Portsmouth, VA

The Class of 2009 in Portsmouth received recognition that school officials would probably prefer to not see; they had the 2nd highest dropout rate in the State of Virginia.

The City had a 20.1% drop out rate. That is almost 3 times the State average of 7.9%.

In more promising news, the Portsmouth City Public Schools are all now fully accredited by the State. Also, the on-time graduation rate has continued to increase.

All of the Hampton Roads area school districts have at least one high school that has dropout rates higher than the State average. Virginia Beach City still has the lowest in the area at 6%, followed by Chesapeake. Suffolk and Norfolk both have dropout rates higher than the state average.

Portsmouth School officials say that reducing the number of required electives will help curb the dropout rate. Really? Seems to me that with over a fifth of the system's students dropping out, more serious measures need to be put into place. High dropout rates correlate with higher crime rates and lower community incomes. Students who dropout will cost the City more in services over the long term.

The Homebuyer Tax Credit has extended and expanded for Portsmouth residents. It has been extended to include current homeowners. The following are features of the new bill:

•·Deadline for current credit is November 30, 2009.

•·Deadline for new and improved credit is April 30, 2010, as long as the home is under contract by that date; deal must close within 60 days.

•·Eligibility and amount of new credit:

•-$8,000 for first-time homebuyers (those who have not owned a home in the last three years).

•-Up to $6,500 credit for homeowners who have lived in the home they are selling, or have sold, as a

principal residence for five consecutive years in the past eight.

•·Buyers with income exceeding $125,000 for single and $225,000 for married couples are not eligible.

•·Homes valued at more than $800,000 are also ineligible.

The pool of eligible buyers will increase and the program will be in place through the first half of 2010. This is a very positive event for home buying and the Real Estate industry!

http://www.geneallen.com Come and see ALL the Homes for Sale in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, as well as the rest of Hampton Roads. This site is updated daily with new real estate listings, pictures and other information vital to your home search.

Run, the Droid is here. Verizon has finally announced a new phone based on the Google operating system called Android. This is the 2.0 version. I did a small blog here on it a few days ago.

There will be a lot of phones based on the Android operating system but I am focused on the Verizon phone as that is the carrier I have. I don't know if AT&T will sell one as it is direct competion to the iPhone. Does it best the iPhone? I don't know but to sell more of them it really doesn't have to be. It is available world wide and other networks besides Verizon.

Aside from all the other neat things it does such as touch screen, real multitasking, large touch screen, voice GPS, VOICE ACTIVATED SEARCH, micro SD card, 5 MEG camera with DVD quality video, Slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a host of other tricks. it has a GPS app from Google you don't have to pay for.

Did I mention it has a GPS that you can use. Verizon has always disabled the GPS in its phones so you had to purchase the service from them at $10 a month. That alone is worth the price of admission for this phone. I guess Google has "Juice" I didn't even know about.

You can read about the Droid here.

http://www.geneallen.com Come and see ALL the Homes for Sale in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, as well as the rest of Hampton Roads. This site is updated daily with new real estate listings, pictures and other information vital to your home search.

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Here is how to make your MLS pictures better in Portsmouth, Va. This is a lovely little vacant home in the Prentis Park area of Portsmouth, Va. The listing agent has done a good job of staging the home. I really wasn't taking this for the MLS picture but thought I could show what you can do with about 5 minutes worth of work in Photoshop Elements 7 and a little thinking a head.

I took the first picture to show what the room looks like without any adjustments. The walls and plant are pretty well exposed but as typical the windows are blown out. Not wanting to go back out to the house I took a second picture. This time I exposed for the window and turned on the flash. If you have a point and shoot camera, turn your flash to be on all the time or forced, then aim your camera right at the window and push the shutter halfway down, now compose your shot and take the picture. It should come out something like the second picture here. The windows come out great but the sofa a little dark. That is what photo shop is for.

I took the second picture into Photo Shop Elements and went to enhance. I enhanced the Shadows by 25% (this works on a lot of dark pictures). The next thing I did was clone out the light that was shining onto the carpet and the wall. It took about five minutes. Of course there were probably a few more things I could have done like compose better but this was really a picture just for me. The results are in the third picture. At least it is pretty good for a MLS picture.

http://www.geneallen.com Come and see ALL the Homes for Sale in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, as well as the rest of Hampton Roads. This site is updated daily with new real estate listings, pictures and other information vital to your home search.

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SPSA and Portsmouth are in another fee dispute over three facilities it operates in Portsmouth. This dispute dates back to the original agreement from 1983. Portsmouth officials want $1.5 million in service fees that it says they are owed. Of course, SPSA says they don't owe the money and want the courts to decide that matter. Stay tuned as the courts decides the $1.5 million dispute.

geneallen.com Come and see ALL the Homes for Sale in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, as well as the rest of Hampton Roads. This site is updated daily with new real estate listings, pictures and other information vital to your home search.

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