Kenneth Fisher

Beach Town Brokers Team of Priudential Laney Real Estate is hosting a First Time Homebuyers Seminar on Tuesday, July 21 at 7:00pm. The event will take place at the Laney School of Real Estate at 803 S College Rd. beside K-Mart and UNCW. We will have guse speakers on the topics of mortgages and home inspections. We'll talk about the beneifts and risks of purchasing a home, the process of buying, how to find a good deal, the $8000 tax credit and more... Pizza will be provided by Incredible Gourmet Pizza of Wrightsville Beach. Call Kenneth @ 910-616-2123 for more info. Hope to see you there.

I've been keeping up with the green movement and sustainability for quite some time now. In college I worked on a project that involved passive solar design. As my real estate career has developed I've worked with numerous people who have been interested in green features, and I think there is a common misconception about the cost associated with GREEN.

I just went to a continuing education class with Bill Gallagher (quite entertaining for ce). The topic of the class was green building. Having already been pretty well exposed to the topic, most of the info was not new to me, but it did refresh my memory.

Although there are levels of green building that can be expensive, like solar panels, there are also many simple things that can be done in the construction process, and even as simple as changing light bulbs, that can make a home "greener".

*Some inexpensive forms of green building are: Using more rapidly replacable materials, like bamboo. Energy star appliances, Water collection systems for irrigation, using high r-value insulation (or even foam insulation) and low u-value windows, reusing materials from old homes, limiting impervious surfaces, incorporating proper ventalation, using tankless water heaters, applying low voc paint, etc.

*Passive Solar - If one has the luxury of being able to start fresh, one thing that can make a major impact is the direction the home faces, and the angles of the windows. Depending on the location in the world, a house can be positioned to get the benefit of the sun in the winter, and shade in the summer. Plants and trees are also inexpenive ways to help with this. I've even seen homes bermed against to provide insulative qualities. Besides solar panels, there are other ways to benefit from the sun. Certain materials, like brick, absorb the heat from the sun and when the sun stops shining, they slowly release that heat. A step further with the same principle is using a solar mass, which can be as simple as a black barrel filled with water. The barrel of water absorbs heat from sunlight during the day and releases it at night, or it could be used for hot water during the summer.

"Being green" is a full circle thing. It encompassed everything from being close to things so driving is limited, to reducing energy consuption at home, to using local materials, to eliminating health and environmetal hazards. All of these things decrease the footprint we leave on the earth and also help to reduce our cost of living. It doesn't have to be expensive . The term "Green" does get thrown around quite a bit for things that are not really "green", but it also gets a cold shoulder sometimes from people because they think its too expensive. ITS NOT NECESSARILY.

For more information on the subject, visit www.usgbc.org, the website of the US Green Building Council. Smart building and renovating will have to embrace this now and even more so in the future.

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you had as good a weekend as I did. The weather was perfect in Southeastern North Carolina, and we actually had some pretty good surf. I went out for a few hours yesterday and was very rejuvenated. The water temperature is approaching 60 degrees, and it feels pretty good once you get used to it. Anyway, thats not what I want to talk about.

Isn't it amazing how things have changed in just a few short years. Everyone is twittering, facebooking, Linkedining, and whatever other social media people use. I think this is pretty cool to an extent, but who agrees with me that it can be a bit overkill. I love the internet and all the capablities that it provides us, but I don't want to know what everyone thinks about everything they encounter during the day. I wonder if the world will ever get tired of being too connected. I use Active Rain and Facebook, plus a number of other more static web sites. Active Rain is a fantastic media for professionals to network, express opinions, and post information to potential customers and clients. Facebook is awesome to keep up with people and to mass communicate on a somewhat more personal level. To me, that seems like a pretty good amount of web activity, but I get invitations daily to confirm that I know someone on some new social networking site. I don't think I could keep up with much more, and still be productive in other areas for my business and personal life. How much is too much? What's the formula for effectively managing the overload of social media?

You can tell quite a bit about a city, or town, or region by the festivals held there. If there are lots of fun things to do, people are more likely to want to live in a particular area. In Wilmington, NC we have the "Wing Flig" this weekend. I'm a little bummed out because I won;t get to make it, but the Wing Fling is a yearly event held at High McRae Park where local restaurants enter a contest to see who has the best chicken wings. There are bands playing, and a few vendors, and people can buy tickets to judge the wings. You can bring a cooler, or whatever, and enjoy a day in the park eating chicken wings. We also have a "Chili Cookoff", which is similar. Azalea Festival and RiverFest are our two largest festivals, but we have a few smaller ones too, like the Greek Festival, Piney Woods, Beer Fest, and the Latin Festival. At Wrightsville Beach in the Winter we have the Holiday Flotilla. Of course, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day are pretty big celebration times for warm weather fans.

I want to know what festivals other areas have that make for interesting places to live and visit.

Beach Town Brokers Team is holding a First Time Home Buyers Seminar on Wednesday, March 11 at 6:30 pm. The location will be in room L107 at Cape Fear Community College. The event will last for about an hour and will be a great introductory to the home buying experience. In attendance will be John Friend of Watermark Mortgage, Stuart Vick of Amerispec Home Inspections, as well as Kenneth Fisher, Frankie Pierson, and Meredith White of the Beach Town Brokers Team.

The presentation will cover subjects such as the following: The benefits of homeownership, qualifications to becoming a homeowner, the process, how to analyze homes and make good decisions, home mortgage information, first time home buyers tax credit, home inspections, building wealth through real estate, and more. It will be a good time, we'll make sure of it. Coffee and donuts will be provided.

For more information please call Kenneth Fisher at 910-616-2123, or email Kenneth@TheRealWilmington.com.