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A garage is an asset to any home, but the space doesn’t often reach its full potential. Sure, you may use it for parking your car and storing tools and toys, but wouldn’t it be nice if your garage were more functional? Use these tips for organization and renovation ideas to help you get more use out of your garage.


Organization
Your garage can easily become a home for a horde of items such as toys, sporting equipment, holiday decorations, and tools. Here are a few solutions to keep it in order:
Separate items into categories, and give each category its own space. For example, reserve an individual shelf or bin for gardening equipment, another for recreational gear, and so on.
Use hanging wall storage to clear space on the floor. If your garage has high ceilings, make use of the extra wall space by installing overhead cabinets or shelving—this is a perfect spot for storing seldom used items. However, make sure any ...

Is the housing market about to crash?
Here’s what the experts say

Benjamin C. Tankersley/For The Washington Post via Getty Images






The U.S. housing market is on fire. Double-digit appreciation is the rule. Giddy sellers are sifting through multiple offers. Frantic buyers are forced to pay more than asking prices — sometimes by $100,000 or more.


The real estate party is in full swing. The National Association of Realtors said this spring that prices of existing homes soared a record 17 percent from March 2020 to March 2021 — a pace that eclipsed even the eye-popping appreciation of the last boom. Appreciation has cooled since then, but only a little — prices rose 13 percent from September 2020 to September 2021.
The last time the U.S. housing market looked this frothy was back in 2005 to 2007. Then home values crashed, with disastrous consequences. When the real estate bubble burst, the global economy plunged into the deepest do ...

Home design is getting more personal. More homeowners are using their homes to show their individuality and design freedom, according to home design experts at The Plan Collection, an online home design firm.
“It makes sense as people have gone from having to be home to wanting to be at home in an environment that expresses their personalities and individual tastes,” says Laurel Vernazza, home design expert at The Plan Collection. “Since no one could travel, homeowners had to bring those experiences into their homes.”
The Plan Collection’s team offers its predictions of the hot home design and building trends for 2022, including:
Curvier building elements: Curves can add an element of surprise and counter the “straight-line syndrome” of recent years, designers say. Expect to see more arched openings, barrel-vault ceilings, and curvy furniture, designers predict. Outside, arched windows and doors, arched o ...

There are a lot of questions right now regarding the real estate market as we head into 2022. The forbearance program is coming to an end and mortgage rates are beginning to rise.

With all of this uncertainty, anyone with a megaphone – from the mainstream media to a lone blogger – has realized that bad news sells. Unfortunately, we’ll continue to see a rash of troublesome headlines over the next few months. To make sure you aren’t paralyzed by a headline, turn to reliable resources for a look at what to expect from the housing market next year.

There are already alarmist headlines starting to appear. Here are two recent topics you may have seen in the news.

1. Foreclosures Are Spiking Today

There are a number of headlines circulating that call out the rising foreclosures in today’s real estate market. Those stories focus on an overly narrow view on that topic: the current volume of foreclosures compared to 2020. They emphasize that we. ...

Home Sales About To Surge? We May See a Winter Like Never Before.


Like most industries, residential real estate has a seasonality to it. For example, toy stores sell more toys in October, November, and December than they do in any other three-month span throughout the year. More cars are sold in the U.S. during the second quarter (April, May, and June) than in any other quarter of the year.

Real estate is very similar. The number of homes sold in the spring is almost always much greater than at any other time of the year. It’s even labeled as the spring buying season. Historically, the number of buyers and listings for sale significantly increase in the spring and remains strong throughout the summer. Once fall sets in, the number of buyers and sellers typically drops off.

Last year, however, that seasonality didn’t happen. The outbreak of the virus and subsequent slowing of the economy limited sales during the spring market. These sales were pushed back lat ...