With the world quickly using up its fossil fuels and driving itself further toward irreversible climate change, it’s easy to fall into despair about the future of domestic life. Cheap energy, land, water and building materials have made the last century of American homebuilding a story of ever-expanding luxury. Arguably, all of these will become scarce and expensive over the next 50 years. Will our children’s homes be anything as comfortable and expansive as our own?
The answer is yes—though it depends on how you frame the question. Our children probably won’t be able to afford to run conventional air conditioners all day long. Nor will they likely have access to unlimited water supplies, particularly in the parched Southwest. But that doesn’t mean they have to live without the same quality of life that their parents and grandparents have grown accustomed to. The key is to use smart planning and technological advances to not merely adapt the home, but rethink its most basic design and function.
To demonstrate what such a house might look like, our team of professors and students at Virginia Tech designed and built Lumenhaus. With functional spaces and a modest size that allows for efficient energy use, Lumenhaus won the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe, a competition that brought together 17 college teams from around the world in Madrid. (To see a short film about Lumenhaus, click here.)
The competition challenged each team to design a solar-powered home. But Lumenhaus, which draws inspiration from Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, is about more than just solar power: its movable walls break down the barrier between inside and outside, making a small interior feel larger; it plugs into a smart-grid network that allows the excess energy it produces to feed back to the community; it features pre-fabricated expansion rooms, so it can grow and shrink with a family’s needs; and it draws on passive cooling and geothermal heating to maintain comfort at minimal cost—to both the owners and the environment.
The accompanying multimedia demonstration presents six of these features. Each of them not only rethinks the way the American home functions, but offers a compelling argument for how to use technology and plain common sense to guarantee that our children and grandchildren can enjoy the same quality of domestic life that we have.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Bankruptcy: Can I Keep my House?
Bankruptcy can be a frightening event, but one that is becoming all too common. In fact, the rate of bankruptcy has risen lately to its highest levels since 2005. One of the ideas that may make bankruptcy so forbidding, is the thought that everything a person owns will be sold to pay off creditors. While it is true that many assets may have to be given up to pay outstanding debts, not everything is always on the auction block.
Many people facing bankruptcy wonder, "can I keep my house in bankruptcy?" Not a vacation cottage, but the home where their kids are growing up. Whether or not this will actually happen depends on a few different things. First, are the mortgage payments current? If the payments to the bank are still up to date it is more likely you will be able to keep your house. However, if you have fallen behind on the mortgage payments, the results may differ under Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy is available to those debtors who qualify under certain under income guidelines set by state laws. A debtor's income must be equal to or below the median income in the state, with each state setting different income guidelines. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy is also known as a "liquidation" bankruptcy because it erases all debt that is legally capable of erasure or "expungement." A debtor gives any non-exempt property in exchange for most of the debts being erased.
Chapter 13 bankruptcy also has some eligibility requirements. Unlike Chapter 7 bankruptcy, Chapter 13 bankruptcy reorganizes and uses a debtor's income to pay creditors the money that is owed. If a debtor's income is too low, or if it is not regular, then the debtor may not be able to make payments according to the schedule set by the court, and will not be eligible for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
To keep your house, if you have filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 you must make arrangements acceptable to your mortgage lender to catch up on any delinquent payments you may owe. Then, it will be up to the lender to decide whether to work with you and keep your house out of foreclosure. Under Chapter 13, you may be able to include any delinquent payments in your bankruptcy payment plan and pay them off over a specified period of time while maintaining ongoing monthly mortgage payments.
In non-community property states, a debtor may be able to protect their home if their spouse has little or no debt. Many states will completely block or significantly limit the ability of unsecured creditors to reach property that a debtor owns together with their spouse, assuming the spouse is not also filing for bankruptcy.
Many people facing bankruptcy wonder, "can I keep my house in bankruptcy?" Not a vacation cottage, but the home where their kids are growing up. Whether or not this will actually happen depends on a few different things. First, are the mortgage payments current? If the payments to the bank are still up to date it is more likely you will be able to keep your house. However, if you have fallen behind on the mortgage payments, the results may differ under Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy is available to those debtors who qualify under certain under income guidelines set by state laws. A debtor's income must be equal to or below the median income in the state, with each state setting different income guidelines. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy is also known as a "liquidation" bankruptcy because it erases all debt that is legally capable of erasure or "expungement." A debtor gives any non-exempt property in exchange for most of the debts being erased.
Chapter 13 bankruptcy also has some eligibility requirements. Unlike Chapter 7 bankruptcy, Chapter 13 bankruptcy reorganizes and uses a debtor's income to pay creditors the money that is owed. If a debtor's income is too low, or if it is not regular, then the debtor may not be able to make payments according to the schedule set by the court, and will not be eligible for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
To keep your house, if you have filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 you must make arrangements acceptable to your mortgage lender to catch up on any delinquent payments you may owe. Then, it will be up to the lender to decide whether to work with you and keep your house out of foreclosure. Under Chapter 13, you may be able to include any delinquent payments in your bankruptcy payment plan and pay them off over a specified period of time while maintaining ongoing monthly mortgage payments.
In non-community property states, a debtor may be able to protect their home if their spouse has little or no debt. Many states will completely block or significantly limit the ability of unsecured creditors to reach property that a debtor owns together with their spouse, assuming the spouse is not also filing for bankruptcy.
Friday, September 3, 2010
How Selling a House Works
Selling a house is a complicated process, no matter how good the real estate market is. Whether you’re a first-time home seller or not, you’ll probably have a bunch of questions. Do I need a real estate agent? What’s “closing”? How much paperwork am I going to have to fill out? How can I get the best price for my house? How can I sell my house and buy a new one at the same time?
In this article, you’ll learn the answers to all of these questions and more as we explain what “curb appeal” is and why an open house isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
There are two main ways to sell your home -- with an agent or without one. Before we discuss and weigh each option, let’s go over some general tips that all sellers should know.
Knowing the value of your house and exercising patience and restraint are key. Get your home appraised; it’s worth the $250 to $500 price tag. In a good market, the sale price can be 10 percent to 15 percent above the appraisal. In a weaker market, the sale price may be around the appraisal figure. We’ll go over how to figure out your sale price in detail later in the article.
A home inspection is also important in avoiding complications during your sale. The seller will get an inspection, but discovering problems during a pre-sale home inspection allows you to have more control over how to handle them. If your home inspection does uncover problems with your home, it’s essential that you familiarize yourself with your state’s disclosure laws to avoid future litigation. These laws vary from state to state, but they generally require you to disclose, either verbally or in writing, the presence of any hazardous materials in your home or significant flaws in construction. If you’re unsure of what you have to disclose, consult a real estate agent, attorney or your local housing authority.
Remember, patience is key. Yes, it's true that realtors express concern that homes can go “stale” after being on the market for too long, meaning they are no longer attracting interest from buyers. But a stale sale usually results from a seller overvaluing his or her home. The opposite can also occur: in a rush to sell a home, or to sell in time so as to move into a new house, a home can be undervalued.
Finally, if you're able, try to put your home on the market as long as possible before buying a new one. Otherwise you may end up paying two mortgages, which can be difficult to afford. If you do end up finding a house that you can’t wait to buy before selling your own, you can ask your lender for a bridge loan. A bridge loan is a special type of loan that, if you have enough equity in your current home, allows you to pay the down payment on a new home. You may also be able to get a home equity loan in order to help with the dual mortgage payments. For more information, check out our article How Home Equity Loans Works.
Now that we’ve gone over some basic lessons for selling a home, it’s time to consider an old debate: Do I need a real estate agent or not?
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