Outdoor Decks Grow in Size, Popularity

Even in this tough market, a nice outdoor deck is a feature any home buyer can love.

The size of the average deck on an upscale home has doubled in the past 10 years, to about 700 square feet, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS).

Decks are particularly popular with young families. Parents like the idea that children can be outdoors, yet contained in a safe place.

However, Home builders don’t seem to have gotten the message that decks are popular. Ninety percent of all decks are added as a remodeling project, says Steve Van Kouteren, of consulting firm Principia Partners.

The cost of the average deck project has risen 40 percent since 2004, to $10,347, according to JCHS. But it’s an improvement that tends to pay off pretty well at resale. Homes on the Pacific coast get a 108 percent return on when the home is sold, according to Remodeling magazine. Those in the upper Midwest, where the season for outdoor living is short, get only 71 percent.

Source: SmartMoney, Brad Reagan (05/01/200

Daily Real Estate News  |  May 6, 2008Don’t Make Your GPS a Theft Target

Real estate practitioners who leave their global positioning systems (GPS) attached to car windows and dashboards while they aren’t in their vehicles are enticing thieves, police departments say.

“The offenders want whatever is hot,” says Orland Park, Ill., Police Sgt. John Keating. “It used to be CD players, speaker systems, radar detectors, satellite radios. Right now, it is GPS systems. They want anything they can sell for quick cash.”

The models most sought after by thieves are the portable devices that typically sell for $200 to $600 but can go for as much as $1,000. GPS systems installed in the dash, which can sell for more than twice that amount, take more time and effort to steal.

Thieves not only take the devices, they also smash windows to get them. Police urge GPS owners to either take the devices with them or store them in the trunk.

Source: Chicago Tribune, Emma Graves Fitzsimmons (05/06/200

Daily Real Estate News  |  April 16, 2008Residential Wind Turbines Catching On

The next big thing among eco-minded consumers is the personal wind turbine.

An increasing number of home owners, especially in northern California and the Northeast, are attracted to wind turbines, which generate electricity —sometimes nearly enough to power an entire house. The technologically-sophisticated systems are expensive, but state tax incentives and laws that require utilities to buy excess power from residential turbines at retail rather than wholesale prices are making them more cost-effective.

”Back in the early days, off-grid electrical generation was pursued mostly by hippies and rednecks, usually in isolated, rural areas,” says Joe Schwartz, editor of Home Power magazine. ”Now, it’s a lot more mainstream.”

In some places, the neighbors aren’t too thrilled, Schwartz says. ”In urban and suburban areas, neighbors are never happy to see a 60- to 120-foot tower going up across the street.”

Source: The New York Times, John Casey (04/15/200