Last weekend my wife entered a cake contest at our local church.  She asked me to help her make it the night before, and so I know some of the ingredients, but not all.  Most are in her head, as she has such a culinary background that she can walk through a cooking or baking project without a recipe throwing in ingredients completely from scratch and create a masterpiece.  This one was entirely organic, and it included graded apples (personally labored over my me) and organic flour, cocoa, cane sugar and the glaze was a mixture of agave necture, cocoa and sprinkles of coconut.  There were also some crushed brazil nuts, and macadamian nuts in and outside of this wonderful creation.  There were other ingredients she used after I left the kitchen, so I cannot tell the whole tale here. She ... 03/26/2011

I was driving down a road in a rural area today and I took this photo of the rolling fence line along the road.  I thought it portrayed an interesting look for an early spring view of a Southwest Michigan Country road. As you can see there are leaves on the ground from last fall, somewhat preserved after months of being buried under snow. You can also see the trees are still in their winter slumber.  This road is filled with typical Southwest Michigan country road potholes which our auto mechanics and tire salesmen simply love. This photo was taken while there was a light rainfall, and the water offered a unique definition to the patchy asphalt.  Despite the imperfections of the Calhoun County road commission, I thought this looked like a well balanced photo for blogging this evening. 03/23/2011

When a new investor is looking to acquire their first investment home, what should be their first step?  If you look online, you find all manner of investment property gurus that proclaim various methods on how to buy cheap, and get a place rented, etc.  I have learned over the years that buying cheap is not always good, and it should not be the first consideration in buying your first rental home.  So where do you begin with investment properties?  The first step I instruct new investors to do is to do research.  Research would include looking into the demographics of an area you seek to invest in.  Go ask questions of other landlords.  When I bought my first rental, I called the rental property owners association in my city and asked a lot of questions.  Three key questions I asked we... 03/22/2011

As a piece of home decor, an Aunt of my wife's in Colombia sews these really fun kitchen geese that you can use for storage of towels, rags, bags, etc. in the kitchen.  They make for a fun conversation piece, and we always get comments from guest on it.  We do not keep our goose too high a profile, but more tucked away in a utilitarian use holding plastic bags near the back door.  I thought this was so unusual and realized that it is not a terribly common piece of decor in a home, so I took a photo of it recently and present it here.  As a Realtor I have seen a lot of creative things in peoples kitchen, but somehow this goose is light and humorous in its own right.  I have never come across anything similar to it here in the USA as of yet. I hope you enjoy it as my unusual Sunday photo!   03/20/2011

French toast is one of my favorite breakfast meals of all time.  The origin of French toast goes very far back in history.  It was created by medieval European cooks who needed to use every bit of food they could find to feed their families. They knew old, stale bread (French term "pain perdu" literally means "lost bread") could be revived when moistened and heated. Cooks over time have added eggs for additional moisture and protein.  It evolved into one of the most favorite morning dishes for breakfast through time. A picture below shows a batch of original French toast that my wife made a while back from some stale French bread we had to hand.  It was not only moist, and delicious, but so incredible that I decided at the time to take a photo of it when she was not looking.  (I had to ... 03/20/2011

With a foreclosure, what happens after your offer is accepted?  What should be your most immediate action?  This is where the guidance of an experienced Realtor can be quite helpful.  After one has gone through the negotiating process, and the seller who is usually a bank or mortgage company accepts you most recent coounter offer, there is one important thing to do: Wait.  Hold them cards partner...  you might be holding some of those aces, but you don't have all of them... Once an offer is accepted, final documents still need to be signed by all parties.  Usually the way it goes is your original offer was submitted in writing, and then the bank responded with an email to your Realtor with a counter offer.  You responded with a counter offer, or accepted it, and a message was sent back.... 03/20/2011

Living in Battle Creek, Michigan and working in the community as a Realtor has me in a position to help many people become homeowners right here in town.  When one begins to look for a home, it is important to narrow down the details of what they want to look at.  Otherwise, one could spend their time looking at homes that do not appeal to needs or interests.  "What type of Battle Creek home do you want to buy?" is usually one of my early questions to new clients.  Narrowing down the criteria they want is important to narrowing the search.  How many bedrooms to they want or need?  Do they need a garage?  Do they need a basement?  Do they need a large yard?  Does it have to be fenced in?  Are they looking to be in a certain school district?  Or perhaps a certain part of town?  In short, ... 03/20/2011

As a Realtor, I have had a website for almost four years now.  I host mine through a company that allows me to change and upgrade my website whenever I choose.  Over this time, I have learned a lot about web page design from just jumping in and learning.  I made some mistakes along the way, as with any new field, but at the same time I have been able to evolve my website into something that is uniquely my own.  I have written articles, included links to my other social media sites, and added a RSS feed to one of my local blogs, as well as many other features.  It is really quite fun, but time consuming, so I tend to only work on upgrades about one weekend out of every quarter or so.  I will devote a day on a weekend and just create away and upgrade the look, or add new material, etc.  H... 03/15/2011

With regards to homeowners insurance, it might be helpful to know what the insurance inspector is looking for.  Having been an insurance inspector myself, I can offer some insight.  There are several things the underwriter of an insurance policy wants to know about a property, and they send out an inspector to be the eyes and ears for the company.  Some of the basic location issues they want to know about are how close the home is to a fire hydrant.  If it is over 1000 feet, they may charge a higher premium.  They also want to know how close the home is to a fire department.  If it is over 5 or 6 miles, depending on the guidelines of the insurance company, they may charge higher fees for that as well.  Unless it is an interior inspection, most insurance inspections are done from the ext... 03/12/2011

When buying a home there are some common mistakes to avoid.  I put together a video on this the other day to help prospective buyers on this.  The first ‘common mistake to avoid when buying a home' that I cover is the mistake I see new first time home buyers make once they are pre-approved for a loan.  They get pre-approved for up to a certain dollar amount by a lender for an FHA program for example.  Let's assume they are approved for up to $75,000, which is a moderate priced home in the Battle Creek market where I am a Realtor.  Then, once approved, they go to their Realtor and tell them that they want to look at low priced homes at $25K to $30K because they want their mortgage payments to be as low as possible.  Not having consulted with their lender as to whether the same FHA loan c... 03/12/2011

When I work with new investors seeking to acquire rental property, it sometimes takes them a chain of failures and lost deals to learn that low ball offers on foreclosures get rejected.  Many starting out on the process seemed to universally follow a rumor line forwarded by uninformed individuals that suggest screaming low offers as a successful action.  The fact is that most of the foreclosures today are well researched in the market area by the seller, and are extremely discounted in order to sell them quickly.  So you take a misinformed new investor and he or she sees a home listed for sale at $35,000 in a neighborhood where the fair market value is $60,000 to $70,000 and they take the wrong advice and offer $10,000 in hopes to get consideration by the seller.  What generally happens... 03/12/2011

The last several years around the holidays, my wife and I started our own tradition.  Every Christmas, we make sure one of us gives the other a puzzle.  Then we spend our evenings during the week between Christmas and New Year's putting the puzzle together.  Every year it becomes more challenging, as we seem to get harder and harder puzzles to tackle.  That week between Christmas and New Years tends to be more of a family time, and so we have found that puzzles are a fun way to enjoy some creative time.  When I was a child, my father used to select a new puzzle every year and we would create it as a family in the evenings together. As I was going through some photos tonight on my computer, I came across one from this past holiday season that I failed to post.  You can see that we placed... 03/08/2011

Selling a home online is a new direction everyone with social media skills is trying to accomplish in my business.  However, I recently had some great success with selling a home online in Battle Creek, Michigan.  I had a listing that I needed to sell.  It was tied in with a contingency offer on another home being purchased.  My hope was to sell this one quickly, or I would stand to lose both deals.  So I had to cull all of my knowledge, and make a solid effort to market the home for my seller at full speed in the new age of social media.  I knew that blogging about the home would be important, but blogging alone would not be enough.  I needed to cross the line on the personal learning curve of making my own videos and posting them on YouTube.  After I did a crash course on YouTube itse... 03/08/2011

Sometimes when I am showing an old home, I stop to admire the old lighting that I find.  Perhaps it is because I once owned an stained glass business in Atlanta many years ago, and one of the things we sold was lighting. I found this exterior light still intact on an old two story victorian home here in Battle Creek that was a foreclosure.  The building was deteriorated and chopped up in several areas due to 'modernization' by former owners over the years, but somehow this lamp survived.  It has a few dings, but it is mostly intact.  I thought it was pretty cool, and knowing a little about how these things are made, I consider it a really nice one.  03/08/2011

Here is a photograph of a flag I took that was flying over an auto dealership here in Battle Creek, Michigan.  I love seeing a massive American flag flying in the breeze.  This one was easily about four car lengths long, and probably three high if you do a little comparison using the cars at the bottom.  It is a huge flag, and as simple a gesture as it is, I am sure it attracts a lot of attention to the dealership.  One cannot drive past there constantly and not fail to notice this flag.  I remember as a boy when I would volunteer for flag duty, and we had cotton flags back then, and they had to be raised and lowered every morning and at dusk.  Now we have all-weather flags, and no one seems to bother ever lowering them, which I suppose is a good thing in one aspect, as it is always the... 03/08/2011

I work with a lot of first time home buyers, and often there is strong interest in looking at rural homes.  Sometimes I survey them and discover that many have never lived in a rural setting, but have the general idea that it is something like they saw in the 'Sound of Music' or 'Heidi' as a kid, and want to experience the solitude of open spaces.  Although there is a lot of truth to this, and rural settings offer a lot of privacy and a quiet setting, there are also som realities that buyers should know about.  There are distinct advantages, and disadvantages to rural homes.  Being familiar with them is important to making the right decision if that is right for you.  There are sometimes additonal expenses with rural homes that buyers do not factor in, and if they do not, then they find... 03/08/2011

As most any Realtor can tell you, we often get calls from prospective buyers who want to see a house or go looking at houses before they are approved for a loan.  I do not mind showing houses to people, and often make it my business to accomodate everyones request to see a home, regardless of pre-approval.  However, buyers should realize that it is an important first step in house shopping to get pre-approved before they go out looking.  There are many reasons for this.  There are many different aspects to loan programs, and depending on the program you are approved for or select, it can have an impact on what type of house you purchase.  I put together the following video for first time home buyers on this subject, especially directed at buyers looking for homes in the Southwest Michig... 03/06/2011

I have sold many foreclosures in my market area of Battle Creek Michigan in the past several years.  There are some common myths or ‘misconceptions' new home buyers seem to have about the process of buying such a home.  There tends to be a rumor line riddled with some false information that circulates around about foreclosures in general, and although at one time some of these myths may have been true at one time many, many years ago, they are not the case in present day.  I put together a video recently covering some common ones I have run into.  I am certain if you posed the questions to other Realtors all over the country, there would be more to add to the list. Here are seven common ones I have encountered: 1) Myth: A bank will accept a verbal offer. "Just tell them I will offer $X ... 02/28/2011

I came across this sign while looking at a house for a client.  The homeowners have seven acres close just a little North of downtown Battle Creek, and they of course have a hen house where they sell eggs.  I unfortunately did not have time to inquire if I could buy some eggs when I visited, as I was pressed for time.  However, my wife has her connections locally with another chicken farmer and we have fresh eggs all the time.  There is a distinctive difference between the fresh organic eggs from a local farm, and the processed ones you buy in the store.  So for all those that have enjoyed fresh eggs from a local farm, this picture if for you! 02/28/2011

If you are interested in buying a foreclosed home in the Battle Creek area, there are certain points about the negotiating process you should become familiar with.  Despite the importance of being organized, as I have stressed in my other blog posts, such as this one on 'Basic Steps to Buying a Foreclosure'. It is also vital to understand the behind the scenes process that a bank or mortgage company goes through before the house is listed for sale.  Banks and mortgage companies, the large ones like Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo typically hire a third party Service Company called an ‘asset management company' to oversee the sale of the property.  The asset management company hires a local Realtor to serve as the listing agent, and the property is placed on the market for sale.  ... 02/27/2011