Determining a home’s value is key to a successful listing and sale. Sellers who insist on over pricing their home will find that when it doesn’t compare favorably with others in the same price range buyers won’t make an offer. Meanwhile, buyers looking at lower priced homes who may be good prospects won’t see it […]
Determining a home’s value is key to a successful listing and sale. Sellers who insist on over pricing their home will find that when it doesn’t compare favorably with others in the same price range buyers won’t make an offer. Meanwhile, buyers looking at lower priced homes who may be good prospects won’t see it […]
Classical music fans in Central Virginia love September. So do some of the finest classical musicians in the world. For fifteen years now, Charlottesville natives Timothy Summers and Raphael Bell have brought the two together for the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, two weeks’ worth of stimulating concerts of classical music for small ensembles. The eight […]
These days it is not unusual for lenders to require a down payment of as 20 percent on the purchase price of a home. This makes a lot of sense from the lender’s point of view for several reasons. First, buyers who can save that 20 percent show they handle their finances well. Second, with […]
Nationally the commercial market continues to recover, according to Lawrence Yun, the National Association of REALTORS® Chief Economist. Yun predicts an improving commercial market, with the multi-family sector leading the way based on what he expects will be an expanding GDP, an easing in commercial lending and continued job growth. The Charlottesville Market Hock Hockensmith, […]
Shortly after she learned to talk, Molly Streit announced that she wanted to take horseback riding lessons. “I made the rule that she couldn’t ride until she was 5,” her mother, Meghan, said. “The day after she turned 5, she took her first lesson.” Molly is now 7 years old, and has been riding her […]
Is there a commonly accepted “playground etiquette?” Or are playgrounds a lawless land ruled by barbaric, screaming bullies and their diaper-clad children? Thinking back, wistfully, to my own children’s blissful playground days, I see images of radiant, round-faced, sun-screened toddlers, squealing with glee as they run, slide, and swing. Wait! Has the ether of time […]
With one child still in preschool and one in grade school, I’ve already fallen into the typical yo-yo family routine phenomenon: By the last month of the regular school year, I’m just done. Done with daily lunch packing. Done with backpack checking and bake sales. Done with incessant clock watching, brush-your-teeth demanding, shoelace tying, and […]
One of the things that made me wary about having children earlier was intimidation over the sheer work involved in raising kids. I thought I’d do fine with the nurturing, tender, Hallmark moments of fatherhood, but I was much less confident in my ability to manage the mundane day-to-day labor and constant vigilance that parenting […]
They call themselves the Smartie-Nerds (a mash-up of the two candy names), and after placing fifth in the world at last spring’s Destination Imagination global competition at the University of Tennessee, nobody’s going to argue with them. “Them” is Madison Gildersleeve-Price, Abby and Elly Haden, Teresa Li, Maggie Matthews, Sarah Trotter, and Stacy Vitko, an […]
Physics teacher Matt Shields, who recently received a 2014 MIT Inspirational Teacher Award for his work both in and out of the classroom with students at Charlottesville High School, never planned to be a teacher. “Physics was almost an accident. I think I got a C in physics in college,” Shields said, adding that his […]