Staging a House to Sell

By Marilyn Pribus –  “It’s critically important to have a house show well when it’s time to sell,” declares REALTOR® Byrd Abbott, an associate broker with Roy Wheeler Realty Co. “Some tweaking and paring down often needs to be done because it’s so much easier to present a staged home.”  What Exactly Is Staging? Often […]

Historic Garden Week 2017: Sharing the Beauty

By Ken Wilson –  “Gardens above all else are for sharing.” – Emily Whaley Would any gardener beg to differ? Emily Whaley knows: after all the planning and the plotting, and the digging and mulching and watering and tending have done their work comes a garden’s finest hour, when gardener and friends stroll through, approving […]

Keep Your Cool This Summer

By Marilyn Pribus – “I can’t believe we’ve already had the AC on and it’s only April,” laments a Lake Monticello resident. “I don’t even want to think about our electric bill this summer.” She’s not alone. Air conditioning soaks up about five percent of all the electricity produced in our country, approaching $30 billion annually. […]

How to Find the Best Mortgage for Your Next Home

By Celeste M. Smucker –  A big concern for home buyers is finding the right mortgage program, one they can live with for many years, and this decision is especially important for those who have limited funds for a down payment. Many move-up buyers have more than enough cash from selling their previous home to […]

Home and Garden Trends: What’s New in 2017?

By Celeste M. Smucker – When it comes to home and garden, you can count on one thing.  The new year brings changes in everything from floor plans and style updates to interior and exterior color preferences  and cutting-edge technologies.  Home buyers and those thinking about remodeling an existing house can look online for trends and […]

What is Your Home Worth?

By Celeste M. Smucker – When home owners are ready to sell their house, they usually have a good idea about what they think it’s worth. Similarly, buyer prospects have a strong opinion about what they are willing to pay for it.  Sometimes these numbers are far apart.  So what determines what a home is worth […]

Building Goodness

By Ken Wilson – Jack Horn loves to build and he loves to travel. A couple of weeks after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated much of Haiti in January of 2010, Horn, the CEO of the Charlottesville contracting firm Martin Horn, Inc., found himself on a mountainside overlooking Port-au-Prince. He was in the country with Building […]

Landscape Design Adds Home Value

By Marilyn Pribus – It’s always important to plan for the future when landscaping your yard. You want it to be nice for you today and you also want to keep an eye on the resale potential because a well-landscaped yard adds to that all-important curb appeal. How Much Landscaping Should I Have? “It’s very much […]

Up Close and Personal: The 2017 Virginia Festival of The Book

By Ken Wilson –  Up and down Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall on a recent Saturday morning, the literati were looking. At New Dominion Bookshop, the oldest bookstore in town, dating back to 1924, a woman was checking out the Lit Crit section.  At the Blue Whale, where original prints, antiquarian maps, and rare volumes sit alongside […]