Here’s a good summary of how your phone can help manage your home!
The world is changing drastically before our eyes, especially when it comes to technology. Remember the days of flip phones? Not only do we have cameras and videos now, but we have thousands of apps in the palm of our hands to basically do anything for us – deliver food, order a car, book a hotel, you name it, you can do it!
Home appliances and furniture are now becoming “smart.” I won’t be surprised when all homes have smart features. Here are a few to update your home into a “smart home.”
1. Smart Refrigerator
Samsung has come out with a refrigerator that has what every mother needs! Their family hub refrigerators include a touch screen that shows everyone’s schedule for the week, leave notes, order groceries, and it even plays music!
Ikea is one of the first to come out with this but I’m sure many furniture companies will follow their lead. A lot of people don’t like a bunch of wires showing, so this is a great solution – a nightstand that charges your phone wirelessly.
Jenn-Air has a double wall oven that connects to Amazon’s Alexa AND Nest. With Alexa, the chef can make commands to preheat, turn on/off, etc. without touching the buttons with dirty fingers. With Nest, the oven senses the rise in room temperature when cooking food so it brings the temperature down to make being in the kitchen more desirable.
Locked yourself out? Baldwin Hardware has solved the problem! Your smart phone becomes your key. All you need to do is approach your door, tap a finger under the keyhole, and the door locks/unlocks. You can also provide family members and friends with an “e-key” so they can have access as well! Then you are able to keep track who comes in and out of your house, with time stamps! (Perfect for high schoolers!)
Kids are home alone and the doorbell rings. Sometimes it can be a little scary even for young women! With Ring, you can see who is at the door with your smartphone! It has night vision too!
Smart building materials. Roof shingles will notify you when there is a leak, drywall that detects moisture, and wood framing that will report termite infestation. John Galante, president of AE Ventures, says this is what we will be seeing in the next decade or so!
Eddie89 has been one of my all-time favorite contributors here at the blog, having left dozens of comments over the last three years – thank you for your insights! I appreciate the testimonial too, and publish it below to give Kayla and Donna their due props!
Since Zillow only allows me to write 1 review per real estate transaction, per team of agents we worked with, this is going to be a super long review.
Review on Jim Klinge: Jim Klinge is the quintessential real estate agent, the “broker’s broker” of real estate agents. My husband and I reached out to Jim for the purchase of our first home in North San Diego County. We emailed him on a Saturday night, received an email reply that same night and we were hitting open houses Sunday morning!
We also had a list of potential houses we were thinking about purchasing and Jim was able to expertly go through that list and eliminate the turkeys so that we wouldn’t be wasting our time and money. Due to the very competitive San Diego market, we were outbid on several of the houses we did like, before we finally hit pay dirt and found a home in excellent condition and more importantly, in an excellent location!
We highly recommend Jim Klinge to help you buy or sell your home!
Review on Kayla Klinge: We had the pleasure of working with Kayla through her dad, Jim Klinge. Kayla attended all of the home showings and helped dig up the details on each of the homes we were thinking of buying. Even though we were not looking at million dollar listings, Kayla made us feel like “million dollar” clients and her thoughtfulness and professionalism were instrumental in helping us choose the right home in the right location. She’s definitely going to be a superstar in the real estate industry!
Review on Donna Klinge: In a world where we’re seemingly surrounded by mediocrity, it was such a pleasure and refreshing change of pace to deal with a consummate professional like Donna Klinge!
After purchasing our first home in North San Diego County, Donna took full ownership of helping my husband and I navigate the gauntlet of paperwork we had to fill out with escrow and then deal with all the myriad contractors and inspectors to help get our new house fixed up. She was also instrumental in putting together the repairs estimate based on the findings of the home inspector, which resulted in the sellers reducing the sales price to help us with repairs.
We couldn’t have asked for a better team to help us purchase our first home in North San Diego County.
In the future, will there be affluent millennials that will be ready, willing, and able to pay more than today’s prices? Maybe there is comfort knowing that 1/3 of millennials aren’t living paycheck to paycheck today?
With the median San Diego home price recently having exceeded its prior bubble peak, there is some concern that the housing market may be entering bubble territory again. But while San Diego’s housing market is certainly hot, and its home prices a good deal more expensive than usual, it’s hard to make the case that this is a genuine bubble.
A bubble is more than just a market that’s become pricey. Investment bubbles are characterized by extremes in two areas:
• Valuation: Prices become exceptionally high compared with the economic factors that have typically driven pricing in the past. Often, prices and valuations will experience very rapid increases.
• Psychology: Investors are optimistic to the point of euphoria. They are dismissive of risks (and skeptics who raise them), and seem to fear only missing out on further gains.
San Diego housing in the mid-2000s was an absolutely classic bubble. From 2001 through 2005, local home prices increased 63 percent faster than incomes and rents. At their peak, home valuations reached 73 percent above the historic norm; the highest it had gone previously was 12 percent above normal, and that had led to a six-year downturn. By mid-bubble, prices — already totally unhinged from their fundamentals — were growing at a blistering pace, as much as 33 percent in a single year.
As for the sentiment … I was a housing skeptic on these pages, so I could go on at length. Suffice it to say that one reader informed me that by not buying a house, I was dooming myself and all my descendants to be part of a new permanent underclass of non-homeowners. That was one of the nicer comments.
The author doesn’t mention that the investor-bought homes will be resold, giving realtors ample opportunity to sell a renovated home….for higher commissions. If you ever hear me leading any national effort as a 50-year real estate veteran, stick a fork in me.
INSTANT OFFERS is a new program by Zillow that leverages the credibility of Zillow to help sophisticated investors buy homes from unsuspecting consumers at thousands below market value.
For years, Realtors and consumers have tolerated inaccurate Zillow “zestimates.”This was Zillow’s entry into the actual real estate business and should have been stopped cold at the time. These online valuations (no one sees the home) consistently mislead consumers about home values, making it harder for Realtors to help buyers and sellers make good decisions.
Now Zillow’s “Instant Offers” encourages unknowledgeable home sellers to sell directly to profit-driven investors at below market value. This program mesmerizes home sellers into acting without consulting a Realtor, attorney or appraiser.
Instant Offers is a costly, misleading program for the public and a stab in the back to Realtors who fund Zillow. It’s a lose-lose program for everyone (except greedy investors). It reduces home seller equity while diminishing Realtor income.
It’s time to draw a line in the sand. Years ago when Zillow introduced “zestimates” NAR should have demanded that Zillow stay out of brokerage services or risk losing MLS IDX feeds and Realtor advertising.
Now Instant Offers is a clear intrusion by Zillow into real estate brokerage, a move that needs to be stopped before it gains traction.
The StopZillow.com petition website and Stop Zillow LinkedIn Group were formed by real estate attorney, Huffington Post writer and 50-year real estate veteran Greg Hague to insist NAR keep Zillow out of brokerage to protect Realtors and the public.
The first petition is simple and clear: warn Zillow to discontinue Instant Offers or risk losing the MLS IDX listing feeds and Realtor advertising.
Read the petition to NAR. If you agree, please sign online. That’s it.
Your information will not be shared or used for any other purpose.
After signing the petition you will receive a weekly email update about the progress with NAR and Zillow.
The Pending Home-Sales Index dipped 3.3% last week, which helped to fuel more doomer talk (examples here and here).
People assume that if the stats don’t rise every year, then we have a problem. But doesn’t the number of homes for sale affect the outcome? If there are 9% fewer new listings nationally this year, then a 3.3% drop in the new pendings doesn’t sound bad.
But local is what matters – how did we do in May?
NSDCC May Sales and Pricing
Year
# of May Sales
Median SP
Avg $$/sf
Avg DOM
# of Listings 1/1-5/31
2013
362
$943,500
$416/sf
42
2,312
2014
269
$950,000
$465/sf
41
2,243
2015
297
$1,125,000
$492/sf
47
2,333
2016
334
$1,216,250
$498/sf
41
2,477
2017
334
$1,222,500
$517/sf
34
2,265
We had a year-over-year 9% drop in new listings over the first five months of 2017, yet May sales were 10% higher (and late-reporters will add more).
They are selling fast too. The median DOM (days-on-market) was 16 days, which was the same as 2013 when we were in full-tilt boogie mode. Almost half the houses sold are finding their buyer within the first two weeks!
To casual visitors, this colonial town in southern Ecuador looks like it was torn from the pages of history. With its cobbled streets, soaring cathedrals and bustling markets, it exudes a lazy, old world charm.
But Cuenca is also on the cutting edge of a very modern trend: providing a safe haven for U.S. retirees who have found themselves unwilling — or unable — to live out their golden years at home.
The growing wave of ex-pat seniors is not only upending notions about retirement in the hemisphere but reshaping the face of communities throughout the Americas. And the trend is expected to grow as waves of baby boomers exit the workforce ill-prepared for retirement.
There’s no accurate way to measure the phenomenon, but the Social Security Administration was sending payments to 380,000 retired U.S. workers living abroad in 2014 — up 50 percent from a decade ago.
In the Americas, records show that seniors are flocking to Canada, Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.
On a recent weekday, Susan and Michael Herron were having a long, lazy breakfast by the side of the Tomebamba River that cuts through the city. Both in their 70s, they have the lean look of people whose principal mode of transportation is walking — and a sense of adventure usually found in people half their age.
They had previously “retired” in Central Florida, Georgia, Alaska, South Carolina and Panama before finally settling on Ecuador — because it was beautiful and cheap.
“We could have survived [financially] in the United States if we had moved to a more rural area,” said Susan, 71, a semi-retired property manager. “But we wanted to take this chance while we were still healthy enough to be able to do it.”
In Cuenca, a city of about 350,000 people, they’ve found robust public transportation, an extensive museum network, solid healthcare and markets bursting with fresh fruits and produce. It’s a place where their two-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath apartment costs less than $400 a month. They’ve found that for about $1,500 a month, they can live a solidly upper-class lifestyle, dining out frequently and traveling.
“In the United States, we couldn’t afford to go anywhere,” Susan explained. “We were having to stay home.”
If there is a real driving force for retirees, it’s healthcare. Although the Trump administration has said it will leave Medicare untouched, its desire to scrap the Affordable Care Act amid rising premiums has created anxiety among seniors, said Prescher with International Living.
“Look at what retirees [in the U.S.] are facing,” he said. “They have a fixed income, maybe their investments haven’t been doing that well and now nobody knows what public healthcare will look like in the United States.”
“In the face of that … if you can live in a place where you can cut your cost of living in half while getting access to high quality healthcare, you have to think seriously about it,” he added.
James Skalski, a 74-year-old semi-retired architect and builder from Minneapolis, credits the city’s quality but quirky medical establishment for turning his life around. When he arrived here three years ago, he was 20 pounds overweight, had high blood pressure and was running from a family history of heart disease.
“In the United States, all they would do for you is give you drugs,” he said. Here, a holistic doctor worked with him for six months, using a regimen of nutrition, chelation therapy and meditation that Sakalski said reversed all that. Price tag: $1,600.
“Just last month, I had to go to the dentist for inflamed gums, and the dentist was using state-of-the-art X-ray equipment made in Germany,” he said. The X-ray, antibiotics and dentist visit ran him less than $30. He encouraged a friend to travel from Alaska for dental work. With flights and all, it was still cheaper.
“It was a real eye opener,” he said. “For a guy like me who’s not a millionaire, this all makes sense.”
Cuenca’s survey of retirees found that most were either paying for healthcare out-of-pocket or had private healthcare. But some are reliant on Ecuador’s public healthcare system. Foreigners only need to pay into the system for three months before they have access to full benefits.
Because Medicare doesn’t cover most costs abroad, the Herrons, for example, were paying $84 a month to belong to the public healthcare system. When Michael, a 76-year-old retired IT worker-turned-novelist, recently ended up in the emergency room for a cardiac issue, the total bill was $133. In the past, the same procedure in the United States had been billed to his insurance company at $186,000.
Crespo, the city official, said the retirees are pumping money into the economy, but there are growing concerns over how they might be affecting the healthcare system.
“We’ve heard about cases where someone night need brain or heart surgery that might cost $300,000 in the United States and they have the operation here for $300 because they had paid into the system for three months,” she said. “The price differences are abysmal.”
The Herrons say they’ve tried to isolate themselves from the U.S. political news by not having a television. And while they say they have no desire to return to the United States, they’re open to continuing their retirement adventure in some other country.
But for the moment, they’re still enjoying the little details of laid-back Latin American living.
“We keep pinching ourselves,” Susan said. “We can have a two hour lunch and not be rushed out of the restaurant.”
Samsung has come out with a refrigerator that has what every mother needs! Their family hub refrigerators include a touch screen that shows everyone’s schedule for the week, leave notes, order groceries, and it even plays music!
4. Smart Door Knob
