So you’ve got the house you’ve always dreamed of with an above ground pool. Or maybe it isn’t exactly the move-in ready home, but you are willing to put in some elbow grease to fix it up. A pool however functional can be more of an annoyance than a pleasure if the yard around it isn’t maintained. With an ugly yard, you will find yourself drawing the blinds instead of running outdoors with some sunscreen and glass of ice tea. To conquer the blight of badness that detracts from summer fun in your own pool we have created an entire list of tips to clean up your yard and pool to make it the haven you always dreamed of.

Clean Up the Clutter

Don a pair of yard gloves, get out some lawn bags and start cleaning up the area around your above ground pool. Bundle together sticks and branches; rake up leaves and other loose debris and place in them in yard bags. Use a shovel to dig up dead or dying plants in your yard. Consider moving plants that shed a lot of leaves to another area of the yard away from the pool.

Come up with a landscape plan. Sketch out the approximate shape of your yard and draw the area of your pool. Figure out what areas you want to have landscaped, and where you want to keep the lawn intact. Generally, plants and landscaping around the pool will make it easier to maintain your lawn.

Clean Your Pool

A clean pool is an inviting pool, so before you get your bikini and flip flops on; gather your pool gear to clean out last season’s debris. Don’t forget to get out your:

• Skimmer
• Patching Tools
• Pool Chemicals

Take the time to skim off leaves and other large debris from the surface of the pool water. Patch any leaky areas and use your pool vacuum to suck up debris and dirt from the pool floor. Finally, refresh your pool’s chemicals by adding chlorine or bromine to keep the water clean all summer long.

Add Some Landscaping

Consult your landscape sketch and figure out what type of plants you want in your yard and around the pool. Ideally you will want to choose plants that enjoy full sun, have a limited amount of leaf and other debris shedding from it, and are showy enough to provide visual stimulation around the pool. Since your pool is above ground, bigger plants and trees are more favorable than smaller ones.

Ideal Plant Types for Pool Landscaping:

Trees

• Acacia
• Mexican blue palm 
  

  Coral Flowered Gum

• Mediterranean fan palm
• Eucalyptus
• Coral Flowered Gum
• Australian willow
• Desert Fern
• Date Palm
• Windmill palm
• Southern Live Oak

Flowers

• Desert Honeysuckle  
  

  Golden Columbine

• Evergreen Iris
• Golden Columbine
• Fleabane
• Black foot Daisy
• Paper Flower
• Rain lily
• Ganzania

Shrubs

• Pine Leaf Milkweed
• Wooly butterfly bush
• Bush dalea
  

  Wooly Butterfly Bush

• Pineapple guava
• Creosote bush
• Rosemary
• Lavender cotton
• Mountain marigold
• Arizona rosewood
• Lavender cotton

Other Types of Plants

• Agave   
  

  Easter Lily Cactus

• Aloe
• Foxtail/Asparagus Fern
• Easter lily cactus
• Yucca
• Prickly pear cactus
• Trailing indigo bush
• Verbena
• Jerusalem sage

Plants to Avoid

Some plants just don’t do well near a pool.  Here are a few you should avoid:

• Evergreen/Chinese Elm
• Ash
• Bougainvillea
• Carob tree
• Sweet acacia

Planting Your Garden

Once you have selected your plants it’s time to get to work. Purchase bags of nutrient-rich garden soil at your local home improvement store. Also a good ground cover such as pine needle hay, red or black mulch, or river rock help set off a nice contrast between your plants and the ground. Ground cover also keeps the soil in place, clearly delineating between your lawn and your landscaped areas. Figure out the square feet of your garden and purchase enough bags to create a 2-inch thick layer around the surface of your garden.

Dig holes in your garden that correspond to the root ball shape of your plants. Remember to keep in mind that plants will grow – set them far enough apart and away from the pool so they have space to get bigger and not choke other areas of your garden. Mound dirt up and around your plants, cover the garden with the mulch and water the whole area thoroughly. You may need to do a little extra watering at first as the roots begin to adjust to their new surroundings.

After all your hard work it’s time to kick back and relax. Now that you have a fully landscaped area around your above ground pool  you can enjoy your surroundings and take in the view.

 Is it better to buy or rent? For a single woman the thought of attempting to own a home may be daunting, but it might be the best decision for you.  The decision to rent or own depends on many factors.  Below I have listed several things you should consider when trying to decide whether renting or owning is right for you.

Whether you want to test the waters in an apartment before you buy , think you might have to relocate in a few years, or simply do not want to put down the large down payment to own, renting is always a readily available option.

Things To Consider About Renting:

• Less work. The maintenance is mostly in the hands of the landlord.
• Limited, or possibly no ability to personalize your living quarters due to leasing agreements
• Possibility of rent prices rising over the years
• Total amount spent over a year on rent vs. the mortgage price on a similar home

If you find yourself discovering potentially intimidating roadblocks to owning, remember that you are not alone and that other  women have overcome these obstacles.  Today, record numbers of single women are buying homes.  Owning a home is more affordable than 30 years ago.  The market is open for you, so take advantage. According to statistics from the Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than one in five home buyers is a single woman. If that’s not enough to make you want to join the single ladies home owner movement think about this fact: twice as many unmarried women are buying homes than single men.  Now might be the time for you to join the sisterhood!

Questions To Ask Yourself

1. How strong is your desire to own your own home?

2. Do you need more space?

3. Do you need or want to be closer to your job, school or family?

4.  How much of a down payment is required?

5.  How locked in are you if you change your mind?

6. What will it cost you to get out of the deal?

7. How long will it take to accumulate enough of a down payment that you are likely to qualify for a mortgage?

8. Remember: homes can fluctuate in value. This can be a positive or negative aspect of home owning.

Pros

• There are several tax advantages and deductions that you can use once you own a home.
• Mortgage balance decreases and equity builds, even if the value of the home does not increase.
• The ability to build your dream home. Without landlords, contracts, and leasing agreements, you have free
  range to build and decorate within your home.
• Stability: once you own a home your family has a place to call their own for the rest of their life.

  Cons

• Despite your hard-work in maintaining your home, property values can always drop.
• Once you own, it is much more difficult to move. Many people are feeling the effects of the country’s current economic issues, making it much harder to sell a home for the amount it is truly worth.
• Responsibilities of owning a home are greater than renting.
• Difficult to get a home loan with little/poor credit history. Renting is a much easier option for those with no credit history because it is more of a short-term commitment
• You must maintain the entire property on your own. This can become costly and time consuming.
• Unexpected expenses must be accounted for in your owning budget.

Author Bio: Magellan Development Group is Chicago’s premier real estate development company, developing environmentally-sensitive urban communities that combine innovative architectural design with high-quality construction. Visit Magellan today to find apartments for rent and condos for sale in Chicago.

By Alan Noblitt

With the real estate market unstable in many areas of the U.S. and inventories still high, how is a person to sell their property? Most buyers can’t get loans to take advantage of the rock-bottom interest rates, so the banks and other mortgage lenders are lesser players than they were a few years ago. While there is no perfect solution for all scenarios, owner financing is an option that everyone should understand and consider using when selling a property.

Basically, owner financing is having you, the seller of the property, carry the financing for the buyer of the property. You hold the real estate note (also called a mortgage note) and become the bank. Then, after the transaction closes, you can either hold on to the mortgage note or sell it to a mortgage buyer that you trust.

Using Owner Financing

Offering owner financing and carrying the real estate note is an option that you can use for most property types (residential, commercial, and land). It is not appropriate if an underlying loan nearly matches the note amount or if there is minimal equity in the property.

The perfect real estate note, whether you plan on selling it or keeping it, is one where the sales price approximately matches the property value, the payer put in a down payment of at least 10% (in this market of declining prices, 15-20% is even better), the payer’s credit is 680 or above, and the terms are satisfactory . For the latter item, this means a good interest rate, either no balloon payment or one that is at least three years out, proper documentation, lender’s title policy, etc. While there will still be a discount if you sell the note, that discount would be minimal.

Most notes are lacking at least some of the elements above, so your best option is often to only sell part of the note. For example, if the note has a 30-year term, you would just sell the next five years or ten years worth of payments. This is called a partial purchase, or simply a partial. With a partial, you get less money upfront than if you were to sell the whole note, but you can look forward to a future income stream and net a lot more money in total. Often note buyers will be open to buying the rest of the note (at your option) after receiving payments for just a year.

So, if you’ve just sold a property using owner financing, you have three options:

1/ Hold on to the mortgage note and collect the monthly payments. Of course, this means that you are responsible for managing the collections, being certain that property taxes are being paid, ensuring that fire insurance is current, etc.

2/ Sell all of the note to a mortgage note buyer.  Again, if the main elements of the property or note are not strong, the discount may be bigger than you would like.

3/ Sell part of the note, as described in the paragraph above.  This allows you to get some cash in hand while not taking such a discount hit.

Selling Your Note

If you are considering selling your note, make sure that you’re working with an experienced and reputable mortgage buyer. In addition to asking lots of questions and checking your gut instincts:

• Google him/her to learn about what they have done and whether there are any negatives listed about them.
• Check www.ripoffreport.com to see if they are mentioned there and what the complaint was about, and check their grade with the local Better Business Bureau.
• If the property is in California and you’re working with a broker, make sure the person has a current real estate broker’s license. If not, they’re operating illegally, so move on quickly.

In summary, although owner financing is a tool that you can use in any real estate market it is especially useful in times like these, when lenders have pulled back. Owner financing has been around for centuries and has been frequently used for real estate over the past 30 years.

 Alan Noblitt is the owner of Seascape Capital Inc., which buys and brokers real estate notes and business notes. He may be reached at 1-800-634-4697, or visit the website at www.seascapecapital.com .

By Steve Allat

Ever since the economic shift in the fall of 2010, the picture of the home landscape has been changing to suit the challenges that were presented. While it may seem that some ‘luxuries’ and up-scaling via aesthetic choices have been curtailed, they have been balanced nicely by a new practicality.

The idea now is not ‘What can I afford to do?’ as much as ‘What can I afford not to do?’ – the answers to which are:

1. Grow some of my own food/herbs – Edible Landscaping
2. Staging projects over time – planning and prioritizing
3. DIY – getting your hands dirty with guidance from an experienced Landscape Designer or Contractor.

It isn’t as though spending on landscaping has ever been frivolous, except perhaps at the very high end, but more and more folks are reigning things in and really thinking about what they need from their landscape. This is a very responsible approach and one that this contractor applauds. At it’s most basic, the residential landscape provides a balance of form and function, so I’ll list a few of the latest trends according to these two parameters.

1/ Making efficient use of space: As yards become smaller, efficiency in design becomes more important than ever.  Consider  less lawn and more garden space, whether that garden space is purely aesthetic or a vegetable/herb garden used to grow or supplement your food supply. Particularly, those with smaller spaces who didn’t think they had options are now looking at living walls, container gardening, and planting in layers and more densely than before.

2/ A Living Wall:

 A ‘Living Wall’ (or green wall), as installed on a residential site by MUBI Regenerative Systems (mubi.ca) and maintained by Enviroscapes (enviroscapes.ca).  The wall has a drip irrigation system throughout, and on it are grown native plants such as Salal and Ferns, edibles like Strawberries. Other edibles that could be grown on a sunnier wall include herbs such as Oregano, Lavender, trailing Rosemary. Other benefits include greening up an otherwise bare wall and cooling and oxygenating the surrounding area.

3/ New plant varieties are forthcoming all the time and tend to excite the eye and grab the spotlight.  A few new plants to be excited about include:

Perennial Plant of the Year – Arkansas Amsonia (Amsonia hubrichtii) Several Amsonia species are native to parts of North America and they grow with little maintenance and even fewer problems. Grow them for their surprising blue flowers, their airy foliage and their brilliant gold fall color. The Perennial Plant Association has named Arkansas Amsonia (Amsonia hubrichtii) 2011 Perennial Plant of the Year, so we should be seeing much more of it. I’m hoping that is so, because I haven’t been able to get a photo of Arkansas Amsonia. Featured here is my Eastern Bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana), another easy growing, lovely Amsonia.

The petals of Gaillardia ‘Arizona Apricot’ have Golden yellow edges circling apricot centers. It’s an unusual color combination for gaillardia flowers, making it a nice, subdued alternative to the flashier combos we’re used to. The plants tend to clump and stay somewhat short, reaching a mature height of only 12 inches. It still has a long bloom period, from early summer to frost. Deadheading will keep the blooms coming.  Gaillardia ‘Arizona Apricot’ is widely adaptable, blooming freely in USDA Zones 2–10. As with other Gaillardia varieties, ‘Arizona Apricot’ is very drought tolerant, once established.

Among the loveliest of Winter Daphnes, ‘Zuiko Nishiki’ demonstrates terrific vigor and a well-branched, upright habit in addition to its heavenly fragrance and heavy late-winter bloom. Ideal for the partly shaded border, foundation, and even as a specimen, it is an extraordinary presence during the bleak winter months, as well as a source of evergreen color year-round.

4/ Landscaping in stages: As the idea of a large landscape project can be daunting, not to mention laborious, I can see the practicality of phasing a landscape project over time is becoming more popular for many reasons: it makes budgeting easier, it allows you to live in the space as you develop it making changes easier, and it spreads out the work making it more manageable. This is true whether you do part or all of the project yourself.

Either way, the biggest favour you can do for yourself is to consult a qualified landscape professional to work with you on the design and/or procedure so that the work is done in the most optimal sequence.

5/ Edible Landscaping: Having an edible garden, using containers to garden in otherwise inaccessible spaces and re-purposing materials are all becoming more staple items in having a functioning landscape. Yet having these items doesn’t mean it has to be unkempt or unsightly – it just takes a good eye and a bit of upkeep. The previously described living wall is a novel solution, as are the ideas of container gardening and planting in layers to maximize the square footage of your space.

6/ DIY:  There are tasks that you can do yourself, but may not always want to – the site prep (excavation, removals) and hard-scape (construction elements like paving stone, retaining walls, decks and fences) in general or those tasks requiring special skills or tools.

Above all, 2012 promises to be another year in which the residential landscape project is a bit more modest and yet a bit more responsibly thought-out and installed, something that benefits us all.  As a small contractor, I certainly do not mind having smaller projects and more of them – it just means that we all work together to create more functional landscape spaces that you can enjoy.

Author Bio: Steve Allat is owner and operator of Enviroscapes, a small landscape design and installation company serving the lower mainland of Vancouver, B.C.  Their motto is ‘Treading lightly as we work together to install the landscape space  you desire’, which sums of the idea of doing work in an efficient and practical manner, without sacrificing quality or aesthetic value. Steve can be reached at 604-928-0913 or by visiting www.enviroscapes.ca.

Are you going to school and have limited funds to work with when it comes to furnishing your home?  There are ways that you can decorate your house for style and comfort without spending a great deal of money. Learn some tips on how you can furnish the rooms of your home on a limited budget.

• Decorate rooms used most often first

If there are certain rooms that you use more frequently than others, such as your living room, concentrate on those rooms to make them as comfortable as possible. Other areas of your home can wait until a future time when your funds are not as limited.

• Preserve what you already own

Do not discard items of furniture that are still perfectly usable. If you have furniture that bears scratches or is worn in places, these items can be refinished and given an entirely new look. A fresh coat of paint or varnish and new slipcovers can work wonders with furniture that looks tired and old, and can save you a huge amount of money.

• Buy secondhand items

Thrift and consignment stores offer articles of furniture that were discarded by other individuals but that may work very well for you. These items can be bought at inexpensive prices. Check out the stores in your area that offer bargains on used furniture. You may very well find the perfect pieces for your home.

• Go to yard sales and flea markets

You can often find some great bargains at a neighborhood yard sale or local flea market. Take a day out of your schedule, such as a Saturday or Sunday when you do not have classes, to see what you can find in your area. Also, check the local newspaper for ads that list locations for yard sales and flea markets.

• Invest in unfinished furniture

Furniture stores will provide unfinished items at lower prices, giving you the chance to get in on a good deal and then put your own personal touches on what you buy. Unpainted items can create beautiful room settings when they are painted or stained in the way that appeals most to you.

• Elicit the help of friends and family members

You may have friends or family who have items of furniture they no longer want or need that they can pass on to you. It might also be a good idea to arrange a furniture swap where you can provide an item of furniture to one of your chums in exchange for an item he or she has that you like.

• Add accessories

You would be surprised how you can add charm to a room just by using certain accessories. Beautiful pillows on the sofa, a colorful area rug that complements your décor, and attractive window dressings can all play a part in helping you to furnish your home inexpensively.

Do not feel that you need to spend large sums of money in order to attractively furnish your home. You have a number of options for decorating affordably that will provide a comfortable and welcoming environment for you and your guests, and a peaceful place to study.

Christina Lloyd writes for a website that advises on student grants for women. She used the tips in this post to make her house a home when she was a student and believes it’s possible to furnish a home attractively even on a tight budget.