If you are getting ready to move out of your longtime home and into more sunshine, you can actually gift your home to a child or friend but that gift will come with a few strings attached. In many countries around the world, once the parents die, the children simply move into the home and take over the master bedroom. While that progression still occurs in the United States, estate taxes, rising home values, job transfers, and the desire for a separate space and different environment have changed the use of the traditional family home.

The actual gain is the difference between the adjusted sales price (selling price less selling expenses) and the adjusted basis. The adjusted basis is the original cost plus capital improvements. Capital improvements are the cost of improvements having a useful life of more than one year. Examples include the new roof, dock, deck, remodeled bathroom, and finished basement. Generally, an expense is a capital improvement if it adds value to the property or extends its useful life. If these criteria are not met and the expenditure is considered necessary to maintain current usefulness, it is a maintenance cost. (more…)

search for : estate taxes, rising home values, adjusted sales price, Capital improvements

Fixed-rate interest-only mortgages allow borrowers to lock in an interest rate for the life of the loan, while reducing their monthly outlays by paying interest and no principal, typically for the first 10 or 15 years. These loans, which barely existed two years ago, now account for roughly 8% of all new residential mortgages taken out, says UBS AG, a financial services firm. Borrowers took out roughly $39 billion of these mortgages last year, up from just $7.9 billion in 2004, according to UBS, which analyzed loans that are packaged into mortgage-backed securities.

But these mortgages have significant drawbacks. Borrowers who make interest-only payments on a regular basis don’t build up any equity in their homes, apart from any increase resulting from rising property values. And homeowners can be hit with sharply higher monthly payments once the interest-only period ends and the borrower is then obliged to repay the balance of the mortgage over the rest of the loan’s term. Payments in the loan’s later years include both interest and principal. (more…)

search for : Fixed-rate interest-only mortgage, interest rate, rising property values

Ten or 20 years ago, wildfires there would not have threatened many homes. But today, North Carolina has more acres of wooded property with homes than any other state in the nation. There are measurable costs to protecting those homes when fires threaten. For instance, the Forest Service’s CL-215 tanker plane costs $2,800 an hour to operate. It was flown 4.6 hours at the Wilkes County fires on Summit Ridge and Buck Mountain. The plane cost $4 million when the state bought it used in 1998.

Six years ago, the nation’s first national map that focused on the areas where undeveloped wilderness meets homes and other buildings showed that North Carolina had more than 12.77 million acres in the area foresters call the Wildland-Urban Interface. That was the most in the U.S., and the state has had the nation’s fastest-growing Wildland-Urban Interface since then, Birckhead said. The Forest Service and other agencies are using the North Carolina Firewise program to help teach people ways to keep their homes safe from wildfire. “It’s generally recommended as a minimum you have 30 feet of break in the fuels around your home,” said Roger Miller, a Forest Service public-information officer. (more…)

search for : wildfires, North Carolina, wooded property, Wilkes County, Summit Ridge, Buck Mountain, Forest Service

Only nine states, including North Carolina, now prohibit hunting on Sunday. The North Carolina law was passed in 1869 as part of the blue laws that have roots in religious observance. Today, the reasons for and against keeping the ban spread far from the pulpit. Bruce Bente, a spokesperson for the Asheville-based Carolina Mountain Club, one of the region’s largest clubs, attended one of the Responsive Management-led focus groups in March. “As a club, we are opposed to Sunday hunting on a position of safety,” Bente said. “When we hike during hunting season, we wear blaze orange. The one day we can relax is Sunday.” (more…)

search for : North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Sunday hunting, Hiking, Carolina Mountain Club

In 1992, many folks had never even heard of riding bicycles on a trail through the woods. That was the year Jim Parham published Off The Beaten Track, A Guide to Mountain Biking in Western North Carolina, a book that would change the way trail guidebooks were written, and strongly impact the recreation industry in the Southeast.

At the time, he was a 28-year-old whitewater river guide and kayak instructor for the Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City, NC who’d fallen in love with off-road cycling, and he noticed the outfitter store staff spending precious sales time drawing crude maps on scraps of paper for customers asking where to ride. In October of 1991 he decided to take action and publish the first mountain bike trail guide for the Southeast. The concept was simple: concise directions, basic, ultra-clear maps, and everything a rider needed to have the best experience possible. The book itself would be slender, but packed with information–no philosophical musings, no text padding, just a few terse comments from the author to help the reader find the right ride. (more…)

search for : Off The Beaten Track, A Guide to Mountain Biking in Western North Carolina, Nantahala Outdoor Center

President Bush’s contention that America’s economy is “petroleum-based” is not entirely accurate. Although oil makes up approximately 40 percent of total U.S. energy consumption, coal and natural gas each now supply about 25 percent of the total energy consumed by the United States. So, while oil is a major element in America’s energy supplies, it is by no means the only significant factor. Disruption in natural gas or coal supplies would pose major problems to the American economy.

Until recently, the United States was in pretty good shape when it came to natural gas. Prices were low and supplies sufficient. In 2000, for example, North America consumed nearly one-third of the world’s annual output of natural gas. Unlike oil, for which the United States, Canada, and Mexico together produced only 60 percent of the supplies they consumed, the three countries produced nearly 100 percent of the natural gas consumed. Bound together by free trade agreements, the continental market for natural gas more than doubled through the 1990s. (more…)

search for : America, petroleum, coal, natural gas, oil