Homeowners Insurance - Do you know what is covered

Attention Northern Virginia Homeowners:

We found this great article of the challenges homeowners encounter due to not being familiar with the coverage stated in their homeowner's insurance policy. This is a must read!

http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20070612_doesinsure.htm

Home Energy Practices

With the Northern Virginia weather change this fall, here are some key tips to remember on your energy practices in your home:

Be careful not to overheat or overcool rooms. In the cooler months, try to set your thermostat at 68 degrees in daytime, and 55 degrees at night. A programmable thermostat may be a wise investment. In the warmer months, try to stabilize your thermostat at 78. Lowering your thermostat just two degrees during winter could save up to 6 percent of heating-related CO2 emissions. That's a reduction of 420 pounds of CO2 per year for a typical home.

Try to clean or replace air filters as recommended. Advice we offer in the PIM/PDA age is to put a reminder on your electronic calendar for the day/week to change your filter. Energy is lost when air conditioners and furnaces/heat pumps have to work harder to draw air through dirty filters. Cleaning a dirty air filter can save up to 5 percent of the energy used. That could save 175 pounds of CO2 per year.

Saving CO2 emissions is just a start - it also will save you on energy expenses!

Key points in this real estate market.

Greetings to Virginia Buyers and Property Owners,

The current upheaval in the market has given rise to significant opportunities to help our clients make informed decisions. Tom Sherman, President of Mortgage Services Unlimited in Dallas, emphasizes the importance of educating clients and customers. Therefore, please allow me to share these points.


For sellers, the following points are key:

* Home values will stay stagnant or potentially decrease.
* Qualified borrowers are looking for deals.
* Fewer borrowers are qualifying for home loans.
* Rising foreclosures tend to negatively affect home values.
* Increased “days on the market” (DOMs) increases the likelihood that buyers will aggressively negotiate prices down.
* Continued stress in the financial markets will affect consumer confidence.
* Loans may take longer to close.
* Appraisals are becoming more difficult to obtain.
* Properties should be funded before contract contingencies are removed.



It’s critical to price homes to sell -- and sell quickly -- decreasing the need for price reductions. If you are thinking of selling in the near future, please contact us so that we can discuss the market and what is best for your particular situation.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Northern Virginia Homeowners - vacationing tips

Northern Virginia Homeowners – Tips for while you are away!

Vacationing is fun anytime of the year but with this summer starting to ease into many families' summer vacations, we’ve compiled some tips on preparing your home for your absence.

1 - Consider a house sitter. Maybe a trusted neighbor, relative, or family friend can look after your home and/or affairs while you and the family are away. Consider leaving an information sheet or packet about the house for the sitter as well - alarm system information, important phone numbers, how to work the appliances and electronics, spare key location, and circuit breaker panel location.

2 - Security System - Consider the installation of a home security system. Most vendors will try and sell you the whole ball of wax, while an effective and efficient purchase would be monitors on all doors to the outside and motion sensors for high traffic areas. Consider a passphrase that you and your emergency contacts will remember easily for false alarms. Security Systems also normally convey when you go to sell your home. This is a nice add-on.

3 - Periodical Services - Please consider putting your mail on hold at the local post office, and also telling the newspaper company to hold your paper. Piled up mail or newspapers is a clue to potential burglars that your home is absent or unattended to. Of course if you have a house-sitter, they can gather these periodicals daily. Or a neighbor can gather your mail and papers every day for you.

4 - Lighting - Consider motion detectors on outside lighting and automatic timers for some selective inside lighting. These features can help convey the presence of someone while you are away. Don’t tip off burglars that you are away.

5 – Separate Power circuit - Many homeowners keep a second refrigerator or freezer in their garage for additional food storage. With high heat and summer thunderstorms, your power can fluctuate while you are away. Since most garage electrical outlets are on Ground Fault Indicator (GFI) circuits which can trip off very easily. Your stored food will unfortunately spoil with an outage or fluctuation. Consider having an electrician install a dedicated, non-GFI power circuit for your garage refrigerator or freezer so that you do not return from vacation with a spoiled surprise.

There are other handy tips to prevent burglaries – refer to your local police department for crime prevention services.

Websites for reference:
Alexandria City - http://alexandriava.gov/police/pd_csp_crimeprevent.html

Arlington County – http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/police/citizens/reference/crime_prevention/policecitizensreferencecrime_preventionPreventionsafety.aspx

Fairfax County - http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/POLICE/police15c.htm

Loudoun County – http://www.loudoun.gov/publicsafety.htm

Prince William County – http://www.pwcgov.org/default.aspx?topic=04003600225

Happy vacationing!
Ed and Stacy

Some thoughts on the D.C. area real estate figures in the media

Stacy and I are stopped quite often and brought into enjoyable conversations about the Northern Virginia Real Estate market. Regularly these conversations will involve a reference to an article in the Washington Post, a smaller local paper, or a story on a local news show. Something along the lines of, "I heard on the Washington Post that Real Estate in the D.C. area is expected to drop an estimated 12% this month."

While such predictions are usually not unfounded, we are quick to point out that statements like this are an average .... of everything in the population being made reference to. In a prediction that Northern Virginia home prices will drop 12% this month, we need to make sure we concluded that this number includes a the sume and average of lot of other numbers. The case could be that townhomes on Eastern Loudoun County are down 18%, yet condominiums in Arlington County are up 3%, and luxury homes in Potomas are down 10%.

Real estate is a local business. You may find if you drill down into one of these reports or predictions, that the elements of a real estate market value sum percentage can vary within the same zip code or subdivision.

When we are asked - "How is the market?" The answer out of my mouth is usually - in a balanced market like here and now, it depends on what local piece of the market you are talking about.

Reference Links for Would-Be Buyers

For those researching a neighborhood,
here are some Web sites of general interest:

Information on sex offNational Sex Offender Public Registry provides names, addresses and photos of registered sex offenders; www.nsopr.gov.

Public transportation: Metro provides locations and schedules of buses and subways in the D.C. area; www.wmata.com.

Schools: Newsweek's list of top 1,300 high schools is at www.newsweek.com. Under Education, scroll down to America's Top Public High Schools. This is a sampling of official local Web sites with details on individual communities. Most counties and cities make similar resources available online.

Public transit bus systems:
Fairfax County Connector
Montgomery County Ride On

Public schools
Parent teacher associations
Alexandria County
Arlington County
District of Columbia
Fairfax County
Loudoun County
Montgomery County
Prince George's County
Prince William County

Crime mapping District of Columbia: for crime mapping, go to Crime Statistics, then Map It Yourself. Fairfax County: go to Crime Information, then Incident Mapping. Montgomery County: go to Crime Statistics, then choose one of the six districts. Prince George's County: select the Police Department; Crime Mapping is under Quick Links.

Housing Outlook 2007 How have real estate prices in your neighborhood changed this year? Check our maps and data.

Local ExplorerUse Local Explorer to learn about Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia communities.

House-Hunting Homework

Schools, Crime, Transit: A Wealth Of Local Detail Awaits

By Allan Lengel Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 14, 2007; Page F01

Before buying a house in Bethesda last month, Susan Fiorella tapped away on her keyboard. She researched schools. She checked crime statistics. She even solicited opinions about neighborhoods from an e-mail group for urban moms and dads.

"A lot of people don't need to be as rigorous to develop this kind of comfort level," said Fiorella, a strategist for a health-care provider and the mother of two young children. "We did exhaustive research; that's our personality."

In an era when Googling has become a national pastime, schools, police departments, businesses and governments are making it easier to research neighborhoods, lessening the chances of buyer's remorse.

Many school Web sites, for example, post test scores and write about special offerings such as magnet programs. Some police departments provide statistics on crime in specific areas. Some county governments post locations of parks and neighborhood master plans. A U.S. government Web site even pinpoints locations of sex offenders, down to a specific block.
"I recommend to all my purchasers: Familiarize yourself with the neighborhood before you write the offer," said Judi Seiden, an associate broker for Prudential Carruthers Realtors on Capitol Hill.

Said Joel Abalos, an agent at Keller Williams Realty of Fairfax Gateway in Fairfax: "You don't want to sell a house to somebody and two weeks after closing they find out there's a rapist next door."

In the BTI era -- Before the Internet -- would-be buyers or their real estate agents often ran around to gather information packets from schools, libraries and government offices. The Web has changed that.

"It's made it much easier," said Robyn Burdett, an agent with Re/Max Allegiance in Fairfax. "It's taken away a lot of the legwork, and I want to say the unknown is gone."
She said, "Just going to the Metro Web site, my client can figure out the bus schedule for the park-and-ride and how they all connect and how long they take."
Still, when a Web site won't quite satisfy, she recommends finding out the old-fashioned way. To find out more about a school, for example, she sometimes suggests that clients talk with the principal or call another parent to ask questions.
"I've also had clients walk their kids through the school," she said.

One of her clients, Jason Lynch, an ecologist with the Environmental Protection Agency, is living with relatives in the Washington area while he researches homes and neighborhoods. In the meantime, his wife and two daughters, ages 4 and 7, are back home in Illinois.