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According to Realtor Magazine, severe weather events have increasingly been putting households at risk over the years. Many homeowners are taking these weather events seriously, knowing the harsh weather can put their homes and their lives in danger. Nearly 68% of about 1,000 U.S. adults recently surveyed say they considered the potential for severe weather events when […]

While the COVID-19 pandemic has rocked the economy, the housing market has defied all predictions by remaining strong. Unlike the last financial crisis, home prices are soaring to new heights, there isn’t a vacant home in sight, and few struggling homeowners have lost their homes to foreclosures. At the start of the pandemic, the federal […]

It’s one of those debates that rarely seems to have a clear-cut winner: Should retirees pay off their mortgage or continue making those monthly payments? The answer — probably somewhat annoyingly — is that it depends. Of course, there are a couple of immediate benefits to paying off a mortgage: Your monthly obligations drop and you […]

If you are in the market for a new house, you may be overlooking one key to your success: your credit score.  That three-digit number has a direct impact on your ability to get a mortgage and what interest rate you will pay. Mortgage rates are at two-month lows, with the benchmark 30-year fixed loan at 3.11%, […]

Fertilizing, watering, and mowing are the usual steps to take for a healthy lawn, but sometimes things can go awry. Unsightly weedy and brown patches can show up on your lawn and seriously undermine your home’s curb appeal. Dealing with a damaged lawn can be a frustrating experience for homeowners. No matter how much water […]

What Do Landscape Architects Do? First, let’s start with what a landscape architect is not: someone who puts plants in the ground and installs irrigation lines. “A landscape architect is really like an architect. We do the same thing for your exterior,” says Anita Van Asperdt of LandCurrent Landscape Architects in Portland, Oregon. “We make the drawings. We do not […]

State and local governments have faced a cash crunch as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. And they’re passing the pain on to homeowners in the form of higher property taxes, according to a new report. A new analysis from real-estate data company Attom Data Solutions found that Americans who owned single-family homes paid $323 billion in property taxes […]

As of the end of 2020, about five and a half percent of active mortgages—about 2.7 million loans—were in the forbearance program, down from over 8% at its peak in March. That represents a large number of borrowers for servicers to deal with as they exit the program, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that an […]

An outdoor kitchen is a natural gathering spot in the landscape. After all, everyone ends up in the kitchen indoors, so the odds are great that the same thing will happen when there’s a kitchen outside. An outdoor kitchen encourages you to enjoy dining al fresco whenever the weather is good, whether you have guests […]

One in four Americans purchased a smart-home device in 2020, according to a new survey from SafeWise, a firm that offers safety solutions and resources for the home. The majority of those surveyed say they are spending more time using home tech and are increasing their home tech spending and report using smart-home technology at […]