Blog

Rising Interest Rates Impact Both Buyers and Sellers

alt tag

WHAT CAN BUYERS DO
Rising interest rates are certainly not ideal, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t find your perfect home. There are many factors that need to be considered, including your personal financial situation and your willingness and ability to pay slightly more for that mortgage payment each month. The good news is that you will now be in a market with less competition and will likely have more power in negotiating with sellers.
Prior to applying for a mortgage, make sure your finances are in good order. Pay down debt, this directly impacts your Debt-to-Income ratio (DTI) that lenders look for.

  • Improve your credit score – this has a big impact on the rate your lender will offer, higher credit scores typically mean you will get the best rates available. 
  • Make sure you have a solid down payment, this will impact how much a lender is willing and able to offer and will impact the rate they offer as well. 
  • Find a great realtor to help navigate this challenging and dynamic real estate market. A good agent will help you find property within your budget and will be able to assess trends in the market to ensure you negotiate a fair price.

NH Ski Resorts Transition to Summer Activitities

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag

 

As the colder months of the year fall farther behind us, so do our trips to ski mountains. Once packed mountains are again abandoned until the next winter season begins. In an effort to combat this dormancy, mountains are starting to provide activities for the public during the summer months, too. Several ski mountains in New Hampshire [...]

Raised Garden Bed

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag

Let’s talk about raised gardens, if you don’t have adequate yard space or simply want the convenience of not having to bend over to tend to your garden this is a great alternative. So let us cover the basics.

 

How Deep Should a Raised Garden Be?

A raised bed doesn’t have to be very deep to be effective.8-18”, If the plants you are growing require drier soil the bed should be taller and filled with a porous growing medium. Vegetable beds should be 12-24” deep.

Gardening Hacks Guest Blog

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag

It’s gardening season! Are you ready? Today I’ve gathered up some of the funnest gardening hacks out there. From using diapers and soda cans, to making watermelon slings and table cloth movers. How fun are these ideas?! We are busy and we need all the quick, quirky, and helpful gardening ideas we can get!

Calling All Home Gardeners

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag

It is that time of year again, here is some guidance for starting your Seedlings Indoors.

I know, most of New England is under a blanket of white and the last thing you have on your mind is your summer garden. You can grow a robust vegetable garden by buying young plants at your local garden center closer to the time you want to plant them outside, but your selection may be limited especially if you are an organic grower. On the other hand, you can have a much wider range of varieties if you start your own plants from seeds indoors. If this is you, now is the time to start planning and mapping your outside garden. Start plants like tomatoes with long grow times and requirements for warm weather now.   Planting your own seedlings is very economical with many seed suppliers like Johnnyseeds.

10 Tips for a Smooth Home Remodel

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag

Follow these 10 tips when you embark on an exciting home remodeling project.

  1. Establish effective two-way communication with the home remodeler. It’s essential to have good communication for a smooth home remodeling project. Does the remodeler listen? Does he or she answer questions clearly and candidly? Can you reach him when you need to? Does he return phone calls promptly? Does he let you know when problems arise and work with you on solving them?

Choosing a Home Builder

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag

Homeownership is the foundation of the American Dream and with dwindling inventory across the country many potential buyers are breaking the barrier into building the homes they can’t find on the market.  This isn’t a task to enter into lightly, there’s plenty of horror stories to be found about buyers being scammed or having contractors walk away in the middle of the job whether they’ve been paid or not.

Due to the lack of inventory any good builder is going to have a pretty hefty pipeline and likely not enough help to keep up with the demand so it’s important to do a lot of research on your own before venturing into this territory.

Homebuyer's Dictionary from the National Association of Home Builders

  • By
  • Posted
Real Estate Dictionary

ARM? GPM? PITI? You’d have to be a cryptologist to figure out some of the terms buyers encounter during the home buying process. Doing research on how to buy a house before beginning the process can greatly improve your experience and prepare you for the exciting course ahead. And with this glossary of home buying terms at your side, you can rest easy that your new home won’t get lost in translation.

What's in Store for the National Housing Market in 2021?

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag
Happy New Year! Many of us are excited to see the end of 2020, and a New Year means a new housing market… right? Well, maybe not, or at least not yet.

It’s difficult to pin down one 2021 housing market prediction that will be 100 percent accurate, but there are a lot of compelling points being made from very detailed analyses. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Pemi-Valley Habitat for Humanity

  • By
  • Posted
Pemi-Valley Habitat for Humanity

About Pemi Valley Habitat for Humanity 
Pemi Valley Habitat for Humanity is part of a global, nonprofit housing organization operated on Christian principles that seeks to put God’s love into action by building homes, communities, and hope. Pemi Valley Habitat for Humanity is dedicated to eliminating substandard housing locally and worldwide through constructing, rehabilitating, and preserving homes; by advocating for fair and just housing policies; and by providing training and access to resources to help families improve their shelter conditions.  Habitat for Humanity was founded on the conviction that every man, woman and child should have a simple, durable place to live in dignity and safety, and that decent shelter in decent communities should be a matter of conscience and action for all.

What's Your Decluttering Style

  • By
  • Posted
Organized Linen Closet

Clutter can often be a sign of a chaotic lifestyle and it can also represent a very depressed person. You might have ready many articles on the subject and tried a variety of ways to clean up your own space but within days it’s right back to the same old trend of collecting mail or papers you really don’t need.  That’s because you haven’t found the decluttering style that best fits your lifestyle. There’s no one way that works for everyone.

Clutter and Depression

  • By
  • Posted
alt tag

It’s been proven. Clutter is a bummer — literally.

Dishes in the sink, toys throughout the house, stuff covering every flat surface; this clutter not only makes our homes look bad, it makes us feel bad, too.

At least that’s what researchers at UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families (CELF) discovered when they explored in real time the relationship between 32 California families and the objects in their homes. The resulting book, "Life at Home in The Twenty-First Century," is a rare look at how middle-class Americans use the space in their homes and interact with the things they accumulate over a lifetime.

Our over-worked closets are overflowing with things we rarely touch.

It turns out that clutter has a profound effect on our mood and self-esteem. CELF’s anthropologists, social scientists, and archaeologists found:

AHEAD's January Financial Virtual Workshops

  • By
  • Posted
AHEAD Financial Education

The beginning of a new year is always a good time to revisit our budgets, credit and saving money any way we can.  AHEAD is fulfilling these much-needed services by offering virtual one-hour workshops.

In January they have 4 courses being offered virtually and FREE. Even better, they are making them available during the day as well as in the evening.  Their January schedule is as follows:

Creating a Home Office

  • By
  • Posted
Home Office

If you are one of the thousands of employees who are now working from home here are some suggestions in getting a home office space established. First off, you will need tools that boost efficiency, comfort, and pleasure to make any work-from-home assignment better. If you want to be productive and professional when working from home, you must create a home office that matches your aspirations. Here are the most important criteria for creating a home office that you will want to use. Follow these tips to save yourself time and remove the stress of having a poorly planned home office before you begin working from home full time.

Give An Attitude of Gratitude

  • By
  • Posted
Giving Tuesday
Giving Tuesday is a day of giving celebrated on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.  This global movement is fueled by the power of social media. It's a great time to consider giving to these organizations that provide services locally. 
 
It is our hope at Alpine Lakes Real Estate that as we enter this holiday season, you're able to find even the briefest moment of solace with loved ones whether it's at home, outdoors, or via Zoom. From our family to yours, Happy Holidays!
1-20 of 181 Posts