Ron Lee Homes

       Even though, with this year's La Nina winter experience that is happening here in St. Tammany Parish, we at Ron Lee Homes would like to show you a way to make sure that you are prepared for any cold snap that we may have for the rest of this winter.  Your home is your biggest and best investment, so follow these tips to make sure that you protect your investment and save yourself any money you could spend in repairs.

       The fall Equinox is a good time of year to start thinking about preparing your home for winter, because as temperatures begin to dip, your home will require maintenance to keep it in tip-top shape through the winter.

       Autumn is invariably a prelude to falling winter temperatures, regardless of where you live. It might rain or snow or, as David Letterman says, "Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees." Did you know there is only one state in the United States where the temperatures have never dipped below zero? Give up? It's Hawaii.

Here Are Ten Tips to Help You Prepare Your Home for Winter

1) Furnace Inspection

• Call an HVAC professional to inspect your furnace and clean ducts.
• Stock up on furnace filters and change them monthly.
• Consider switching out your thermostat for a programmable thermostat.
• If your home is heated by a hot-water radiator, bleed the valves by opening them slightly and when water appears, close them.
• Remove all flammable material from the area surrounding your furnace.

2) Get the Fireplace Ready

• Cap or screen the top of the chimney to keep out rodents and birds.
• If the chimney hasn't been cleaned for a while, call a chimney sweep to remove soot and creosote.
• Buy firewood or chop wood. Store it in a dry place away from the exterior of your home.
• Inspect the fireplace damper for proper opening and closing.
• Check the mortar between bricks and tuckpoint, if necessary.

3) Check the Exterior, Doors and Windows

• Inspect exterior for crevice cracks and exposed entry points around pipes; seal them.
• Use weatherstripping around doors to prevent cold air from entering the home and caulk windows.
• Replace cracked glass in windows and, if you end up replacing the entire window, prime and paint exposed wood.
• If your home has a basement, consider protecting its window wells by covering them with plastic shields.
• Switch out summer screens with glass replacements from storage. If you have storm windows, install them.

4) Inspect Roof, Gutters & Downspouts

• If your weather temperature will fall below 32 degrees in the winter, adding extra insulation to the attic will prevent warm air from creeping to your roof and causing ice dams.
• Check flashing to ensure water cannot enter the home.
• Replace worn roof shingles or tiles.
• Clean out the gutters and use a hose to spray water down the downspouts to clear away debris.
• Consider installing leaf guards on the gutters or extensions on the downspouts to direct water away from the home.

5) Service Weather-Specific Equipment

• Drain gas from lawnmowers.
• Service or tune-up snow blowers.
• Replace worn rakes and snow shovels.
• Clean, dry and store summer gardening equipment.
• Sharpen ice choppers and buy bags of ice-melt / sand.

6) Check Foundations

• Rake away all debris and edible vegetation from the foundation.
• Seal up entry points to keep small animals from crawling under the house.
• Tuckpoint or seal foundation cracks. Mice can slip through space as thin as a dime.
• Inspect sill plates for dry rot or pest infestation.
• Secure crawlspace entrances.

7) Install Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detectors

• Some cities require a smoke detector in every room.
• Buy extra smoke detector batteries and change them when daylight savings ends.
• Install a carbon monoxide detector near your furnace and / or water heater.
• Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to make sure they work.
• Buy a fire extinguisher or replace an extinguisher older than 10 years.

8) Prevent Plumbing Freezes

• Locate your water main in the event you need to shut it off in an emergency.
• Drain all garden hoses.
• Insulate exposed plumbing pipes.
• Drain air conditioner pipes and, if your AC has a water shut-off valve, turn it off.
• If you go on vacation, leave the heat on, set to at least 55 degrees.

9) Prepare Landscaping & Outdoor Surfaces

• Trim trees if branches hang too close to the house or electrical wires.
• Ask a gardener when your trees should be pruned to prevent winter injury.
• Plant spring flower bulbs and lift bulbs that cannot winter over such as dahlias in areas where the ground freezes.
• Seal driveways, brick patios and wood decks.
• Don't automatically remove dead vegetation from gardens as some provide attractive scenery in an otherwise dreary, snow-drenched yard.
• Move sensitive potted plants indoors or to a sheltered area.

10) Prepare an Emergency Kit

• Buy indoor candles and matches / lighter for use during a power shortage.
• Find the phone numbers for your utility companies and tape them near your phone or inside the phone book.
• Buy a battery back-up to protect your computer and sensitive electronic equipment.
• Store extra bottled water and non-perishable food supplies (including pet food, if you have a pet), blankets and a first-aid kit in a dry and easy-to-access location.
• Prepare an evacuation plan in the event of an emergency.

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Pittsburgh and New Orleans Among Those Included

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) released its first NAHB/First American Improving Markets Index (IMI), a new economic index revealing metropolitan areas that have shown improvement for at least six months in three key economic areas—housing permits, employment and housing prices.

The list of metropolitan areas includes:

• Alexandria, LA
• Anchorage, AK
• Bangor, ME
• Bismarck, ND
• Casper, WY
• Fairbanks, AK
• Fayetteville, NC
• Houma, LA
• Midland, TX
• New Orleans, LA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Waco, TX

“Despite the challenging conditions in the national economy and housing sector, there are areas throughout the country where we are seeing pockets of improvement” said Bob Nielsen, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Reno, Nev. “Housing conditions are local, and do not always reflect the national picture. We created this new index to shine a light on those housing markets across the country that have stabilized and have begun to show signs of recovery.”

“By examining key indicators of home prices, employment and housing permits data, we are using a comprehensive, but conservative method in determining which markets are improving,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Last year at this time, there was not a single market that showed improvement using these criteria, and now we can point to 12 examples of growth.”

“It’s not surprising that many of the states represented are energy rich areas,” Crowe continued. “Those are the regions still experiencing relatively strong employment, supporting housing demand.”

The IMI is designed to track housing markets throughout the country that are showing signs of improving economic health. The index measures three sets of independent monthly data to get a mark on the top improving Metropolitan Statistical Areas. The three indicators that are analyzed are employment growth from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, house price appreciation from Freddie Mac, and single-family housing permit growth from the U.S. Census Bureau. A metro area must see improvement in all three areas for at least six months following their respective troughs before being included on the improving markets list. NAHB uses the latest available data from these sources to generate the list of improving markets.

Please visit www.nahb.org/imi for additional data, tables and a list of 2011 future economic release dates.


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       Data from the University of New Orleans shows home sales in the five-parish North Shore region climbed slightly in the first nine months of 2010. The numbers indicate a slight nudge for the market that saw a slowdown in activity during the height of the national economic collapse.

       UNO’s Institute for Economic Development Director Ivan Miestchovich said the trends through the first three quarters of 2010 signal upward momentum in the single family housing market and a slowdown in the rate at which home prices in the region are falling.

       Between January and September, 3,019 single family units were sold in the North Shore region compared with 2,845 in the same span of 2009. Average prices fell just less than 3.5 percent, or from $200,426 in 2009 to $193,435 last year.

       The report also provides an overview of economic trends along the Interstate 12 corridor, which includes St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Livingston, Washington and St. Helena parishes.

       The region lost 3,430 jobs, or 2.3 percent, between the first quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010. Tangipahoa Parish accounted for the largest share with 1,395 jobs, followed by St. Tammany with 1,170 jobs.

       Those job sectors with the largest jobs losses were construction (1,051) retail (997) and manufacturing (986).

       During the same time frame, industries adding jobs on the North Shore were health care and social assistance (594) and professional, scientific and technical services (154).

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       Here’s a contrarian view for you.  Credit Suisse says the fears about housing are well overdone.  In their analysis they cite 6 different bullish factors that should help to bolster house prices in the USA:

• The government now owns or guarantees about 70% of US mortgage debt ($11.5trn), thus any knock-on impact from a fall in house prices should be much lower than in 2007-2008 and the flow of foreclosure onto the market can be managed well (recall that since April 2009, 3.1 million trial loan modifications have been made).
• Valuation is extremely cheap on all measures (price to income, price to rent, affordability index, rental yields).
• Delinquency ratios, charge-off and foreclosure rates seem to have peaked.
• Housing starts are about 1m below trend demand of housing units – based on household formation and replacement demand. The question is: What is the level of excess inventory? The number of unsold new and existing homes have fallen by 63% and 14% from the peak, respectively; if we then assume half the foreclosed property becomes vacant (i.e. half of the 2.3m homes currently foreclosed), this amounts to 2.7m homes, which should take 2 ½ to 3 years to absorb.
• Distressed sales (short-sales, foreclosures and REO sales) are less than a third of the total, after peaking at almost half in 2009.
• Housing as a proportion of GDP is now just 2.2%, compared with a long-run average of 4.5%.

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Newly built properties can offer fewer hassles, higher efficiency, and increased customization

       As the mortgage crisis continues to inundate the market with distressed properties, today's house hunter has no shortage of cheap, foreclosed homes to pick through. But despite all those deals in the previously-owned home market, consumers shouldn't overlook the potential benefits of buying a new home. "New homes usually sell higher per square foot then resale homes," says Jack McCabe of McCabe Research & Consulting. "But their selling points, I think, are pretty strong." To help consumers better understand the advantages of new home buying, U.S. News spoke with a handful of experts and compiled a list of 9 reasons to choose a new home over a resale:

1. Customization: Many home builders allow buyers to participate in the process of designing their property, which helps create a living space specifically tailored to the consumer's tastes. New home buyers, for example, can often decide where their bathroom might go, choose their favorite type of flooring, or pick the color of the exterior paint. Buyers moving into a subdivision can sometimes even pick the lot they like best. "There is a lot of flexibility for [new home buyers] to kind of put their personal signature on the product," says Patrick Costello, president of Forty West Builders. "Those kind of things you can't do with a used house—it's just not possible."

2. Building Envelope: Building codes have mandated increasingly higher energy efficiency standards since they began to address the issue in the late 1970s, says Kevin Morrow, senior program manager for the National Association of Home Builders' green building programs. "The most recent International Energy Conservation Code came out in 2009 [and] required roughly 17 percent more efficiency than the codes of three years prior," he says. "So using that as sort of a gauge to how newer homes should perform from an efficiency standpoint compared to older homes, it's pretty clear that just as homes meet code, they are going to be more efficient."

Newly constructed homes use energy more efficiently in two ways, Morrow says. First, they tend to have a tighter-sealed building envelope that helps prevent conditioned air—cool air in the summer, warm air in the winter—from escaping. Features that create this envelope include higher-efficiency insulation, doors, and windows. "Gone are the days of the single pain window … now I think you are starting to see triple- and quadruple-paned windows," Morrow says. "These are windows that are designed to really minimize the transfer of heat either from warm to cold or vice versa, and they of course will help the building envelope."

3. Green Appliances: The more energy-efficient mechanics of the house also help reduce utility bills for new home buyers, Morrow says. Newly-constructed homes often include green systems and appliances—like high efficiency stoves, refrigerators, washing machines, water heaters, furnaces, or air conditioning units—that homes built years ago might not. "The conditioning equipment is usually considered to be one of the larger energy consumption devices, but certainly those kitchen appliances matter," Morrow says. Existing homeowners can always retrofit their property or buy higher-efficiency appliances, but doing so requires a potentially significant expense.

4. Fewer Repairs: The features of newly constructed homes should also hold up better than those of existing homes, which may have experienced years of wear and tear, says Evan Gilligan of Mandrin Homes. "People will buy [previously-owned] houses and then the carpet needs to be replaced or it needs to be repainted, or it needs new appliances, or the flooring is shot," Gilligan says. "When they buy a new home in today's market, it really is new."

5. Less Maintenance: At the same time, today's new homes are engineered specifically to minimize maintenance requirements. For example, Costello says his company uses composite products for a home's exterior trim instead of wood, which could rot or need repainting. "You buy a used house you don't know what you are getting, you might have to do a lot of maintenance," Costello says. "We are trying to look down the road and make things as easy as possible for the homeowner so they can enjoy living there and not have to be saddled with maintenance."

6. Warranty: In addition, builders often agree to take care of the repair work that becomes necessary in your newly constructed home for at least the first year. “A new home is generally fully warrantied by the builder for a minimum of a year and most of all the other components are warrantied for extended periods,” says Jack McCabe. So if your roof starts leaking or the heater breaks during the warranty period, your builder will pick up the tab for the repairs. “When you buy a resale home, even if you have a home inspection done, it still does not turn up hidden defects that you don’t find out about a lot of times for two years,” McCabe says.

7. Fire Safety: Newly constructed homes often include fire safety features that may not be present in properties built years ago, Gilligan says. "We use fire retardant in our carpeting and in our insulation," he says. In addition, all newly constructed homes are required to include hard-wired smoke detectors. These devices can provide better protection than battery-operated smoke detectors, which can fail to perform if their battery runs out, Morrow says. "Hard-wired [smoke detectors] run on the electricity of the house and then have a battery backup for if the house power goes out," he says.

8. Concessions: Especially in today's sluggish housing market, buyers may be able to squeeze more concessions out of a home building company than an individual seller. That's because individual sellers often have an emotional attachment to their property that can blind them to its true value. "People usually think that their home is worth more money than it is," McCabe says. At the same time, builders often have greater financial wherewithal to absorb a loss on a sale than individuals. "I'll put it to you this way: a $30,000 hit [spread] over 30 lots hurts a lot less than a $30,000 hit on one existing house," says Christopher Rachuba of Rachuba Home Builders. "So I think [buyers] may get more bargaining [power] that way."

9. Financing: New home buyers may be able to take advantage of mortgage financing perks made available through their builder. "New home builders, in many cases the larger ones, have their own mortgage companies or they will offer paying points or closing costs and buy down certain rates for you," McCabe says. "The seller of a resale home is generally not going to do that for the buyer."



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       As Congress begins to debate how to reform government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, NAHB on April 14 called on lawmakers to ensure that the federal government continues to provide a backstop for the housing finance system to ensure a reliable and adequate flow of affordable housing credit.

       Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, NAHB Third Vice Chairman Rick Judson, a builder and developer from Charlotte, N.C., said the need for this support is underscored by the current state of affairs — with the GSEs, Federal Housing Administration and Ginnie Mae acting as the primary conduits for residential mortgage credit.

       “NAHB feels the federal backstop must be a permanent fixture in order to ensure a consistent supply of mortgage liquidity as well as to allow rapid and effective responses to market dislocations and crises,” said Judson.

       Related to the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, NAHB recommended policy changes to restore and improve the secondary mortgage market and housing finance system:

• Degree and structure of government support. While government support is needed to ensure that mortgage credit is available and affordable in all areas of the country under all economic circumstances, support for the conforming conventional mortgage market should not be provided directly to private companies. Instead, the federal government should explicitly guarantee the timely payment of principal and interest on securities backed by conforming conventional mortgages, in the same way that Ginnie Mae now provides guarantees for investors in its securities.
  
• Operation of the conforming conventional mortgage market. NAHB envisions private companies — conforming mortgage conduits (CMCs) — being chartered to purchase conforming conventional loans originated by approved mortgage lending institutions such as banks, savings and loan associations, mortgage banking companies and credit unions and then issuing securities backed by those mortgages.

      CMCs would guarantee the timely payment on the mortgages that are pooled in the government-guaranteed securities and would be required to be well-capitalized and to maintain reserves at levels appropriate for their risk exposure. However, CMCs and the mortgages backing their securities would not have implicit or explicit support from the federal government. A fund would be established by the government to provide a guarantee of timely payment of principal and interest to investors in the securities. The CMCs would pay a fee to capitalize the fund, which would be designed to mitigate the federal government’s risk so that it would only be exposed in the case of a “catastrophic” occurrence.

• Conforming conventional mortgages. Mortgages eligible for inclusion in securities receiving an explicit federal guarantee should have well-understood risk characteristics. This would include fixed-rate and standard adjustable-rate mortgages and selected multifamily mortgage loans.

       NAHB is in the process of updating its policy on the future of the Federal Home Loan Bank System and believes that policymakers must take into account its significant structural and operational differences from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when considering the future make-up of the housing finance system.

       With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now operating under conservatorship and experiencing severe financial pressures, NAHB urged Congress to proceed with caution as lawmakers take steps to transition to a new housing finance system.

“Any changes should be undertaken with extreme care and with sufficient time to ensure that U.S. home buyers and renters are not placed in harm’s way and that the mortgage funding and delivery system operates efficiently and effectively as the old system is abandoned and a new system is put in place,” said Judson.

Click Here for the Source of the Information.