Rate A Home Blog

 Judy is the Executive Officer of The Grand Rapids Home Builders Association (HBA). I am proud to say that I have known Judy for well over 20 years.Judy has taught me many lessons in life on dealing with people and keeping it positive. A more positive person you will never meet. I have had the pl...

Check out this awesome photo posted on AOL. It came from a research project they were conducting about weasels.The photo of the wolverine was captured in the northern part of the Sierra Nevada range (Lake Tahoe area) in California by graduate student at Oregon State University, Katie Moriarty.The...

I just read a beautiful article in The Grand Rapids Press stating hundreds of college students from Calvin and Hope Colleges (2 local colleges) are foregoing their spring breaks to perform community service throughout the world.When they had a choice to enjoy a view similar to this. Party, releas...

Here's a game to take your mind off of work for a bit. The object is to locate the person featured in the photo's below. Plus it will help everyone get familiarized with the featured Active Rain Member. Use a second hand or timer before starting your search and post your time result in the commen...

The ThemThem Group is officially one month old today and boasting 445 members. Bravo to all of you, and a special thanks for helping the Group grow through your positive energy, along with your invites to others. There have been so many awesome posts to some well deserving people. Already, Moms, ...

As if Real Estate isn't struggling enough, I read an article today on the WSJ Online that states, banks and mortgage companies have a "Black List" (of course they don't refer to the list as that) circulating internally. The list includes, what they term as slow or soft markets that create a high ...

Do you really know what your looking for in your Dream Home, Condo or Rental search?  Don't do your home work up front and you may end up in the dog house.  One of the best first steps is putting together a Wish List of your needs. If you are working with a buyers agent, builder or leasing agent,...

I had two bills in the past month that were stamped with "Where's George". It was quite interesting when I visited the web site, entered the serial number and date to find out how far these bills had traveled.I added my home town to the Wheres George website and sent them off to their next destin...

Dreamaker: to search, provide valuable information, secure and present the Dream Home.Every Agent is a Dreamaker! Sure, the availability of information for buyers on the Internet seems like all the buyer would need these days.But in reality each of us can read up on surgeries, vehicle repairs, ro...

I can still remember when I was young and loved playing with my trucks. I would spend endless hours with neighborhood friends, building fake cities in the sand box. Hearing Mom call out my name when lunch was ready. Of course the lunch whistle hadn't blown on my construction site, but with enough...