fourth straight month as problems in the mortgage industry continued to hurt the housing market.

The National Association of Realtors reported yesterday that sales of previously owned homes dropped 3.8 percent from May to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.75 million units, the slowest pace in more than four years. It was also 11.4 percent less than the number of units sold in June 2006.

New Home Sales Down Substantially

WASHINGTON — Sales of new homes fell in June by the largest amount in five months as the housing industry continued to struggle with its worst downturn in 16 years. The median home price also fell.

The Commerce Department reported that sales of new single-family homes dropped by 6.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 834,000 units. The decline was more than triple what had been expected and was the largest percentage drop since sales fell by 12.7 percent in January. Sales are now 22.3 percent below the level of a year ago.