A coat of paint is the cheapest way to make a huge impact on your home before it hits the market. But choosing colors can be overwhelming, especially when you’re facing the climbing wall-sized paint section at the hardware store.

Fortunately there’s a new book perfect for folks looking to do their own staging. It’s called Neutral Color Schemes from Firefly books available for $29.95 (or 19.77 on Amazon).

It offers over 200 palette suggestions with a main color and 4 accent colors for trim, pillows, curtains and the like to give a room a pulled together look.

Another nice feature is that it purse/man-bag sized so you won’t ever have to face the paint swatch section alone again.

I missed out on all the warm fall weather to put up outdoor holiday lights this year. If you haven’t untangled your string yet either, here are some reasons to consider the switch over to LED Christmas lights.

What research has found is that we tend to fire up the holiday spirit to the tune of 400 watts at dusk - but, also add on an addition 200 daytime watts. This means we tend to leave our lights on more than we care to admit. This averages out to about $15 a day for an “average” home. Of course, if you’re the Grindwald’s (Chevy Chase’s movie family in Christmas Vacation) you’re paying more.

But even if your display is modest, you’re probably forking out some cash to make it the Season of Lights so you might as well be smart about it.

Here are a few reasons to consider buying the newer energy-efficient bulbs: LED lights use a fraction of what a similarly sized incandescent light would use.The Fun Times Guide to Going Green claims it takes  5 watts per bulb in the average incandescent mini-light while an entire string of LED mini-lights uses around 4 watts. Wow.

In addition to drawing less electricity, the LEDs hold up longer. How many times have you had a cheap string of lights fail the same year you’ve bought them? The LED bulbs are more substantial and also cool to the touch - always a nice bonus.

Okay, the not great news about LEDs: The color is not the same as the incandescent lights that you probably grew up with that signals grandma’s cookies, Asti Spumante and Santa rolling by in a Norelco Shaver - in short, all things Christmas.

The closest color to that would be the LEDs marketed as “warm” or “soft” and guess what - they cost more.

And on that note, all LEDs cost more. A strand of 50-60 white LED mini-lights will cost you around $10 which could get you nearly 500 incadescent mini-lights. So you’re unlikely to break even on energy savings the first year, but you do have durability going for ya.

Now if they only they self-strung, then we’d really be talking…

Send me photos of your light display (LED or traditional) and I’ll be sure to post ‘em.

In its last act as a semi-independent company, Fannie Mae altered mortgage guidelines for real estate investors last Friday. It was Fannie’s 22nd update this year.

The first part of the guideline change limits the number of properties owned by any one person. 

Fannie Mae will now decline any mortgage application for a second home or investment property if the mortgage applicant already finances, or will finance, more than 4 properties in total.

The former guidelines allowed for 10.

There is a loophole, however.  Fannie Mae will not count properties against the 4-property limit if they are held in the name of a corporation.  This holds even if the real estate investor is the sole owner of said corporation. 

Investors, therefore, should consider moving their properties into a corporate structure to avoid triggering Fannie Mae’s 4-property limit.  Many take this step for liability and taxation reasons, but it’s now a good idea for mortgage approval reasons, too.

The second part of the guideline change cannot be so easily avoided.  Fannie Mae is assessing new, loan-to-value based loan fees on all investment property mortgages.

• Loan-to-value less than 75 percent : 1.75% loan fee
• Loan-to-value 75.01-80.00 percent : 3.00% loan fee
• Loan-to-value 80.01-90.00 percent : 3.75% loan fee

These fees are mandatory and are in addition to any whatever other risk-based loan fees Fannie Mae may assess.  Currently, those fees amount to a half-percent at minimum for real estate investors.

Since its Fannie/Freddie takeover, government officials have not addressed whether mortgage guidelines will be rolled back to “a looser time”.   If they are, it would be a big deal for real estate investors because, as many are finding out, low rates don’t matter much if you can’t qualify for them.

If you’re currently in the market for an investment property (or two), consider that it may be cheaper and simpler to purchase over the near-term versus the long-term.  And consider moving your existing properties into a corporate structure first.

However, before heading down that path, be sure to get good advice.  Talk to a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) and/or an Attorney to insure you are made fully aware of the implications of moving real estate into a corporate structure.  There may be other things that can have an impact on that decision which would not make it worth it. So, the bottom line is…be informed.

When I find an MLS listing that stirs my burning real estate desire, I grab onto it like a pit bull with lockjaw. Suddenly I get lost in a micro-obsession mode and need to learn everything I can about the area.

For my last move, it wasn’t convenient for me to jump into the car and drive 2+ hours every time my housing lust flared. Instead I jumped on my trusty Mac and did my snooping virtually. (Which as a home seller I can say is much appreciated. My friend Kelsey’s house has incredible gardens, as you can see from her MLS photos, and she has had more than one party impulsively let themselves into her privacy-fenced backyard to have a closer look around. That’s a bit creepy.)

A few of these snooping features I’ve mentioned in previous posts and some of them are brand new. I thought it would be handy dandy to bundle them up in one spot to serve as a kind of stalker training manual. Of course, we must use our power for good, not evil.

My first stop as a Nosy Rosy is always Google Maps. I wrote about it a while back regarding the controversy surrounding private communities not wanting their homes pictured on the web, more specifically on Google’s Street View. As I said before, it’s a cool feature that allows you to see photos from various street addresses. And if you’re obsessed with a home that’s for sale, being able to “drive” up the road on your computer can really help you scratch that itch. One caveat is that the street numbers aren’t always perfect, but usually there’s a front photo on a MLS listing that can help you ID the exact house if the numbers fail you.

After I’ve i-driven the street a few dozen times, then I’m ready to go to walkscore.com. This site takes any given address, looks up the walkable businesses, libraries, schools and other amenities like parks and kindly places them on a map for you. It then renders a score based on how many locations you can walk to and add to your quality of life - not to mention avoid gas consumption and being skinny like our EU cousins across the pond. The house I still own in St. Anthony Village scored an impressive 72 and is considered “Very Walkable.” You can see it’s score card here.

The next big deal for lots of people with children is schools. There are several sites out there that slap together numerical ratings for schools based on test scores. A popular one I mentioned before is GreatSchools.net and another is School Data Direct, but what is even more important to me than the numbers is finding parental comments about the school on the sites.

That’s why I suggest you search for a local blog in your area. When moving to Duluth, I posted on PerfectDuluthDay.com asking for readers to advise me on where to live in the city. This was 2 days before Christmas and I got 80 something replies. And these were thoughtful replies that really helped me. And not just with selecting a neighborhood, but it gave me an emotional toehold into the city and gave me the lay of the land about local issues. Suddenly it felt like somewhere I wanted to live and I actually “knew” a few people when I got here.

A Minneapolis example would be minneapolis.metblogs.com, but a google search- and looking on the blogrolls of other sites (it’s just a link page on a site that can direct you to other blogs) can help you find your way to a blog that’s right for you.

If you run into any other tricky cybertools, please send them along in a comment (I love comments!) or directly to Lucie at webdigs.com.

Photo from the Star Tribune by Joel Koyama from the 8.6.08 story Rambler Revival in the Variety section

The 50’s rambler has always been the Rodney Dangerfield of architecture, but it seems their smart and efficient layout is finally getting some respect. I’ve long been a fan.

When we bought our rambler during the frenzied love affair with the bungalow, several friends really didn’t know what to say. The house had hardly been updated since it was built in 1950 (picture orange shag) so it was dated to say the least - and downright ugly in parts. But we saw past that to a layout that really worked for a family.

And it seems that finally, I’m not a alone. Today’s Star Tribune has a fantastic story written by Kim Palmer about an award-winning rambler remodel. What won the 2008 Heritage Preservation prize, along with an appearance on HGTV’s “Decorating Cents” wasn’t that the ranch-style house was transformed from an ugly duckling to some show swan - but instead the project has been lauded for keeping the rambler a rambler with some tasteful updates.

The owner architect who is responsible for the project, Judy Grundstrom, offered some tips on updating a mid-century home:

A rambler is a rambler. “Don’t try to turn a rambler into something else. I get these calls from people who say, ‘I have a rambler but I’d like to make it Tuscan or Craftsman.’ I actually turn those projects down. If your house is going to have any historic integrity for the future, allow it to be a rambler.”

Work with what you’ve got. People who own vintage houses often want to remove original features that they consider too dark, such as old fireplaces or paneling. But it’s easier, and much less expensive, to brighten a space with light-colored furniture and vibrant accents, she said.

Know your limits. Doing it yourself is a great way to save money, but some projects are better left to professionals. The Grundstroms decided they were handy enough to install the mosaic glass tile in their kitchen, a decision they soon regretted. “That was the worst weekend of my life, so stressful that we almost got divorced,” Judy Grundstrom said. “Now I tell everyone, ‘Pay the money. It’s a steal.’

***

If you’re truly a hipster you can subscribe to the magazine Atomic Ranch to get ideas to make your trendy digs even more so.

Have a visceral response to ramblers? Let me know, I’d love to hear it.

Lucie Amundsen is a shelter writer and essayist who owns a rambler and is currently renting a rambler. You can read more of her stuff at www.twowordy.com.

Even though I’m not going to be buying a house for at least a year, I still find myself checking out what’s out there. I use traditional MLS sites like webdigs.com, troll Craigslist and FSBO portals, too. Some of the non-traditional sites offer A LOT of pictures - sometimes 20 or more.

I love real estate photos, I really do, but when is it too much of a good thing?

According to Point2Agent, the more photos the better. Their research shows more hits as the numbers of images increases.

But I believe in the burlesque dancer approach - you want to show just enough to entice, titillate even - but not SO much that your potential buyer peeks a blemish and moves on. The idea of posting images is to motivate armchair buyers into their car and seeing your house in person where they can fall in love with it. Somehow you want your home to be the Dita Von Teese of Real Estate - sexy, alluring, but never giving away anything before its time.

I found that when confronted with 30plus pictures, I’d eventually come to one that would throw me out of real estate ecstasy - and I’d more often than not scratch it off my list. So it becomes a fine balance of using the “come hither” photos and excluding ones that may cast doubt.

A while back I read a Star Tribune article on how to take better photos for selling your home. One of the best tips I got was to take an outdoor photo in the evening with the lights glowing in the house. When I took mine I really lucked out because it had just rained which made my patio particularly inviting.

That’s a staging tip by the way. My stager, Jean McCue, suggested that we hose off the patio before showings to make it look it’s best. We did it when we could, but honestly by the 40th or so showing the novelty of doing to was wearing thin. But I always did it for second showings.

When my house was on the market with Webdigs, I think it had 9 photos and that seemed like a nice number. We never lacked for showings and we were able to hit the high points of the property.

P.S.: I am finding excerpts of “Selling isn’t for Sissies” all over Real Estate Blogs throughout the country. The one that made me laugh though was being included on a site called f*ckedseller.com. How funny is that?

You might have caught this article today in the Star Tribune. It’s about the private north suburb community of North Oaks requesting that Google Maps remove photos of their properties from its Street View function. By the way, it’s a really cool feature that allows you to see photos from various street addresses. If you haven’t played with it, I encourage you to give it a try. If you’re house hunting, it’s yet another way to burn innumerbal hours on-line searching for your next real estate quest.

The gist of the article is that North Oaks contends no one can enter to take photos of homes without trespassing on their private property - thus making any posted pictures ill-gotten goods. Google complied with their request and took down North Oak maps. But if you read the electronic comments left by readers on the Star Tribune website, it seems the general public are not with the good people of North Oaks. Comments range from calling residents paranoid to accusing them of class warfare.

This surprises me. I mean, it’s private property and the folks in North Oaks pay for all the roads and infrastructure themselves. It seems well within their rights.

When I wrote the Neighborhood Spotlight column for the Star Tribune a few years back, I had to stand on the street and take pictures of homes as examples of real estate in a given place. I hated doing it.

I used to tell my editor, Jim, that he’d have to bail me out or visit me in the hospital should I end up in an altercation over the practice. Luckily, I never did, but I know I ruffled some feathers and got some stare downs from residents. But I knew I had the law on my side with public road under my feet.

In the case of North Oaks, there is no public space from which to photograph from. And if North Oakians want to exercise their right to privacy, I see no reason why they shouldn’t. In a world with paparazzi stalking celebrities at every turn and nothing is too sacred to throw onto the World Wide Web, I find it refreshing for a group to decide to opt out of it all.

If you want to opt out as well, the Star Tribune kindly provided these instructions:

HOW TO TAKE YOUR HOME OFF STREET VIEW

• Go to maps.google.com.

• Enter any address and click on “street view.”

• Click on “street view help” in the image window.

• Click on “report inappropriate image.”

What’s your take?

Chew toy treat dispenser

Now you’re probably wondering how this dog toy fits into selling my house. You may remember that we’ve had some problem staging out our Rottweiller, Scottie-dog. Of course, there’s not doubt that for showings he’s got to go.

When you’re buying a house you don’t want to see a dog, hear a dog or in anyway think that a dog resides in this house. There’s a universal truth at work here - your own dog is lovely, wonderful, a Lassie reincarnate, but the other guy’s dog - well, that’s plain disgusting.

I accept this. Consequently spending hours on end in the mini-van was bringing out uncharacteristic behavior in our dog - like eating our seat belts. So I went to my local big box pet store and left with a solution. It’s one of those indestructible Kong chew toys, but with the twist of specially shaped dog cookies you shove in there. As your dog chews on the toy, he’s rewarded for his efforts with a treat. It gives him a hobby to distract him from our tasty restraining devices - we all need a hobby.

What’s in the can? Well, that’s a pressurized meat product you can squirt in along with the treats for added interest - and you don’t even have to refrigerate it. (I know - Ewww, but do you know how expensive it is to replace seat belts?)

So now before a showing, no matter HOW busy I am, I sprint Scottie around the block and then load up his Kong with pressurized meat  & liver cookies before I stick him in the van. I wouldn’t say he’s delighted or anything, but he’s been better.

Don’t tell him, but I got the “senior” version of this toy (Note: the dog on the can is wearing glasses). This particular chewer is made of a slightly softer material giving him a better chance of getting at the cookies (which are lower fat for the old guys).

Scottie’s been sentenced to the van 4 times this week for showings. Honestly, It’s getting hard on all of us. After a month on the market and 30+ showings, I’m starting to really resent the process. It’s a real time suck. I’ve fallen off the staging wagon a bit, so my last showings took me a good three hours to pull the house together for. At that rate, I could have had a part-time job.

There are some reasons to be hopeful. I was reading a report put out this week by RealTrends.com which is listed on the site’s front page. Chew on this - it states that while home prices for April 08 are down 4.5% and sales are off 16.3% over 2007, it’s way better than last month. March’s prices were 7% down and sales were off 28% from the previous year.

While I’d hardly call that GREAT - it’s more like this sucks, but it sucks so much less than it did. Kinda suck-lite. Still I’m choosing to take this as a good news and root for suck-lite to turn into a full-blown recovery.

I’m starting to hear the rumble of real estate on the move. And it’s not just some abstract, “I heard from a friend…”. No, my agent, Tom has some real live clients who have been interested in a number of properties that have snapped up.

And get this — they got into multiple offer situation for a house in Richfield. The clients bid $12K over asking — and lost! The listing agent said they had 5 offers and that the $12K over offer was 3rd. 3rd!!

I wonder if the listing agent priced the house low as a catalyst for a bidding war. Bill Effros writes about this in his book, How to Sell Your Home in 5 days. The gist is to advertise your home for far less than market rate starting on Wednesday, offer tours all week and close bidding on Saturday. Jason and I talked about doing this strategy, but just seeing my house on the market for so much less than its worth made my stomach turn.

At any rate, that bidding wars are happening - heck, that BIDDING in itself is happening is encouraging for a seller like me. While I don’t expect to ride the crest of 7 years ago, I’m delighted that the playing field seems to be evening out a bit.

Seller’s Diary - taking staging outside

And as far as keeping you informed with our sale, we have a second showing tonight which means I have several hours of tidying and staging ahead of me. And we spent a good 15 hours on yardwork this weekend and it’s looking pretty spiffy. We planted shrubbery and annuals on our berm. ( I can’t even say shrubbery without thinking about Monty Pytho, can you?)

Our berm with young plantings. In a few years the plants will take over and make the berm blend seemlessly into the landscape.

What’s a berm? It’s just a mound of earth that’s covered with landscaping fabric, mulch and plants. It’s been a popular topic in recent years on shows like HGTV. It’s a way to get a little height variance in a yard and if you grow tall plants, it can provide some privacy around a patio. That’s partially what we were after, but mostly I didn’t want to pay someone to haul dirt away when we had our stamped-concrete patio poured. For the price of the clean-up, I could purchase the materials to create the berm.

Another thing we did this weekend was visit Mulch Mountain. That’s the mulch set out by communities created from their tree maintenance programs. While it’s not the beautiful clear cyprus mulch that we used on the berm, it has a lovely variegated look to it that works well in garden beds.

Tulips with free mulch and I see I need to weed more.

The kids love playing on Mulch Mountain and did I mention it’s free? Compared to the $2 bucks plus a bag I pay for the stuff at the home center, that’s worth digging little sticks out of my kids’ sneakers.

The one we went to was at the north side of Columbia Park at the playground parking lot in northeast Minneapolis. Call your city office to find out where free mulch lives in your area.

Lucie Amundsen is a contributor to the magazine, BackYard Living and others. She hopes to sell her home in enough time to start a garden at a new one.

I tried to resist. When my stager foisted the Swivel Sweeper on me, I demurely declined. Broom & dust pan technology workin’ fine by me - thanks! But she insisted I try it.

Okay, turns out this little cordless electric sweeper really IS great, despite being an “As seen on TV” gadget (but available at Target and Home Depot). It’s a good product for people “living in a product” as we try to sell our homes. In fact, my stager considers it an essential staging tool.

What makes the sweeper so neato is the way it handles, turns on a dime, hugs the turns and allows you to get all the way under the bed - it’s got the mobility of a sports car. And more importantly it picks up all the dog hair & cheddar bunnies hiding under the kitchen bench. (It’s a State Fair demo waiting to happen.)

Since my house has been on the market, I make the bed in the morning - carefully arranging all 8 pillows like something out of the Linen’s & Things circular - and then I run through all the rooms with the little sweeper in under 5 minutes. This happens to be my attention span for this task.

I then pop off the sweeper’s bottom panel and empty the sweepings into my kitchen garbage, plug the charger back into the station and I’m done. If this were the Cleaning Olympics, I’d really be nailing those time trials.

Whereas I would never attempt timed competition with my Dyson. Now I LOVE my pink Dyson vac, I really do - but it’s a production to take it out. It’s relatively heavy and because I’m spatially-impaired, I often have to look at the manual to remember how to get the attachments on (yes, that was hard to admit, but I know my honesty in this matter is paramount). So to be able to whip out this feather light vac and sweep up without moving any furniture is fantastic.

It performs best on the hardwood and tile and I’d say “pretty good” on the carpets. We still need to drag out the “the big vac” every now and again, but for everyday clean-up it’s made me swoon.

Lucie B. Amundsen is a DIY writer in the Twin Cities who is currently resisting moving to the Twin Ports.