Expert Advice from Amy & Kyle Bergquist at Keller Williams Legacy Partners
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
Landlords are required to follow rules while handling the money of their tenants. One of them relates to the security deposits that they collect when someone first moves in. Tenants are supposed to earn interest on their deposits at a rate defined by the state. For many years (since 2002) the state held the required security deposit interest rate at 1.5%. This page on the CT Department of Banking site shows the historical interest rates
The snowless winter has made sledding nearly impossible this season. We got a few runs in after the Halloween storm, and a few more after a modest snowfall in January, but since then the sleds have been idle. Instead we’ve been thinking about spring and the upcoming gardening season. And it seems like others are on the same page. Last week we learned about an updated plant hardiness map from the USDA. The map for
Yesterday Amy noticed a story come across the wire about a new Microsoft patent. One of the main benefits, which appears in the abstract of the actual filing, is that it will allow walking directions to be provided that take into account “unsafe” neighborhoods. The story caught our attention because as real estate agents we are not allowed to talk about neighborhoods as “safe” or “unsafe.” An area’s level of safety is a personal perception
The number of single-family homes that went under contract in January 2012 jumped 14% over January of last year. The total of 458 deals that came together signals that the local real estate markets are off and running for 2012. We have heard a number of theories as to why buyers are active so early in the year. One is that the lack of snow has everyone acting like it’s spring. Another line of thinking