Using Open Source for work and play
Market value is the amount prospective buyers are willing to pay at the time homeowners are ready to sell. Now you may ask - how do I find out the market value of my home? Well, the best way to ensure that you get the best price is to obtain an honest Comparable Market Analysis (CMA). You can get a CMA from your qualified, professional real estate agent.
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There is hot debate about stem cell use, their ethics and potential for curing diseases. Although promising, the application to disease states should not be overblown. We may all feel bad for Christopher Reeve, but injecting him with stem cells is simply not going to make him miraculously walk. Some cold water needs to be thrown on the loudest proponents, since common sense dictates that all advancements in science don’t always happen out of sheer will and hope. Like all medical experiments, we ask the question: will it work and is it safe, and this applies equally to stem cells.
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Starting after this month, you are going to see more of your year-over-year performance reports show gains, rather than losses. The strength in the market since March has finally overcome some of the weakness last fall. Once we are past the collapse last October, we will be ahead for the past year. Funny how that works, just like the rant last week on why the ‘lost decade’ tells us more about where it started than where it ends, the past year tells us more about last fall than this year. The decline in September last year was -8.9%. October fell -16.8%. November was a further -7.2%. We’ll have just gotten rid of that first bit in the short-term history when this month is over. After December’s gain of 1%, January fell by -8.4% and February dropped -10.7%. Add in the first 9 days of March and that put us down over 25% year-to-date from December 31st. Most of the whole big stock rally since then has only just recently gotten that 25% drop back and a little bit more. (Remember that you need to gain one-third to overcome a drop of one-quarter, up a half to get back a third, up 100% to get back a half.)
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The dollar, any currency, has several major functions in an economy. The one we are most familiar with is that of ‘a medium of exchange’. That means we go to the bar with a ten in our pocket and exchange that for a beer and a sandwich. We have exchanged money for goods. The second is what we call a ’store of value’. You can take that ten and put it in your pocket (or in your bank account) and leave it there and you’ve got purchasing power tomorrow. The third function of currency is as ‘a unit of account’. Which is what happens when we say we buy $1 trillion worth of stocks when what we really own are a bunch of electronic blips on a computer at Fidelity, but we account for everything in dollars. We use the currency to account for the real value of the goods. That is only different from the medium of exchange in that we use it whether we make the exchange or not. Money, to be any good has to be ‘legal tender’. That means we can use the money to pay our taxes, pay our bills, repay our loans and other legal obligations (see Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice). Since it is legal tender, the other party has to take it, even if it is worth less than the dollars they lent us or whatever.
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By making it easy for buyers to learn everything there is about your home and neighborhood, you can actually influence the sale. Working with an agent who is very familiar with your neighborhood will help ensure that these details are well-marketed to potential buyers. You should also be sure to share any key information about your home or neighborhood with your listing agent so he or she can use it to more effectively. You’ll also want to make sure that your agent provides as much information about your home as possible - on the Web. Time -starved home buyers like to use the Web as a convenient way to hasten the home search process.
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