A few weeks back, we talked all about (and I mean all about!) statements sellers should avoid making while they’re engaged in what I like to call ‘verbal staging:’drafting the listing description and marketing materials that create prospective buyers’ expectations about your home. 

Though the subject started a rollicking conversation, many of you posed the sensible follow-up question:

U.S. builders started work on more homes and apartments last month and requested more permits to build single-family homes. The increases suggest the battered housing market is healing.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders broke ground in April at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes. That’s a 2.6 percent increase from an upwardly revised March figure and near January’s three-year high of 720,000. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.

Building permits, a gauge of future construction, fell last month from a 3 ½ year high to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 715,000. But that was because of a 23 percent drop in the volatile apartment category. Permits for single-family homes rose almost 2 percent.

Even with the gains, the rate of construction and the level of permits requested remain roughly half the pace considered healthy. But the increase, along with rising builder confidence and stronger job growth, is a hopeful sign that the home market may finally be starting to recover nearly five years after the housing bubble burst.

“We continue to believe that the bottom has been put in for housing … and while improvement will not be vicious nor rapid, improvement it still will be,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at BTIG, an institutional brokerage.

Builders have grown more confident since last fall, in part because more people have expressed interest in buying a home. In May, builder optimism rose to the highest level in five years, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index.

Homebuilders reported improving sales and higher traffic from prospective buyers, the survey showed. A gauge measuring confidence in sales over the next six months also increased.

Recent job gains have likely made it easier for more Americans to purchase a home. Employers have added 1 million jobs in the past five months. And unemployment has dropped a full percentage point since August, from 9.1 percent to 8.1 percent in April.

Mortgage rates, meanwhile, have fallen to record lows, making home-buying more affordable. Still, many would-be buyers are having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can’t afford larger down payments required by banks.

Though new homes represent just 20 percent of the overall home market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

There are some hurdles to a smooth recovery: Builders are struggling to compete with deeply discounted foreclosures and short sales – when lenders allow homes to be sold for less than what’s owed on the mortgage.

Another reason sales have fallen is that previously occupied homes have become a better deal than new homes. The median price of a new home is about 30 percent higher than the median price for a re-sale. That’s nearly twice the markup typical in a healthy housing market.

Need a pleasing color palette for your home decor? Just look around you! From works of art to stylish scarves, gorgeous color combinations are everywhere. Choose a colorful piece by an artist or designer, and the work is done for you.

Our cute little swimming spot, Sandy Pond, has swimming lessons available for town residents starting at $55 per session. 

Interested? Click here for more information!

Pingry Hill Model Home for Sale with first floor master bedroom. Fabulous open floor plan Youll love it! Vaulted Ceiling & skylites in Huge kitchen/dining area open to bright 4 Season Room with lots of windows, FR with gas fireplace and hardwood floors.

Three bedrooms with full bath on second level. Finished Basement with two huge walk in closets.

Tons of upgrades: $466,135 to duplicate this house in Phase III. Come by to see for yourself.

One month ago, we introduced the Trulia Price Monitor and Trulia Rent Monitor as the earliest leading indicators of how asking prices and rents are trending nationally and locally. So what happened to prices and rents in April?

April’s Price Rise Makes a Three-Month Streak

Nationally, housing prices have bottomed and are on the rise. Asking prices onfor-sale homes were 1.9% higher in April than one quarter ago. A 0.5% month-over-month rise in April, on top of month-over-month price increases in March and February, makes for three months in a row of rising asking prices, after adjusting for typical seasonal trends. In fact, prices have been stable or rising for the past eight months, except for a dip in December 2011. This marks a new milestone: asking prices were 0.2% higher in April than a year ago. Before April, prices were still falling year-over-year.

Not only are rising prices starting to look like a real trend: they’re also coming to a market near you — if they haven’t already. Asking prices increased year-over-year in 44 out of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, with Miami andPhoenix leading the charge.

Why these markets? One factor is job growth, which boosts housing demand. Miami, Phoenix, Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills (suburban Detroit) and Denverall saw strong employment gains in the past year. Another factor is the big price declines after the bubble, which attracted house hunters and investors searching for bargains to those markets. Most of the metros with the largest price increases in the last year had huge price declines during the bust, including Phoenix, Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills and the four Florida metros in the top ten. But among the metros with the largest price declines over the past year, only three–Sacramento, Las Vegas and Fresno–had huge overall price drops after the bubble burst.

Note: Rankings based on the year-over-year changes in asking price among the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas.

Seattleites, take heart: in the most recent quarter, most of the metros with year-over-over price declines have turned around. Prices rose quarter over quarter in 92 of the 100 largest metros, including in Seattle, Las Vegas andAtlanta.

Rents Keep Marching Upward

Rental demand remains strong, with rents rising 5.6% nationally year over year. One reason for this continuous climb is job growth, as the metros with the largest rent increases tend to have fast job growth, like San Francisco andSan Jose. But another reason why rents keep going up is the decline in homeownership: foreclosures forced some owners to become renters, while tight credit and the weak job market put homeownership out of reach for many others. The result: rents have risen even while prices were falling, and now that prices are rising, rents are rising even faster.

Note: Rankings based on the year-over-year changes in asking rents among the largest U.S. metropolitan areas.

Let’s Get Local: What About Prices and Rents in My Neighborhood?

Even within a metro area, neighborhoods have their own price and rent trends. This month we looked at trends within five large metros: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC and the San Francisco Bay Area.

In the New York area, prices rose year over year in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island, while declining in the rest of the region. But rents rose everywhere – both in the City and suburban areas.

Note: In these tables, asterisks (*) denote areas where sample sizes are too small to report year-over-year changes in rents.

In Los Angeles, asking prices increased only in the downtown area. Prices fell elsewhere throughout the region, most of all in Long Beach. As in New York, though, rents rose throughout the region, except for Long Beach, with downtown LA experiencing both the biggest increases in prices and rents.

Should you buy an old or new home?

Highlights

• Older home will need new roof, windows and heating-and-cooling system.
• Most homes built from 1940s to 1980s are standard models.
• Newer home may have bigger closets and bathrooms, but a smaller lot.

Most homebuyers naturally focus on the price and location of the home they want to purchase. But the home’s condition, which is partially a function of its age, should also be an important consideration.

Age considerations tend to be the “least important” for most homebuyers, but for perhaps half of them, age should be “higher on the list,” says Jason Burkholder, broker at Weichert, Realtors — Engle & Hambright in Lancaster, Pa.

Old house may mean old components

A key question for buyers should be when the home’s major components were last replaced and upgraded. If those components are more than, say, a decade old, buyers should factor the cost of replacement into their decision to purchase that home.

“If it’s a 50-year-old house, but the roof, furnace, central air, wiring and plumbing are less than 10 years old, does it really matter that it’s a 50-year-old house? If it has been maintained and upgraded, the age is rather irrelevant,” Burkholder says.

A newer home might be neglected or full of cheap fixtures just as an older home might be in good condition and packed with upgrades. Yet more often, the newer home will be more contemporary and less in need of immediate repairs while the older home will be out of style and have at least some deferred maintenance.

The cost of repairs, maintenance, replacements and upgrades tends to make older homes less desirable, and thus more affordable than newer residences, even though the savings at the time of purchase is often offset over time. Repairs don’t create a return on the investment, and few improvements recapture 100 percent of the cost. Some improvements recapture only about half the outlay. (Remodeling magazine’s annual “Cost vs. Value” report offers a wealth of data about the cost of and return on home improvements.)

Read more: Should you buy an old or new home?

We are so excited to be building this new plan (the first one in our neighborhood of gorgeous homes!). Check out our Kerry-Lynn plan. 4 bedrooms, 2 full baths and over 2,000SF of living space. For guess how much? UNDER $400,000!!! And on an acre lot. And with granite, hardwood, tile, stainless steel appliances, gas fireplace and central air conditioning. Wow!