Marsh view from Courtesy Dyal Compass LLC Facebook

Ethan Allen Interiors Inc., one of America’s most respected interior design and furnishing companies, has announced their role as the primary home furnishings provider for the ever popular HGTV® Dream Home series for 2013 (pictured below). But the best news in the press release is that YOU can win this wonderful Kiawah Island vacation paradise residence. (See below)

Out front of the HGTV Dream Home the 2013 Acadia by GMC

It’s not all that often I get really excited about a press release,  but the showcase home at the Indigo Park community on beautiful Kiawah Island outside my hometown of Charleston, SC, is actually situated within the Island resort’s first sustainable neighborhood. This year’s HGTV® Dream Home, is the epitome of seaside living in the modern age. And I love Kiawah, in case you begin to wonder.

Relaxed is what coastal life is all about, but not without style and elegance to go along, as you can easily see. The HGTV Dream Home 2013 Interior Designer Linda Woodrum has made brilliant use of what Ethan Allen has always been famous for, crisp and refined modernity, and she clearly knows how to play natural light and surrounds off one another. Kiawah is, if anything, a very green place.

Courtesy HGTV Dream Home

Anyone familiar with the marshlands of coastal Georgia and South Caroline will readily identify with the integration of tones Woodrum has made here. The virulent greens of the dining area shown above, along with the textures of the rugs, mixed with the wood tones and crisp accessory edges, are welcoming to say the least.

The same and more holds true for Woodrum’s treatment of the master suite below. This is all any modern homeowner could expect in intimate and cozy Island sleeping spaces. The Ethan Allen Sydney Paisley Duvet adds just the right finishing touch, don’t you think?

Courtesy HGTV Dream Home 2013

For those who do not know, Kiawah Island offers some of the most pristine landscapes, and seaside homes and villas, anywhere in the United States. For readers interested in more pictures, videos, and looks at the Dream Home, please visit their site here. And, if you’ve ever felt the soft Southern breezes off Charleston’s barrier Island through your hair, the video below from real estate developer Candace Dyal and her company DyalCompass, puts real people like you in the lazy days of Carolina coastal charm.

Dolphins at play off Kiawah – Courtesy Kiawah Island Golf Resort Facebook

As a native of Charleston and the low-country, and also someone infinately familiar with developments and especially Charleston’s design community, if there’s a more intriguing combination of value along the Atlantic coastline, I’d love to hear from anyone who knows. Ethan Allen, Kiawah Island, HGTV, fabulous design minds like Linda Woodrum (at right) of Hilton Head’s TS Hudson Interiors, and developers like Candace Dyal who put it all together – the great combinations are just too perfect for imperfections.

I know because I was a contractor for several homes appearing in everything from Better Homes and Gardens, to House Beautiful and so on. Kiawah is actually a magazine photographer’s paradise. Not to mention the coolest of places to live and play.

So, how you you win the HGTV Dream Home giveaway worth a cool $2 million? Enter twice daily via their entry form here. The Kiawah home you see, $500,000 dollars, and that GMC Acadia Denali in the image up there may be under your feet soon. I am in. As for Kiawah? Even if we don’t get that new home I’ll be testing my 9 iron, fishing pole, and kiteboard there this Summer.

Image credits: Many thanks to Ethan Allen, HDTV, and DyalCompass  and Kiawah Island Golf Resort for these wonderful pictures.

There's no doubt about it - investors are smarter when it comes to buying. © Andrea Danti - Fotolia.com

1. Smart Investors Don’t Get Emotional

Investors are emotional people, like anyone else, but there’s one thing that they don’t get emotional about (unless they’re noobs) and that is real estate. A smart investor is “cold-hearted” when it comes to buying a potential property because he simply views it as a vehicle for making money, nothing more.

An investor will look at the bottom line. Will this property make me money? Will it provide a positive cash flow, or can I strip equity from it? Simply put, if the numbers don’t add up, he walks.

To avoid a case of buyer’s regret when looking for your next (or especially your first) home, think like an investor. What appeals to your emotions may not appeal to your pocketbook. Emotions are fickle in nature as well. What was once a charming little cottage may soon become an overpriced, cramped headache you long to be rid of.

Investors don't get emotional. © Maridav - Fotolia.com

You will be paying for this property (unless you sell or pay it off early) for quite some time, so it’s important to take the long view when running the numbers. Things change – this is a fact, so make sure you leave yourself plenty of breathing room in the money department.If this means giving up your “dream home” for a smaller bungalow, do it – you can always upgrade when you have more cash to drop on another home.

Best case scenario – put a good chunk of change down, and buy well below appraised value, so you gain equity from the starting gate.

2. Buy With The End Goal In Mind

Investors chase markets. They will migrate their cash from markets which are declining, or under performing and move them to markets which are doing well.

As a homeowner, you may not wish to move every 7 to 10 years (an average market cycle), but if you buy well from the start, the market losses will have less impact on your investment – certainly not to the extent that many saw recently when they chose to walk away from homes they were upside down in.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Renovate

Investors will run the numbers before buying a home in need of renovations. If they cannot obtain a good return on their investment in a reasonable amount of time, they will not buy the property.

We all need to get our hands dirty now and again. Courtesy Devilarts via Flickr.com

Not everyone is cut out to be a “do-it-yourself” in the realm of renovations, but if you know how to handle yourself in the hardware store, you will be ahead of a great many individuals.

But let’s say you’re not comfortable with anything more than a bit of paint and maybe linoleum floor tile. That’s fine. If you’re buying a home that’s a “fixer-upper” the discount should be substantial enough for you to hire out the “heavy lifting.” Just make sure the numbers add up and you’re still in the black after everything’s said and done. If not, then walk away.

4. Smart Financing

Investors use various strategies when buying property. Some like to buy well, and then hold onto their investment for the long term before selling at a profit, while others like to buy property well, and then flip it within a short period of time. In either situation, a pre-payment penalty will not do as it obviously would eat into profits.

Smart financing will see you running all the way to the bank. © HitToon.com - Fotolia.com

It’s critical to obtain an affordable home loan – one which has no pre-payment penalties and is affordable enough to allow you the option to pay it off sooner. Bankrate.com has a number of calculators which can help you run your loan through a variety of scenarios to determine how quickly you can pay it off.

5. Make Your Home Pay The Mortgage

One way that an investor will add value to a property and increase their profits is by adding a mother-in-law suite or “granny flat” to existing property (if local ordinances allow), which allows him to boost his rental return quickly.

Your tenant could end up paying some or all of your mortgage which can offset the expense of adding onto your home. While this is not for everyone, if your situation allows it, and the financials work out well, you could enjoy all of the benefits of a passive income without leaving home.

Bad titles are an invisible spanner in the works. Jeroen van Oostrom / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A “bad title”, according to Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, is “…one which conveys no property to the purchaser of an estate.” While this is an uncommon situation, it can happen from time to time, especially when individuals have bought and sold the property in years past without the benefit of having a title search done on the property.

Lenders will require title insurance coverage before issuing a mortgage, and it’s after receiving the “title report” – which is normally requested early in the transaction – that problems may be encountered.

One of the most common defects in a title is a “gap” or “break” in the chain of title (list of property transfers). This problem can usually be repaired fairly easy with either an affidavit or a new or corrective deed. In the case of a mortgage which was paid off but no record of payment can be found, a satisfaction of mortgage which is filed in the public records will resolve the issue.

Other problems with title can include missed judgments, clerical (scrivener’s) errors, and past owners or heirs who did not convey out their interest in the property. The title company’s search will find these problems and resolve them before issuing insurance to either you as the new owner, and/or the lender.

In some cases, when an affidavit, satisfaction or new/corrective deed won’t resolve a complicated, erroneous title, a quiet title suit is required to ensure you as the buyer will have sole ownership in the property and you won’t have to worry about any “lost heirs” coming out of nowhere to claim their inheritance!

So if your broker suggests you buy an owner’s title insurance policy, do it! It’s the only kind of insurance in which you pay a premium once (at closing) and enjoy its protections the entire time you own the property.

The survey, conducted by Yahoo Real Estate, found that 81 percent of Americans believe that owning a home is part of the American dream, while only 13 percent believed they were already living in their dream homes. The survey questioned 1,500 current and aspiring homeowners and renters. Despite the fact that one in three of them knew someone who had experienced a foreclosure, the majority were still optimistic.

The type of home that respondents wanted has changed dramatically from previous years. Green efficiency is now more important that gated communities, mountain views, being near a beach, or even having a cottage in the woods. People now want homes built from sustainable materials, a reality that could reflect both a growing consciousness of the environment and the realization that “McMansions” are more expensive to maintain.

65 percent of those surveyed would be willing to buy foreclosed property, and 59 percent of renters would prefer to own homes but cannot because of the money required for down payment, insufficient income, bad credit, or concerns about employment.

For a more detailed look at the survey, you can visit Yahoo! Real Estate online.

But you would be wrong. It seems that the best homes in the most desirable areas are being snapped up all too quickly, and there’s a lot of competition for them. Investors with hard cash in their pockets are providing stiff competition to finance-chasing first-time buyers.

First-time buyers have to move faster to avoid disappointment. Image courtesy of Telegraph

Take the case of Steve and Kim Duty, who recently lost out on their dream home in Denver, when a cash buyer topped their offer with a $400,000 straight cash bid. Having lost out once, they were forced to move much faster to secure the second home they were interested in.

It seems that buyers who are thinking they are going to get a fantastic bargain on their ideal home may be in for a nasty surprise if they are not careful, says 8z Real Estate president Lane Hornung.

“People have read all these reports about what a bad market it is, and so they come in with a low offer, maybe 10% or 20% below asking price,” he explains. “But they quickly find out that someone comes in and tops their offer, while the seller is still considering it. People need to move much faster, especially if the property is a nice one and going at a good price.”

Money talks - cash buyers can be hard for sellers to ignore. Image courtesy of IB Times

This is true in many parts of the country, such as Washington DC, Texas, San Francisco and even hard-hit places like Phoenix, which is proving to be very attractive for smart investors.

Last May, 30% of all home sales went to cash buyers, an increase of 5% from a year before. Some real estate markets have seen even more cash buyers than the national average, with figures for places like Las Vegas (49%), Miami-Fort Lauderdale (63%) and Phoenix (44%) indicative of their attractiveness to investors.

Cash buyers are preferable for many sellers, because the deal is all the more certain to go through if the buyer doesn’t need to apply for credit. Making things worse for first-time buyers, the slowing down of the foreclosure process, with lenders delaying the sale of these homes, has meant that the inventory of properties for sale in some areas has whittled down. This means that the best ones that are available are often much sought after.

Hard-hit markets like Phoenix are highly attractive for investor. Image courtesy of DBLTHNK

So be warned. If you find a home you really like and it’s going for a good price, move quickly or you may well be beaten to it.

Buying a home has been the cornerstone of hope for the American family for many generations. In fact, owning one’s own homestead is at the core of what America is about as a country, as a social experiment. But the dream so many once had, the hope that a secure home is possible for anyone, this idea is radically changing, and with good reason.

Father Knows Best cast - a picture of the American Dream

Some experts even suggest, home ownership is not right for everyone. I say; “Well, thank you Mr. Expert.” It should be for anyone who dreams of their own home, and is willing to work for it. But again, the experts are just not very diplomatic, clearly not so many can dream of their own property now.

While the American Dream being flushed away for new generations of homeowners, what’s more disturbing is the fact that current homeowners may not be suited to ownership. You read that correctly, even those with property may not be suited (according to the “experts”) to homeownership. Beside the staggering numbers of families losing their homes to foreclosure, there are an equal number “underwater” where their home’s value is concerned.

Are the days of share-croppers back?

So many showed confidence in Realtors, bankers, and other industry “experts” when they bought their American Dream, only to discover their dream is worth less, far less than “projected.”

Even the complexion of this so called American Dream has been altered by recent events. People who can afford to buy or build, have apparently reevaluated their dream. The National Association of Home Builders reports that the median size of new family homes being built has dropped from 2,268 square feet to just over 2,100. The dream is shrinking.

The American Dream, Gone, Gone With the Wind

A Pew Research Center study shows that upwards of 16 percent of American families have turned back the pages to the era of multi-generational home ownership. In short, a constriction and digression of thinking where our American Dream goes. But, this may not be a bad thing – maybe the dream was wrong in the first place? The graph below suggests that perhaps 50 million or more people have gone back to this more European way of viewing property.

Back to the family, the only security there is

It is interesting, and even a bit alarming that not many Americans seem to know how to weigh this economic collapse. Another Pew Research study offers insight into the ways in which, what they term The Great Recession, has hit Americans. So much has changed, is changing. In essence, Americans, knowingly or not, sit adrift in a lifeboat where once a great ship’s deck balanced their aspirations, their very lives.

30 months after the Great Recession began, the downsizing of expectations – shrinking aspirations about everything continues.

The chart below shows clearly how this Great Recession has cast America back toward the Stone Age. Many fear the Company Store may not be far off, and what’s worse, it may be a blessing for millions.

Homes may be a luxury America can no longer afford

Fully half of the U.S. labor force has experiences work related hardship – loss of their jobs, cuts in pay, hour reductions, or movement to part time, etc. The American household has lost 20 percent of its wealth, and owes the budget deficit tens of thousands just to pay back what America has borrowed. And Walmart, and Realtors, and Procter & Gamble expect business as usual?

If the “straw boss” is ever coming back to America, it seems now is the opportune time. If you listen to the hit from 1956 by Tennessee Ernie Ford below, at least some of you may remember a time when a strong back and a weak mind was all most Americans had of the dream – those times are here again my friends. We never thought “Gone With the Wind” would apply to the future.

A home like this could be yours - no mortgage - forever

For the past three years, Taylor Morrison, one of the nation’s largest home building companies, has given away homes to three lucky families in their Dream Home Giveaway contest. The contest returns for a fourth year with a $200,000 grand prize home in one of the company’s building communities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, or Texas.

“A home is something every family deserves and we’re proud to help families across the country realize that dream every year,” said Taylor Morrison President and CEO Sheryl Palmer. “With the Dream Home Giveaway, we get to grant that dream to one lucky person.”

The winner will have the opportunity to custom design a house, choosing floor plan and home options of the new dream home. In addition to the grand prize, winners will be selected every week to receive a Microsoft Xbox 360 with Kinect, Microsoft Zune HD player, or HP Pavilion dm1z notebook. In order to compete for these prizes, contestants must recommend the contest to friends via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

Contestants can enter daily for more chances to win until Jun 30, and Taylor Morrison will announce the winner July 15, 2011.

You are only this far away - click here to enter and win