A cold fall day in Anchorage - get your home ready for cold weather!

turns cold.  I live an Anchorage, Alaska, which is located on Cook Inlet.  Our elevation is low and the water keeps our temperature relatively temperate, but it will still get well below freezing and stay that way for months.

Here is a checklist of things I do around my house “pre-snow“:

1. Have your furnace inspected.  This should be done every year.  If you forget and have a problem, odds are it will be on a very cold night when the heating guy takes forever to get to you and charges triple-time.  I’ve found that you can save money by having your heating systems cleaned and serviced by a professional in good weather, beats the rush and saves  you money in the winter when rates are higher.

2. Clean leaves out of your house gutters.  If you have trees close by your house, you will have leaves.  If you don’t get the leaves out, by next year the leaves will be decomposing into sod.  Wait a couple seasons and you’ll have mess of it. On a rainy day you’ll see water running over the sides of your gutters, possibly at the dammed up downspouts.  This is an easy job to do in the fall before the roof gets ice on it.

3. Disconnect your garden house.  This is an easy item to overlook.  Leaving a garden hose connected will make water trapped inside the hose freeze and travel upside the wall of the house.  Modern hose bibs are built to be frost free, but it’s not worth it to test the quality of your wall and frost-free hose spigot.  If it freezes, it will break and can run water inside the wall either right when it breaks or in the spring when it finally thaws creating a much larger mess and greater repair.

4.  Use your ‘set-back’ thermostats.  In the great State of Alaska, there has been a push for years to get an energy audit and make basic repairs.  By basic, installing better quality windows, caulking drafts and cracks and installing weather seal to doors jams and thresholds to stop air leaks.  Most homes today, at least in Alaska, have set-back thermometers that allow you to set the time for you home to cool down during the day when you are at work, and come back to temperature when you are on your way home from work.  If you have them already, use them!  They will save you money.  If you don’t have them, get them, install them and use’em!  During the day, wear a sweater and put your socks on – you’ll save money!

5. Use Your Ceiling Fan.  I like to have the air moving when I am at home.  In the summer our fan blows down to provide refreshing cool air.  Warm air rises; if you have a vaulted ceiling your fan will push the warm air back down into the room. 

6. Remove small appliance fuel.  Gasoline will gel when it sets for the winter.  Remove the fuel from your lawn mower and other summer tools.  You can add a fuel stabilizer to the gas tanks of small engines, such as tractors or 4 wheelers, if you aren’t going to run them for the winter.  If you use a snow blower, now would be a good time to fire it up to make sure it’s ready when you get a driveway full of snow.

7. Take the table and chairs off the deck.  It’s a sure bet you won’t be having breakfast or dinner on the deck for a while.  If you move the table and chairs off the deck, it’s much easier to shovel the deck this winter.

8. Clean your chimney.  The fire department will tell you they have chimney fires every year from people with traditional wood fireplaces when they built a big fire on the first cold night of winter.  Remember, wood fires release creosote into to the flue which condenses on the flue walls on the way up the chimney.  Creosote is very combustible.  Clean your fireplace in the fall to repair for winter use.

9. Double check your smoke detector and carbon monoxide units.  Accidental carbon monoxide poisoning generally happens when furnaces have problems or when cars run in the garage without ventilation.  Make sure the batteries are fresh and the units are functioning properly.  Also check for operating fire extinguishers!

10. Unpack your snow shovels.  Make sure your shovel is accessible for the first snow dump early on Monday morning when you open your garage door to head to work!  Ugh! 

A number of years ago I was buying a property for myself. The property had a great view; the owner had spent a fair amount of money improving the property; there was great potential for me to do some things to the property that I wanted to do. I had been looking for just this opportunity for some time – and I was excited, but trying to be remain calm, cool and collected so I would’t tip my hand to the seller how much I wanted to buy. I also wanted to be rational and not lose my perspective.

Guess what I did? Seeing that the property was fairly new and everything looked so clean and “squared away”, I decided to forgo the

Think you are Saving Money? Don't step over dollars to save dimes!

home inspection and save myself $400. I reasoned, I’m sure an inspector will find $300 or $400 in little things to justify the inspection, but I can certainly see everything I need to see and I’m sure it was built fine. I closed the loan and purchased without an inspection, against the advice I give my clients.

The first night I spent in the property, I noticed the wall sconce lights flickered annoyingly, and they were not the bulbs that were supposed to do that. I replaced the bulbs with new bulbs. They still flickered. After much frustration and a couple visits by an electrician, I learned the builder has undersized the electrical panel and novice’s had wired the home without a permit. Light switches ran circuits that weren’t logical, some didn’t work and all and there was a bad electrical short in the wall which affected the flickering lights. This would have been easily discovered had I paid a professional home inspector to objectively evaluate the property.

Moral of the story? Always get a home inspection. Even if you know the sale is “as-is” and the seller isn’t going to make any repairs, at least know what you are buying!

Here are the high points of the “right to inspect” as laid out in Alaska’s commonly used “Purchase and Sales Agreement.”

* Seller agrees to maintain the property in it’s current condition, all the way through to closing. This means if the garage door opener fails once you are in contract and you are the seller, you must repair or replace it.

* Buyer has the right to inspect early, usually within 10 days, of making an offer.  The buyer can choose any qualified professional inspector(s), but must notify the seller who has the right to refuse certain inspectors, but not unreasonably.  Seller agrees to make the property available for the inspection.

The older a home is, the more code changes may affect a sale

* Buyers inspection may include, but is not limited to: square footage, school boundaries, zoning, avalanche, sex offenders, pest inspections, structural, plumbing, sewer and water, heating appliances, insulation, electrical, roofing, soils, drainage, foundation, mechanical systems, code compliances, possible environmental hazards such as asbestos, mold, illegal drug or substance manufacturing, urea-formaldehyde, radon gas, waste disposal sites, and underground tanks. (whew, did we miss anything?) 

* The buyer can inspect anything obviously.  The buyer has 72 hours to either terminate the purchase after his inspection or accept the property or request repairs from the seller. 

* If requesting repairs, buyer shall request in writing and attach a copy of his inspection or findings from his due diligence.  A time frame for sellers response is included in the request, usually under a week. 

* The seller, after being requested to make repairs, can agree to make the repair, negotiate on the repairs such as offer a credit, or simply not agree to make some repairs.

* If buyer and seller are in agreement, the work is done prior to closing and may be subject to a reinspect, at the buyers cost.  If buyer and seller ARE NOT in agreement, the transaction is terminated and both parties go their own ways.

* A repair condition or result of an inspection becomes a material amendment to the “State of Alaska Residential Real Property Transfer Disclosure Statement” and be disclosed to subsequent potential purchasers.

As you can see, the “Right to Inspect” has been well thought out and is meant to keep buyers and sellers on equally fair ground.

Asphalt Driveway settling away from concrete slab

One of the things that wears out on many homes in Alaska is the asphalt driveway. 

First, it’s important to know if you are reading this from outside the Anchorage area, very few homes have concrete driveways in central or northern Alaska.  That is because during the freeze – thaw cycle, the ground gets wet, when it freezes, ice expands. 

Concrete doesn’t flex, but asphalt does.  This is why asphalt is the most common of driveways – the concrete will crack and break up over time in most driveways.

Many asphalt driveways hold up for 10 to 15 years, but most of them begin to fail at some point in the life of a home.  You can prolong the life of your driveway by sealing the cracks so water doesn’t penetrate and black topping the surface, but if the ground heaves through the thaw and freeze seasons, ultimately you’ll see large cracks, heaving or asphalt pulling away from the concrete pad inside the garage.

The same driveway after being filled and sealed

When your driveway fails, as the one in the first photo, you don’t have to live with it – you can repair it without breaking the bank.  There are companies that specialize in filling cracks and surfacing, or if even more severe repair is required such as overlaying the driveway or replacing it.  Call or email me for names and numbers of contractors that Iwould recommend.

Your basic sheetrock wall over the counters

One perc of my job is that I get to see other peoples nice houses.  You know how it is, just when you think you’ve seen the coolest thing ever, along comes someone else’s cool thing.  And styles change every few years. What was really cool in 1985, wasn’t so hot in 1995.

Guess what I did, inexpensively and on budget?  I gave my kitchen an entirely new look!

My cabinets are cherry, which I happen to like;  The space between the lower cabinets and the upper cabinets had a simple 4 inch back splash that worked, but to me was……boring!

After seeing the look in magazines and on other peoples nice homes, I decided I wanted to get a tile back splash over the sheet rock wall between my existing counter tops and the bottom of the upper cabinets. 

I got an idea of what I liked and talked to my friend Rick Stonke at R & K Services.  Rick is good with colors and patterns and he knows I can be very picky.  Once someone does me right and knows me, I like to stick with them so I don’t have to train anyone new to my idiosyncrasies.

Rick measured up my wall area and helped me pick out the tile. He ordered it and about three weeks later (because I told him I wasn’t in a hurry and to ship it the cheapest way possible), we had tile and Rick billed me for it.  I think it was about $700 for what I picked.

Tile with glass insets and under cabinets lighting

Then, I saved a few paychecks and waited until the time was right in the house.  You see, my lovely and wonderful wife, can get very grumpy when there is a mess going on the house, so I have to plan this stuff. Anyway, that’s another story;

Long story, made short, the tile guy came over and three days later, I had a tile back-splash!  What an amazing difference it made in the kitchen!  This brought my home out of the 1990 and made it contemporary – for now anyway!

Oh, how much did it cost to “remodel” my kitchen?  Material and labor, about $1,400!  Not bad!

Replacing your smoke alarm battery for daylight savings time

The reason is I had not followed this good advice, I suppose,  is that I’ve had lousy experience with smoke alarms! 

My house is a two story house with four bedrooms on the upstairs level.  That means, with the newer CABO building codes, I am required to have one smoke alarm in each bedroom and one in the hallway and one on each floor, right? 

Every winter, Murphy’s Law would kick in at my house.   At some point in the winter, always on Sunday night, at 3am in the morning a smoke detector would begin chirping.  After trying – and failing – to sleep through the beep with a pillow over my head, I would end up standing between each bedroom and the hall waiting, bleary-eyed, for the chirp. 

Slowly, I would follow the sound down the hall until I figured out which bedroom it was and then replace the battery.  Of course, by then I would be awake and unable to get any more sleep.

This year, I decided to do this the right way.  I bought a pack of 9 volt batteries, got my step ladder out and set out to change the batteries in each smoke detector. 

You know what?  It was easy!  Of course, you don’t have to listen for the beep, you are just removing the smoke detector, replacing the old battery, and re-hanging the unit.  Piece of cake!  It probably didn’t take me 30 minutes to do all of them this fall! 

And, I’m betting this will be my first year that I’m not woken in the night to find a culprit chirping smoke alarm!

What I mean when I say that is there are only so many factors that need to be considered in a property sale.  If you owe too much and cannot lower your price, you might have to wait a long time.  Markets cycle; things change over time.  If you wait long enough, the circumstances will change. 

One example of things changing is interest rates.  When I was in real estate school in 1983 the instructor told us any interest rate under 10% was good for business.  It was 12% and 13% for a while. No one would ever have guessed it would be 4% for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage!

On the flip side, price and condition are everything.  If you have the latitude to make adjustments, that’s exactly what you should do.  Sometimes improving the property over what the standards are for homes in your price range will make a big difference. 

Inproving Key parts of the home can improve it's salability!

For instance, I remember a builder in Anchorage back in 1999.  He took on a bunch of building lots and built houses on them. Sales were floundering and the builder was on a crunch to get the houses sold.   

The builder replaced the standard Formica counter-tops (remember these were BRAND NEW homes) with a basic granite.  He removed the standard white dishwashers and microwaves (brand new appliances!) and upgraded to stainless steel.  At the time, with these upgrades, these homes turned into a value  in their price range; sales picked up and the builder ended up selling all the homes.  The moral of the story is, you can improve your condition, and probably still get your price and sell your property.

The other factor a seller has control over is price.  Believe me, no one likes to “dump a property,” or appear desperate.  Everybody wants to receive as much as they can on a sale.  I’m not talking about slashing your price.  I’m talking about reducing below the competition so that the home become a value when compared to other properties on the market with similar attributes.

Lenders and banks that end up with property through foreclosure know this.  Believe me, they are rarely making money when they sell; just the opposite, they are taking a huge loss when they sell.  They don’t want to lose any more than they have to.  However, banks know they are in the business of loaning money.  A vacant house is just a “non-performing” asset.  The lender is likely to review the market and lower the price to compete so the property is one of the best priced on the market.  The property will sell and lender will get the home off their books and put that money back to work.

Relocation companies know this, too.  Homes priced right will sell.  A relocation company will require monthly market evaluations to see if competing home inventory is increasing and what sales are happening on homes with similar qualities.  They often will get the price right to sell, even thought they don’t want to lose money, they also don’t want to sit on the market.

Sometimes we’ll see home sellers say the problem is that their listing agent hasn’t advertised their home enough, shown the home enough or open housed it often enough. 

I’m not discounting that argument; it’s true, some real estate licensees do more than others; however if the home is priced right and the condition of the home is better than the competition, the home will sell.  On the flip-side, if the home is overpriced there is no amount of adverting, open houses or other activity that will sell the home.

A common 50 gal gas fired hot water heater

A most important component in your home is the hot water heater.   

It’s not pretty, and it’s usually hidden out of sight next to your furnace, either in the garage or in a utility closet.  But when it quits working, you’ll know it!

The average lifespan for a hot water heater is 13 years.  You see some fail earlier and some last for a few years longer.  By far, the most common types of hot water heaters are sealed round cylinders and are gas fired.

Typically there is very little to go wrong with your hot water heater.  Occasionally a strong draft may cause a the flame to go out and you may have to re-light it, but that would be a rare occurrence.  A sign of pending failure would be a drip from the bottom of the water heater.    Once your hot water heater develops a leak in the base, it is just a matter of time before there are bigger problems.

When you purchase a hot water heater, you have the choice of the size of the water storage tank and the speed which the unit heats water.  A 50 gal hot water heater is very common.  Some families spend a few more dollars to get a high recovery water heater, which can heat water faster, which might be nice with a larger family with greater demand.

In Anchorage, the Municipality requires a plumber to purchase a permit to install a hot water heater.  In my experiance, to have a professional plumber install a new hot water heater, you’ll spend between $750 and $1,000 dollars.

Northrim Bank recently acquired 45 town-homes through the foreclosure process. Our team submitted a proposal to market the project for the bank, along with proposals from other Anchorage real estate companies.  We are proud to have been selected to represent the bank and help them sell these  townhouses!

Briarcliff Townhomes, Anchorage, Alaska

The townhomes are priced from $199,000 to $208,900, depending on their location and other amenities.  All units will have washers and dryers and refrigerators.

There are two different models, the “Retreat” with two bedrooms upstairs and a larger “master” bedroom down, and the “Ranchette” model which has the large master upstairs and two bedrooms downstairs.  

Both models have two full baths, a double garage and spacious kitchens with vaulted ceilings.  Both models are are about 1,360 square feet inside and a garages are about 400 square feet.

We will begin open housing Saturday and Sunday beginning April 1.  We’re going to be easy to find. 
View Larger Map

To find the townhouse project, go to Old Seward and 68th Ave, the street to the west is called Merlin. You can follow the signs right to the model home! 

In Anchorage, Alaska energy saving compact florescent lights are a "no brainer"

 dark winters in Anchorage and Alaska in general essentually guarantee saving money since we keep our lights on so much of the time.    I had been reading about. Some of my bulbs had been starting to die their normal death and I knew that since I replaced them all when I bought my house seven years ago, they would all be going out soon.

I say it was a goal, because “re-bulbing” your home isn’t cheap. The new bulbs can cost several times more than their incandescent predecessors. The main reason for switching your bulbs out is that the new CFLs use about 25% of the electricity of an incandescent bulb, meaning you should see a noticeable decrease in your electric bill within about 30 days of replacing your bulbs! For instance you might replace your old 60 watt bulb with a 23 watt CFL bulb and get the same light, if not more! The other benefit is that the bulbs can last up to 15 times longer than your old incandescent bulbs, so you won’t be replacing bulbs very many times while you live in your existing house!

If you haven’t noticed yet, the new bulbs are beginning to look more like your old bulbs. For a while compact fluorescent bulbs looked more like a soft served ice-cream cone than a light-bulb, but that is changing. There are many new bulbs offered in many shapes and sizes now.

The first set of bulbs I bought had very “white” or even a blue cast to them. When I installed them in my kitchen my wife, Kristi, immediately wrinkled her nose up and said she didn’t like them. I asked her to live with them for a few days to see if we got used to them. We didn’t.

I came to learn that you have to pay attention to the color and shade of the light. CFLs can be from a yellow shade that most of us are more accustomed to, to a “daylight” version that will remind you of a car dealer’s showroom floor. The CFL bulbs are labeled using “Kelvins” to express the color of light and the warmth or coolness it will give out. Basically, from my limited experience, the lower the Kelvin number, say 2,300 will get you a softer light, much like you are used to. If you get up to the 3,000 kelvin range, which is what I first installed, you see a very white, even “stark blue-ish” showroom variety light, which isn’t all that pleasant for most home uses.

You can find these lights at many places. I started at Alaska Specialty Lighting on Tudor, and then saw some lights for sale at Costco and then at Home Depot and Lowe’s.

I am going to be reporting back to you with some “real” numbers soon. I plan to tell you what my electric bill averaged at my house prior to the light switch-out and what it is “post” bulb switch-out. Stay tuned and in touch. I welcome your comments via email at danwolf@alaska.net.