Five ways to reduce your heating bill
Winter is coming and your energy bill is starting to creep up. Here are a few tips to keep your costs manageable during colder months:Dust your vents
This can be an easy, effective way for lowering your heating bills. Dust acts as a natural insulator and can block some of the hot air from heating your home.
Turn on your ceiling fans
Most ceiling fans are equipped with a ‘summer’ and ‘winter’ setting. In the wintertime, set the blades to move in a clockwise direction so hot air, which naturally rises toward the ceiling, can be blown downward to warm up the room.
Use zone heating
If you live in a large home, keep the lesser-used areas just warm enough to prevent pipes from freezing. Close some of the vents in these rooms and shut the door to keep that heat in. On the flip side, open the doors of the rooms that see heavy use so hot air can flow evenly throughout the house.
Rearrange your furniture
Check if you have any furniture situated near your heating vents. You don’t want to be paying all that money just for hot air to be flowing into the underside of your living room sofa.
Let the sunshine in
The low-in-the-sky winter sun can give you hours of free solar heat each day—if you let it in. Be sure to open the curtains in the early morning hours and to close them at night to keep that warm air inside. You may also want to swap your curtains for thicker, insulated ones in the winter for further protection against the cold night air.
How CIR REALTY’s ‘Coming Soon’ program can help you sell your home faster!
You have decided it is the right time to list your home for sale—congratulations! Now it’s time to discuss your marketing plan, which may include a ‘Coming Soon’ period. A ‘Coming Soon’ listing is a real estate listing that has not yet been added to the MLS system, but is set to come onto the system often within just a few weeks. This means that the general public, and other REALTORS®, are unable to see any information about the property without contacting your Realtor for more information first.
With a ‘Coming Soon’ sign on your lawn, you may be able to generate enough buzz that by the time your property hits the open market, you already have enough interest that competition is running high and multiple showings may be booked.
If a potential buyer is truly interested in your property, they may want to make you an offer before you list openly to avoid competition. This may save you time in the future from having to have your home ready for open houses and nightly showings. It also forces the potential buyer to make a competitive offer that is lucrative enough to entice the seller to not list on the open market.
In addition to extra exposure and buzz, the ‘Coming Soon’ period provides the opportunity to have conversations with interested parties and other Realtors. This gives you the chance to get valuable feedback early on so that you can make potential changes to the listing (price, staging, etc.) before it goes on the MLS. This feedback is important because it means when it does come time to show your home to the world, it’s being marketed in the best light possible.
