الخميس، 22 ديسمبر 2016
Pocono Medical Center hosts holiday party to benefit local families
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7 Unexpected Places You Could Find Cash and Valuables Around Your House
While most people associate treasure hunting with pirates, Penny Hoarders know better. There’s treasure all around us; we just need to know where to look.
In a previous post on treasure hunting at home, we looked at 11 hidden places in and around your house or apartment. Once you’ve exhausted those secret spots, it’s time to get outside and expand the search.
Here are seven more places around your home to check. Who knows where you’ll discover hidden or lost valuables and money?
1. Garage
Not quite in the house and not quite outside, the garage is a common hiding place for all sorts of things. Look in the rafters, in the attic if there is one, and in any and all cabinets and containers.
In 2012, officials in Carson City, Nevada, made some interesting discoveries while inspecting a house left behind by a recluse who died with no nearby relatives. They found $12,000 in cash in the house, but soon that amount looked paltry. In the garage, neatly wrapped in aluminum foil, was $7 million in gold coins.
Check out any old tool boxes you find in the garage. Some tools might be sold as useful items or, if they are old and interesting, as collector’s items.
There are other things sometimes left in tool boxes. Consider the man in England who one day looked through his deceased father’s old tool box and found a handful of old coins he later auctioned for £30,000 (about $50,000 U.S.).
2. Backyard
When we were kids, my brothers and I filled a plastic container with little toys, coins, and other items, and buried it under a tree in the backyard. We planned to dig up our “time capsule” years later, but when we tried we never could figure out where it was.
It might be there still, and if it remains there another 40 years the coins and toys will probably have value as collectibles.
Valuable discoveries in yards are not uncommon. In early 2014, while hiking out of their backyard, a California couple found a buried treasure worth $10 million: six metal cans, each one filled with rare gold coins.
A metal detector can help you find buried valuables. Hidden currency is often in a container made partially of metal, like a jar with a metal top.
Also, people typically level the ground after burying things. The loose soil on top compacts over time, creating a noticeable low spot, so watch for small depressions in the yard.
Burying things under the edge of a cement walkway or driveway is also common.
3. Garbage and Recycling Bins
Excited that the dealers from “Antiques Roadshow” were coming to his town, a man brought in a violin he had plucked from someone’s trash. Maybe it was worth a little something, he thought.
As it turned out, once cleaned up, his junk-picked violin was worth around $50,000. Apparently it was a creation of Giuseppe Pedrazzini, a famous Italian violin maker.
If you see something interesting sticking out of a neighbor’s garbage bin, why not grab it? It’s fair game once it’s discarded.
If you live in a condo development, as my wife and I do at the moment, watch that dumpster for treasures. Here, the residents tend to generously put anything of value alongside the dumpster instead of in it. I’ve sold some of the things I’ve found there, and we eat every day at a beautiful wooden table that was discarded next to our recycling bin.
4. Garden
Over the years I’ve read quite a few stories about buried treasures in gardens. I’m not sure I would want to hide valuables where people are likely to dig, but perhaps homeowners figure they’ll be the only ones digging in their garden. Plus, the soil is already loosened, so a garden is an easy place to bury things.
Use a metal detector to avoid having to dig up your whole garden. If you can find old photos of your home, you might discover parts of the yard that used to be a garden — search these spots.
Gardens can be wild places, and sometimes things get lost in the weeds. Coins and tools fall from the pockets of gardeners, and on occasion even statues get lost.
Wait… statues? That’s right — a man in England found a statue worth £20,000 (about $33,000 U.S.) behind overgrown bushes in a garden.
Closer to home, a friend of mine found an entire wood-burning stove half-buried in the dirt in the garden behind his new house.
5. Barns and Sheds
Barns, sheds and other outbuildings around a home are natural places to hide things, and good places to continue your treasure hunt. You might find valuable items left behind by previous owners.
When my wife and I bought a place in Colorado, the detached garage/storage building behind the house was bursting with random appliances and tools.
My neighbor sold the scrap metal for me, but I still wonder about a classic oil stove we found. It looked old enough to be a collectible antique. I probably should have had it appraised before we moved and left it to the next owner.
People also purposely hide things in outbuildings. At a house I owned in Michigan, I had a shed whose floor was made of loose cement tiles.
If someone lifted the one that was three back and four over from the southwest corner, and dug into the dirt a couple inches, they would have discovered my old coin collection in a plastic peanut butter jar. A simple metal detector would have revealed the location of that little treasure.
My coins are no longer there, but I’m certainly not the only one who has hidden a collection — and people who hide things often die without revealing all of their hiding places.
Old pump houses are another place to investigate. In years past, when people didn’t trust banks as much, they hid gold coins in false water lines. Look for pipes that don’t actually go anywhere or connect to others.
Who knows what might be out there in your shed or barn?
7. Foundations
Treasure hunters look at the foundations remaining at old homesteads to determine where the front steps and porch would have been. Why? That’s where people most often sat down to rest, so it’s also where coins most often fell out of pockets and got lost in the grass and dirt.
If your own home is old enough, there might be some valuable coins where people sat generations ago. Get out that metal detector and shovel.
If you expand your concept of treasure, you’ll likely find more of it. I recently helped a friend clean out a house he bought as an investment. Two guys in a pickup truck stopped by and offered to take many of the things that were in the yard, and we filled their truck.
They planned to sell the load to a scrap metal processor for a couple hundred dollars — something the previous owner could have done before he lost the house to the bank. You can do the same with any metal objects you find around your home. Whatever you discover, there just might be a buyer!
Your Turn: Have you found any treasures around your home? Let’s hear about it!
Steve Gillman is the author of “101 Weird Ways to Make Money” and creator of EveryWayToMakeMoney.com. He’s been a repo-man, walking stick carver, search engine evaluator, house flipper, tram driver, process server, mock juror, and roulette croupier, but of more than 100 ways he has made money, writing is his favorite (so far).
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Here’s How You Can Make Extra Cash from Those Photos on Your Hard Drive
Looking for some extra cash? Look no further than the thousands of digital photos taking up space on your hard drive.
Pick your best photos and turn them into money by selling them on microstock websites.
The term “microstock” refers to the micropayments the sites charge customers for those images — payments passed on to the photographers who took them. Most sites start their image pricing at just $1 for the smallest size, with costs increasing with image sizes.
Microstock sites, such as istockphoto.com or shutterstock.com, make it easy for amateurs with a passion for photography to get started selling their photos online.
Once approved as a contributor, most microstock sites do not charge photographers to upload photos to their portfolios. Instead, the sites take a percentage of each sale.
In the beginning you may make just 15% from each photo sold, but often that number can reach as much as 50%, especially if you’re willing to offer your photos exclusively to one site.
“It’s all about quantity,” says stock photographer Eliza Snow. “It takes a different mindset to be able to say ‘I will sell this image 100 times for a $1’ versus one time at a gallery for $100.”
Quit Your Job and Sell Photos Instead
Snow has been an iStock contributor since 2005. She was able to quit her corporate job three years later and now makes a full-time income selling stock photos.
She is also co-founder of Everything Microstock, a site dedicated to helping beginners start taking and selling photos. The site includes a list of resources and impressive chart of microstock agencies worth checking out.
Photographer Rich Legg had an experience similar to Snow’s. He joined iStock in 2005 and by January 2008, selling stock photos was his main source of income. He started by setting small incremental financial goals — pay for his monthly Internet fees, pay for his domain and website — until he made it his goal to be able to pay his monthly mortgage payment from his stock photo sales by the end of 2007.
But, he’s quick to add, times have changed and someone entering the industry now may not be able to increase her income quite that quickly.
First Steps to Selling Stock Photos
To get started, it’s important to make sure you have the proper equipment. Your stock photography portfolio is not a place for iPhone photos.
Instead, invest in a good-quality digital camera. Snow recommends a camera where you control the settings, like a digital SLR, over a point-and-shoot camera. “Your camera must be able to shoot sharp images,” she says.
All images submitted to iStock are inspected by human eyes before being approved and posted online.
Legg also works as an image inspector for Getty Images (owner of iStock) and stresses the importance of learning the ins and outs of your camera so you can take technically-correct images.
While the application process for the bigger microstock photography sites like iStock or Shutterstock can be more difficult, Snow suggests getting started with one of the hundreds of other microstock sites. “Don’t feel dejected if you are rejected by the first site you applyphoto sales by the end of 2007. But, he is quick to add, times have changed and someone entering the industry now may to.”
Build Your Portfolio
Developing a diverse and robust portfolio is essential, since selling microstock is a numbers game. Legg recommends setting a goal of how many photos you will upload on a weekly, monthly or annual basis. His goal is 50 to 100 images a month, which is scaled back from the 200 images a month he uploaded when he was getting started.
Both photographers recommend considering the many potential commercial uses for your images and taking advantage of any connections you have to different industries.
“Breaking into landscape and nature is hard,” said Snow. “But if you have a brother-in-law who owns a dry cleaner and you can get behind-the-scenes photos, that is an excellent opportunity.”
“Look in your sphere of influence and see what you have access to,” suggests Legg.
Remember that in stock photography, generic is best. “There can’t be any recognizable brands in your photos,” said Legg. And photos with people or properties will require a model or property release be signed before selling the photo.
Help improve the chances of your images selling by using the correct keywords, suggests Snow. “Think of it like a Google search and all the ways people might search for your image.”
“Don’t forget that often in addition to photos, microstock sites typically also sell audio and video clips and illustrations,” added Snow.
Is Microstock the Only Way to Go?
It all depends on how hard you want to work. While Snow and Legg sell exclusively on the microstock website istockphoto.com, photographer David Seaver prefers to have more control of his images and income. Seaver sells stock photos directly from his website, but is quick to admit that stock photography is not a huge part of his business.
He has also approached publications directly in the past about providing photos and suggests reviewing their websites for photography guidelines before contacting the editors.
His advice for beginners is to shoot something you enjoy. “There can be a market for images of anything,” he said.
Your Turn: Have you sold your photographs as stock images?
Ally Piper is a writer and marketing strategist. She recently relocated to Cape Cod with her husband and loves taking photos (not for sale, yet) of the natural beauty that surrounds her there.
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Why Suing McDonald’s Over 41 Cents Isn’t as Absurd as it Sounds
Fast food can be so unhealthy that the name “value meal” is questionable in the first place — given the physical costs of the meal.
But at least you can rest assured knowing you’re getting the best bang for your buck when you order off the value menu. Right?
Well, maybe not. As it turns out, even the simple pleasure of cheap, greasy burgers isn’t always that simple.
This Guy Revealed the “Extra Value Meal’s” Dirty Little Secret
James Gertie, a Chicago-area McDonald’s customer, recently filed a class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s franchisee Karis Management Co. for false advertising.
After running some quick numbers, he discovered that the two-cheeseburger “Extra Value Meal” he’d been ordering would actually be cheaper if he purchased the included items a la carte — to the tune of a whopping 41 cents per transaction.
Gertie purchased the meal from five Karis-managed McDonald’s restaurants over the course of about a month, and he states he was charged $5.90 for it each time.
But according to posted menu prices, the meal would only cost $5.49 if he’d purchased the items individually: two cheeseburgers for $2.50, a medium order of fries for $1.99 and a medium soft drink for a buck.
According to the lawsuit, that means that, although the burger bundle is advertised as an “Extra Value Meal” on the menu, it’s actually not a value at all — let alone an “extra” one.
Gertie’s suit asks the defendants to repay customers what is, essentially, unjustified extra fees. The jury’s still out on whether he’ll succeed, though.
Yes, There’s a Problem with Calling it a “Value” Meal if it Isn’t
Although it’s easy to scoff at this lawsuit, it does serve as a valuable reminder about the sometimes sneaky sales tactics retailers use to get us to buy more goods, or higher-priced ones, when we might otherwise not.
For example, some stores will run “clearance” sales on items that are actually only discounted by a penny — or worse, not discounted at all. It’s worthwhile to peel off that sale sticker and see the original price!
And practically everyone’s overzealously bitten on a “limited time only” Groupon sale, only to discover the deal actually lasts for months.
By making a purchase sound like a bargain — or saying the sale price will only be available for a short period of time — sellers tell customers to spend their money right now so they don’t miss out.
However, this same sense of FOMO also prevents you from critically examining that purchase… and possibly deciding to keep your wallet right where it is.
By falsely amplifying an item’s value, sellers take away or modify a key element in your decision-making process. And even if the difference is only a few bucks (or 41 cents), that’s not cool.
So I don’t know about you, but next time I’m in the drive-thru, you can bet I’ll be surreptitiously plugging prices into my calculator app. (Fast-food prices vary across markets, so you’d do well to do the same at your own favorite guilty pleasure stop.)
After all, it’s already probably a bad decision from a nutritional standpoint. I might as well make sure it makes sense from a financial one.
Your Turn: Is your favorite “value” meal actually a deal?
Jamie Cattanach is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. Her writing has also been featured at The Write Life, Word Riot, Nashville Review and elsewhere. Find @JamieCattanach on Twitter to wave hello.
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31 Days to Financial Independence (Day 19): Getting Promoted at Your Current Job
“31 Days to Financial Independence” is an ongoing series that appears every Thursday on The Simple Dollar. You might want to start this series from the beginning!
Last time, we began to look at improving your income at your current job through a number of techniques that focused on improving job performance and making a clear case that you deserve better wages for your work.
Today, we’re going to look at the next step in that wage earnings journey: getting a promotion at work. This can be something as simple as moving up to the next grade on a very standardized employment scale, like the one managed by the federal government, or moving into a whole new role in the workplace, perhaps even into managing others.
A promotion is often the most straightforward step for most people when it comes to career advancement. You still go to work at the same place. Often, you keep interacting with many of the same people. What will change is your job responsibilities, the items that can go on your resume, your income potential, and quite possibly your current income as well.
The goal with any promotion is to either directly increase your true hourly wage or put you in a position where it is much easier to increase your true hourly wage. As a quick reminder, we discussed your true hourly wage earlier in this series; it refers to the amount of money you make per hour when you subtract out all of the extra costs of work and also include extra hours devoted to work items that you’re not directly paid for. If a promotion is not providing you an improvement to your true hourly wage or making it much easier to improve your true hourly wage, then a promotion isn’t worth it.
Exercise #19 – Putting Yourself in Line for a Promotion
Many strategies for getting yourself prepared for a promotion overlap with the ones that will help you get a raise, but these strategies are more geared with pleasing those who might promote you rather than your immediate supervisor.
The key thing to remember is that it is rarely your immediate supervisor who will promote you. Often, the promotion comes from your supervisor’s supervisor or from someone else in the organization entirely.
The question you should always be asking is what you can do to maximize your value to those people, the ones that would hire you. While the things you do to maximize your value to your supervisor often overlap with those things, there are many different things you can do to improve your value for promotion that won’t necessarily improve your value to your immediate supervisor.
This list focuses on things that maximize your value for promotion, mostly in terms of building relationships and skills that will make promotion possible and also finding opportunities for promotion. Use them where they make sense.
Understand the job requirements of the promotion that you desire, and use those requirements as a personal checklist. Go online and find an exact job listing of the position that you would like to have and learn what the exact requirements for that job is. What skills are required? What education is required? What experience is required?
Then, take those requirements and compare them to where you are right now. How do you match up? Do you already meet those requirements? If not, which ones do you not match up with?
The real question you need to be asking is what exactly can you do to fulfill each and every one of those requirements from where you’re at now. What do you need to do so that you can say “yes” to everything required for the job?
That list should become your checklist. Your goal should be to check everything off of that list so that you’re prepared for that job and there are no obstacles standing in your path. Often, taking care of those requirements will also help to ensure that you actually do a good job if and when you get that promotion as well.
Pay attention. Watch. Listen. Be aware of when an opportunity to be promoted to your desired job comes available. Promotions sometimes happen very quietly, particularly when a company is interviewing for a job from outside the company, and people within the company don’t even hear about it.
Keep an eye on any hiring listings that your company or organization might be doing. Look for situations where a particular department might be growing or when someone is leaving a position, as those are often great opportunities for promotion.
Build positive relationships with people who would be your peers in your promoted position. Let’s say you get that promotion that you’re eyeing. Who exactly will be your peers at that point? Who will you be meeting with regularly? Who will be your colleagues?
Start establishing positive relationships with those people now. Talk to them whenever you can. Ask about the realities of their job and listen. Ask what makes someone good in their position and what doesn’t. Give them respect for the position they’ve earned.
Basically, you want to be a positive known quantity to those fellows because there’s some chance that they will be involved in the hiring process in some fashion, and if they know you have the kinds of traits needed to succeed and those people like you, it’s going to be a net benefit for you.
Not only that, these relationships will tell you pretty quickly whether you want that particular promotion or not. Will you get along well with those colleagues? Do you have the traits that are really needed for that position? That’s what those positive relationships will tell you now rather than later.
Find a mentor that is several steps above you on the ladder. Try to identify someone in your workplace that’s above not only your current level but the level you wish to be promoted to and ask them for mentoring help. Make sure that the person is one of the “good guys,” meaning that they don’t play workplace political games and are well respected by others.
Tell that person that you have a great deal of respect for what they’ve been able to achieve, that you hope to be able to achieve many of those things, and that you hope that they will give you advice and suggestions on how to get there.
Listen to those suggestions. Take them seriously. Take notes. Use what they say to the best of your ability to prepare yourself for what’s next.
Most people are thrilled to have someone come to them showing respect and asking them for help. It’s an ego boost, especially for people who have achieved a lot but are unrecognized for it. They’ll almost always help you, both through direct advice and occasional assistance, but sometimes behind the scenes, too, in ways that you’ll never see.
Dress for the position that you want to get promoted to. Different positions often have different dress codes, whether formally stated or not. Look around your workplace and see how people at your level dress and then observe how people who are in the position that you want to achieve dress. Dress like your target.
Yes, that means you might somewhat overdress for your current job. That’s okay. The only time you need to worry about it is if you find that dressing differently is somehow incompatible with your current job, such as if you’re trying to shift from a shop job to an office job. In that case, dress appropriately for your current job but make an extra effort to apper presentable.
The goal is to give a visual appearance of caring about your job, something that appears at the briefest glance. Clothes can provide that idea at just a quick glance.
Willingly accept responsibility – and live up to that responsibility. Many people who are at a job just to collect a paycheck avoid as much responsibility as possible. They want their hours at work to pass as easily and effortlessly as they can. The problem with that approach is that positions that offer more pay almost always come with more responsibility, and if you’re showing everyone that you shirk responsibility, no one is going to promote you.
Accept responsibility. Make sure key tasks are done and be willing to accept the ramifications if they’re not. If a responsibility is offered, take it and execute it to the best of your ability. If you get in over your head, ask for help – asking for help is far more responsible than trying to go it alone and failing.
Build a reputation for reliability. If you regularly accept extra responsibility and handle it and if you are extremely consistent at showing up on time and doing what needs to get done, you’re going to gain a reputation of reliability, and reliability is one of the most important factors you can have if you’re wanting a promotion.
Many businesses run on the back of their key personnel being reliable, and if you can show that you have a strong tendency to be reliable, you’re much more likely to be moved into a key position.
Ask lots of questions about how the organization works levels above where you’re at. A promotion almost always means an expansion in the scope of your job. You’re now worrying about aspects of the business that you never had to worry about before. Someone who flips burgers worries about the burgers and the grill; someone who manages worries about how that burger-flipping task fits into the bigger picture.
Try to step back and understand the bigger picture. What role does everyone play in it? How does everything flow together to produce a product that people want? Why do people do the things they do at work? The better you understand how the business works as a whole and how things interconnect, the better off you’ll be in terms of getting promoted.
How do you figure this out? Ask questions. Figure out what everyone’s job is and how they all flow together. Ask questions of your supervisor about how everything connects. If you don’t understand something, ask.
Engage in an organized program of additional education of some kind that’s relevant to where you want to be promoted to. Many jobs that you might be promoted into come with some form of educational requirement that you may not have. Perhaps they require a degree in a particular area, or they require a masters degree in your field when you have only a bachelors degree.
While those educational requirements might not completely prevent you from getting a promotion, they can provide a real hindrance and create an obstacle that would make it easy not to promote you. The best solution? Use your spare time – and any workplace programs that help – to actually get that education.
In fact, any extra time you spend outside of work on personal education that’s suitable for the promotion you wish to get will help. Not only is it a demonstration of your ability and willingness to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed at the job that you want, it’s also a demonstration of personal initiative, a willingness on your part to simply take care of what’s needed to bring about success. That’s attractive to any employer.
Avoid self-promotion. Many people fall into the trap of tooting their own horn about the things they’ve achieved and the great attributes that they bring to the table. This is very rarely a good idea in the workplace.
For starters, most people know of your achievements and of what you bring to the table without your self promotion, so the self promotion is redundant. It’s also often seen as vain and egotistical and actually seen as a pushback against team efforts, which is particularly important because most modern workplaces thrive on teamwork.
Don’t waste your breath talking about your own achievements unless you are specifically asked to do so. Interjecting your own achievements almost always puts you in a bad light. Save that listing of achievements for your resume and for your interview, when you’re prompted to share them.
Deliver lots of praise and give lots of praise to your colleagues for good work, to your supervisor and to everyone else. This is almost always the best approach in terms of building a positive reputation in the workplace. Not only do your coworkers appreciate the nod, it shows to people in management that you are genuinely a team player that’s focused on using the best of everyone’s efforts to achieve great results.
This should be your reflexive response to any situation when there’s a chance to talk about workplace accomplishments and about other workers. Look for the good things that others produce and how it’s resulted in good outcomes overall. If there’s ever a focus on something that you’re primarily responsible for, dole out lots of credit to everyone who helped you.
The person that does this is the person everyone is going to want on their team because it’s clear that success will reflect on them as well. This, of course, puts you in demand because of it.
Practice self-direction. While asking for help when you’re genuinely unsure of the next step is completely appropriate and even seen as a positive, it’s also seen as a positive if you can take a situation where the next step isn’t immediately clear and you can simply find the right thing to do on your own – and then you do it.
For example, let’s say you’re restocking shelves. Rather than having to ask about each step in the process, understand what the big end goal is and then formulate your own steps in the process, then execute those steps on your own without having your supervisor intervene.
Self-direction is an absolutely essential skill for almost every promotion out there. It is very hard to climb a career ladder and earn new levels of employment if you do not have the ability to self-direct much of your work. Employ as much self-direction as you possibly can and only check with others and with your boss if you’re not entirely clear on how to judge a particular situation.
When a promotion opportunity opens up, talk directly to the person who would be hiring you, not your immediate supervisor. Many of the steps that will make you a good potential candidate for promotion are the same ones that make you indispensable at your current job. While good supervisors will see this and help you rise in the organization, some will not as they will find it more useful in the short term for them to keep you right where you are.
The most effective way around that is to discuss promotion with people who might actually be hiring you. Generally, your immediate supervisor will not be involved in hiring you for a promotion, so when you’re seriously looking at an opportunity to step up, bypass your supervisor and talk to the people who can actually get you promoted.
Find out what their expectations are. Make sure they know who you are in the most positive way that you can. Don’t give into the temptation to self-promote; instead, let your reputation precede you.
Next time, we’ll talk about strategies for switching to a new job with a new employer that can give you a much higher ceiling on your income.
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Most Americans Think They Won't Need $1 Million To Retire
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Avoid Holiday Debt By Preparing for Christmas 2017 Now
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Six Predictions for the Housing Market in 2017
It’s nearly impossible to discuss the 2017 real estate market forecast without factoring in the Trump Effect. President-elect Donald Trump and his rhetoric, which may evolve into actual policy soon, will impact many aspects of the market in the year (or years) to come.
The Trump administration is likely to usher in several major policies that could significantly change the long-term trajectory of the U.S. real estate market, including changes to immigration policy, tax cuts, and infrastructure spending.
“The housing market in 2017 will be more impacted by politics then we have seen in quite a while,” says Nela Richardson, chief economist for Redfin, a national real estate brokerage. “For the past five or six years, the market has been almost in neutral. But what Trump is promising to do in his administration will affect the homeowner and the home buyer.”
Trump’s tightening of immigration policy, for instance, could harm the housing market in a couple of different ways. Here’s why:
Single-family new construction increased just 9% in 2016, says Richardson. That figure is low, as it has been since the housing bust almost a decade ago. One of the big reasons housing construction hasn’t returned to normal levels, despite increased demand, is labor shortages — a lot of workers left the industry when construction jobs dried up in 2007-2009.
About one in four construction workers are foreign born. Stricter immigration policies from the Trump administration are likely to make the problem worse, according to Redfin, which recently issued its 2017 market analysis. The company predicts single-family home construction growth will slow to 6% in 2017 if immigration policy changes go into effect next year.
The takeaway here is that having less new home construction activity impacts the overall number of houses for sale and the availability of affordable starter homes, which ultimately translates into higher prices for first-time home buyers.
But that’s not all, says Richardson. “It’s not only that it cuts off potential home buyers, but a lot of home buyers are immigrants,” notes Richardson. In other words, a tightening in immigration policy could also reduce the number of people seeking to purchase a home.
Trump’s promised tax cuts, meanwhile, are aimed at the wealthy, and thus could potentially result in more housing demand at the higher end of the market, says Richardson.
And as for infrastructure, Trump has talked of increased spending in this sector, but has not offered much detail. Still, the comments he’s already made have led to an uptick in interest rates, says Richardson.
“We don’t know a lot about what that spending will look like. It looks a lot like it will be subsidies for contractors. But right now there’s so much optimism that the stock market is rallying and yields and mortgage rates are going up.”
Higher interest rates essentially make a financed home purchase more expensive overall, so they aren’t great for sellers or buyers. They’re also not good news for blue-collar or middle-income home buyers.
And there’s one last ramification of Trump’s election to consider with regard to the 2017 housing market. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, expressed concern over comments made by Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who has discussed potentially changing the mortgage interest deduction.
“That would be a terrible hit to the confidence of home buyers,” says Yun. “It spooks potential buyers when they hear that. A change in the mortgage interest deduction could have a big negative impact… The mortgage interest deduction has been widely popular for most homeowners, and housing wealth has historically been a significant source of middle-class wealth, so that would be a hit to the middle class.”
The Trump Effect is just one part of the overall picture emerging for next year’s housing market. Here are five additional predictions for the coming year.
Continued but Slower Market Growth Due to Affordability Pressures
In America’s largest cities, the available inventory of homes that are considered affordable on a median income has declined for the past four years. And 2017 won’t be much different, according to Redfin.
The real estate brokerage predicts inventory will recover slightly, up 1.7% year over year, after falling about 3.4% in 2016.
Redfin also predicts median home sale prices will increase 5.3% year over year. And finally, existing home sales are forecast to increase 2.8% in 2017, after rising 3.4% in 2016.
2017 Will Be the Fastest Real Estate Market on Record
What makes a real estate market a fast market? The average number of days a home spends on the market before going under contract.
Redfin predicts 2017 will break last year’s record on that front. In 2016, the typical home stayed on the market just 52 days, the shortest time recorded since 2009.
“We’ve had a persistent inventory crisis for two or three years, especially in starter homes, there’s not a lot of those on the market right now,” explains Richardson. “In some markets, such as Seattle or Denver, homes have offers within six days of being listed.” That’s six days on average.
The development of new technologies is also contributing to homes disappearing from the market quickly, by making the entire real estate transaction more quick and efficient.
Mortgage Rates Will Increase, But Not by Much
Experts predict that rates on the 30-year-fixed mortgage will climb to about 4.3% next year.
Already, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has increased from 3.5% at the end of October to just above 4% following the election, according to Redfin. That rise is being attributed to Wall Street’s optimism toward Trump’s economic proposals, as well as the Federal Reserve’s long-expected interest rate hike earlier this month.
More People Will Have Access to Home Loans – For the Time Being
For those with particularly good credit, here’s a bit of positive news. Some financial institutions have introduced mortgages that require down payments of as little as 1% to 3% of the home’s purchase price, if you have a stellar credit history.
In addition, starting in 2017, the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will back bigger mortgages for the first time since 2006. The loan limits insured by these companies will increase from $417,000 to $424,100 in most regions of the U.S.
The potential bad news is that the Trump administration is talking about doing away with, or privatizing, Fannie and Freddie, a move that will negatively affect countless home buyers, says Yun.
“Most consumers are unaware of the role of Fannie and Freddie,” he says. “Without them, it will be much more difficult to obtain mortgages.”
An Ongoing Housing Shortage
Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways from the 2017 housing market forecast is the unabated shortage of affordable housing in this country. It’s an issue impacted by nearly all of the other predictions already discussed – construction slow-downs, mortgage rate increases, and more.
Yun, of the National Association of Realtors, says there’s nothing on the horizon in the coming year that will likely bring any relief or improvement to this issue.
“We just don’t have enough homes being built in relation to population growth,” he concludes. “This could lead to some social discontent, because overall we will continue to face this housing shortage while new home building remains sluggish.”
Related Articles
- First-Time Home Buyer? Check Out These Helpful Programs
- Why You Should Buy Less House Than You Can Afford
- 10 Tips for First-Time Home Buyers
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Rural households to get broadband boost
Up to 600,000 households and businesses will be able to access ‘superfast broadband’ in some of the country’s hardest-to-reach areas, as the government has announced it will use a £442 million windfall to boost services.
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Uncover wealthy ways to begin 2017 with January's 'new look' Moneywise magazine
Give your New Year finances a boost with the new look edition of Moneywise, which goes on sale in WHSmith today.
For just £3.95, we tell you how to earn 3% income on your Isa, give our expert fund picks, and reveal the winners of our Children’s Savings Awards 2017.
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Homemade Broth: A Healthy and Frugal Winter Treat for Body and Soul
Winter’s here, and if you’re anything like me, cold weather brings with it a strong desire to eat warm, hearty soups. And what is at the heart of every delicious soup? A tasty broth, of course.
I misunderstood broth for most of my life. I thought the only way to make it was to buy a box of salty powder off the supermarket shelf and then mix it with hot water. Add in some cheap noodles and boom, you’ve joined an esteemed culinary line of soup-creating chefs.
It turns out that’s not the case. The traditional way of making broth involves slow cooking high-quality tendons and bones to extract the plethora of nutrients and flavors they have to offer. These traditional methods are starting to come back into vogue, as people far and wide tout their health benefits (which we’ll get into below).
As with many rediscoveries of ancient techniques, the health food marketplace juggernaut has caught on. There are now stores popping up that will sell you broth made in the traditional fashion. I pass one shop in New York City, called Brodo, on my walk to work every morning. Their offerings look tasty, but they’re also pricey: It costs a minimum of $9 for a 16-ounce cup of basic bone broth.
Meanwhile, if you buy four pounds of bones from the supermarket at an average of $3 per pound, you can easily make a gallon of broth for only $12. The equivalent amount at Brodo would cost you $76!
I commend the people at Brodo for their entrepreneurial spirit and for charging what the market can afford. After all, making homemade broth takes precious time. But as with buying coffee, your wallet will thank you if you find a way to make your own traditional broth at home. Not only is it cheaper and more flavorful, it’s also healthier than store-bought powders and bullion cubes.
Health Benefits of Traditional Broth
A few years ago, as I was looking for ways to revamp my diet and get rid of the debilitating stomach pains that were bothering me, I discovered the traditional way of making broth – and I’m very glad that I did.
When humans first started consuming meat, they used to consume the whole animal. This meant eating all the stuff many of us scoff at today, including organ meats, tendons, and bones.
Those tendons and bones have formed the basis of real, nourishing soup broths for thousands of years. The collagen in these tissues provides a whole array of amino acids and nutrients that you miss out on if you only ever eat muscle meats. If your stock includes bones with marrow in them, even better.
As with many things in nutrition science, the best way to find what works for you is to experiment on yourself and see what works. There are no large-scale studies on the health benefits of eating traditionally prepared bone broth, but the anecdotal evidence is piling up.
I know that it personally helped me heal many of the issues going on in my gut after I developed a tumor in my colon during college. After introducing broth to my diet, my stomach cramps became much less frequent, and my overall health improved. Others claim that bone broth helps protect your joints, boost your immune system, and improve your sleep.
The potential benefits of consuming traditional broth reached the mainstream after it came out that the Los Angeles Lakers training staff was pushing the team to consume as much of the stuff as they could handle. The players who bought in raved about having more resilient joints and increased energy.
Your mileage may vary, of course. But for me and many others, adding broth to our diet was a revelation.
How to Make Your Own Delicious Broth
If you have a large pot or a slow cooker and access to a butcher, you can make gallons of yummy, healthy, homemade broth that will put the boxed, chalky supermarket broths to shame.
To start, buy a mix of bones. The more tendons, the better. Chicken feet are great, as are knuckle bones, necks, and all other animal parts you might normally be too grossed out by to even look at.
Here’s the simplest preparation method:
- Pull out your biggest pot, or your slow cooker, and dump in the animal parts. Aim for at least two pounds of bones, but I’ve done up to 10 pounds at a time for really big batches.
- Fill the pot to the top with water, and add in some salt, fish sauce, lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, and a couple of vegetables (onions, carrots, and celery are pretty common choices) for flavoring.
- If you’re using a pot, bring the water to a boil, then cover it and let it simmer for 6-8 hours. If you have a slow cooker, just set it on the lowest heat setting for 7 hours and walk away.
- Once the bones have simmered long enough, strain out the liquid into a bowl. You can use the broth right away (though it will contain some extra fat), or store it in your refrigerator. If you take a look after a few hours and it’s no longer liquidy, but rather bouncy and gelatinous, then you know you’ve made a batch of healthy, protein-rich goodness.
When you’re ready to use the broth, just skim off the layer of fat from the top, warm it up, and you’re good to go. You can use the broth in any recipe that calls for chicken, beef, or vegetable stock, from soups and gravies to risotto or stir-fry dishes.
A great thing about making your own broth is that it’s pretty forgiving: As long as you’re boiling bones, it’s hard to go wrong. There are many different takes on how to prepare a good batch of broth, and a simple Google search will reveal many different recipes. For instance, a recipe from the New York Times calls for no fewer than 15 ingredients. I can only imagine it’s even tastier than the one listed above — so if you want to get fancy, there are options.
Also, if you make more than you can eat in a week, don’t fret. The broth freezes really well, and can be defrosted easily in a microwave.
Summing Up
If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to get more quality proteins into your diet, making your own bone broth is a no brainer.
Julia Child once said, “How can a nation be called great if it’s bread tastes like Kleenex?” I feel like she would have felt similarly about American soup broth tasting like overly salted slop. We’ve gone away from the traditional preparations, and we sacrifice for it in nutrition and flavor.
Making your own broth means you can always have a delicious soup when you want it, and you’ll have peace of mind in knowing that you are consuming food in a manner that is consistent with how humans have eaten for a very long time.
Related Articles:
- Our Family’s Eight Favorite Slow-Cooker Recipes
- 10 Healthy and Inexpensive Foods (and a Great Recipe for Each One)
- Bottled Water, Filters, Chlorine, and Why I Drink from the Shower
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