However, these aren’t the only people who are walking away from their mortgage and choosing to rent. There are plenty of people who are still able to afford their mortgage payments, but don’t see the financial sense in staying in a place that is costing them hundreds or thousands of dollars more than a comparable rental.

However, this last decade has seen an unprecedented real estate cycle – a housing collapse that was widely unpredicted (widely in the sense that many, MANY people bought homes that they could not afford in hopes of cashing in on wildly exploding home prices) and a recovery that cannot be portended by a forecast based on the cycles of the past.

Check to see if planning permission has been granted to build an intensive pig farm down the road, or if a new highway has been scheduled to cut a swathe through the lovely view you were planning on enjoying from the deck of your new home.

During spring and summer plenty of bright, scented flowers should attract dazzling butterflies and hummingbirds. Evergreen shrubbery and small trees will create safe feeding and roosting areas for a host of wild birds all year round.

Wood pellets are a common fuel: made from compressed sawdust, bark, or wood shavings and usually collected from industries that use wood in their products. Wood burns more cleanly than other biomass fuels and produce more heat. Due to these properties, quality wood pellets create a very small amount of ash residue.

Are you the type of person who dreams of really getting back to nature, to have that little (or moderate sized) house in the woods with a babbling creek nearby? Then you may have also been imaging a log home. But what is involved in building this unique structure?

But homeowners who have tried to keep a garden looking beautiful in a neighborhood often visited by deer has a few other choice words for these animals. Most of the time, the reason they are in our yards is that housing developments have encroached on their natural habitat. How can we find a way to co-exist?

The process of foreclosure can take months to occur, so if a deal can be reached with the lender to eliminate this final point, it would be a win-win situation for everyone involved. Ideally, homeowners would enlist the help of a realtor who is familiar with the procedures involved in a short sale. There are many steps involved with a transaction like this, and having an experienced person guiding the way is most helpful.

One of the first things you can do is take an objective look at your house, both your yards - front and back, and assess how your house fits in with the neighborhood in general. Do some sections of your exterior need updating? Are there obvious areas in need of repair, such as fence slats or roof tiles?

One of the key advantages to having an outdoor fireplace is being able to extend the use of your patio into the cooler months. If you build your fireplace within a covered porch area, it can even be used on rainy days, or for the very hearty souls, when the snow flies.