Homeseer home automation controller unboxing
http://www.discount-low-voltage.com/Connectivity/Home-Control/HT-ZEE Here #39;s a quick unboxing look at the cool Homeseer home automation controller. These are ...

By: Mercy Salinas

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Homeseer home automation controller unboxing - Video

For those looking to score a deal on a home, foreclosed properties can offer a great opportunity. Lenders are looking to unload the property and will often offer up a deep discount to do so quickly. But the process of buying a foreclosed home can differ a little from traditional home sales. Here are some things to consider before you make an offer on one of these properties.

The As-Is Sale

Disgruntled homeowners in foreclosure can feel like they have nothing left to lose. Faced with the prospect of losing their house, homeowners sometimes leave the place stripped of anything valuable or useful, including door knobs, fixtures and wiring. In cases like this, the lender is unlikely to make repairs and will sell the home as-is. While you can get the place at a steep discount, it might only be a bargain if youve got some DIY skills. This shouldnt necessarily discourage you from buying, but youll need to figure out if the cost of repairs will offset the discounted offer price.

Not Knowing What Youre Getting Into

With most homes, youll likely get some disclosure from the current owners. A helpful homeowner might give you a little advice, like the best place to start a garden, or offer you a heads up on minor repairs, like a bathroom door that sticks. And when it comes to big repairs, such as a shoddy foundation or termite damage, the owners might be legally required to let you know before you buy the place. But a lender has no history with the home, so dont expect to get a run-down of problems before you move in. A foreclosure might be a good deal, but it can also turn into an unexpected adventure.

Dont Assume Theyll Take Any Offer

While a foreclosed home can often be a bargain, you shouldnt expect the lender to accept a lowball offer. Even in a market flooded with foreclosures, a bank might balk at a low offer, preferring to wait until housing prices bounce back rather than take a huge hit on the investment. However, you can use local foreclosures to your advantage. Take a look at recent sale prices for homes sold by lenders which are often called real-estate owned, or REO sales to help you price the place.

It Takes More Time

Most mortgages are backed by big banks and financial institutions, which means you will likely run smack into a large, slow-moving bureaucracy when trying to buy a home in foreclosure. With a traditional home sale, you can expect to find out if your offer has been accepted within a day or two. But when buying from a financial institution this process can take weeks. So have patience and dont freak out if you dont immediately hear back from the seller.

A Different Kind of Sale

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5 foreclosure buying tips

Ideally, you want to be able to take your home's electrical system for granted. It should power your lights and appliances reliably, safely and invisibly.

But it's important to notice warning signs that an experienced professional should examine a system. Our researchers compiled these indicators, based on interviews with highly rated electricians:

Flickering lights, a sizzling sound when lights are switched on or off, plugs that spark, plugs that fit loosely in receptacles or lights that dim when appliances start. These may signal a loose wiring connection, which can be a fire hazard.

Warmth in a wire, extension cord or fuse box. This may indicate a faulty or unsafe wiring connection, which could cause an overload and lead to fire.

A breaker that repeatedly trips, indicating an overloaded circuit.

A breaker that never trips, especially in an older home. That may be a sign that your wiring system lacks adequate electrical safeguards.

Also, make sure you know what kind of wiring winds through your home. Copper is the ideal material. Pre-1940s knob-and-tube wiring and 1960s-era aluminum wiring are associated with greater fire risk.

Knob-and-tube systems feature porcelain knobs that anchor wires to studs and floor joists and insulated tubes that carry wires through walls and other obstructions. Such systems have separate hot and neutral wires that run parallel to each other and dissipate heat into the air. They can become a fire hazard if overburdened, improperly retrofitted or come in contact with insulation.

Problems with aluminum wire generally occur at connections, where exposed aluminum wire may rust, resisting current flow and generating heat. Aluminum also expands and contracts in response to load and temperature changes differently than copper or other materials, so connections between aluminum and other metals can lead to problems that reduce conduction.

If you live in an older home and aren't certain of its wiring type or safety status, schedule an inspection by a licensed, experienced electrician.

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Dont take electrical systems for granted

Going out and finding a bargain financial investment home, on paper, is just one-half of the process of property investment. The other half of real estate investing is going down to the property or courthouse to examine the real estate financial investment house literally for problems either in terms of the building, legal title and various other liens that can be on the property.

Unless you locate a residential property that is truly run down and you wish to tear it down to its structures, you really want to look out for homes that could have prospective electrical and water piping problems. The reason this is important is that, wiring and water piping is typically hidden behind walls and other furniture installations and mending them could be a really costly event since you have to hack into the wall surfaces and run the piping and circuitry if the issue is really severe. If you are new to home investing attempt to make an electrical engineer along with you when you are doing some property assessment.

Secondly, structure problems are typically harder to identify. When perambulating the home, look for cracks showing up beside your house and the foundation that enters into the ground. Search for big uncommon holes found beside the home and fractures on the outside paint of the structure. You may wish to bring a civil designer and a professional along to identify how much it would certainly set you back to take care of the property if you think the repair entailed will be considerable. You could also bring them along to give a grim price quote to our home owner and pull down the price of the residential property.

Finally, roof problems could be a consistent headache to you and your prospective occupant if you are buying the property for occupancy functions. When examining your home, look around the ceiling near the glass and around the edges of the wall surfaces to look for new paint or yellow spots or fractures with water in them. The majority of homeowners would be wise to remove the water bubbles after a heavy rain when trying to make an offer for the property, yet it is consistently crucial to determine if there is a major leaking roof which might cost you are lot into repairing it. Use this flaw to work out the cost of the home additionally if you want the residential property.

Fourthly, an additional reason the financial investment home concerned might be a bargain may be because there are legal issues linked with it. Common ones include, a number of proprietors that could not concur whether to offer or not. Lawsuits here would certainly be futile and you ought to stay clear of such residential property once you find out concerning it.

Another problem could be a lack of clean title. Did you know that the vendor can be selling you only the structure without the land or perhaps there are existing tax liens on your home or some other liens that can avoid you from acquiring good title to the home? Investing time talking with a trusted real property attorney to find out about typical realty problems in your area can save you bunches of lawful problems later on.

Fifthly, bankruptcy of your homeowner or one of the part proprietors of your property might depending upon the lawful proceedings of your state impact your ability to move title quickly. The majority of states make it a demand that the receiver of the broke needs to concur so pay cautious focus on the bankruptcy regulations of your state. That being shared, often the banks want to offer you at a deal so as to recover the bad debts quickly so do your homework before purchasing such a financial investment residential property.

To conclude, these 5 reminders could be made use of as a beginning factor for you to review your property financial investment. Spend time to believe rationally about the properties that you have actually viewed and see if they have any one of the above flaws and think about if you want to proceed buying them and whether the costs that you may sustain in fixing them will justify the rebate of the residential property to the market worth. Most importantly, take substantial activity today and seek your property financial investment dreams.

Take Action and you will be successful.

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Looking for Another Investment Home? Here Are Some Issues You Should Avoid

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) Steve and Mary Payne have not lived in a home of their own in 10 years.

Singularly and together, they've lived in shelters, with family and in a tent in an encampment under the Pete Hollis bridge known as Tent City.

They recently saw the two-bedroom, one-bath house with a glassed-in porch that, once renovated, will become their home for the next year.

It's available through a new program from United Housing Connections called Restore a Home.

"I still think it's a dream," Steve Payne said, standing in a large kitchen that was clearly his wife's favorite room.

"It's big," she said. "Won't be running into people."

"We used to have Thanksgiving and Christmas. The whole family," her husband said.

"Let's plan on that again," said Rick Ingram, the interim executive director of United Housing Connections who showed the Paynes the house, which is in the beginning stages of renovation.

Steve and Mary Payne were featured in a five-part series in The Greenville News last November that showed Greenville County has the second highest population of homeless people in the state after Richland, where Columbia is located. The series described life under the bridge, where the Paynes were new residents, where they celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary.

The newspaper found that people with unreliable income or on disability, as the Paynes are, couldn't afford a place to live, sending them into the streets, shelters and tent communities. The problem is exacerbated by low-paying jobs and limited public transportation.

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Homeless couple gets home from Upstate volunteers

Joe J.C. Ganote celebrated Fathers Day with his son and grandchildren at his home in Lees Summit, Mo. But if the younger Ganotes hadnt made the cross-country trip from San Diego, you can bet that grandpa would have logged on to Skype to watch them on the 106-inch screen in his basement.

We can see them walking around. They ham it up, boy! They know they are on camera, J.C. Ganote said about the 11-month-old twins, Michela and Caleb.

Across town, Terry Maskil of Shawnee, Kan., often settles into one of the plush reclining theater chairs next to his sons Adam, 13, and Nicholas, 6, to watch a movie in their basement home theater, which features a 120-inch screen.

These days, home theaters are the family rooms, and money can buy you all the amenities, including surround sound, subwoofers and popcorn makers.

Photo by SHANE KEYSER

The components sit in a cabinet outside of the room in the Maskil family home theater in Shawnee, Kan. Home theater systems are often installed with dad in mind, but turn out to be a good way for the whole family to spend time together. (Shane Keyser/Kansas City Star/MCT)

Photo by SHANE KEYSER

The main floor home theater at the home of Joe Ganote in Lee's Summit, Mo. (Shane Keyser/Kansas City Star/MCT)

Photo by SHANE KEYSER

A bag of popcorn at one of five custom recliners in the Maskil family home theater in Shawnee, Kan. Home theater systems are often installed with dad in mind, but turn out to be a good way for the whole family to spend time together. (Shane Keyser/Kansas City Star/MCT)

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Home theaters are growing in popularity

CLINTON Clinton's senior citizens will not have a new place to call home, even when the work is done on their senior center later this year.

Rather, the town's senior citizens will have a majestic, 132-year-old building, one filled with history and originally built by local merchant John R. Foster in 1882 before becoming The Clinton Home for the Aged in 1900.

With a projected project cost of $1.9 million, the old mansion will become a new senior center, outfitted with upgrades like state of the art kitchen and new wiring.

"Now it's becoming a reality for us," Council on Aging Chairman William Grady Sr. said as workers from M. O'Connor Contracting worked heavy equipment handling drainage and parking lot work and wielded hammers driving nails to renovate interior space.

The path to a new senior center has, however, been long. For several years the issue was whether the town should build a new center or renovate an older building.

The Clinton Home had originally been transferred to the Clinton Home Foundation to be used to benefit seniors, and it operated as a rest home for years. Finally, it was closed as health regulations made it more difficult to operate, and the building was offered to the town.

Transferring it to the town for use as a senior center fulfilled the intent of the use, and as a bonus came at the right cost: free. But significant renovations would be needed.

Voters had approved $1.4 million for the project at a town meeting, but the town had already spent $475,000 of that to buy the American Legion property on Chestnut Street, a site on which a new building has been planned before the town opted to go in another direction.

A $763,000 Community Development Block gGrant added to the kitty, along with other funds from the town's economic development office. In addition, the Clinton Home Foundation offered up funds $300,000 for a trust fund, the interest to be used for future maintenance, plus $50,000 a year for five years toward costs.

Voters added another $100,000 at the recent town meeting.

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Mansion being retrofitted for Clinton senior center

Steve Thomas, Emmy Award-winning television personality and former host of the home improvement shows, This Old House and Renovation Nation speaks during a Habitat for Humanity luncheon at the Bethlehem Center in Alton Park to promote a home building blitz in the Southside where builders will renovate three homes.

Some 1.6 billion people in the world live in slum housing without running water, with leaking sewers or faulty wiring.

Others live in tents, and its not just somewhere else. It happens in America, said Steve Thomas.

You cant run a world this way. Its going to blow up. So you have got to do something, said Thomas.

The Emmy Award-winning television personality and former host of the home improvement shows This Old House and Renovation Nation was the star of Habitat for Humanitys Home Builders Blitz 2014 celebration Wednesday at the Bethlehem Center.

Thomas said he got involved with Habitat after traveling the world and seeing people live in substandard housing.

Nearly 200 people including contractors, professional home builders and developers met at the Bethlehem Center to share a barbecue lunch and celebrate their combined efforts to build two homes and renovate another in Chattanoogas Southside neighborhood.

Some donated time, while others gave gutters, building material, money or T-shirts.

They are a part of Habitat for Humanitys home builders blitz, a nationwide effort to build more than 250 homes in five days this week.

Thank you for making dreams come true, said Tom Gipson, who founded Habitat for Humanitys Home Builders Blitz.

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Habitat for Humanity sets housing goal

With so many devices, such as smartphones and tablets, entering the home, the need for Wi-Fi becomes more and more necessary. While many Internet service providers now conveniently provide Wi-Fi routers with the boxes that provide our Internet service inside the home, they are often of limited range. Also, where these services enter our home isn't always the most convenient, depending on your situation and layout. There are some options to make things better, however so let's take a look at a few of them.

First, Wi-Fi signals are best placed as high up in the home as possible. Unfortunately, if you are receiving your Internet signal through cable or telephone lines it is likely that the lines run in through your basement. While there might be some options for lines on a main floor, many of us (myself included) have our Wi-Fi routers located on the lower floor. This means that your signal will get weaker the further you get from the router. If you are located in an older home or have a lot cabling in the wall, the signal gets weaker and weaker. With the good weather finally here, it would also be nice to enjoy Internet access outside on the patio but for some it's just not possible.

Fortunately, NetGear makes a Wi-Fi extender, formally called the NetGear AC1200 Wi-Fi Range Extender EX6200-100NAS. What this device does is take your existing Wi-Fi signal and boosts it to extend the coverage. It keeps your existing security in place and is a breeze to setup. I recently put one in my home, so I'll discuss my situation.

My Internet access comes in through the basement and I have a room with a computer, router, and network switch. It is the heart of my network as it were, but the Wi-Fi signal starts to get weak when you are upstairs and becomes unusable in the backyard. By placing the EX6200 on the main level, centrally, I now have coverage throughout the entire house and well into the backyard as well. The only requirement you have during the setup is a plug and access to your existing Wi-Fi network.

Using a smartphone, tablet or a computer you simply enter your existing credentials into the new hot spot that appears. After answering a couple of quick questions, you are ready to go. You will now have an additional hot spot to connect to and you can even call it the same as your existing one and your device will automatically pick the best one as you move throughout your house.

The EX6200 works well and also provides some additional benefits. First, you can connect a USB key (or hard drive) to the external port and have access to the files on it through the network. So if you have photos or music you can access them through the wireless network.

Secondly, it provides additional wired ports so if you have a device that connects the internet only via ethernet, you can place the EX6200 close to that device and then connect it to the network with a wire. It gets around the problem of trying to run wires through the walls, floors, and ceilings with ease.

Thirdly, you can connect a USB printer to it and now you can print from any device that can connect to the wireless network (appropriate drivers permitting of course). It is truly a multifunctional device that performs its main function very well.

If you just need a wired solution to perhaps go from location A to location B (and it's very inconvenient to get there) you might also want to consider ethernet over power lines. The technology has got better over the years. Products, such as the D-Link PowerLive AV500, allow you to use the power lines in your home as wiring. It's hard to believe that data can run alongside power but it absolutely works. You can even plug this into another router if you need more than one plug at the other end.

As our need for connectivity increases, problems can arise and fortunately, technology is here to solve those too! Stay cool and stay connected.

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Extending your Internet range

The Midway Fire Department has deemed this mobile home on Norman Shoaf Road to be a total loss after a late Tuesday night fire. The cause was a nearby lightning strike.

Fire investigators have determined a fire that destroyed a mobile home was due to a lightning strike from a storm that rolled through the county Tuesday night. Nearly 500 people between two power companies were without power Wednesday night as a second storm made its way through Davidson County.

Firefighters with the Midway Fire Department responded to a single-wide mobile home fire in the 1500 block of Norman Shoaf Road at 11:20 p.m. Tuesday. Midway Chief Mike Craft said his firefighters arrived to find heavy smoke coming from the residence. They quickly found a fire, but two adult sisters who live at the home escaped without injury. One of the sisters was visiting her sister who owned the mobile home, and the visiting sister safely got her sister out.

Craft said the mobile home is a total loss. The chief and fire investigators from the Davidson County Fire Marshals Office determined Wednesday that a lightning strike happened near the house and spread to wiring around a dryer in the mobile home, causing the residence to catch fire. Craft identified the homeowner as Nancy Hutchins.

Craft said one of the sisters owned the mobile home. The Greater High Point-Davidson Chapter of the American Red Cross is assisting them. All of their belongings were lost in the fire, but they had homeowners insurance.

The mobile home was over 40 years old. The fire completely destroyed a bedroom and bathroom, and heat and smoke damage was reported throughout the house. Midway firefighters were assisted on the scene by the Gumtree and Wallburg fire departments.

A.J. and Melissa Briceno live across the street from the mobile home that caught fire. They said they also heard a loud pop about 11:15 p.m. Tuesday.

Craft said Tuesday nights storm brought heavy lightning and rain to the Midway area.

Power was restored throughout the day, but a Wednesday night storm brought more outages. Crews with EnergyUnited and Duke Energy had dropped the number of outages to single-digit numbers earlier in the evening. However, at 9:11 p.m., EnergyUnited was reporting 481 power outages and Duke Energy had eight outages.

Duke Energy had 1,213 of its 33,095 customers in Davidson County without power Wednesday morning. The companys first power outage was reported at 10:13 p.m. Tuesday.

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Lightning from storm destroys Midway mobile home