Where do Plano home sales go from here

The data for the MLS area of Plano is mixed at best.  New home sales for the month of July were 250 units which was of by 26% from a year earlier.  Dollar volume was also off 25%.  Average price for homes was $267,795 which was up 1% from a year earlier.  And the median price was $240,000 which was 8% higher.

Year to date data is more encouraging but we need to be careful about a trend reversal.  Sales year to date were 1613 which was down only 4% and the dollar volume followed suit.  Average price was unchanged at $263,209 and the median price was up 2% at $220,000.

August and September numbers will tell us more but the market has a somewhat soft feel to it.  I do think we will see better numbers in September and through the rest of the year.

                                                   July                                            Year to Date
Sales                                          250                                                    1613
Pending Sales                              224                                                    1850
Average Price                        $260,242                                            $256,246
Average Days on Market             71                                                        77
Total Single Family inventory    1453

Tips on keeping homes in Plano, Frisco and Allen more Eco-Friendly

I saw this in Rismedia over the weekend

 

Easy Ways to Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly

By Paige Tepping

RISMEDIA, August 14, 2010--Homeowners across the country are continually striving toward a more eco-friendly lifestyle. While homeowners may not know where to start, there are small steps that can be taken that can add up to make a big difference.

The experts at OurGreenerLife.com offer the following tips to help you lessen your eco footprint.

1. Use less water
Saving water is all about small steps. Here are a few simple ways that will help you conserve water while saving money.
-Shut off the water while you brush your teeth
-Take showers that are a minute or two shorter
-Only run full loads of laundry and dishes
-Buy from sustainable producers. These are farmers, ranchers and other producers that use techniques that pollute less and use less water. You can do some research online or ask at your local organic market to find these products.

2. Use less energy
If you don’t have the money to buy a hybrid car or convert your house to solar power, you can make a big difference with the following small changes.
-Buy energy efficient appliances. They may be more expensive, but make up for the increased cost in lower energy bills.
-Unplug chargers when you’re not using them. Cell phone and other chargers use up power even if there’s nothing attached to them.
-Put devices with remotes, like TVs, VCRs and stereos on a power strip and turn the power strip off when you’re not using the devices. These gadgets use a lot of power to run the remote receiver even when the device is off.
-Walk or ride your bicycle for short trips.
-Buy local products. It takes energy to transport food and other products across the country. Buying local not only supports your local economy, it helps them use less energy.
-When it comes to saving energy and water, it’s a great idea to get the kids involved—you can even make it a game. Have them track how much water and electricity everyone is using and compete to see who uses the least.

3. Reuse
Most of us know the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle, but when we work on conserving, we often leave reuse out of the picture. While you can often find tips on how to reuse common products from other people, what you need most is creativity. With a little thought, there are many items around your home that can be reused—toilet paper holders can be used to sow seeds for the vegetable patch, old yogurt containers can be cut into strips to make plant labels and old food jars can be refilled with homemade foods or can make great impromptu vases.

4. Use environmentally friendly products
When you go to the grocery store, you probably see more and more ‘natural’ or ‘eco friendly’ products every time. There are generally two big problems with these products: Just because they’re more natural than regular products, doesn’t mean they’re entirely natural and they’re often expensive.

If you want inexpensive, natural, safe products, why not just make them yourself? Vinegar is a great way to clean and disinfect glass and other surfaces. Need to remove stubborn stains? Just add some baking soda to your vinegar cleaner. Some quick searching online will lead you to hundreds of other natural safe home-made cleaning products.

Dallas Area home sales continue to show improvement

This was released by the Texas Association of Realtors today.

Sales volume of Texas homes up for third quarter in a row

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According to the latest Texas Quarterly Housing Report, covering second quarter 2010, the volume of real estate sales in Texas increased for the third quarter in a row, possibly spurred by renewed job growth in the state and the expiration of federal homebuyer tax credits.

The Texas Quarterly Housing Report is issued four times a year by the Texas Association of REALTORS® with multiple listing service (MLS) data compiled and analyzed by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.

For the period of April through June 2010, sales of existing single-family homes increased 14% to 66,079 compared to the same quarter of the prior year. Over the same time period, the median price of homes in Texas remained virtually unchanged at $149,200. The months of inventory of Texas homes – a statistic that indicates the balance between supply and demand for homes – increased slightly from 7.3 months in 2009-Q2 to 7.4 in 2010-Q2.

Bill Jones, chairman of the Texas Association of REALTORS®, commented on the positive results. ”We’re encouraged to see continued strength in Texas’ real estate market as 2010 marches forward,” says Jones. “We’re now focused on maintaining that strength and expanding access to affordable, sustainable homeownership in Texas.”

To do so, the Texas Association of REALTORS® launched TxHomePrograms.org, a searchable online database of homebuyer assistance programs. In addition, Texas REALTORS®are partnering with local lenders, housing counselors, and others throughout the state to host educational events for consumers about affordable housing.

Jim Gaines, Ph.D., an economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, says the robust second-quarter numbers were “spurred by particularly heavy volume in April and May. However, the federal tax credits for homebuyers expired on April 30 and sales volume decreased between May and June. It’s possible the tax credit deadline inspired buyers to move up purchasing decisions, so we may have seen our usual ‘summer peak’ in sales volume a little early this year.”

Clean your drains the easy way

Have you ever needed to get under the sink to clean out a clogged or odorous p-trap?  I sure have and frankly it is not a fun job.


I saw this device on the morning show and I will be ordering one for every sink in our house.  CHECK THIS OUT!

To see this in action watch the video below.

North Texas Home Prices Rise - Plano, Allen, Frisco and McKinney all show increases

Dallas-area home prices rise 2.9% in new report

09:43 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 27, 2010

By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
Dallas-area home prices continued to post modest gains in the latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

Also Online

Foreclosures map:

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Map: Dallas-area pre-owned home sales and prices

Map: U.S. home prices

Link: Making Home Affordable

Dallas had a 2.9 percent rise in prices in May from a year earlier in the new report released Tuesday.
While a solid increase, the Dallas-area increase in prices is less than the overall 4.6 percent average price rise recorded in the 20 cities Case-Shiller tracks.
But the national average is skewed by recent big price increases in some California markets that have seen dramatic drops in recent years.
San Francisco home prices rose by more than 18 percent in May from a year earlier. And prices were up 12.4 percent in San Diego and 9.7 percent in the Lo Angeles area.
Seven of the cities Case-Shiller tracks are still showing year-over-year declines. The largest price decreases were in Las Vegas, down 6.5 percent, and Charlotte, N.C., down 2.8 percent.
Case-Shiller analysts remain cautious.
“While May’s report on it’s own looks somewhat positive, a broader look at home price levels over the past year still do not indicate that the housing market is in any form of a sustained recovery,” S&P’s David Blitzer said in the report. “It still looks possible that the housing market might bounce along the bottom for the foreseeable future, before showing any real improvement that will filter through to the rest of the economy.”
May was the seventh consecutive month of year-over-year Dallas-area home price increase in the Case-Shiller index.
Local prices are still about 5 percent below where they were at the peak of the market in June 2007. But prices here have rebound by more than 6 percent from February 2009.
To measure prices, Case-Shiller looks at the actual value of specific single-family homes over time. The index does not include condominiums and townhouses. It only covers pre-owned properties – no new construction.
The latest home price data based on North Texas home sales shows that pre-owned home prices are up about 2 percent from the first six months of 2009.

S&P CASE-SHILLER HOME PRICE INDEX

Percentage change in home prices in May 2010 compared to year earlier in each market.
Atlanta	+1.7%
Boston	+4.8%
Charlotte	-2.8%
Chicago	-1.5%
Cleveland	+3.7%
Dallas	+2.9%
Denver	+3.6%
Detroit	-2.5%
Las Vegas	-6.5%
Los Angeles	+9.7%
Miami	+1.2%
Minneapolis	+11.6%
New York	-0.4%
Phoenix	+7.2%
Portland	-0.7%
San Diego	+12.4%
San Francisco	+18.3%
Seattle	-1.4%
Tampa	-1.5%
Washington	+7.4%
Composite-20 city	+4.6%
SOURCE: Standard & Poor's

Tips on Saving Money in your Plano home

I found this on Lifehacker.  It has some good tips.  You can find a larger view at the quicken blog.

You've heard a few of these household tips, here and elsewhere—install a programmable thermostat, switch to fluorescent, stop energy vampires. Visualized and tabulated for yearly savings, though, those small changes seem much more appealing.
Quicken's personal finance blog has a big-view graphic up that illustrates the monthly and yearly savings of all the small changes you can make for yourself, your wallet, and the planet. Take a gander at a larger view here, and click for an even larger image at Quicken's blog:

Clean your grill and keep it in top condition

Got this today from Lowes.

There is much debate as to which type of grill cooks better: Charcoal or gas. But one thing they have in common is how easy they are to clean. To maintain a gas or a charcoal grill all you need is a rag, a wire brush and some cooking oil.

Routine Maintenance
Routine brushing of the grates prevents food and bacterial buildup. A brass wire brush is best for clearing and cleaning off surfaces. After each use, wash and soak your brush in hot soapy water. Then hang dry it with the brush upside down on a grill hanger. Drying the brush naturally ensures the bristles will last a long time. After your brush is dry, keep it indoors to reduce weather exposure to the bristles.

After you've brushed down your grill and the grates are at a cool temperature, spray it down with some cooking oil. This prevents your grill from rusting and ensures a long life. If you don't have cooking spray, another option is to pour some oil on your rag and wipe down the cast iron grates.

Cleaning the burners is also important as burners can accumulate grease and food, leading to uneven temperatures along your surface. After the burners have cooled, scrub with a wire brush evenly and clean around the ports to ensure food and grease have not amassed.

Cleaning out grease traps is important because grease is highly flammable and can cause a fire or heat up all surfaces, including the handles.

For charcoal grills, it's important to dump all used charcoal or ash after each use. After dumping out the remains, clean the insides with a wire brush. Ash catchers also need to be cleaned. By keeping the bed of your grill clean, you'll cut down on excess smoke and bad flavors.

Semi-Annual Cleaning
Several times throughout the year, it's smart to dismantle your grill and give it an extensive cleaning. If you have a gas grill, disconnect the propane tank before beginning the process. Then, soak the grates in soapy water and scrub. If the racks are especially dirty, you can use a steel wool pad. After cleaning your grill, turn it on and let it cook for 10 minutes. This will allow any residual cleaning supplies to burn off.

It's also a good idea to check the chassis for rust. Rust easily comes off with a stiff wire brush or a steel wool pad. The joints, connectors and fasteners should also be inspected to ensure they aren't corroding. And re-tightening fasteners, replacing grill appendages (wheels, knobs and handles) and checking hinges is a good idea.

Polishing Your Grill
To polish your grill, sprinkle some baking soda on a sponge and clean off all exterior surfaces. Aluminum foil gently rubbed along your grill can help remove grime and buildup. If you notice any missing paint, grill-safe paint is a good option.