Michelle Millikin

Posts Tagged ‘home’

Home decor is like fashion:  ever-changing and fun!  There are some easy and inexpensive ways to update your home to keep it within the trends of the times – whether remaining within your home or preparing for a sale.

Mother Earth Inspired:  Popular color palettes are reminiscent of natural elements – reds found in the earth and soil, blues of the ocean, greens of the forest and neutrals in a textured look of eggs, sea shells and sand.  These natural tones are being paired with color accents (my favorite!) such as tangerine.  Pantone Color Institute named Tangerine Tango as their color of the year.

Accessories found to incorporate natural elements may be a thick woven blanket, woven baskets, leather stools and use of cotton textiles.

1. Animal print:  Still but use sparingly.  I recommend only one use in a room at a time.
2. Digital Fabrics:  Have become a new work of art.  Frame a digital fabric with a natural theme such as leaves or branches.
3. Don’t throw out old peices:  Vintage is Vogue.  Use old asian rugs or art peices as a focal point of your room – drawing off of its color palette for paint colors and other accessories.
4. Mix your textures:  Matchy-Matchy chromatics is a thing of the past.  Mix wood species and upholstery fabrics.  Silk with suede, furniture with large studs, shiny/modern with vintage.
5. Reflection and Light:  Very key element within a living space, especially in our climate which is filled with cold and overcast days.  Reflective white, blue and silver objects help lift a room.  Mirrors have a magical way of making a room look much larger and refract light to areas that may need some help.

Have fun and make your home your own.  The typical rule in staging a home for sale id to strip it to neutral.  If it is gawdy, I tentd to agree but I also watch Buyer’s eyes light up when introduced to a home with class, taste and imagination appropriately displayed.  It can be inspiring to see what can be done within a space.

Give me call to set an appointment for some updating and easy ideas!

Even in a flat market, those pennies add up.
An article in today’s Boston Globe (Despite Low Prices, Many Shun Homeownership), casts a shadow on the dream of buying your own home. To be fair, it brings up a number of valid issues. Prices have indeed fallen and the market is still soft, thanks to eroding consumer confidence. Credit remains tight, which means fewer people will qualify for home loans , and they will need a bigger down payment to do so. Still, it misses the biggest point of them all: despite the increasing cost of getting into a mortgage, owning your own home will almost always be a smart long-term move.
Renting is not investing

The days of flipping property for a quick buck are gone, and you won’t see double-digit appreciation in most markets for several years, but that doesn’t mean your home has no value. One way or another, you’re going to spend money on housing. In most markets, you’ll spend a bit less to rent a home than buy it, but rent is not an investment. Even in the best of markets, you’ll never see a return, and your rent will rise as time goes on.
Owning a home may not get you rich, but renting will never even pay for your coffee. If you own a house for any length of time, you’re likely to get something back. Let’s say you live in a home for ten years, sell at a slight loss, and get back only your down payment and half of your mortgage payments . You’re still outperforming a renter. If your property appreciates, you’re doing even better, and at some point down the road, comparable rents will be far higher than your mortgage payment–while building zero equity.
Buyer’s markets mean choice

Tighter credit and a slew of foreclosures means more choice at bargain prices than we’ve seen in decades. Part of what fueled the house-flipping craze of the last decade was a lack of inventory. Low inventories fueled prices, which encouraged prospectors to snap up more houses, leaving the American consumers to take what they could get. With the prospectors and the predatory lenders gone, you can find the home you really want for the long term–not just for now–so you can watch your investment grow.
Buying has benefits

There are a host of other benefits to homeownership. Owning a home builds your credit, strengthens neighborhoods, and gives your family an unmatched sense of roots and participation in the community. And no recession can take that away.

There has been some recent concern that the recent health care reform bill would impose a 3.8 percent “sales” tax on the sale of every home. Here is what the bill would actually do regarding taxation of the sales of homes, according to the Tax Foundation:

“First, there is no “sales” tax on home sales in the health care bill. The bill would impose essentially a capital gains taxes on some home sales made by a limited number of taxpayers. (The health care law contains a new 3.8 percent tax on “unearned income” for high-income taxpayers. Unearned income includes capital gains.) To be hit by the 3.8 percent capital gains tax, you first have to be a married couple making more than $250,000 in adjusted gross income or $200,000 if you are single. The capital gain on the home sale must also exceed $500,000 if this is a primary home and you are a married couple ($250,000 for singles). So for example, even if you and your spouse make $300,000 in wages and you bought a home that you lived in for a while for $600,000 that you now sell it for $1 million, your capital gains tax on that home sale would be zero. Even if the home sold for $1.2 million, thereby resulting in a capital gain of $600,000, only $100,000 of that capital gain would subject to the new tax (because of the $500,000 exclusion).

For those who earn above those income thresholds ($250,000/$200,000) and who have a capital gain on a home that is a second home or one that does not qualify for principal residence (i.e., lived in for too short of a time period), the full capital gain would be subject to the new 3.8 percent tax.

Over time, however, if the health care reform and the tax code were never changed, more and more home sales would be subject to this tax. That’s because the $200,000 and $250,000 income thresholds in the health care reform bill were not indexed for inflation leading more and more people to qualify for having to pay the 3.8 percent tax on their investment income (including some home sales). Furthermore, the $500,000/$250,000 primary home sale exclusion amounts are not indexed for inflation, meaning that over the long-run as home prices grow with inflation, more primary home sales would be subject to capital gains taxes.”

Due to the high income thresholds and the $500,000/$250,000 primary home sale exclusion, I feel this media-worthy issue is not a concern within the Wausau Real Estate market. For our local Wausau market, stimulating the job growth and raising local consumer confidence should be of our greatest concern.

According to Harris Interactive the following reports what percentage of Americans participated in energy-saving activities within the past year:

Installed more energy-efficient light bulbs:  63%
Purchased energy-efficient appliances:  36%
Started paying bills online:  46%
Switched to paperless financial statements:  40%
Donated an electronic device for recycling:  41%
Switched from bottled to tap water:  29%
Installed a low-flow showerhead:  17%
Installed a low-flow toilet:  16%
Made home improvements that provided government tax credits:  14%
Purchased a more fuel-efficient car:  13%
None of these:  13%

If you would like to learn how you build green materials into your new home, please call me for a consultation:  715-581-9013