Daily Archives: September 16, 2011

North Salem NY Real Estate | Be happy with a simple home | Inman News

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Be happy with a simple home

Valuing function over fashion

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series.

“Simplify, simplify!”

Today, more than ever, there’s wisdom in Henry David Thoreau’s well-known exhortation. And it applies to our domestic lives as much as anywhere else. Here’s Thoreau’s quote in its entirety:

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.”

Alas, the unstoppable wheels of marketing and mercantilism that subtly direct so much of our American lives make it damnably hard to heed Thoreau’s advice. But once we recognize that there’s only one thing absolutely crucial to a contented life — namely, your good health and that of the ones you love — and all that attendant bric-a-brac of materialism quickly falls away.

Architects are as much a captive to rampant materialism as anyone else. After all, much of an architect’s time is spent divining and assembling collections of people’s material wants into tidy packages, whether they take the from of a kitchen, a bathroom, or a whole house. And since we’re the gatekeepers for some of the biggest expenditures most people ever make, marketers are hell-bent on trying to influence us.

We’re treated to a ceaseless array of products brochures, samples and telemarketing. As a matter of fact, in the midst of writing this, yet another sales representative telephoned to draw my attention to his product — let’s see, was it a home elevator, whole-house automation, or an oven with an Internet connection?

The truth is, I’m more likely to steer people clear of such products than to specify them, all the more so in this dismal economy. Yet while it’s easy to blame the marketers for creating such a cult of materialism, we Americans are far from blameless.

Our overbearing sense of self-entitlement is central to the economic problems we’re now mired in: We want all that fancy stuff they try to sell us whether we can afford it or not, and we’re willing to be in hock up to our eyebrows in order to get it.

Having so fully bought into the marketers’ siren song conflating possessions with happiness, we’ve lost perspective of how little it really takes to be happy. Or as the very sage blogger Charles Hugh Smith recently pointed out regarding the relativity of our expectations: “If you’re used to living in a tent, a plywood shack seems like a luxury.”

Getting people to buy things they don’t need isn’t a new idea. Back in the 1930s, at least one plumbing fixture manufacturer — Standard Sanitary, today’s American Standard — declared that “cleaning the teeth in the regular lavatory is a very unsanitary practice,” and suggested that every bathroom have a separate “dental lavatory” just for tooth brushing.

The idea didn’t fly, probably due more to the Great Depression than anything else, yet the same clever sales strategy did eventually break through in the form of “his and hers” master bath lavatories.

Next time, we’ll look at some more recent examples of selling people things they don’t need, even though, in many cases, they cost more and don’t work as well.

via inman.com

Waccabuc NY Real Estate | Know your home real estate inspection rights | Inman News

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Know your home real estate inspection rights

Don’t fall victim to surprise defects after move-in

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DEAR BARRY: When we purchased our house, the home inspector didn’t want us to attend the inspection. He simply mailed us the report, but we never got to meet him. Since moving in, we’ve found defects that were not reported to us, and now we feel that our presence at the inspection should have been allowed.

Among the undisclosed problems were ungrounded outlets (discovered later by our contractor) and several safety issues with our forced-air furnace (discovered by the man from the gas company). Not being allowed at the inspection should have been a red flag. After all, we paid for the inspection. Why shouldn’t we have been there? –Ben

DEAR BEN: No home inspector with a healthy understanding of the profession would deny homebuyers the right to attend their own inspection. There is simply no excuse for such a ban. You paid the home inspector’s fee, and for this you had every right to be there; to ask him questions; to learn, firsthand, what he observed at the home.

Inspectors who bar their clients from attendance have no concept of the service business they are in and should either re-evaluate their professional function or find another way to make a living. It’s a matter of attitude, of realizing that the purpose of the inspection is to provide buyers with a thorough understanding of the condition of the property they are buying.

The home inspection is the buyer’s private consultant and advocate. That should be the essential approach. Without it, all other aspects of the inspection become suspect, particularly the thoroughness of disclosure.

Qualified home inspectors routinely test accessible wall outlets and report when they are not grounded. Failure to note such an obvious and common defect is a sign of professional negligence. Additionally, various defects involving the safety of a forced-air furnace are commonly reported by qualified home inspectors, as these can significantly affect the safety of occupants.

If you were represented by a Realtor, that agent was equally at fault for not ensuring your attendance at the inspection. Real estate professionals typically arrange for their buyers either to attend the home inspection or at least meet with the inspector at the end of the inspection for a full review of the findings. For this reason, representation by a competent, ethical agent or broker is vitally important.

The unanswered question now is, “How many additional defects remain to be discovered and disclosed?” This uncertainty can be resolved only by hiring another home inspector; someone who is thorough, experienced, and well known for competent professionalism.

DEAR BARRY: Construction is nearly completed on our new home, but we’re concerned about the windows. We ordered low-e glass, the windows that filter out heat rays from the sun. We paid extra for this, but we’re not convinced that’s what we got. The contractor assures us these are the right windows, but we want to be absolutely sure. What should we do? –Cliff

DEAR CLIFF: If you have doubts about the windows, contact the window manufacturer for clarification. Window companies typically have field representatives who investigate possible problems involving the contractors who install their products. Upon request, they should send someone to the site to ensure that all of their products are properly installed and functional.

via inman.com

Mount Kisco NY Real Estate | Septic system checkup | Inman News

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Septic system checkup

Homeowners face varied regulations

There’s an older home in the neighborhood that was occupied by a single woman for more than two decades. When she died of cancer a few years ago, her son inherited the home and moved in. Not long after, the septic system failed and had to be replaced.

Eric Knopf, owner of Indigo Designs Inc., a company that designs and maintains septic systems, said that septic systems definitely have a life span. “You can get about 30 years on a home’s roof. Some cars will get you 200,000 miles; some maybe 300,000. Septic systems also have a definite life span.”

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, an estimated 30 percent of all households use a soil-absorption septic system to dispose of waste. A properly designed, installed and maintained septic system is comprised of a watertight container, drain field, and adequate soil conditions beneath the drain field.

Only 32 percent of all septic systems in existence meet the criteria for adequate soil absorption, due to the presence of bedrock, sandy soil and high water tables.

Here’s the quick scoop on what happens in an on-site septic system — i.e., the sewage treatment a home needs if not hooked in to a community sewer:

Wastewater leaves the house and enters the septic tank. The septic tank acts as a holding tank and allows the solids to settle. The heavier solids sink to the bottom forming the sludge layer; the lighter solids — fats, oils and grease — rise to the surface and form the scum layer.

The relatively clear layer in the middle is called effluent. While this is going on, naturally occurring anaerobic bacteria begin breaking down the solids in size and destroying the pathogens, or germs.

As the effluent enters the drain field, it percolates through the gravel bed where a large portion of the pathogens are destroyed. Pockets of oxygen created by the uneven shape of the gravel allow the more efficient aerobic bacteria to exist. As the effluent exits the drain field, the natural soil completes the treatment process.

By the time the effluent has traveled 2-3 feet through the soil, all the remaining pathogens have been destroyed.

“What happens in a septic tank is a beautiful thing,” Knopf said. “You have all these little critters working together. When you introduce something that kills what they are doing, it disrupts the process — at least for a while. What’s going on in there is fairly robust and will come back.”

Jim vonMeier, who operates www.septicprotector.com, advises homeowners to have their septic contractor inspect the system in the beginning to get a benchmark of how the system is operating because they can tell when a system is “cooking” properly.

Medications are one potential disruptor to septic system processes. “The drugs people take can have a negative impact on a septic system,” vonMeier said.

“Antibiotics, for example … kill bacteria in your body, but that killing process does not stop there. When you go to the bathroom, you are flushing those antibiotics out to your septic system, where they kill the ‘good’ bacteria in the tank and soil. Chemotherapy drugs can also have the same effect.”

States and counties have different rules and regulations regarding on-site septic systems. For example, Washington’s Kitsap County requires that all developed property utilizing an on-site sewage system have the system inspected and evaluated through the Kitsap County Health District prior to conveying the property to a new owner. New homes and businesses that have never been occupied are exempt.

“It’s common to hear that the best solution to pollution is dilution,” Knopf said. “While systems do recover, they are not designed to take everything we give them. For example, in Washington state, kidney dialysis patients are allowed to install a small drain field just for that use. It just depends where you are and what you are dealing with.”

Tom Kelly’s new e-book, “Bargains Beyond the Border: Get Past the Blood and Drugs: Mexico’s Lower Cost of Living Can Avert a Tearful Retirement,” is available online at Apple’s iBookstore, Amazon.com, Sony’s Reader Store, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Diesel eBook Store, and Google Editions.

via inman.com

Pound Ridge NY Real Estate | SEO Lessons From Apple’s Steve Jobs

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To some he is the devil incarnate, and to others he is nothing short of a god-like genius. Love him or hate him, you cannot deny that he has a fairly nifty way with words (as well as considerable business acumen and good taste in design).

After reading a recent article in a geeky magazine, I got to thinking that maybe the esteemed Mr. Jobs could teach us a thing or two about modern SEO – and when I say modern SEO I am not talking about the spammy, repetitive strain of meta keywords and directory submissions. I’m talking about creating great content, beautiful sites, link building through real relationships and the creation of new brand names.

So, without further ado let us dive into some of his most famous quotes:

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

Gone are the days of being propelled into the upper echelons of Google results by submitting a thousand blog comments and creating different pages for different search engines. What are you creating for your site that is truly wonderful? Sites that work hard on the content (and promote it a little) tend to do that little bit better nowadays. Put effort into what you create.

Think with the audience in mind. What would you want to see? If you wouldn’t want to see it, scrap it. You have to feel that the content you create belongs on that first page of Google.

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

We know that Google is looking at the design of the site to some extent nowadays. Several versions of the Panda update debuted this year, and before that, Google rolled out its site-preview option on search results pages. Apple products are testament to the fact that people appreciate nice design as long as you don’t forget functionality.

Make your site ooze sexiness or authority or whatever is relevant to your vertical. Investin finding a good designer who will work alongside your SEO team. Usability and beauty do not have to be mutually exclusive. Which leads us to:

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Think of the iPod and the dial on the front. Not only does it look beautiful but it is practical (and to be honest, it feels good when you slide you fingers around it). Consider the slid-to-open function on the iPhone, it feels good doesn’t it? Sites should be created with these things in mind. Make sure the design is an integral part of functionality.

“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”

Think of some of the most famous people operating in SEO at the moment. They wear their white-hat credentials (rightly so) as a badge of honor. Be proud of only carrying out white-hat techniques on your (or client’s) sites. It is a long race when you are playing by the rules but it pays off at the end. Think of the guys and gals who have succeeded in SEO (mostly white hat, right?), whilst the black hats are busy burning sites and worrying whether this morning will be the morning that they wake up and the site is gone from the search results. (That quote comes from Wil Reynolds.)

“It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn’t compete with six people in blue jeans.”

As Google starts to favor brands more and more it is easy to think that you are not going to be able to compete with the big guys. We are the guys in the jeans, and we can compete. Be inventive, be flexible, create and innovate. It can seem fairly obvious that you are not going to get a little bitty site to be No. 1 for the keyword “insurance,” but you can find a niche that the big guys haven’t. It is all out there for you. You just have to find it.

“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

I wasn’t at mozcon, but I have seen the slides, and both Rand Fishkin and Will Critchlow talked about this in their face-off. There is nothing wrong with “appropriating” a few good ideas from other successful companies. Twist them to fit your style, your site, you social media campaign or whatever. Most SEO strategies start with a little bit of borrowing – from keyword ideas to low-hanging link-building opportunities.

So love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has some great ideas that you can appropriate for you web strategy, and let us not forget he has been fairly successful with that little company of his.

I will leave you with two more quotes that I have in the pile, they go quite nicely together, and pretty much sum up this post:

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. We just want to make great products.”

“Click. Boom. Amazing!”

 

via searchenginejournal.com