Sounding the Alarm

Last week we received a notice from the City of Hartford. It is time to renew our house alarm registration with the City’s Department of Emergency Services and Telecommunications. Residents of Hartford are required to register their alarm with the municipality. We pay $15 per year, which not only gets us into the systems, but also buys us free emergency responses for the first two false alarms within a 12 month period. There is no

2011 Closed Stats From 50,000 Feet

Last year we gathered up all the Hartford County residential transactions since the beginning of the CTMLS in 2000 and showed how the very high level trends had changed over 10 years. Today we update those charts with the data from 2011. As always, the CTMLS is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Observations The total number of single-family home transactions fell again in 2011, decreasing about 8% from the 2010 total. With the latest data

A Little Truth in Advertising, Please

Dear Listing Agent, Thanks for getting us in to see your listing last night. My client and I appreciate it. We were excited to see the home. Based on your description and photos, it sounded like it might work for her. Unfortunately when we got to the house it was not really what the description and pictures portrayed. Now, I’m all for taking pictures that highlight the best features of a home. But there is

Bat Adventures: Who is the Bat Man?

This post continues our story about bats in the attic… It’s time for the bats to go, but how does that actually happen? Who do I call to help me get them out? We keep a list of contractors and other service providers so that we have someone to recommend to our clients in any occasion. But there is nobody on the list for wildlife removal – somehow I don’t think the bug exterminators are

Time to Turn off the Water Outside

We’ve had some frost. And we’ve had a dusting of snow. Although it’s not bone-chilling cold, most of us won’t be using the outside water spigots again until spring. Here at the Bergquist house that means it’s time to shut off the water. Water spigots are at risk of freeze damage over the winter because water sits in the pipes outside the main walls of the house. Even though the house itself probably does protect