Contributed by Patricia Bonacorda It’s easy to ignore your plumbing when taking care of other household responsibilities. Here are some easy tips to help make sure your plumbing continues to work reliably throughout the coming months: Water Heaters This will be a good opportunity to make sure your water heater is working properly so that you don’t run the risk...

Contributed by Karen Highland It seems like everyone has a real estate blog these days, as many real estate agents have joined the blogosphere over the last few years. ActiveRain has grown to over 250,000 bloggers, Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes.com and many other major real estate news sites have also started blogs. The space is glutted. Just out of curiosity, I did...

Posted on Apr 28 2015 - 2:32pm by Housecall
Comments Off on How to Build Credibility with your Real Estate Website

Contributed by James White, homeyimprovements.com When companies spend time building an online brand identity, what they are really doing is setting out to establish trust, and credibility is an important part of the equation. Without it, businesses cannot expect to generate leads, increase sales, or improve referrals and conversion rates. There is perhaps no other...

If you’re like me, thoughts of putting your home on the market and moving up, down or out of dodge all together periodically float through your mind. These days, there’s extra incentive given the inventory shortage in most regions of the country—some areas are even experiencing bidding wars. “After back-to-back years of a robust housing recovery, we are continuing...

Posted on Apr 24 2015 - 3:12pm by Nick Caruso
Comments Off on Legalized Marijuana: A New Meaning to ‘Going Green’ in Real Estate

As the market continues on its road to recovery, many obstacles are falling by the wayside making it easier than recent years to find the right homes for the right buyers. Mortgage rates are still low and affordable, the unemployment rate has dropped, and in many areas across the country, inventory has more or less stabilized. These factors are always some of the...

Posted on Apr 24 2015 - 2:07pm by Suzanne De Vita
Comments Off on Just Add Water: A Tour of Connecticut’s Gold Coast

Cruising along the winding roads of Old Greenwich and nearby Riverside, Conn., one senses the rows of homes, spaced on lots less than a half-acre, parallel the enveloping feel of community. With views of steel-blue, glittering Long Island Sound peppered between homes, the neighborhood is at once a shore town and embodiment of a bygone era, where the school, firehouse...

This gives new meaning to the term “groundbreaking.” While the rest of us struggle to recycle junk mail, a select few are saving the planet by constructing homes made of rammed earth – locally sourced clay, gravel and sand walls that trump anything Etsy or farmers markets can offer. And though its roots trace back to ancient civilizations, rammed earth walls...

Posted on Apr 21 2015 - 9:30am by Nick Caruso
Comments Off on Extreme Marketing: Build A Rollercoaster Through Your Listing!

Dutch real estate agency Huizen Promoter built a rollercoaster through an open house, trumping anything anyone else has ever done in real estate. Ever. OK, so that's an exaggeration - but still! A rollercoaster! The coaster starts from the rear of the house, taking riders down through the basement and pulling them upstairs, giving them a room-by-room tour of the...

When it comes to the World Wide Web, there’s one rule of thumb you can’t afford to ignore: Just because it’s on the Internet, doesn’t mean it’s true. Take your next door neighbors who were duped into renting a cute little two-bedroom apartment, with all the bells and whistles, who learned that the home didn’t even exist—once the moving van was packed...

Working in real estate can be a challenge in itself, but when you're working with a multigenerational buyer—a household of more than two generations—things can get even more complicated as you work to meet the diverse needs of parents, grandparents and children alike. However, as the housing market continues to fluctuate, more and more multigenerational households...