Here are trends developing in the residential real estate market:

• Higher-density housing — Urban areas offer people the opportunity to work, shop, and play right where they live. Market demand is growing substantially for housing in urban areas, particularly from young singles, childless couples, and seniors.
• A sense of community — Yankelovich, a national research firm that studies consumer trends, has identified what it describes as “hiving,” which it defines a peoples’ quest for a more meaningful sense of community through frequent social interaction and neighborhood involvement.
• Experiences — City residents want to be closely connected to community amenities. They want to be within walking distance of, or connected by transit to, recreation, culture, entertainment, and work.
• A simpler lifestyle — Empty nesters want a simpler lifestyle, as well as the children of empty nesters who don’t necessarily want to live in the type of suburban environment in which they grew up.
• Green living — Green will remain a strong trend, driving internal and external home components, according to builders. You’ll see more energy saving features such as radiant barrier roof decking and eco-friendly materials such as low VOC paint, which emits less of the fumes that can cause respiratory problems.
• Prices — Real estate industry experts expect financial and real estate markets in the United States to bottom in 2009 and then flounder for much of 2010, with ongoing drops in property values, more foreclosures and delinquencies, and a limping economy that will continue to crimp property cash flows, according to the Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2009 report from the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
• Get smaller — People realize they don’t need 3,000 square feet and four cars anymore. McMansion-style subdivisions in the suburbs will take a double whammy. Rising heating/cooling bills for expensive homes work against sellers already struggling to overcome resistance to car commuting expenses.

Sources: National Association of Home Builders and Urban Land Institute

Ideal Bite’s audience voted on their favorite tips –click the links below more full details.

Sign Up for Free Tips!

Green Right Now reports that people are increasingly finding that reusing and recycling items in their homes not only helps save the planet, it helps save money. Here are some other areas where it might be easy to be green and frugal at the same time — for more tips and the complete story, see greenrightnow.com:

• Let’s have a cup of coffee. Do you use paper coffee filters? A permanent coffee filter will cost you about $8 to $10. A common kind of paper filters costs about $2 for 40, so if you drink coffee daily the permanent filter will pay for itself in six months. After that, it’ll save you $18-$20 a year. And while we’re talking about coffee, do you throw out the grounds? They’re useful even if you haven’t (yet!) started a compost pile. Put a container in your fridge where you keep used grounds, and then once a week take them out and work them into the soil around rose bushes, hydrangeas (especially if you want them blue!), azaleas, blueberries, laurels, rhododendrons or other acid-loving plants; you can also sprinkle them in bare spots in the lawn, but if you have pets, be sure to work them down into the dirt.

• Turn off the computer. “Enable the power management features on your computers,” said Denise Durrett of Communications Support with the EPA’s Energy Star program. Letting a computer hibernate during the hours you aren’t using it can save $12 to $90 a year, Durrett said. When you aren’t using your television or other electronics, unplug them or turn off the power strips. “Your electronics – computer, TV, VCR, even your phone chargers – use energy even when they’re turned off,” says the EPA’s Environment, Health and Safety Online website. “Stand-by power can account for as much as 20% of home energy use.”

• Unplug the cell phone charger. “There are more than 5 power adapters for every person in the United States,” Durrett said. “That’s over 2 billion total. People have a habit of not unplugging the charger from the wall after the phone’s charged.” If every charger was an Energy Star approved charger, or was unplugged when not in use, it would mean a savings nationally of more than 5 billion kilowatt hours a year.

• Can you reuse instead of recycle? You’ve got the habit of tossing recyclables in the bin. Cheers! But are there items you could make better use of? Baby food jars or spice jars, for example, can be washed and reused as containers in school lunches (unless you have a klutz for a kid, in which case re-usable plastic is still probably your best friend).

• Bottled water: We love bottled water. We unabashedly adore it. We are especially grateful for it when we’re in a convenience store and don’t want soda. But those bottles add up, both in the landfill and in the budget. Say you buy a case of bottled water once a week for $5. That’s $260 a year. Say you buy a refillable water bottle (be sure to get one labeled BPA-free) and use it. That’s $260 in your pocket.

• Dryer sheets: If you use dryer sheets, most of them will easily work for two loads of laundry; you’ll end up buying half the boxes of dryer sheets you used to buy. And after you’ve dried clothes with them, put the dryer sheet in a container near your cleaning supplies. They make great dust cloths for everything from furniture to computer screens, they hold up to cleaning products, and they’ll even clean glass without smears.

For the rest of the tips and the complete story, go to greenrightnow.com.

Frustrated trying to find natural products at boutique nurseries and big-box retailers that have a patchy selection of organic products and whose sales staff don’t know much about them? Try finding a local feed and seed store. Many stock just what you’re looking for. Why? Because organic farmers use an array of organics and also because farming has a long history of employing natural treatments. How do you think they got things to grow down on the farm before all those chemical concoctions were created? So here’s a list of useful landscape products we found at our local feed store:

1 – Chicken Manure – It may be poop, but it’s a premium fertilizer that’s higher in nitrogen than cow manure. However, because it’s so rich, it can burn plants. Organic gardeners recommend composting it first. Dairy cow manure is less rich and can be spread around and used as a top dressing on lawns and beds. For the straight poop on this topic see this excellent article: Manure Matters by organic gardener and author Marion Owen at PlanTea.com.

2 – Cottonseed Meal – Also a good nitrogen feed for lawn or gardens and it won’t burn turf, even if it’s liberally applied. It also supplies phosphoric acid and potash. No room to ruminate about those ingredients here. Suffice it to say that they’re nutrients your grass needs. One downside, because cotton is notoriously pesticide-heavy crop, this can contain pesticide residues.

3 – Alfalfa Meal – Another nitrogen source. Good for working into beds and amending soil when planting. For a comparison chart on organic fertilizers, see Rodale’s All New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening.

4 – Corn Gluten – The gold standard among organic gardeners for pre-emergent weed treatments. Some people also use it as a fertilizer. It comes in flake and granule form. You’ll pay more for granule, but it will stay put better too. For more info on why and how corn gluten meal works see the corn gluten website at Iowa State University, the leader in developing this natural weed fighter.

5 – Liquid Seaweed – Where’s a rich source of nutrients? Oh yeah, the oceans! Dilute and use as a foliar feed. Also works diluted in a couple gallons of water as a perk-me-up for flowering plants and shrubs. Cousin is Kelp Meal, considered a good soil conditioner.

6 – Expanded Shale – Not everyone needs this, but if you do need it, you need it badly. Expanded shale in tiny pebble form helps break up hard, clay soil, improving the drainage and aeration for plants. This rock also soaks up extra moisture and then releases it when the surrounding soil is dry, a minor miracle not to be celebrated in hot climates.

7 – Green Sand – A green-blue sand for “greening” and fortifying flowering plants and vegetables with potash. It’s rich because it’s derived from marine sediment rock. Also effective in loosening clay soils.

8 — Molasses – Don’t get organic gardeners started on this topic, they have a zillion versions of how to mix and use it, perhaps because the bag comes with instructions for feeding livestock, leaving open the question of garden applications. We say just a dab, like two or three spoonfuls does great things in a watering can. Molasses also works as a soil amendment, raising the level of microbe activity. Sweet.

For more information on organic gardening and green living, go to Green Right Now.

Copyright © 2007-2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media