Photo from desiretoinspire.

I once sold a house next to a cemetery.  The buyers loved it and liked that it would “be peaceful.”  However, other people might be a bit more jumpy about the idea of bodies resting in eternity in the ground outside your window. Every time the wind blows and rattles a window pane, every time the house settles causing a creak from upstairs could be quite unnerving.

At least that’s how perhaps Gita Bantwal’s buyers from Pennsylvania might have seen the homes she showed them,

 One of the houses was a luxury home. The wife was a doctor and the husband an engineer. Both of them loved the house. The wife,( the doctor) did not mind the location but the husband did not want to buy a house next to the cemetary. They are Asians. They believed in principles of Feng Shui.

There was another couple I worked with, where the wife actually liked the location because she said it would be quiet and she could even go for a walk there but the husband did not want to buy next to a cemetery . The price reflected the location and it was priced right. They paid much more and bought another house.

I wouldn’t mind having a home next to a cemetery, but it could sure make for a tough resell!

Buying a home right now is “a terrific deal,” according to billionaire Warren Buffet.  Not many people would disagree with the man, especially since he has proven he knows how to make money.

From NYC Apartment Agent,

“If I had a way of buying a couple hundred thousand single-family homes and had a way of managing — the management is really the problem because they’re one by one, they’re not like apartment houses — I would load up on them, and I would take out mortgages out at very, very low rates.

My personal desire is to be able to afford to pick up a few rental properties right now, but alas. I guess we’ll have to leave that to the Warren Buffets of the world.

As a kid, we often went camping.  The fanciest one we used was rented from the Air Force base where my dad was stationed.  It was a pop-up tent that slept about six people.  Dad would also put up a tent outside since we were a family of eight.  The boys camped in the tent and us spoiled girls got to sleep “indoors” in the camper.

Today’s campers are rolling houses. Some people do extraordinary things to make their rolling houses look like regular site-built, slab, and foundation houses (at least from the wheels up).  From thistinyhouse.com, the houses featured in the book Rolling Homes were all photographed near Eugene, Oregon.

Here’s a great photo,

This looks like something I could park in my back yard and use as an “escape” shack!  Love it!

Photo by enpundit.

Some cynical jokes about marriage say that men – instead of getting married – should just buy a house a and give it to her to avoid tI he heartache and headaches of the inevitable divorce. I do know plenty of people who have gone through or are currently in the middle of divorces.  But once the relationship ends and you’re ready to start dating again, what do women like?

According to CNN Money, women prefer dating men who own houses as opposed to renters.

Only 2% of women said they preferred to date a man who rents, while only 3% of men said they would choose a woman who rents over one that owns her home, according to the survey, which was conducted by Harris Interactive for real estate site Trulia.

Both sexes also clearly prefer it when there’s no roommate in the picture; 62% of survey respondents, men and women, prefer to date singles who live alone.

So between great interest rates and inexpensive homes add dating to the reason buyers should consider jumping into today’s housing market!

It takes a special kind of agent to work with people prowling for “deals” in the real estate market. I am not one of them. I want to work with clients who will offer a fair price – yes we can negotiate – but FAIR.  So when a client wants to low-ball every single offer, I say it’s time to find an agent who is willing to work with their lack of reality.

Amanda Christiansen from Ft. Wayne, Indiana had a similar experience but she nipped it in the bud,

Deb went on to tell me that her hairdresser got a great deal on a home a few years ago.  She said that she bought it for around 60% of list price.  Yeah, it was listed for $20,000 and she got it for $12,000.  It was also in the highest crime rate area in Fort Wayne, it was a HUD home, and it needed work.  

I told Deb that if she wanted to get a deal like that we needed to start looking in the same place her hairdresser lives.  I also told her that if she was going to take real estate advice from her hairdresser that she should start taking hair style advice from me, and that next time she needed her hair did to CALL ME!  I’ll do it!

What a perfect response!

Photo by Robert Nunnally.

Photo from The Black Workshop.

After yesterday’s pallet being used as a beautiful book shelf, take a look at this one transformed into a porch swing.

Photo by the Frugal Homemaker.

How many times do you see old pallets lying around destined for a landfill?  Look behind your local grocery, big box, or hardware store to find them.  While I believe you might need a big house – or at least a big wall – to make this work, but here’s a great use for an old throwaway pallet.  From Amanda Carver Designs,