12 Easy Tips for Winterizing Your Home Right Now

I am happy to introduce Bill Richards of ProTech Home Inspections. He will be blogging with us periodically!

In the Rochester area and surrounding counties the weather keeps changing – it’s warm, it’s cold, it’s warm again – but soon the cold days will be upon us for good. Save money this winter and help the environment by winterizing your home. It’s easy to do, and you’d be surprised
how these simple steps can make a big difference in your utility bill and your comfort level.

1. Get your furnace inspected. Furnaces should be cleaned and tuned by a professional annually. It’s not an expensive service, and it will keep your furnace running efficiently and safely. Remember to change furnace filters often.

2. Check your home for air leaks. Especially around doors and windows. Adding weather stripping and insulation is one of the easiest things you can do. Add weather stripping around doors and caulk or foam around gaps in windows to help keep the warm air inside.

3. Insulate your attic and crawl spaces. A little extra insulation in your home’s attic or crawl space can save you a lot of money in heating bills. You need at least 11 to 12 inches of insulation in your attic. Since ceiling joists are about that high, you know you need to add more insulation if you can see the ceiling joists.

4. Get your duct work checked. A home with central heat can lose up to 60% of its heated air before that air reaches the vents if ductwork is not well-connected, sealed or insulated. That’s a huge waste of money.

5. Reverse the direction of your ceiling fans. This pushes hot air down and re-circulates it through the house.

6. Move furniture off your vents. How easy is that?!

7. Wrap your pipes. If you’re worried about your pipes freezing and bursting, wrap pipes in areas that are not heated with pre-molded foam rubber sleeves or fiberglass insulation. Wrapping the pipes leading into and out of your home can help prevent water damage and possible flooding too, especially in basement or crawl space areas.

8. Take the hoses off the spigots. Water expands as it freezes, and any water that’s trapped in pipes has the potential to split them as it cools. Store your hoses in the garage for the winter.

9. Clean the chimney. Before starting that fireplace, make sure the chimney is clean and your smoke detectors are working and have fresh batteries. And everyone in the family should know where your fire extinguisher is and how to properly use it.

10. Shut the door. Have guest rooms or other rooms you don’t use? Close the vents in those rooms and shut the doors.

11. Clean the gutters. Avoiding water overflows especially in icy or snowy conditions. Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees by now. Keep an eye on the gutters and downspouts to be sure they’re clear of leaves and are draining properly.

12. Invest in a programmable thermostat. Program your heating system exactly the way you want it, so that your house isn’t heating when nobody is at home.

Remembering these important home winterization tips each year before winter starts will help you prepare your home to be warm, energy efficient and safe – even if the weather outside turns frightful.

Don’t forget to share these great tips with friends, family and co-workers. We’re sure they would appreciate the energy efficiency and safety reminders.

ProTech Home Inspections wishes you and yours a happy and healthy Holiday Season.

Warmest regards,

Bill Richards

ProTech Home Inspection, Inc.

(585) 377-3876

Five things Home Buyers Should Know

RISMEDIA, December 15, 2009—(MCT)—Interest rates on the benchmark 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dipped to a 38-year low recently, giving consumers another reason to consider purchasing a home or refinancing their current one.

Freddie Mac recently stated the average rate on a 30-year loan was 4.71% with an average 0.7 point, the lowest rate since the agency began its weekly tracking of long-term interest rates in 1971. A point is equal to 1% of the loan amount, payable as a lump sum at closing. While the decline wasn’t overly dramatic, the dip is likely to get people wondering whether it’s time to sign on the dotted line.

The 5 following questions may help you decide if now is the time to go ahead and purchase a home or refinance your current home.

Q: Why are rates so low?
A: Since early January, the Federal Reserve has been purchasing mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae in an effort to stabilize the housing market by making homes more affordable for consumers. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is managing the program, plans on purchasing $1.25 trillion of securities.

Q: Are rates expected stay this low?
A: It’s hard to tell, but don’t count on it because the lending landscape is likely to change next year. In September 2009, the Fed said it would gradually wind down the purchase program, ending it by March 30, 2010. That has some in the mortgage lending industry worried.

In a recently published mortgage survey, more than 60% of Bankrate.com’s panel of experts predicted that rates will move higher over the next 30 to 45 days. How much higher is anyone’s guess. Last year at this time, the average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage was 5.53%.

Q: Why do different mortgage surveys come up with different average interest rates?
A: It depends on which lenders are in their sample, when the survey was taken and whether the rates quoted are the posted rate, the application rate or the commitment rate. Also, some surveys take into account the points paid to secure the rate.

But regardless of the survey, the general consensus is that rates are ultra-low right now and may be the lowest the market will see.

Q: What else does a consumer need to know?
A: The lowest rates are offered to the most credit-worthy customers who can make sizable down payments. Shop not just for the interest rate and the points involved but also for the fees involved, which can vary widely from one lender to another.

If you’re refinancing, remember the bigger the loan, the greater the payoff for finding a lower interest rate. Savvy customers put in their paperwork with a lender and set a “strike” interest rate at which to lock in the loan, a good move considering rate volatility.

Several refinancing calculators are available online that let borrowers plug in all the required numbers and determine the monthly savings and how long it will take to recoup the expense of a refinancing.

Q: So is now the best time to buy a home?
A: It depends on personal situations. Homebuyers certainly have a lot of factors working in their favor right now—low interest rates, plenty of marked-down homes for sale and an extended and expanded federal tax credit that will expire in the spring.

On the flip side, there’s growing sentiment among analysts that housing prices, which are showing ever-so-minor improvement, may fall further. The reason? Lenders are expected to get better at determining which borrowers will qualify for loan modifications. That means lenders also will get faster at moving homes through the foreclosure process.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, recently predicted that housing prices nationally will hit bottom in 2010’s third quarter. That means anyone buying a house now could see the value of their investment initially depreciate.

(c) 2009, Chicago Tribune.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.