Home Sweet Home: But at What Price?
For the 15 years we've been married, my wife and I have been house hoppers, buying and selling homes from one coast to the other as we've followed my job and hers. As a result, we've always been reluctant to spend a lot of money fixing up our homes, since we know we won't be in them for long.
But now we're in our sixth house, and we're pretty certain our roots are set. With that stability comes a different kind of home-improvement question: How high should we go? Do we go all out, knowing this is our home for a long time, even if building what we really want stretches the borders of our budget?
Homeowners everywhere face this question every time they start visualizing what their house could be if they just push out a wall here, tack on a new bedroom there, or replace that 1970s-era kitchen with a modern cooking arena.
Much of the debate -- as with cars or vacations or any big-ticket items -- comes down to affordability. But when you're talking about your home, the rules take on a different dimension. This is your castle. The last thing you want to do is look at your home every day and think: If only we had done....
And thus the challenge so many of us face: When remodeling your house to meet your dreams, do you pursue what you want, or simply settle for what you need?
* * *
Part of this debate is financial, part is emotional.
Unlike spending money on, say, a car, remodeling a house is an investment in a generally appreciating asset. If you're lucky, you will be able to recoup some or all of -- or even more than -- your costs when you resell the house.
Yet it's the emotion that drives most homeowners. Most of us are spending the money with an emotional, not investment, return in mind. We want something nicer than we're currently living with.
That's the situation my wife, Amy, and I are now discussing. On a particularly cold night two years ago, Amy turned on the hot water and our whirlpool tub shattered. It's going to cost several hundred dollars to replace.
But then we started thinking. There's demolition work needed to remove the tub, as well as some plumbing. But we never really liked the triangular shaped tub to begin with. And to be honest, the nearby glass-and-brass shower isn't our style; the light fixtures and vanities need to go; the white floor tiles are too sterile; and the mirrors are plain. So do we take this opportunity to do something completely different?
It's what one of my colleagues calls "the might as well" syndrome. She and her husband remodeled their New Jersey home a few years ago, initially thinking of adding eight feet to the back of the house. But a contractor friend said they "might as well go with 12 feet, because that's the length in which some of the wood will come in any event," she says. From there, it went something like this: "We've got most of the house down to the studs, so might as well do the front two rooms, even though they didn't really need to be gutted," she says. "And once you do that, you might as well do new windows in those rooms."
Of course, each "might as well" is another check you're writing. And those checks add up quickly. My friend, Christie, in Los Angeles, penciled in $20,000 to remodel a new condo she recently bought. That now has climbed above $30,000, she says, "and no doubt there will be more trickling in as I get into full swing."
One of the problems, as Christie sees it, is that "the money all seems fake anyway." You're spending cash in your head, so it's easy to go for that upscale fridge instead of the lower-end model that somehow functions just as well without an Internet connection. Christie isn't by nature indulgent. But in what is a near-universal emotion when it comes to our homes, Christie insists that: "I do not want to live with something that's just OK. I think it's a waste not to get what I really want. That doesn't mean spend like a crazy person, but it does mean that I'm likely to spend more. And if I'm going to spend the money, I might as well do it all upfront so I can enjoy it for the maximum amount of time."
A longtime friend on the East Coast says he wishes he had that foresight years ago when he spent $150,000 adding a second floor to his house. Instead of spending up to get what he wanted, he says, "I settled too much" for the merely adequate. "Now, in retrospect, I wish I'd done more."
"Obviously," he says, "there's only so much you can do because you only have so much money. But it's not big things. It's a bunch of little decisions -- a thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars there -- that add up to real improvements in the house. It's the bigger closet, the nicer bathroom, the better floor. The stuff I see every day. But at the time, they seemed like indulgences. Now I can't believe I didn't do them for an extra $20,000."
* * *
When Amy and I recently decided to finally focus on our master bath, I went wild, spewing my vision of slate and bamboo floors, an Asian-styled furniture piece as a vanity, porcelain vessels as sinks, a stone and glass shower. I want to replace bland hollow-core doors with solid hardwoods and get Amy a designer tub made for soaking.
Whoa, she said. "I just need something basic." While my vision for our bath "would be cool," Amy told me, "I don't want to put that much money into this." She conceded, however, that her initial reaction was colored by the fact that, at this point, she'll accept a cattle trough filled with hot water because "I'm tired of sitting on toys in the kid's tub. I just want a grown-up bathroom again."
But the more we talked, the more she realized we were both in the same camp. Just as I don't want to one day say, "I wish we'd done...," she wants certain renovations, including opening up a particular wall, that will make her feel the room is more functional than it is now.
"If I'm spending this money," she ultimately told me, "then I want it to be forever."
And with that, we called a contractor. Amy and I will do some of the work ourselves to trim costs (see a future column for details on that). In the meantime, the demolition of the old bath starts soon.
When it comes to your home, we've decided you don't settle. Within reason, you dream big.
By Jeff Opdyke
From The Wall Street Journal Online
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Getting Buyers to Stop And Take Another Look
The house had everything that Donna Smallin and her husband wanted, but walking through one particular room sealed their intentions.
"We were in the garage when we said we wanted to put in an offer," she said.
It was an extended garage, longer than average, with cabinets for storage -- understandably a selling point for the organizing expert. (Smallin is the author of "The One-Minute Organizer.") A workbench and the quality lighting that shined down on it captured her husband's attention.
Although theirs wasn't the bid the sellers accepted, they haven't forgotten that garage.
If your spring cleaning plan involves tackling the mess surrounding the car, take heart: A tidy, well-organized, multi-purpose garage can become a selling point when you put your home on the market. On top of that, some say that improvements in this room may actually increase a home's value.
An organized garage "increases the value -- not a lot -- but it does help," said Phyllis Pezenik, vice president of residential sales for DJK Residential, a New York area real-estate firm. Even if it doesn't up the selling price, the garage can act as a perk that inspires a buyer to make a bid.
"When people look to the garage, it sort of sets an overall tone for how the house is being kept," she said. A furnished or organized garage could suggest to prospective buyers that the entire house has been well maintained, she added. See four steps to an organized garage.
But an in-place organization system also is a draw because it addresses a problem fundamental in many American families: Finding a place for the accumulating piles of stuff. A garage is even more attractive when there's enough room left over for work space.
The organization business
As a result of the growing demand for storing and organizing, the number of products designed to organize garages -- as well as outfits that will come and organize the space for customers -- has been increasing over the past years.
The garage storage industry was estimated at about $1 billion in 2006, according to recent research by Specialists in Business Information, a market-research firm. Shed organization is an estimated $520 million market. Together, the two will be a $1.95 billion market by 2011, SBI estimates.
The Gladiator GarageWorks line of products, by Whirlpool, has quadrupled in sales during the past four years, said Michele Savalox, senior marketing manager for the line. Because a homeowner can transport some Gladiator elements -- including drawers on casters and appliances -- to a new residence, there will often be discussion among a buyer and seller at negotiation time on whether the system will stay in the garage, she said.
Another big player in the market, GarageTek, began in 2001 with annual sales of $2 million. The full-service garage organization company had $30 million in sales in 2006, and is expecting $36 million in sales this year. Over the years, GarageTek has also expanded to include franchises in many states, and recently opened franchises in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County, Calif.
Behind door No. 1
There are a couple of reasons for this growing trend of tidiness, according to the SBI report. For one, many Americans are accumulating an increasingly large amount of stuff and are looking for ways to store and keep track of all of it. The study pointed to the growth in the storage-facility industry as proof.
According to the Self Storage Association, 9% of U.S. households rented a self-storage unit in 2005, a 50% increase from 1995 figures. Gross revenues in the primary self-storage facility industry were about $23 billion in 2006, according to the association.
There's also movement toward extending the garage as a living space, incorporating stations for crafters and gardeners and creating auxiliary play space for kids.
Growth in the industry started picking up in 2003 and 2004, according to the SBI study, when an increase in products specifically designed for the garage showed up on home-improvement store shelves. "Great garages" was listed as one of the top home trends by the National Association of Home Builders in 2006. At this year's International Builders' Show, the NAHB forecasted an increased demand in three-car garages.
And, according to a recent survey by Jeld-Wen, a window and door manufacturer, the garage is also the No. 1 entry into the house. Forty-two percent of men and 41% of women said they enter the home most through the garage.
Marty Riskam, a Potomac, Md., resident who had his garage furnished with Gladiator products, said that he appreciates the garage's order when he gets out of the car and doesn't trip over things. His garage has insulated walls, a painted ceiling, installed floors, a car vacuum cleaner and a freezer for the family to store perishables in bulk.
He hired a company, Potomac Garage, to install the elements and help organize.
"I had a friend of mine say to me 'Your garage looks nicer than my living room,'" he said.
Putting a price on order
Prices for organization products and services range widely. Do-it-yourselfers can clean things up with a couple hundred dollars worth of shelving components. But upscale garage cabinets that Smallin recently considered had a price tag of about $20,000.
Gladiator customers typically spend about $1,000 on average on the organizational products, Savalox said. But if you invest in several components -- including a refrigerator system and work bench -- the price goes up.
And a full-service job by GarageTek will run anywhere from $2,500 to $46,000, said GarageTek CEO Marc Shuman. The average job -- a two-car garage installation with floors, wall storage and a ceiling system -- usually runs around $9,000, he said.
Shuman claims that a customer who hired the firm to remodel and organize his garage was given credit for it on an appraisal when he refinanced his home. Home builders also are incorporating the organization systems into new homes in order to differentiate themselves during a slower real-estate market, he said.
If nothing else, a well-kept garage that shows well to potential buyers might help shorten the property's time on the market, said Barry Izsak, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers and author of the book "Organize Your Garage in No Time."
"Even if you look at if not from a numerical standpoint, but from a curb appeal standpoint, it can ensure a quicker sale," Izsak said. After all, the average two-car garage has become "a no-car garage because it's crammed full of so much clutter," he said.
At the very least, those thinking of staging a garage area should keep things off the floor or leaning against walls by using brackets, hooks and cabinets, said Pezenik, the real-estate professional in New York.
But Izsak reminds that even a luxury system won't keep a garage in tip-top shape.
"The best system in the world isn't going to last, it isn't going to work if you don't stick to it," he said. "Even a mediocre system would work. Maintenance is the key."
By Amy Hoak
From MarketWatch
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Four Renovations That Won't Get You a Higher Selling Price
These are tough times for home sellers. If you're one of them, it can be tempting to launch into a series of home renovations to make your home more desirable.
But be discerning about your choices -- certain renovations can actually decrease the value of your home. Money magazine suggests avoiding these four renovations at all costs:
1. A swimming pool. If you don't know this already, a swimming pool is a liability, not an asset. (Unless you live in a hot climate; in the Southwest, a pool can increase a home's value by 11%.) But if your home is in Oregon or Illinois, the cost of insurance and pool maintenance is a buyer turn-off. Families with small children especially avoid homes with pools.
2. Home addition. Sure, an addition to your home will add inside space. But how will it look from the outside? Many home additions can look boxy or unnatural with the rest of the house. If you do go for an addition, make sure it is well designed.
3. Trendy finishes. Don't fall for the latest style or trend when it comes to renovating. As soon as it's out of style, it will stick out -- and look bad. One trend that will probably last for a while is custom paneling in maple or mahogany for home appliances. Otherwise, stick to timeless, classic renovations.
4. A Jacuzzi. Nothing beats a good soak after a long day. But not everyone loves a giant tub with multiple jets. Instead, try a rain showerhead if you want to add some luxury to a bathroom.
By Marshall Loeb
From MarketWatch
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Home-Equity Borrowing Stalls As the Housing Market Cools
After years of piling debt on their homes, Americans are becoming more cautious about using them as a piggy bank.
A cooling housing market and higher interest rates have made homeowners more reluctant to tap the equity they may have built up in their residences. The amount borrowers owe on their home-equity lines of credit has slipped in the past six months, to $561 billion at the end of March, the first such decline since 1999, according to new data from Equifax Inc. and Moody's Economy.com Inc. Although that decline was partly offset by a pickup in fixed-rate home-equity loans, total home-equity borrowing rose just 9% in the 12 months through March, well below the 21% average annual growth rate of the past five years.
"People are feeling uncertain about the value of their home and are feeling tapped out," says Doreen Woo Ho, president of Wells Fargo & Co.'s consumer-credit group.
Some homeowners have decided to "wait and see what happens to real estate," says David Rupp, Bank of America Corp.'s home-equity executive, "or they may view themselves as not needing to borrow."
During the housing boom, demand for home-equity lines of credit climbed sharply as property values rose, interest rates fell and lenders made it easy for borrowers to tap their equity for everything from home improvements to vacations. Borrowing against home equity freed up roughly $187 billion in cash per year between 2001 and 2005 that was used to pay off other debts and for new spending, according to a recent paper by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Fed economist James Kennedy.
Now, the slowdown in home-equity borrowing is leading to weaker sales in some markets for autos, building materials and electronics, says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Economy.com. The slowdown has been particularly notable in parts of the country that are suffering most from housing and mortgage corrections, including Boston, Minneapolis, Miami, Las Vegas and Washington.
Rising short-term interest rates have driven rates on home-equity lines of credit to an average of 8.7%, up from as little as 4.64% in April 2004, according to HSH Associates. Home-equity lines carry a variable rate, usually tied to the prime-lending rate, and give homeowners the right to borrow up to a certain amount, either all at once or over time.
Meanwhile, rates on home-equity loans, which provide borrowers with a fixed-rate and a lump sum, have also increased, but not as much as lines of credit. Home-equity loans average 8.1%, up from 6.75% since April 2004, HSH says.
As a result, more borrowers have opted for the stability of a fixed-rate home-equity loan over the flexibility offered by a line of credit. Balances on fixed-rate home loans climbed 24% to $290 billion in the 12 months ended in March, according to Equifax and Economy.com.
Also, some borrowers who already have lines of credit are refinancing into a new fixed-rate mortgage or fixing the rate on some or all of their credit line, an increasingly common option, says Mitch Ohlbaum, a mortgage broker in Los Angeles. Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages currently average 6.37%, HSH says.
Felice Soule, a medical-device saleswoman in Los Angeles, cut the balance on her home-equity line of credit to $58,000 from about $168,000 when she refinanced her $1 million mortgage this week. The rate on the home-equity line had jumped by more than two percentage points to 9.25% since she took out the credit line two years ago. "By refinancing and rolling [most of the home-equity line] into the first mortgage, it's saving me around $800 a month," she says.
But Keith Gumbinger, an HSH mortgage analyst, says this strategy doesn't make sense for every borrower. By doing a cash-out refinance, you're also extending the length of your mortgage, which means your "total interest charges over time are likely to be higher" than they would be with a home-equity line or loan, he says. And in some cases borrowers may face a prepayment penalty, which can range from a few hundred dollars to 2% of the loan amount, if they close down their home-equity line or loan in the first few years.
Even at today's higher rates, a home-equity line or loan can be an attractive option. Rates are generally lower than for most other sources of financing, and interest payments are typically tax deductible. Most borrowers who have owned their homes for several years still have plenty of equity they can tap.
"If you need the money to clear up some credit-card debt, it's certainly worth the trade-off," says David Lesnick, a financial planner in Goodyear, Ariz. But Mr. Lesnick is also advising clients to proceed with caution. "If it's something that could wait, let it wait," he says.
Lenders are responding to slowing demand for home-equity borrowing by boosting their marketing, unveiling special offers and focusing on traditional uses of home equity, such as home improvement and debt consolidation. Wells Fargo this week rolled out a "Home Improvement Program" that gives home-equity customers discounts at retailers such as Best Buy, Brookstone and LampsPlus.com and access to a network of third-party local contractors.
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is running its first cable-television advertising campaign for home-equity borrowing, focusing on the product's flexibility. It's also rolling out a training program designed to help bankers in Chase branches do a better job of selling home-equity products. Bank of America, has launched a "green" home-equity card program, in which the bank will make a $100 donation to environmental group Conservation International on behalf of new home-equity customers who use their equity-line Visa card for purchases of $2,500 or more.
Delinquencies on home-equity lines of credit also have climbed, to 1.29% in the first quarter, according to a separate study by Equifax and Economy.com. That's up from 0.8% a year earlier and the highest level since early 2002.
Partly as a result, lenders are tightening their standards. That in turn is making it tougher for some borrowers to get so-called piggyback mortgages, which combine a mortgage with a home-equity loan or line of credit and allow borrowers to finance more than 80% of a home's value without paying mortgage insurance.
National City Corp. says that in the past 60 days it has tightened its standards for home-equity loans made to borrowers providing little, if any, documentation of their income or assets. E. Kennedy Carter Jr., a National City executive vice president, says the bank saw applications for these loans jump as other lenders withdrew from the market when institutions who invest in mortgage-backed securities lost their appetite for riskier loans. Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank this month also tightened its eligibility standards for home-equity loans.
Gibran Nicholas, a mortgage broker in Ann Arbor, Mich., says one of his clients was hoping to tap the equity on his $1 million home in an effort to make up for a sharp drop in his income, but couldn't because he had been late on some payments. "Lenders are not looking to do 100% financing for people with less than stellar credit," Mr. Nicholas says.
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For Some Americans, Buying Land Is Like Collecting Art and Autos
In 2001, Kentucky native Brad Kelley sold his cigarette manufacturing company Commonwealth Brands Inc. for some $1 billion and promptly went on a shopping spree. He didn't go to Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue -- he set his sights on the range.
Mr. Kelley bought hundreds of thousands of acres of West Texas ranchland. In Florida, he snapped up some 60,000 acres near Sarasota, where he breeds animals such as antelope and anoa, a miniature water buffalo native to Indonesia. Today he is the seventh-largest landowner in the U.S., according to the debut issue of The Land Report, a publication that bills itself as the magazine of the American landowner.
The rich are accumulating open spaces across the U.S. much as they have with vacation homes, automobiles and paintings in the past. As urban areas have grown, some well-off city dwellers have purchased spreads in remote places, thousands of miles from the typical playgrounds of the wealthy.
"It's like rare art," says Jim Taylor, president of Hall & Hall, a Billings, Mont., real-estate firm, that has worked with CNN founder Ted Turner, among other land buyers.
In West Texas, for example, Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos has acquired several ranches in recent years totaling about 300,000 acres, making him No. 23 on The Land Report's list of the nation's top 100 landowners (Mr. Bezos declined comment for this story).
The push to amass acreage among the rich is part of a broader boom in which Americans outside the agricultural sector have been pouring money into land, pushing up prices. Farm real estate rose 15% in 2006 from 2005 to $1,900 per acre, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The wealth accumulated in the last decade by aging baby boomers has left them looking for places to put their money.
At the same time, in the agricultural stretches of America, the population is aging and the economy is in many cases unable to sustain ranches and farms.
A study published in the journal Society and Natural Resources said between 1990 and 2001 only about a quarter of those who bought parcels of 400 acres or larger in 10 Montana and Wyoming counties were traditional ranchers.
More recently, real-estate brokers say, buyers have been scouring the Great Plains for spreads that offer hunting and fishing, wooed by brokerage outfits spearheaded by retailers such as Orvis Co. and Cabela's Inc.
While the typical land buyer these days is looking for a remote piece of wilderness or ranchland for outdoor sporting activities, or simply to admire the beauty of the landscape, the top landowners tend to be driven by more varied interests.
Mr. Bezos, for example, used his parched land in the far reaches of West Texas last year to test a developmental vehicle for his space-flight company, Blue Origin LLC, while Roxanne Quimby, co-founder of cosmetics and candle company Burt's Bees, has acquired acreage in the northwoods of Maine for conservation.
To be sure, the nation's rich have long owned large tracts of land. But population growth and urban development have made far-flung property more desirable, while advances in transportation and communication have made it more accessible. That, combined with the sort of wealth made by Mr. Bezos of Amazon.com ($4.3 billion, according to Forbes Magazine's 2006 estimate) and the woes of the agricultural economy, has sustained the land boom for the very wealthy.
The owners of the Dallas-based Land Report LLC, publisher of the magazine, believe the phenomenon merits monthly coverage. With a circulation of 40,000, The Land Report is distributed free to 30,000 of the nation's largest landowners and to some 10,000 industry professionals, such as real-estate brokers.
"There is an enormous niche that was completely underserved," says Eric O'Keefe, the magazine's editor.
But the concentration of land in the hands of a privileged few could yield a backlash. Ms. Quimby, who sold Burt's Bees in 2002 to private equity firm AEA Investors LLC for $177 million (she retained 20% ownership in the company), wants to assemble about 100,000 acres to help realize a decade-old dream among Maine conservationists to create a national park. She says she has amassed 80,000 acres so far.
But some locals in the town of Millinocket were outraged when Ms. Quimby proclaimed that her land would be off-limits to logging, hunting and motorized vehicles, including snowmobiles. Now they sport "Ban Roxanne" T-shirts.
"Our way of life is being threatened," says Jimmy Busque, a member of the Millinocket town council and a steam plant operator at the local paper mill.
No. 100 on The Land Report list, Ms. Quimby agreed to allow a year of hunting and motorized access on her latest purchase, the 25,000-acre Sand Stream Sanctuary, which came last September. But she is unapologetic about her plans for her newly acquired property, much of which she has purchased from logging companies. "I don't have to argue the environmental merits of anything," says Ms. Quimby. "I own it."
The nation's largest private landowner is Ted Turner, whose portfolio includes 15 ranches in seven Western states and a total of about two million acres. Long intrigued by bison and how close the animal came to extinction, Mr. Turner acquired his land over the past 30 years in large part to raise livestock. Today his herd of about 45,000 bison allows most of his ranches to pay for themselves in part through sales of steaks and burgers around the country and Mr. Turner's restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grill.
Mr. Turner's latest acquisition came in 2005 in Nebraska, where he bought almost 65,000 acres for about $19 million. Russ Miller, general manager of Turner Enterprises Inc., which manages Mr. Turner's land, says the profound economic and demographic change under way in the Great Plains have enabled Mr. Turner to assemble such a large swath.
Why so much? "It's the only thing that lasts," says Mr. Miller. It's a declaration Mr. Turner has made in the past, echoing the famous line from "Gone With the Wind."
Mr. Kelley, who was raised on a farm, says he amassed about half of his landholdings before selling his cigarette manufacturing company. (The Land Report says he has 789,851 acres, but he puts the total at about 1.2 million acres.) Since 2001 he has redoubled his efforts to build a ranching empire, acquiring cattle operations across the country and breeding hoofstock in conjunction with zoos.
One place of particular interest for Mr. Kelley has been the Big Bend region of Texas, a vast expanse in the state's western corner. In Brewster County, the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, Mr. Kelley owns a total of 429,366 acres, according to the county appraisal office.
"I have an appreciation for land," says Mr. Kelley. "That's sort of where my heart's at."
But Mr. Kelley dismisses the notion that he is a land collector, albeit No. 7 on the list of the nation's top 100. "It's not a hobby," he says. "If you're a hedge fund you buy stocks. If you're a rancher, you buy land."
By Thaddeus Herrick
From The Wall Street Journal Online
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