Written by:  Jackie Waters

Active military personnel move often, and buying new homes in areas of reassignment tends to be part of the job. Once you’ve fulfilled your military service obligation, purchasing a home to settle in may be one of your top goals. Here’s a guide to help you through the process.

McEnearney Associates can help you find that perfect home. Call our office today at 877-624-9322!

Reduce Debt and Improve Your Credit Score

Focus on high-interest debts first; these include credit card debt and payday loans. Any loan with an interest rate greater than 8% may stand in the way of a good mortgage loan. Don’t use credit, steadily reduce your debt load, and keep an eye on your credit score.

Look for Programs That Help You

There are a number of programs designed to help veterans find the home they’re looking for. So, when you begin the house-hunting process, look into programs like U.S. Military on the Move, which joins forces real estate companies (including McEnearney Associates) to give credits or rebates to veterans looking to buy a home. You can learn more about this program by clicking here.

Save Aggressively

As you work on eliminating debt, put the same energy into saving. Try one of these aggressive savings strategies:

• CD laddering allows you to take advantage of the higher annual percentage yields of long-term CDs without committing money for several years at a time.
• Gradually increase the percentage of your income that you put toward savings. Even a 1% increase can help you raise your savings. Be intentional about reducing expenses, especially any “wasteful” or spontaneous spending.
• Reframe your thinking about consumerism and spending money. You may be handing over valuable funds without thinking much about it.

Get Pre-Approved

Secure loan pre-approval. This means your finances and other qualifications have been reviewed. The process also helps you understand how much a home you can afford and what interest rate you should expect.

Choose Your Loan Type

A VA loan has several benefits, including the lack of requirement for a down payment or a monthly mortgage insurance amount. Additionally, the credit requirements for the VA loan are more flexible than those for other loans. There are other options as well, such as Federal Housing Administration loans, down payment assistance programs, and the Specially Adapted Housing grant.

Veterans can also look into VA 30-year fixed mortgage loans, which require no down payment and low interest rates. Though the rates are subject to change, today’s rate (which is based on the purchase of a single-family primary residence in IL) is 3.106% with no discount points, a middle credit score of 680 and the assumption that the loan will have an escrow account, according to Rate.com.

No matter which type of loan you opt for, it’s important to carefully consider certain vital details. Learn mortgage language to negotiate a good contract:

• Mortgage interest rates are determined by many factors, including county and state, the size of the down payment, the duration of the loan, and its type.
• The annual percentage rate on your loan is how much you will pay for the loan. The APR is the cost of borrowing money.
• The term of the mortgage is how long you’ll take to repay the loan. Remember that the longer you take to pay off the debt, the more you will pay in interest.
• Projected payments are the estimated amount you’ll pay each month with your mortgage payment and mortgage insurance combined.

Find Your Home

The natural fifth step is finding your dream home, within your realistic home budget. Create a list of the things your new home must have, such as proximity to great schools, a positive location, size of the home, or amenities such as central air conditioning. Make a list of other things you don’t mind compromising on, such as multiple garages. A real estate agent can offer valuable resources and information, such as the best time of year to buy a home and how to negotiate costs.

Close and Move In

With the help of the realtor, your final step is closing on the home. This includes settling on a good offer, completing paperwork, and paying relevant fees. After your hard work, this moment should be very satisfying.

Approach the purchase of a new home with the same patience and attention you devoted to other missions during your military career. Stay on course, stick to your priorities, and keep your eye on the end goal.

Author

Jackie Waters is a mother of four boys, and lives on a farm in Oregon. She is passionate about providing a healthy and happy home for her family, and aims to provide advice for others on how to do the same with her site Hyper-Tidy.com.

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This week Pat Moran, CEO of Tactical Land Care, continues the conversation on how to best waterproof your home and properly protect your investment. If you didn’t catch last week’s article ‘How To Protect Your Home from Stormwater (Part I)‘ we encourage you to check it out as the information below is a continuation.

What if the water is coming into your basement from below? It’s important to differentiate between water that is coming from drain lines and plumbing, or if the moisture is from groundwater seeping up from the earth below. For cases in which water is entering your home from backed-up drain lines, backflow preventers are in order. Many cities, including Alexandria, offer incentives or partial reimbursement for these installations.

If it’s a matter of groundwater seepage, you will need a sump pump. Sump pumps are generally installed in areas below the finished grade of your basement floor. They are often located in a > 2-foot corrugated pipe or dry well casing. The sump pump is plugged into an electrical outlet and is generally installed with a flotation switch. This flotation switch is designed to turn the sump pump on if there is enough water in the basin to cause the switch to floating. The sump pump is generally installed with PVC piping and a backflow preventer that will carry the pumped water from the basin up the PVC pipe through a hole in the foundation to the outdoors. I would be remiss if I didn’t offer a few additional pro-tips: if you have a sump pump running through a hole in your foundation, ensure that the hole is sealed on the outside with mortar, and sealed on the inside with pest-resistant insulating foam to avoid potential heat loss or pests getting inside. If you have a generator or backup power supply, ensure that the circuit your sump pump draws power from is connected to receive backup power. This can help avoid an unfortunate situation in which a power outage results in flooding.

But now that the water is outside, what now?! Here is where attention to detail is important. The ideal water management system installation will have the water pumped into a gravel bed or dry well area that can help displace water without eroding soil. Depending on how often your sump pump operates, the location where the water is emitted can also be a great place for water-loving trees, shrubs, and flowers. You’ll want to make sure that you avoid situations in which sump pumps emit near concrete sidewalks. During the winter months, these areas can become icy. It’s also best to avoid directing this to the curb where groundwater drains into stormwater infrastructure. I think of these as examples of missed opportunities to utilize freshwater to irrigate some of your beautiful water-loving plants!

And if groundwater from outside the walls or below the basement floor was not enough, we must also account for rainwater from above. Stormwater requires its own suite of solutions that complement the groundwater solutions. For stormwater, it’s a matter of responsible collection and reducing potential off-site runoff. Given the older infrastructure that we face in Alexandria and throughout other historic neighborhoods of our region along with the increased amount of roads, rooftops, and other impervious surfaces, it’s best to avoid any rainwater from running off your property. Existing stormwater infrastructure is simply ill-equipped to handle it. Mitigating runoff can be achieved by taking multiple steps including having high-capacity rain barrels to hold water until needed for irrigation, permeable hardscape areas, and uncompacted planting beds and lawns, and rain gardens. Once these systems are installed, runoff from any impervious surfaces you have must be directed into your stormwater best management practices (BMPs) via swales, grading, or downspout, and gutter lines. And when using gutter lines, particularly those that are underground, ensure you have cleanout valves and utilize PVC rather than corrugated pipe so that they can be maintained and cleaned out. These BMPs; rain gardens, permeable hardscapes, bio-retention ponds, swales, dry-wells, exfiltration pipes, etc. have the opportunity to avoid or mitigate potential runoff, which can ultimately lead to flooding.

To recap, often the relationship with water is more about management than outright permanent mitigation. Specific strategies can be implemented in just a few steps with a licensed and properly trained contractor:

• For below-grade water, sump pumps are important. They are devices, generally tied to floating triggers, which pump water up and out.
• The only waterproofing that will matter is exterior waterproofing. Concrete and especially CMU’s (concrete masonry units), such as cinder blocks are permeable. They absorb water and without proper sealing and waterproofing, they can leak water or emit water vapor. This can make for musty basements. Exterior drain tiles collect water against the house and direct it into a French drain installed at the footer of the house.
• By implementing diversion strategies, you as a property owner can responsibly manage your stormwater by keeping it on-site through rain barrels, converting any patios or driveways to permeable surfaces, and maintaining planter beds as part of rain gardens.

At my company, Tactical Land Care (TLC), we utilize CBLP (Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional) best management practices (BMPs) in conjunction with Interlocking Concrete Paver Institute (ICPI) and Permeable Interlocking Concrete Paver (PICP) principles and design criteria. We find that these protocols are critical in quality assurance for our clients. But that isn’t to say that there aren’t other ways of identifying solutions. I would just recommend that when hiring a contractor, do your due diligence and confirm what materials are selected, what their lifespan is, and whether there are any manufacturer warranties. Also, ask for a written guide for maintenance procedures or schedule follow-up maintenance. Professional stormwater management professionals will adhere to manufacturer specifications and industry standards and should be happy to discuss their installations. Ultimately, we hope that you will embrace more ecologically responsible solutions in approaching the various ways of contending with water in all its forms.

Tactical Land Care

Tactical Land Care is net-zero to help protect our world and environment for all of us. We specialize in sustainable construction, conservation landscaping, and stormwater management solutions, including permeable hardscape and rain gardens. By working together, we can maximize the ecological benefit of your property.

Please give us a call at 703-879-7091, or email us at info@tacticallandcare.com, where someone from our TLC team will develop a plan with you to help enhance your yard or property for many years to come.

Patrick Moran, PMP, LSC, HIC, LEED | CEO Tactical Land Care

Patrick utilizes his passion for the outdoors along with his professional skills as a licensed Landscape and Home Improvement contractor in Virginia and Maryland, as well as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and LEED Green Associate. Patrick has a BA from Yale University, where he studied climate change and its impact on society.

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This is the first installation of a two-part series where Patrick Moran, CEO of Tactical Land Care, has a conversation on how to best waterproof your home and properly protect your investment. After reading be sure to check out the second installation ‘How To Protect Your Home from Stormwater (Part II)‘!

Stormwater Management is a pervasive issue in Alexandria and across the DC Metropolitan Region. It should not be a surprise though. The DMV is after all located within the watershed of our nation’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. Beneath our feet, under our sidewalks, through our lawns, and against our basement walls, water flows. Along the Potomac River, water makes it to the Chesapeake Bay and ultimately, the Atlantic ocean.

Living in this watershed is a source of pride for many ecological stewards, such as myself, but it also results in a host of issues for property owners if proper steps to protect your home or property against water damage are not taken. Through the course of this article, I will share information about several options that exist for most properties in Alexandria and across the DMV. It is important to keep in mind, however, that solutions related to water are never permanent, and it is important to consider that routine maintenance is essential to your water solution’s effectiveness.

The first type of water you’ll often encounter if you have a basement is groundwater. Depending on where your home is, your basement is likely below the water table. This is important to keep in mind because it means that groundwater is likely to pool or migrate to your basement walls via ‘capillary action’. Most basement walls are built from concrete masonry units (CMUs) or cinder blocks. Cinder blocks are used because they are inexpensive and strong, but they are also very porous, meaning that they can absorb groundwater, ultimately leading to a damp basement or crawlspace. Newer construction projects address this concern by applying a waterproofing membrane on top of the cinder blocks, but older ones rarely included these materials. Therefore, it is important to note, whether you have a basement or are considering digging out a crawl space to make one, exterior waterproofing is a must.

As property values continue to increase, the economics of digging down to extend usable square footage through converting crawlspaces to basements makes sense. But we shouldn’t assume that it is as simple as moving the dirt out. Properly waterproofing outside is critical, and though many products that are applied inside claim to solve the problem, they are only temporary bandaids if you have an active leak, or underground water abutting a basement wall. In a region such as ours, where the water table is often above the basement floor, this means having extremely effective outdoor waterproofing membranes, and applicable exterior drainage solutions.

Some contractors and material vendors may recommend that applying a paint sealant, such as DryLok, on the inside of a basement wall will be sufficient to address moisture concerns, but this is ineffective, and should only be considered as a supplementary installation to exterior waterproofing. It is best to address groundwater at its source. To avoid water entering your basement living spaces, the only reliable solution is waterproofing the foundation from the outside. This should include installing an adhesive waterproofing membrane. Whether it be rolled, painted, or sprayed on, an impermeable membrane must be applied to your porous exterior walls. On our waterproofing projects associated with permeable hardscape installation, we generally install a 40 mil PVC liner against the underground portion of the wall to prevent direct contact between block or brick. In situations where there is a permeable hardscape abutting an exterior wall, we utilize this liner to serve as a subterranean eave extending several feet away from the house to ensure that percolating water dissipates away from the wall. In other types of installations, this can be coupled with waterproofing tar membrane and/or drainage tile. Otherwise, water will find its way into your home.

But even these solutions are considered by some to be only the last line of defense after a redirection or collection system is installed. A prime example of such a system is drain tile or dimple boards adhered to the exterior wall to allow water to flow downwards into a perimeter French drain. When drainage tile is installed, the intent is not just to defend against water incursion into basements and crawl spaces, it is intended to redirect down the wall and into a French drain to direct the water away. When correctly installed, a French drain utilizes a perforated PVC pipe, rather than a black corrugated pipe, that will generally be installed in at least a 12-inch depth gravel at the base of the foundation near the footer. These drainage systems will collect and redirect water. But this doesn’t work for all properties, since the water will need gravity to flow elsewhere towards a lower grade area. Where this is not possible, some contractors will suggest that water be piped into the interior footprint below-grade and into a sump pump basin, (more on this later). Generally, these are costly retrofit installations, since it requires a substantial amount of excavation to dig down below the basement floor. Given the dynamics of the installation, they are generally only plausible for single-family homes, and not possible for townhomes unless systems are installed for the entire block face or contiguous section of homes.

Tactical Land Care

Tactical Land Care is net-zero to help protect our world and environment for all of us. We specialize in sustainable construction, conservation landscaping, and stormwater management solutions, including permeable hardscape and rain gardens. By working together, we can maximize the ecological benefit of your property.

Please give us a call at 703-879-7091, or email us at info@tacticallandcare.com, where someone from our TLC team will develop a plan with you to help enhance your yard or property for many years to come.

Patrick Moran, PMP, LSC, HIC, LEED | CEO Tactical Land Care

Patrick utilizes his passion for the outdoors along with his professional skills as a licensed Landscape and Home Improvement contractor in Virginia and Maryland, as well as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and LEED Green Associate. Patrick has a BA from Yale University, where he studied climate change and its impact on society.

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Buying a home is an exciting process that isn’t without its fair share of hiccups and mishaps. When you’re interested in buying a home from current owners, it’s important to deal with the maintenance problems and necessary repairs before making them an offer. Here are some tips from McEnearney Associates for handling these issues when buying a home.

Identify All of the Necessary Repairs

No home with prior owners is going to be in pristine condition. There will always be minor details that can be improved, and some of these may be due to personal preference. What you’re most interested in identifying are all of the major problems in the home that require repair. Even if the seller has had a professional inspection to clear the house of any ailment, it’s always a good idea to hire your own for peace of mind. It never hurts to be thorough; after all, you don’t want to end up paying for a home with hidden issues.

Determine Who Is Responsible for the Maintenance

When you’re in the process of buying a home and issues are detected, it can be tricky to determine who should cover the costs of repairs and maintenance. On one hand, the home is still technically the seller’s property. As the buyer, however, you’ve already expressed an interest in the house. While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to divvying up the cost of these repairs, it’s a good idea to have an honest discussion with the seller. If there are no other interested buyers, you’ll have more leverage with which to negotiate. Just make sure you don’t lose a dream house because another buyer was willing to foot the repair bill.

Decide Between Prior Repairs or Closing Credits

After you’ve determined how much maintenance the seller is responsible for, it’s time to determine how those repairs will be covered. There are generally two choices that home buyers have in this situation. Option number one sees the seller paying out of pocket for all of the repairs before the house is sold. The initial listing price remains the same. If you prefer, you can have the cost of these repairs deducted from the price of the home. This option can save you money on the home but also leaves you responsible for making any necessary repairs.

Negotiate the Cost of the Repairs

Many homeowners decide to accept a home that requires some maintenance on the condition that the seller reduces the listing price by the overall cost of the repairs. If you opt to ask for a price reduction, it helps to know what other homes in the area are selling for (Alexandria homes, for example, have sold for a median price of $510,000) so you have a better idea of what to offer.

Before you accept this deal, it’s important to determine the total cost of necessary repairs. If not, you could end up paying more for repairs than you received in deduction on the home’s price. It’s crucial to have professionals inspect the damaged areas to offer a free quote for repair. Adding up all of these costs will give you and the seller a good starting point for negotiation.

Understand the Terms of the Sale

Before you worry about anything else related to the purchase of a home, you have to understand the terms of each particular sale. Not every home is sold in the same condition or under the same agreements. When a home is listed “as-is”, you need to define what this term means in regard to the home in question. This phrase can mean different things to different sellers. One house could be sold “as-is” with no problems save some outdated furniture, though another home could be listed under the same term with mold, insect infestation, and other awful things. This is why it’s important to understand the terms of each sale before making an offer.

Buying a home is a lengthy and tedious process that can test the patience of many people. It’s important to take your time when negotiating the cost of repairs and determining who is responsible for the maintenance issues. Taking care of these problems could end up saving you thousands of dollars in the long run.

McEnearney Associates wants you to have a smooth buying experience. If you’re struggling or feeling overwhelmed by the process, contact us today for assistance at 877-624-9322.

Author

Jackie Waters is a mother of four boys, and lives on a farm in Oregon. She is passionate about providing a healthy and happy home for her family, and aims to provide advice for others on how to do the same with her site Hyper-Tidy.com.

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