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Europe, China still threats to U.S. recovery Premium Content

By Lou Barnes, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=91214720">Iceberg</a> image via Shutterstock.

Long-term interest rates have stabilized safely in the Fed-controlled zone, with 10-year Treasury notes at 2 percent and mortgages at 4 percent. Stocks and other markets hope for a third round of quantitative easing -- "QE3" -- perhaps as early as next week's Fed meeting. But that move will likely wait for either weaker global economic data or inflation falling toward deflation, or both.

U.S. data is softening -- not anywhere near a new double-dip conversation, but not accelerating to self-sustenance, either. March retail sales did OK, up 0.8 percent, but the housing recovery ballyhooed since winter has been exposed as a promotional feature: New starts fell 5.8 percent in March, new permits rose (but nobody gets a paycheck for one of those), and sales of existing homes fell a seasonally adjusted 2.6 percent from February to March. One theory: Diminished inventories of listings have crimped sales. Uh-huh. "Saudis buy, destroy science for 200 MPG cars!"  more...

Poor record-keeping puts tax deductions at risk Premium Content

By Stephen Fishman, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=22567249">Stack of records</a> image via Shutterstock.

Filing your tax returns on time is only half the battle with the IRS. The other half -- or more-- is keeping good records. Lack of adequate records is by far the main reason taxpayers lose deductions in tax audits.

You need to have copies of your tax returns and supporting documents available in case you are audited by the IRS or another taxing agency. You might also need them for other purposes -- to get a loan, mortgage or insurance, for example.  more...

Top reasons Americans relocate

By Steve Bergsman, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=93950632" target=blank>Moving day image</a> via Shutterstock.

When I was a young man, I moved often. Then I found a good job, got married, and children quickly followed. I stopped moving. That job is long gone, the kids are grown up and living elsewhere, but I'm still married to the same person and haven't moved in decades.

Apparently, I'm a rare bird, because Americans like to move. More than 40 million of us move every year and we have been changing residences at that rate at least as far back as the 1990s.  more...

Save money on your home addition

By Arrol Gellner, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=81790438" target=blank>Architectural plans image</a> via Shutterstock.

In this do-it-yourself era, can you also be your own architect? The answer is yes ... and no. Though it's not widely known, you don't need an architect's license to draw plans for a wood-framed building, as long as it's no more than two stories high over a crawlspace. Since the lion's share of residential work falls into this category, this means pretty much anyone can draw their own house plans, or can hire another unlicensed person to do it for them.

Considering that architects customarily charge a commission fee of between 10 and 15 percent of the project budget for residential work, the do-it-yourself route may seem pretty appealing, especially in these challenging times. After all, the cash you'd save would probably buy a whole truckload of goodies from your local building emporium.  more...

Realtor.com details anti-scraping efforts

By Inman News, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=60210208">Robot</a> image via Shutterstock.

Realtor.com operator Move Inc. says it's blocking automated Web bots from accessing more than 1 million pages a day on the listing site, and that such efforts have resulted in a sharp decline in attempts at "scraping."

The company says it monitors about 137 million interactions on the site per day, looking for patterns that indicate illicit behavior such as the systematic copying of listing data, blocking suspicious IPs from accessing Realtor.com.  more...

How to properly vent a clothes dryer

By Paul Bianchina, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=69390319" target=blank>Washer and dryer image</a> via Shutterstock.

Your clothes dryer is one of the hardest-working appliances in your home. It's also a fairly basic appliance in how it operates, and if it's properly vented and maintained, it should give you years, even decades, of reliable service.

But "properly vented and maintained" is the catch. Because a dryer is such a simple appliance to install and operate, many people don't give it much thought. They set it in place, plug it in, vent it through that pipe coming up out of the floor -- typically with the wrong type of vent hose -- then forget about it. And there it sits, slowly degrading in performance, using up increasingly greater and greater amounts of energy, and becoming a bigger fire hazard with each passing day!  more...

FHA postpones rule change for borrowers in debt disputes

By Builder Magazine, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=87407252">Arrows</a> image via Shutterstock.

Jeremy Radack, a real estate attorney who works with Texas builders to obtain mortgages for buyers, recently got a glimpse of what a proposed FHA rule change would mean to his business.

"We saw about a 30 percent to 35 percent decrease in sales," said Radack.  more...

Withholding rent over dog nuisance

By Janet Portman, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=2034020" target=blank>Dog image</a> via Shutterstock.

Q: We rent the top half of a duplex in Chicago. The tenants below adopted a shelter dog eight months ago, who has severe separation anxiety and barks loudly and incessantly any time he's alone. We've spoken to the neighbors (who don't want to give the dog drugs or use a bark collar, thinking that these will "hurt" the dog), and then we took it to the landlord, over a month ago. The landlord talked to the neighbors twice, but nothing has changed. Are we within our rights to withhold rent until the dog is gone or the problem is resolved? --Fred and Alice

A: Withholding rent is an option for tenants when the landlord has failed to maintain the property according to law, if state law provides for this remedy. Not all states give tenants this option; only about two-thirds of the states do, and some of them limit the withholding remedy to specific types of repairs.  more...

5 benefits of shopping a certified lender network

By Jack Guttentag, Friday, April 20, 2012.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-707365p1.html" target=blank>Mortgage financing image</a> via Shutterstock.

Markets don't work well when one party to a transaction knows much more than the other party, a condition economists call "information asymmetry." The home mortgage market is the classic case.

Sources of information asymmetry

Information asymmetry arises from three major sources:  more...