The turkey may cost more, but Black Friday sales start at midnight (or earlier)
According to the Pew Research Center, older Americans are 47 times wealthier than young. Read the report for stunning figures, graphs, and statistics. With student loan debts reaching all-time highs coupled with a grim job market, one has to wonder how this all will impact real estate. Hopefully Obama’s recent executive orders will ease the burden on this population.
The cost for a classic Thanksgiving dinner including turkey, stuffing, cranberries, pumpkin pie and all the basic trimmings increased about 13 percent this year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Holiday creep: Walmart is joining the growing list of retailers starting Black Friday on Thanksgiving night. Wipe that pumpkin pie off your face, re-button your pants, and join the the hordes. And just in time: What’s on sale in November? TVs and DVDs, halloween costumes, outdoor furniture, and seasonal items like apples, potatoes and turkey.
Every year, Remodeling magazine looks at the hottest home upgrades and renovations and calculates just how much owners get back with they sell. Here are the 6 projects with the lowest return to owners.
Just when you’ve decided the Amazon’s Kindle Fire is the eBook Reader/Tablet for you, along comes a new Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble. Grr! Time also does a comparison of the two new gadgets.
Is the iPhone safer from hackers than Android? Pretty much.
The risk of identity theft looms large in today’s ever more digital world. MSN Money details which documents you should shred. Yahoo! Finance also maps out safe debit card use guidelines.
A round of deep thanks to all the members of our armed forces, both past and present, on this Veterans Day!
The President’s latest housing program, creative open houses, and murphy beds ?!
Researchers have found that relocating people out of poor neighborhoods can be as effective as drugs in reducing their chances of becoming overweight and developing diabetes.
The federal government’s expansion of a mortgage refinancing program could reduce the monthly payments of up to one million homeowners, but analysts said the modest scope of the plan means it will probably do little to heal the housing market or help the broader economy.
Competition for qualified buyers is fierce. So agents are staging mini-circuses, serving free drinks, offering massages and raffling off Botox treatments to draw guests to open houses. Are you employing new, creative means to get clients to open houses?
There are apps for everything these days. The latest trend is apps that let you rent out your stuff – bikes, cars, rooms and even (yuck) your toilet.
We here in Information Central we always enjoy a good research report. The New York Times summarizes the Congressional Budget Office’s October 2011 report Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007.
If you thought the much-mocked murphy bed went away sometime around the end of “I Love Lucy”, think again. The Wall Street Journal reports on a resurgence of interest in this space saver.
Did you know that the punctuation mark expressing surprise and shock “?!” has a name? It’s called the Interrobang (what a bad name) and was coined in the early 1960s. For a while it was so popular that Remington typewriters came with it. The New Yorker revisits the interrobang and provides a link to a quiz on other less well-known punctuation marks.
Halloween is just around the corner, which means soon the streets will be filled with costumed kids looking for treats, and teenagers looking to deal out a few tricks. If you’d like to spare your home the wrath of teenage pranksters this Halloween, or just keep your property vandal-free all year long, follow these important to tips.
And finally, a bit of library humor (yes, there is such a thing) from the classic British comedy The Two Ronnies. If the youtube video doesn’t display below, here’s a link.
Housing & the recovery, tweeting, and real estate advice from Vanilla Ice
The collapse in housing construction was caused by overactive building, right? Only partly. While single-family construction soared during the boom, multi-family construction remained relatively stable before falling even further with the downturn. The Atlantic looks at current household formation statistics, population growth, and construction data and postulates that a housing construction boom may just be around the corner.
NPR posts three interactive maps on foreclosure, unemployment and household income using current data that can be drilled down to the county level. And on Friday, NPR’s Morning Edition ran an interesting piece on shadow inventory, foreclosed properties or properties in the foreclosure pipeline that will further impact the recovery for several years.
Post tweets with hot hash tags and you might find yourself being followed by twitter bots, programs that automatically follow real users based on keywords. Wired discusses what to do if you’re followed by bots (hint: don’t follow back).
The family that tweets together, goes a bit bonkers together. Says the son: “I try to refrain from reading [mom's] blog because then we don’t have anything to talk about.”
Libraries are getting short-changed in the Great Recession. While it’s easy to cut their funding, libraries serve a valuable role in connecting people to jobs, improving schools and helping to build community. Support your local library!
If you can stand all the pop-up ads, Time has an interesting collection of photos from a behind-the-scenes book on the filming of Jaws.
Just in time for the summer music festival season: a shirt that charges your mobile phone based on sound.
Where do turn for advice on your remodel? How about real estate investing rock star style? Well, look no further than the one and only Vanilla Ice. Yeah, him. Pop yer collar and make ‘em holla!
Money Magazine asks: Should you give your kid a down payment? My parents helped me get over that initial hurdle (thanks Mom & Dad!), but you need to look at your financial situation and see what the best method might be: a gift, a loan, co-signing or something else.
The spread between the cost of buying a foreclosed vs. a non-foreclosed home continues to grow.
The Washington Post‘s tech blog reports on the first rumors of what to look for on Apple’s iPad 2.0, due in mid-2011.
Google launches its eBook store. Amazon counters with its Kindle for Web. CNN spells out some of the differences between Google’s new store and its competitors. Salon also reviews, says ‘meh’…
“Millionaire” is so passe… What’s rich in 2011?
In this economy, we’re seeing lots of stories about the return to multi-generational living, but what happens when there is no family to go home to? The Chicago Tribune recently noted the rise in homeowners renting out rooms to boarders.
As we’ve reported before, sloppy work and robo-signing by banks or mortgage brokers can drag out the foreclosure process. But how about 25 years?!
Twelve quick things you can do right now to give yourself a health boost. I would like #12 about now…
And what we’re watching: Health vs Wealth in 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes from BBC via YouTube.
