If rain arrives on moving day, there is no need to panic. In fact, there are many quick, easy ways to protect your belongings against rain and ensure that these items can reach your new home without delay.
Now, let's take a look at three tips to help you protect your belongings during a rainy moving day.
1. Park the Moving Truck Close to Your Home
Ideally, you'll want to limit the distance between the moving truck and your house. This will enable you to prevent large amounts of rain from drenching your personal belongings.
You also should try to keep your home's walkways clear on moving day. Because if you're forced to deal with lots of walkway clutter, and lots of rain, it may be tough to carry your belongings from your home to your moving truck.
2. Lay Towels or Blankets Down in Your Home
Let's face it – a rainy moving day likely will cause you and your entire moving day team to walk in and out of your home with wet, muddy shoes. Fortunately, if you lay down towels or blankets in advance, you can reduce the risk of making your floors messy on moving day.
Remember, when it comes to moving, it is always better to err on the side of cause. If you have plenty of towels and blankets at your disposal, you should have no trouble keeping your home's floors clean as you move your belongings into a moving truck.
Don't forget to have extra towels available for your moving team too. That way, all members of your moving team can dry themselves off as needed.
3. Cover Your Furniture
Excess rain can quickly cause substantial damage to chairs, couches and other furniture. Thus, you'll want to cover these items before you move them from your house to your moving truck.
In most instances, covering furniture with moving pads and bubble wrap will help protect your furniture against water damage. Also, you should always ensure that there are no leaks inside of your moving truck to further reduce the risk of property damage due to rain.
If you're uncomfortable moving all of your belongings in the rain, it may be better to postpone your moving day. This will enable you to let the rainy weather pass and resume your move when improved weather conditions arrive.
Furthermore, if you need extra help on moving day, you may want to hire a professional moving company. This business employs friendly, professionally trained moving specialists who know how to move items in any weather, at any time.
Of course, if you need help finding a moving company, you can always contact a real estate agent for assistance. In addition to helping you buy or sell a residence, a real estate agent can help you get in touch with the top moving companies in your area.
Take the guesswork out of a rainy moving day – use the aforementioned tips, and you can streamline the process of transporting your belongings to your new house.
Living with kids can be challenging for so many reasons. One of the biggest concerns that most parents have within their home besides keeping their home safe is keeping it neat and clean. Although it can seem like an impossible task, you can keep your house clean while your kids are still living in the house. Read on for some tips to a clean and organized house.
Get Rid Of What You Don’t Use
Too much stuff is one of the first problems in a messy home. You need to make a list of every space in your home. See which areas need improvement. Start in those spots to see how much more space you can make. Keep only the essentials. Everything else should be donated or tossed in the trash. If you have more space to get organized, the task of being neat will be even easier to achieve.
Everything Needs A Place
After you get rid of what you don’t use, clutter can still accumulate easily. If you don’t have a system in place to help your kids put things away, chaos will continue to ensue. How do you develop a sense or organization? Group things together. Electronics, batteries, and cords should go together. Different types of toys can have separate bins and containers. Keep blocks with other blocks and crayons with art supplies. Not only will things be more accessible to put away for your kids, but they’ll also be able to find item easier as well. Do you see that you still need a “junk drawer”? You can designate one spot in the house for miscellaneous things that either need a home or are in transition. Just don’t let this space be too big or get out of hand.
Have A Clean-Up Time In Place
Sometimes, clutter becomes a problem because we don’t make cleaning up a priority. Add cleaning up clutter to your list of what needs to be done on a daily basis. Just as you clean your dirty dishes up from the sink, you should take the time to put items back in their place. Are you a procrastinator? Make sure you keep the importance of cleaning up fresh in your mind. Keeping clutter at bay is a habit that needs to be developed by both you and your kids. As a parent, you can make a game or competition out of clean up time. This contest can help to motivate your kids to learn your organizational systems and keep them in place.
Keeping a neat house when you have kids isn’t as impossible as it seems when you attack the project from the right angle.
Applying for a mortgage may seem like a long, stressful process at first. Fortunately, we're here to help you take the guesswork out of submitting a mortgage application.
Now, let's take a look at three tips to help you streamline the mortgage application process.
1. Ask Questions
A bank or credit union likely will ask you to provide a wide range of information as part of the mortgage application cycle. And as you complete a mortgage application, you may have questions along the way too.
Remember, a lender is happy to help you in any way possible. If you ever have concerns or questions as you complete a mortgage application, you should reach out to a lender for expert support. That way, you can reduce the risk of potential problems down the line that otherwise could slow down the mortgage application process.
Even a single mistake on a mortgage application may prevent you from getting a mortgage. Perhaps even worse, a delayed mortgage application may force you to miss out on an opportunity to acquire your dream house. But if you reach out to a lender as you complete your mortgage application, you can gain the insights you need to quickly and effortlessly finalize the necessary documentation to obtain a mortgage.
2. Be Thorough
A mortgage application may require you to look back at your financial and employment histories and provide information that a lender will use to determine whether to approve or deny your submission. Meanwhile, you should be ready to provide a lender with any requested information to ensure a seamless application process.
As a homebuyer, it is your responsibility to include accurate information on your mortgage application. In fact, failure to do so may cause a lender to reject your mortgage application. If you allocate the necessary time and resources to dot every I and cross every T on your mortgage application, you can boost the likelihood of a fast approval.
3. Shop Around
For homebuyers, it is crucial to check out all of the mortgage options that are available. If you meet with a variety of banks and credit unions, you can review myriad mortgage options and select a mortgage that complements your finances.
Banks and credit unions generally provide a broad array of fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages. If you learn about all of the mortgage options at your disposal, you can find one that enables you to purchase your dream house without breaking your budget.
Of course, once you are approved for a mortgage and are ready to launch your house search, you may want to hire a real estate agent as well. A real estate agent will offer plenty of guidance at each stage of the homebuying journey. In addition, a real estate agent can make it easy for you to find a top-notch residence at a budget-friendly price in any housing market, at any time.
Start the mortgage application process today, and you can move one step closer to acquiring your dream residence.
If you want to take advantage of the market and to get a good deal on a foreclosure, apart from having sufficient cash, there are some few things you need to know before you complete the transaction. Before you get started, you should understand what foreclosure means. Succinctly, a foreclosure is a bank-owned property, often known as real estate owned (REO). For whatever reason, the actual owner stopped the payment of them, so the lender (e.g., Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc.) legally took ownership of the property. When a Foreclosure is a good deal When you intend to buy a foreclosure, here is how you know you are in for a great deal:
1. “I love it” - This is what you will say after you have viewed the property, driven around the neighborhood and carefully checked the property fundamentals. You love the home because it is almost what you were aspiring for in becoming a rental property owner or new home.
2. “ I plan to own it for a long time” - This will be your reply when asked. Regardless of how good a deal you think you are getting, the primary point when it comes to ownership is a minimum of five years. If you don’t intend to own the property for that long, it is best you remain a renter. Remember, the three most vital words in real estate are “Long-term ownership."
3. “It is in good shape” - This is what you will say when your family members and friends ask you about the physical state of the property. A vast majority of buyers do not know how much a property renovation will cost. Here is the reality, repair is expensive and could take a very long time beyond your imagination, so make sure the contractors purchase the fixer-uppers.
4. “ The price is similar to recent sales in the neighborhood” - This is what you will notice when you conduct a comparable market analysis of properties nearby.
Confirm Your Suspicions
To further help you confirm that you are about to make good foreclosure deal, you need to compare mortgage rates, get contractor estimates, and check at least eight other properties so you will be sure what the market has to offer. Following these steps will reduce any risk and ensure the foreclosure you bought was indeed a “great deal.”
To get the best deals and avoid buyers remorse, talk to your real estate agent about the local area and any insider information.
During a location search for a new home, you may have come across the term “live-work” in the descriptions of potential living spaces, even when those spaces differ widely from one another. While many buildings market themselves as live-work, the definition for just what that means can vary from building to building.
Some examples of such buildings include:
- A building that is primarily residential but has no restrictions on working from home. This might be any type of residential building or neighborhood including condominiums, townhouses, flats and single-family dwellings.
- Or, it might be a storefront that allows for walk-in customers or clients, and public parking access, with an adjacent living space above or in the rear of the property. These live-work spaces more commonly resemble historic family-run markets or bodegas.
- Other live-work spaces are zoned for more hazardous or commercial activity. These can include artists’ lofts, recording studios, and other creative spaces.
- Some locations are part of urban renewal or gentrification efforts to make residential use of a former industrial area. Allowing residents and businesses to co-exist in such facilities can bring a vibrant vibe to a formerly decaying area. Living spaces surround joint workspaces and common areas.Each different type of live-work housing opportunity has different zoning and residential restrictions and regulations and may or may not have access to residential services such as nearby schools, parks, libraries or grocery stores.
Why choose a live-work space?
Originally made popular by artists’ communities, the live-work concept gave creative people a place to work, with a built-in support community. Some urban areas even have protective zones for artists that impose conditions and restrictions meant to keep the housing affordable for the artist community.Another group to which the live-work concept appeals are entrepreneurs looking for incubators for brainstorming. The concept is that living close to their workspace doesn’t interrupt the flow of ideas that could contribute to their next start-up.
Finally, employees that telecommute or work virtually often look for properties with access to commercial high-speed Internet not available in regular residential area. Because they spend their days working alone, having other telecommuters nearby to gather and share life with keeps them encouraged and connected to a community.
Some live-work residents like being near to other entrepreneurs whose services and products are complementary to facilitate collaboration on mutual projects.
Will it work for you?
Live-work spaces in warehouse conversions and lofts may be near functioning factories, railroad tracks or other noisy industries. Some people thrive on the noise and energy of an active area or busy shared spaces. Others like to step out their doorway to automatic social opportunities. If your needs include quiet space or low levels of background noise, however, this type of live-work space may not be for you.
Before you dive in, spend time meeting your potential neighbors, to get a feel for living and working there.
