The 5 Most Expensive Ways Buyers & Sellers Sabotage Themselves

Trulia always has great articles available, check out this one on how not to self-sabotage a real estate deal:

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It’s easy to see the experience of buying or selling a home as an adversarial one: you vs. the people on the other side of the bargaining table, with one chess move by your opponent potentially costing you thousands of dollars.

In my experience, though, the average real estate consumer’s biggest potential enemy is him or herself. Buyers and sellers routinely take approaches, make moves and make omissions that cost themselves much more than anything the other side could ever do.

The first step of any cure is diagnosis. Here are some clues to detecting the costliest cases of real estate self-sabotage so you can stop them in their tracks, get out of your own way and get back to the business of buying or selling your home:
1.  Hesitating.  I’m a big proponent of buying or selling - making any real estate move, really - on whatever time frame makes sense for your life, your family and your finances, rather than trying to time the market. That said, once you’ve done the math, saved your pennies, prepped your property and otherwise decided to move forward on your home buying or selling plan of action, hesitation can cost you.  

• Buyers who hesitate to make an offer can lose out on a home entirely - or can wait so long another offer comes in, forcing them to offer more to beat the other folks out.
• Sellers who hesitate to take an offer can lose out on a buyer, when a new listing comes on the market that catches their eye or better meets their needs.
• Mortgage borrowers who wait too long to lock their interest rates can end up paying more when rates creep up instead of down.

And here’s one more for buyers: hesitating to move forward after you get into contract can also cost you untold stress and deal complications if it snowballs into a situation where you run late removing contingencies - having to ask the seller repeatedly for extensions can cost you negotiation goodwill that you could otherwise have leveraged into repairs or closing cost credits.

I’d say 90% of hesitation is a result of fear, and fear most often arises when

• we second-guess our life decisions connected to the real estate transaction,
• we don’t understand or are intimidated by a subject, or
• we feel powerless to make a wise decision because we don’t know our options all the factors we should be taking into account.

Accordingly, you can eliminate hesitation-related self-sabotage by:

• working through the life and financial decisions that are intertwined with your real estate matters completely and on paper before you start the process, so you can revisit them if and when you’re tempted to hesitate

• getting as educated as possible in advance about your local market dynamics and neighborhood home values, as well as the home buying or selling process in general, and
• diving head first into the discomfort and uncertainty that everyone experiences when they make these major decisions, sitting down with your agent and other pros involved to get every question you have answered in a timely manner so you can move forward, rather than putting decisions off and “sleeping on it” night after night.

2.  Not taking expert advice.  Have you ever taken an indecisive friend out to dinner, watched them hem and haw over the menu, ask the server what their favorite dish is and then order something totally different than the server’s choice? That same phenomenon takes place every day in real estate. Many smart buyers and sellers invest much time and energy into agent-finding, asking around for referrals, checking agents out online, interviewing them and even calling around to check references, only to completely disregard their advice!

If you have a reputable, competent agent, you might be surprised at how often they can save you money with simple nuggets of experience-laden advice specific to a given scenario, like:

• act fast
• list it lower
• offer less/more
• counteroffer for more
• be aggressive
• take the bank’s terms
• don’t buy that house
• get one more inspection/bid
• don’t remove contingencies yet/remove contingencies now
• ask for X, Y or Z repair, price reduction, credit, free rent-back, furniture, or longer time to close.

Experienced, local agents have a strong sense for some of the precise things that are so tricky for a buyer or seller to wrap their heads around, like pricing and negotiations. You should definitely ask your agent for data and the logical rationale behind their advice, and should keep asking until you understand and are comfortable with the decision that you make (whether or not it agrees with their recommendations). By no means am I suggesting that you blindly take every piece of advice you are given by any agent, trusted or not.

That said, if you’re having a hard time getting satisfaction or making progress on your home buying or selling aims and your typical reaction to advice from your agent is to reject it, at least consider that being more receptive to that advice might actually help you get out of your own way.  

And if you have a truly hard time trusting your agent’s advice for whatever reason, consider that you might simply not yet have found the right agent for you.

3.  Overpricing or lowballing.  It might run contrary to conventional wisdom, the idea that asking for more money or offering less can be acts of self-sabotage, but ignoring the damage that these acts can do to your real estate plans is unwise. In real estate, pricing is just more nuanced than that. It’s not the case that you can simply pick your price, ignoring the financial complexities involved and the psychologies of the folks on the other side, and expect for good things to magically happen.

Those nuances include these truths: setting a list-price that is significantly above what other, similar homes have recently sold for will not only not get you that price, it poses the potential to turn buyers off, keep them from coming to see your home, make your place sit on the market longer than it needs to and ultimately, it can result in low or no offers. At the extreme, overpricing can force you to cut the price, sometimes dramatically, to activate buyers who have learned to disregard the obviously overpriced listing in their online house hunt search results.

And buyers beware: making lowball offers significantly below the fair market value of target homes has a similar impact. Sellers ignore them or counter them up higher or they get beat out (often repeatedly) by more realistic buyers. I have seen the tendency to lowball cost buyers thousands over the months they are trying to get a fantasy-land deal, in terms of home price increases or money that same buyer ends up throwing at their eventual home, out of desperation and frustration.

Don’t let your emotions be the ruler of your pricing or offer decisions. Motivation is one factor to consider, but the data on recent, comparable sales should be given much more weight, to keep the threat of price-related self-sabotage in check.

4.  Cutting corners.  Getting a home ready for sale is a marathon endeavor, not a sprint - especially if you’ve been living there for a number of years. Same goes for working on your credit, savings and financial plans in advance of making your first buy: smart buyers-to-be start years in advance. So, it’s tempting to get near the end of your preparation action plan, lose patience and start cutting corners on staging, property preparation, even vetting your own financials and family wants and needs.
 
Don’t submit to temptation - well, don’t submit without the input of your agent and loan officer.  

Depending on your situation, there are some corners that might be okay to cut - the ones that will have very little impact on the eventual outcome of your real estate endeavors. But give the pros you ‘hired’ the opportunity to give you their input before you unilaterally skip steps on your original action plan. If you tell your agent you need to cut your property preparation budget down by a bit, they can help you decide where the corners you cut will have the least impact on your home’s overall presentation to buyers. If your loan officer says that paying a particular credit account down by $4,000 instead of $5,000 won’t really do too much to your qualification status, you might be fine kickstarting your house hunt a few months before you had planned to.

Unfortunately, it’s all too common to see homes where the sellers have poured cash into great, fundamental repairs and neglected some essential, inexpensive cosmetic items - or buyers who have fallen just a tad short in cash or credit and end up scrambling to boost one or both under pressure. Bring your professional team into the conversation before you cut any corners, and ask them to help you understand and minimize any consequences of cutting costs.

5.  Failing to read documents all the way through. Hundreds of your signatures will be requested and required during the process of buying or selling a home. But perhaps the single-most expensive way real estate consumers stab themselves in the back is by failing to read and understand nthe documents they are given - from contracts to disclosures to inspection reports and even closing/loan documents - all the way through.

Many a condo owner has been surprised to learn that they are being assessed a hefty special bill for common area repairs, when that “surprise” was predictable from a few of the hundred pages of HOA disclosures they received before closing escrow. Seller disclosures can be cryptic and boring, but also often contain red flags to guide buyers and their inspectors to the real areas of concern. (Their guiding power is nil if you don’t read them, though.)

And the same goes for sellers - your agent should read and help you understand offer(s), buyer’s inspection reports and requests for repairs or credits, estimated closing statements and everything else, but ultimately you are responsible for reading and understanding all of these influential, binding documents before you sign them.  

So read them. And don’t be afraid to ask questions or insist on clarifications and corrections, if indicated. If you were quoted a certain interest rate or monthly payment, make sure that matches up to what you see in your closing docs - or that you understand and accept the reasons why it doesn’t, before you sign. This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at the major lender-borrower disputes and buyer-seller legal dramas that have arisen over the years because of errors in loan or closing documents that could have been detected and resolved simply, easily and inexpensively before closing.  Don’t be one of them.

How have you sabotaged yourself - or seen others do the same - in the process of buying or selling a home?

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Need an experienced buyer's agent or listing agent to help you through the buying/selling process? Call The Puffer Team, 828-771-2300, www.homefinderasheville.com.

The Puffer Team Did It Again!

After only being on the market 10 days, this home at 43 Mountainberry Lane in Fairview, NC sold for over full price.  I'm sure the buyers are looking forward to their new home in the mountain.

Check out some these other great homes that are currently available in the Fairview area under $250K, we have a team of Buyer Specialists that would love to help you get into a new home.  Are you looking for an aggressive agent to help you SELL your home?  Call Brad Puffer today, 828-771-2300.



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The Puffer Team, Keller Williams Professionals, 828-771-2300, www.homefinderasheville.com.

7 Real Estate Risks: Are They Over- or Underestimated?

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We tend to speak of the risks of various courses of action in black and white, as risky or not. But the truth is, everything in life has risks - even doing nothing! Behavioral experts, economists and my dear old Dad agree: we’re most likely to make decisions we later regret when we under- or overestimate the risks of the outcomes we hope to avoid.  So, outside of extremely high-risk endeavors like base jumping and going on blind dates, the real challenge in life is not to avoid risk entirely, but to assess it accurately and manage it accordingly.

This need to assess and act on risks appropriately, neither overblowing them or blowing them off entirely, is particularly critical when it comes to real estate risks. It’s easy to let your personality determine how you view and manage real estate risks.  But that’s a costly approach: if you let your personal tendency to be risk averse stop you from ever owning a home, you will also miss out on the personal and financial advantages of home ownership, and the opposite is true. If you take a devil-may-care attitude toward your real estate and mortgage matters, you’re highly likely to make some highly regrettable decisions along the way.  

So, instead of going on risk assessment autopilot, let’s take a quick, yet deep, dive into seven of the real estate-related risks that come up the most often in the minds of smart buyers, sellers and owners like you and how you can manage each of these risks wisely.

Risk #1:  The Risk of Foreclosure.

  The risk of losing a home has only recently moved to the front of our collective national consciousness. Foreclosure was once a very, very rare event, seen as an unlikely worst-case scenario. But it became a vivid nightmare come true for an all-time high number of home owners during the recession. The risk and fear of foreclosure is largely due to this increase in foreclosure rate over the past few years, and to the vivid, catastrophic nature of the event. Also, almost everyone knows someone who either lost a home or had serious mortgage distress, so it seems like a very common occurrence.

When we take a look at the facts behind this risk, we realize that the risk of foreclosure appears to be much higher than it truly is. There are roughly 76 million owner-occupied homes in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. Earlier this year, real estate data firm CoreLogic revealed that there had been 3.4 million foreclosures since 2008. That would mean only about  6 percent of homes in America had been through a foreclosure - and this, through the very worst recession of most of our lives.

The more probable risk is the risk of ending up underwater, which more than 25 percent of American homes were at some point during this past 5 years.

The fact that home values rise and fall cyclically is not a risk or a probability - it’s a fact of the real estate market, and one that you can’t do anything about. Your aim should be to manage and minimize the risk of serious mortgage distress (i.e., struggling to make the payment) or foreclosure. And you have the power to manage these risks by:

 

• Making smart mortgage choices. Buying at a price well within what you can afford, selecting a mortgage that your household finances can sustain over time, and not overleveraging by borrowing cash against your home equity for things like cars, clothes or ready cash.
• Making smart financial moves over time, including building a cash savings cushion you can turn to if a job loss or disability interrupts your income.
• Buying a home in as desirable a location as you can afford - and in an area with strong prospects for economic and population growth.
• Making small, extra payments to bring down the principal balance on your loan, if and when you can afford to.

Risk #2: The Risk of Overextending Yourself.

  This is a very real risk - more real, even than the risk of actually losing a home. Home buyers can overextend themselves when they take loans that give them falsely low upfront payments;. This was common in the subprime era that many believe led to the recession, but is less likely with today’s tighter lending guidelines and narrow loan programs.

That said, it’s still possible to overextend yourself by taking on more of a mortgage than you can truly afford taking into consideration things that your lender doesn’t include in their estimation of you can affordable, like: 

 

• what you need to put aside for savings and investments
• childcare and college or private school tuition
• the costs of fixing, maintaining or upgrading your home.

There’s only one way to 100 percent manage your risk of overextending yourself when you buy a home, and throughout the time you own it: run your own financials! No matter how much you hate math or hate the thought of restricting your spending, it is irresponsible to buy a home (or be a home owner, for that matter), without regularly running your own monthly spending budget or plan or audit or program or whatever you need to call it to encourage yourself to sit down and do it!  You have got to know with specificity what comes in and goes out every month in order to avoid getting in over your head.

Doing this math - on paper, not just in your head - is critical with almost everything you do as a homeowner, financially speaking.  When you decide to remodel, buy things for your home, upgrade your bathroom, or refinance the place, create and honor the habit of making a written budget - even a super simple one -and doing the actual math to get a clear picture of what it will cost and whether you can afford that.

Risk #3: The Risks of Overpaying and/or Leaving Money on the Table.   

The night a buyer and seller agree upon a purchase price, one thing happens in both of their households, almost 100 percent of the time. The buyer wonders and worries that they might have paid too much.  “Would the seller have taken less?” they ask themselves.  And the seller fixates on the reverse, worrying whether they could have gotten more cash out of the buyer. “Would they have paid more?” the seller wonders (and often, asks heir agent).

There is one essential truth about home purchase prices that applies to both buyers and sellers:  you can never know, with 100 percent certainty, whether the other side would have paid more or taken less. The answer to that question exists only in a hypothetical world in which you didn’t offer or take the price you did, in fact, offer or take. So, it simply makes zero sense to fixate on the issue. It’s a drain of time, energy and enthusiasm for an agreement that made enough sense for you to ink, so your best bet is to stop worrying about it.

That said, there are smart strategies buyers and sellers can and should take to minimize the risk of making poor decisions as to purchase price.  Buyers should work with their agents to focus on the recent sales prices of comparable homes as a primary driver, along with their own personal budgets, of the price they offer for any given home. In cases of multiple offers, buyers should make their best offer knowing that you have to offer more than everyone else to “win” the home, by definition. And you should decide, in advance, not to worry or wonder whether a lower price would possibly have worked, if you do turn out to be the victorious buyer.

To avoid leaving money on the table or missing the ‘right’ buyers for their homes, sellers must prepare their homes to the very best of their ability (with advance inspections, repairs and staging, as their agent recommends). Then, price them in accordance with the comparables and their motivation level. The aim should be to price it low enough that the home looks like a compelling value to online house hunters, compared to the competition, but not so low that you  miss out on the buyers who are seeking homes like yours - and also not so low that you would be upset about accepting an offer at the full asking price. 

 
Risk #4: The Risk of Buying a Lemon.  

Ever see the Tom Hanks film The Money Pit?  It’s a vivid rendering of every buyer’s fear: that the home of their dreams will turn out to be a nightmare, requiring years of surprise, costly repairs and causing many a daily crisis when this pipe explodes or that roof caves in. Every home has flaws - even brand new ones. But this is a risk that is often overrated in my experience, especially by first-time home owners who have simply not had to maintain a property before.

The reality is that this risk is relatively simple to size up for a given property, and to manage, via inspections and home warranty plans. Talk with your agent about which inspections to order for a given property, but it’s extremely common to obtain at least pest, property and roof inspections for a single family home before buying it. Standard practices for your area, the specific features of a given property and the findings of the other inspectors might suggest that it’s prudent for you to obtain any number of additional inspections or repair bids, ranging from a sewer line inspection, to the inspections of a structural engineer, general contractor, electrician or chimney specialist. Best practice is for you to personally attend as many of these inspections as possible, and read the written reports - as well as asking follow-up questions until you feel comfortable that you understand and are okay with the home’s condition.

The other best practice here is to obtain a home warranty plan at close of escrow to cover the unavoidable, eventual breakdowns of things like furnaces and water heaters. Your agent will help you secure a policy before close of escrow, but it’s your job to keep the home warranty in place every year when it expires.

Risk #5: The Risk of Losing Your Deposit. 

In most home buying contracts, there is a window of time after the contract is signed in which the buyer has contingencies: the right to bail out of the deal for any number of negotiable reasons, like if the loan falls through or the inspections reveal insurmountable concerns.  While a buyer may have made a deposit at the very beginning of the contract, it is standard in many areas that the deposit is increased (meaning the buyer puts in more money) and rendered non-refundable at the end of the contingency period.  After that point, if the buyer backs out of the deal, many contracts give the seller the right to retain the deposit money.

The specifics of contingencies and deposit money refundability vary, sometimes widely, state-by-state and contract-by-contract. For example, in the standard real estate purchase contract forms used in California and many other states, the buyer must expressly submit a written form that exercises their contingencies or removes them, telling the seller they are moving forward - the deposit cannot be retained by the sellers unless the buyer first removes their contingencies in writing, then backs out anyway.

In other areas, there is an objection period, so that if the buyer says or does nothing (i.e., fails to “object” to the transaction proceeding), the deposit automatically becomes non-refundable when the objection period lapses.  Almost all bank contracts for the purchase of foreclosed homes follow this passive objection period arrangement, rather than requiring the buyer to actively remove their contingencies for the deposit to be rendered non-refundable.

No matter what the specifics of your contract’s deposit refundability guidelines are, there is almost never a good reason for you to forfeit your earnest money deposit. The way to manage this risk is to sit down with your agent before you write your offer and discuss deposit refund, contingency and objection period guidelines. Make sure you ask every question you have and fully understand the guidelines and timelines, as you move through the phases of offer; counter-offer(s), if any; and contract acceptance.

Then, when you do get into contract, work with your agent to get a clear understanding of when your contingencies and/or objection periods expire, and put these dates on your own calendar. Throughout the transaction, operate as though time is of the essence when it comes to obtaining inspections, responding to your loan officer’s documentation requests and the like, because it truly is of the essence.  Finally, make sure you are vigilant about requesting an extension of time for your contingency or objection period(s) if needed.

Your agent will undoubtedly help keep you reminded of what dates are coming up, but you are ultimately responsible for ensuring that you collect the information you need in the time you have to gather it and make a final decision on a given property without forfeiting your deposit funds.

Risk #6: The Risk of Getting a “Bad” Loan.  

Working with a mortgage loan officer that your friends, family or colleagues refer you to - and rave about - rather than simply walking into some branch of some bank off the street or working with the shiniest, slickest someone who promises they can “trick” the banks into giving you a loan. Because the world of mortgage and finance is an area that causes many people fear and trepidation, the idea of getting a so-called ‘bad’ loan strikes fear into the heart of many a home buyer and refi-er.  What makes for a bad loan is different for different people. Depending on where your head is at, it could mean anything from a loan with a higher interest rate or fees than you could have gotten elsewhere to a tricky loan program that has big, bad surprises in years to come, à la balloon payments or scary payment adjustments.

The risk of getting a bad loan was much greater during the subprime era, when there were loads of low-down payment, adjustable loans with big prepayment penalties and skyrocketing interest-only payments.  These loans are largely extinct right now (though they might not be forever).  Fortunately, you have much more control than you might think over whether you wind up with a ‘bad’ loan.

Exercise that control by:

• If you have a bank you like or love, consider obtaining a loan quote from them and one from your referred mortgage loan officer, then ask both loan officers to help you compare them.
• Taking the most plain vanilla home loan product you can. It’s very difficult to be surprised with a basic 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, where the payment stays the same until it’s paid off. The more complexities you add in, the more potential for surprise you open yourself up to.
• Reading and understanding every line of your good faith estimate - and aggressively asking every question you have in your head until you completely understand it.  Do the same with your loan documents at closing. In fact, I recommend asking your loan officer to make sure you can review your loan documents at least a day or so in advance of your appointment to sign them, so you two can walk through them together in an unhurried manner before you’re sitting at the closing table.
• Understand that property taxes and insurance costs do vary over time. Talk with your real estate and mortgage pros to try to wrap your head around the future trajectories of these costs. It’s not overkill to work with a financial planner as you move into the home owner stage of your financial life.

Risk #7: The Risk of Being Duped.

  Related to the fear of buying a lemon of a home, many a home buyer, seller and mortgage borrower has asked me some version of this question over the years: “How do I know they’re not lying to me?”  And for the word “they,” you can pretty much fill in the blank with “my agent,” “the other agent,” “the seller,” “the buyer,” “the mortgage broker,” “the inspector/contractor” - you name it.  There are several ways to assess and approach the risk of being duped in the course of a real estate transaction, no matter who you fear might be doing the duping.

First, recognize that most people are more likely to be honest than they are to lie, as a general rule. Does this mean no one has ever lied to a buyer or a borrower?  Of course not - but it does mean that the risk of you being lied to is actually far lower than the risks involved with failing to fully read the disclosures a seller or lender has provided, in my experience.  This is especially true when it comes to professionals who have their credibility and livelihoods on the line, and sellers, most of whom would rather over-disclose than be sued later.

Second, work with professionals who have been referred to you and vouched for by people you know: your friends, relatives, colleagues, or the other real estate professionals you already have and trust.

And finally, whenever possible, get a backup source of information - don’t rely 100% on one individual’s word, if you don’t have to. Get inspections to give you a fuller picture of the home’s condition, beyond what the seller says.  Pull the home’s file with the city building department to learn more about how it’s been modified over time, if your contract and the real estate law of your area allows. Talk to the neighbors about their experience of the neighborhood - they’re often more than happy to share. Your agent can tell you what is and isn’t allowed under your contract.

 
What real estate risks do you worry about?  How do you actively manage and minimize them?

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Need a real estate professional to help you determine risks involved in a real estate transaction and how to overcome them? Call The Puffer Team, 828-771-2300, www.homefinderasheville.com.  

Don't Forget To Honor Your Veterans

Veterans Day Defined

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (source)

    

Veterans Day is an official United States holiday honoring armed service veterans. It is a federal holiday that is observed on November 11th. It coincides with other holidays such as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, which are celebrated in other parts of the world and also mark the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. (Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice.)

Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day; Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans, while Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving.^[1]

History

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed Armistice Day for November 11, 1919. In proclaiming the holiday, he said

"To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations."^[2]

The United States Congress passed a concurrent resolution seven years later on June 4, 1926, requesting that President Calvin Coolidge issue another proclamation to observe November 11 with appropriate ceremonies.^[2] A Congressional Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U.S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday: "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."

In 1945, WWII veteran Raymond Weeks from Birmingham, Alabama, had the idea to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just those who died in World War I. Weeks led a delegation to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who supported the idea of National Veterans Day. Weeks led the first national celebration in 1947 in Alabama and annually until his death in 1985. President Reagan honored Weeks at the White House with the Presidential Citizenship Medal in 1982 as the driving force for the national holiday. Elizabeth Dole, who prepared the briefing for President Reagan, determined Weeks as the "Father of Veterans Day."

U.S. Representative Ed Rees from Emporia, Kansas, presented a bill establishing the holiday through Congress. President Dwight Eisenhower, also from Kansas, signed the bill into law on May 26, 1954.^[3]

Congress amended this act on June 1, 1954, replacing "Armistice" with "Veterans," and it has been known as Veterans Day since.^[4][5]

The National Veterans Award, created in 1954, also started in Birmingham. Congressman Rees of Kansas was honored in Alabama as the first recipient of the award for his support offering legislation to make Veterans Day a federal holiday, which marked nine years of effort by Raymond Weeks. Weeks conceived the idea in 1945, petitioned Gen. Eisenhower in 1946, and led the first Veterans Day celebration in 1947 (keeping the official name Armistice Day until Veterans Day was legal in 1954).

Although originally scheduled for celebration on November 11 of every year, starting in 1971 in accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, Veterans Day was moved to the fourth Monday of October. In 1978, it was moved back to its original celebration on November 11.

References

1. ^ http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/parenting/homefront/bal-memorial-day-vs-veterans-day-20120528,0,1402423.story
2. ^ ^{a b} "The History of Veterans Day". United States Army Center of Military History. 3 August 2009. http://www.history.army.mil/html/reference/holidays/vetsday/vetshist.html.
3. ^ Carter, Julie (November 2003). "Where Veterans Day began". VFW Magazine (Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LIY/is_3_91/ai_110734282.
4. ^ "History of Veterans Day". United States Department of Veterans Affairs. 2007-11-26. http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp. Retrieved 2008-11-06.
5. ^ "The History of Veterans Day". United States Army Center of Military History (CMH). 2003-10-03. http://www.history.army.mil/html/reference/holidays/vetsday/vetshist.html. Retrieved 2007-11-01.

Remember, today isn't just a day off of work for some, it's a day to remember.  Thank a veteran today for their service and remember those who lost their lives.

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The Puffer Team, Keller Williams Professionals, 828-771-2300, www.homefinderasheville.com

10 High Impact Home Improvements You Can Do for $10K or Less

Feeling a little blah about your current Asheville area home but not ready to make a move? Click here for the "10 High Impact Home Improvements You Can Do for $10K or Less".

Sometimes a little sprucing up is all a home needs to feel like new again.  Check out our Pinterest page for some ideas for home decor, every home has it's own personality, I'm sure yours can be found in one of our "pins".

So what have you done lately to improve upon YOUR home?

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The Puffer Team, Keller Williams Professionals, 828-771-2300, www.homefinderasheville.com