Another year, another statement from the Pantone Color Institute, the leading authority on all things color design. The global color expert recently announced their Color of the Year for 2023: Viva Magenta. A beautiful hue of the red family, it is vibrant and soothing at the same time. Just like last year’s selection, Very Peri, it captures common feelings shared by modern homeowners while presenting a bounty of creative design solutions. Learn a bit more about this special color and how you can incorporate it into your home.
Viva Magenta is a bright, crimson red that balances warm and cool energy. Pantone describes the color dynamically, calling it “fierce” and “rich.” They say it differs from last year’s selection in that Viva Magenta answers our “collective need for strength.” So, what does this mean for you as a homeowner? Viva Magenta is a color of unity. It has the power to embrace and make your guests feel welcomed while maintaining a modern aesthetic. Colors in the red family are known to make a home feel comfortable, especially in the dining room. It has often been said that reds can stimulate appetite.
This year’s interior design trends are showing a preference for colorful decorating. Viva Magenta fits this mold perfectly. It is a bold and vivacious choice for interior paint. Need a splash of energy in the living room? Looking to give your dining room a makeover? Viva Magenta may be the perfect solution.
In terms of complementary colors, Pantone specifically calls out pale grays, blues, and pastels. This shade of magenta can be a stunning accent color for homeowners that prefer a more neutral backdrop while incorporating elements of contemporary home design. The typical accent pieces come to mind: pillows, blankets, and throw rugs. However, Viva Magenta is also perfectly suited for accent items in the kitchen—think glassware, candle holders, hand towels, etc. For those who are ready to dive into the deep end of the magenta pool, consider a velvet couch. Its boldness also goes well with interior design styles that are characterized by flair, such as Art Deco interior design.
Viva Magenta is sure to lead the eye throughout your home. Its magnetic energy may be the missing ingredient to your interior design plans for 2023. For more information on color design tips, read our blog post on Colorful Modern Design Trends for Your Home.
There’s always room for improvement in a household’s quest to go green. From how you use your appliances to the way you consume and dispose of food, every lifestyle choice you make at home presents an opportunity to be more eco-friendly. Adopting more sustainable practices has obvious environmental benefits and helps to improve quality of life, but it can also increase your home value and in some cases may generate extra cash.
7 Tips for Sustainable Living at Home
1. Create a Sustainable Kitchen
The kitchen is responsible for a decent portion of your home’s energy output. Choosing energy-efficient appliances can help to improve your household’s sustainability by using less energy. Reusable materials go a long way in the kitchen as well. Even seemingly small changes like switching from single use to reusable grocery bags and eliminating paper towels can make an impact. Using natural cleaning products will keep your kitchen cleaner longer while improving your home’s air quality, and being mindful about water usage can save on utility bills.
To further improve your home’s sustainability, consider planting an herb garden. This helps to cut down on repeatedly buying spices and seasonings at the grocery store while cultivating a natural ambience in your home. (And they’re fun to cook with, too!) Do indoor plants need sunlight? Of course, so be sure to position your indoor garden in an area where your plants have direct access. Once you’ve picked out a spot, decide which herbs you’d like to grow. Some of the most common herbs are easy to grow and will pair well with whatever’s on the menu—basil, thyme, cilantro, parsley, oregano, etc.
The first step in becoming more energy efficient at home is understanding your energy output. Once you understand your household’s habits, you can identify which cutbacks will help you chart a more sustainable path forward. Energy-efficient lightbulbs can help you save on utility bills. Because they use less energy that standard lightbulbs, they typically last longer as well. Make sure your home is properly insulated and your windows’ caulking and weatherstripping is in good condition. Air leaks and poor insulation waste energy and will cause spikes in your utility bills.
Every household produces some sort of waste, but it’s how that waste is treated that makes all the difference for the environment. Clean your recycling to make it easier to process and do your best to only buy what you plan to eat. Start a compost bin for extra food scraps or consider other agricultural solutions for disposing of it. Consider buying items like shampoo, conditioner, moisturizers, and the like in bulk to cut down on packaging waste. Reusable glass containers or jars will help you portion out meals and provide a useful way to store bulk items like rice and beans.
Yes, making the switch to solar energy comes with significant upfront costs. But an investment in solar is not just an investment in the health of the planet, it can increase your home value as well. The energy savings you’ll generate in the long-term will depend on your household’s level of consumption and the power generated by your solar panels. And if you’re generating more power than you’re consuming, you may be able to sell the surplus energy back to the grid. For more information on solar-based incentives and tax breaks by state, visit DSIRE (Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency®).
Even for the green thumbs, there’s opportunity to go greener at home. A garden is only as healthy as its soil. Mulching is vital to soil health and helps to reduce weed growth. Animal manure also has the power to enrich garden soil, both as a fertilizer and conditioner. Organic weed killers made with natural ingredients will maintain your garden’s health while keeping unwanted weeds at bay. Apply this same organic mindset to dealing with slugs as well. Certain types of slug bait may possess certain chemicals that do more harm than good, especially if you have farm animals on your property like chickens or goats.
Before you begin your next cycle in the laundry room, consider some methods of reducing energy. Because the heating of water is responsible for a majority of the energy generated by doing laundry, using cold water can help you save on energy costs. Cold water is also gentler on clothing. Clean the dryer vent and filter regularly to keep it unclogged and running efficiently. Consider hang-drying when possible, and in warmer months, air dry your clothes to save a dryer cycle.
For more information on sustainable living, helpful advice on home upgrades, plus tips on DIY home projects and more, visit the Living section of our blog.
Staying organized while selling your home can feel impossible, especially if you’re buying a new home at the same time. There’s also the pressure to keep your home clean and tidy for showings to prospective buyers. In all the chaos, taking the proper safety precautions can fall by the wayside, but it is something that should be prioritized. Keep these safety tips in mind as you work with your agent to sell your home.
We’ve assembled a comprehensive checklist of the common tasks required to get your home ready to sell. It is available as an interactive web page and downloadable PDF here:
Open houses are a major driver of buyer interest. Preparing for an open house is a matter of boosting curb appeal, cleaning, and staging to get your home in tip-top shape. It’s vital that you and your agent take certain safety precautions, given that you likely won’t be on sight when the open houses occur. Buyers often feel uneasy in the presence of the seller when touring a home. It also makes it more difficult for them to visualize the space as their own. Accordingly, it’s best to let your agent handle the open house. Here is a helpful list of how to prepare.
Staying Safe When Selling Your Home
Go through your medicine cabinets and remove all prescription medications.
Remove or lock up precious belongings and personal information. You will want to store your jewelry, family heirlooms, and personal/financial information in a secure location to keep them from getting misplaced or stolen.
It is best to remove all family photos during the staging process so potential buyers can see themselves living in the home; it’s also a good way to protect your privacy.
Check that your windows and doors are secure before and after showings. If an intruder is looking to get back into your home following a showing or an open house, they will look for weak locks or unlocked windows and doors.
Talk to your agent about the following safety precautions:
Perform a thorough walk-through with your agent to make sure you have identified everything that needs to be removed or secured (medications, belongings, photos, etc.)
Go over your agent’s screening process so you are both on the same page about how to qualify buyers before showings.
Lockboxes to secure your keys for showings should be up to date. Electronic lockboxes track who has accessed your home.
Go through your home’s entrances and exits and share important household information so your agent can advise you on how to secure your property while it’s on the market.
To connect with a local, experienced Windermere Real Estate agent, get started by clicking the button below:
In the process of buying or selling a home, you’ll frequently come across the term “MLS.” The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is a group of regional databases of homes for sale accessible only to real estate agents and brokers. Their ability to access the MLS makes it easier for buyers to find the right home and for sellers to market their listings.
What is the Multiple Listing Service (MLS)?
The purpose of an MLS is to facilitate real estate transactions by connecting real estate agents and making it easy for them to share information about active listings and sold home data. For buyers and sellers, your agent’s access to the MLS means you’ll be connected to the largest network of homes and listing information on the market.
Each MLS shows the homes for sale in a particular geographic area. Listing agents add their clients’ listings to the database—providing photos and detailed information about the property—so buyer’s agents can show them to their clients. The MLS allows for customizable searches, which agents use to easily identify the homes that match their clients’ criteria. The vast amount of historical data available on the MLS is what your agent will use to conduct their Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) to competitively price your home. The listing data in the MLS is fed to real estate brokerage websites, such as Windermere.com, so that buyers can search for homes on their own as well.
Image Source: Getty Images – Image Credit: fizkes
Benefits of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
Selling a home is a numbers game. The more potential buyers you can reach, the more likely you are to find the right buyer in a timely manner. After your agent conducts their CMA to determine the value of your home, they’ll upload the listing to the MLS. Here they can add additional information beyond what you would find in a typical listing description, such as showing times, contact information, and more. The MLS provides maximum visibility for sellers by connecting them to buyer’s agents who are actively searching for listings. The MLS has also helped to make the industry more equitable. Small real estate brokerages have access to the same MLS info as large companies, putting everyone on a level playing field.
What is an MLS number?
An MLS number is a unique code for each home listed on the market. It makes it easier for agents to communicate regarding a specific property. To learn more about the MLS, or for answers to your buying and selling questions, connect with a local, experienced Windermere agent today:
Owning a home with friends, family, or a loved one can be financially and socially rewarding. But co-owners have a lot to manage: things like decision-making, agreements, finances, and day-to-admin. Compared to married couples, co-owners also face unique risks. While married couple homeowners benefit from financial protections under existing regulatory, legal, and tax regimes, friends and family members who co-own a home do not. The result? Co-ownership is relatively more complex, inefficient, and risky.
Enter Shared Homeowner OS™, a new app from CoBuy. Created in 2017 by a mother-and-son founding team, CoBuy is on a mission to make co-ownership simpler, safer, and more affordable. Thousands of co-buyers from across the U.S. have used CoBuy’s platform to plan, structure, and purchase a home together. This month, CoBuy launches the new Shared Homeowner OS™, an all-in-one app to plan, manage, and collaborate on co-ownership with friends or family. A limited number of spots are available for their private beta, which includes early access, personalized support, and the chance to guide new features. Interested? Learn more and apply to the private beta at www.cobuy.io with my referral code: DonK2023. With this code, you’ll jump to the head of the line and get a 50% discount on a 1-year subscription.
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This video shows Windermere Chief Economist Matthew Gardner’s Top 10 Predictions for 2023. Each month, he analyzes the most up-to-date U.S. housing data to keep you well-informed about what’s going on in the real estate market.
Matthew Gardner’s Top 10 Predictions for 2023
1. There Is No Housing Bubble
Mortgage rates rose steeply in 2022 which, when coupled with the massive run-up in home prices, has some suggesting that we are recreating the housing bubble of 2007. But that could not be further from the truth.
Over the past couple of years, home prices got ahead of themselves due to a perfect storm of massive pandemic-induced demand and historically low mortgage rates. While I expect year-over-year price declines in 2023, I don’t believe there will be a systemic drop in home values. Furthermore, as financing costs start to pull back in 2023, I expect that will allow prices to resume their long-term average pace of growth.
2. Mortgage Rates Will Drop
Mortgage rates started to skyrocket at the start of 2022 as the Federal Reserve announced their intent to address inflation. While the Fed doesn’t control mortgage rates, they can influence them, which we saw with the 30-year rate rising from 3.2% in early 2022 to over 7% by October.
Their efforts so far have yet to significantly reduce inflation, but they have increased the likelihood of a recession in 2023. Therefore, early in the year I expect the Fed to start pulling back from their aggressive policy stance, and this will allow rates to begin slowly stabilizing. Rates will remain above 6% until the fall of 2023 when they should dip into the high 5% range. While this is higher than we have become used to, it’s still more than 2% lower than the historic average.
3. Don’t Expect Inventory to Grow Significantly
Although inventory levels rose in 2022, they are still well below their long-term average. In 2023 I don’t expect a significant increase in the number of homes for sale, as many homeowners do not want to lose their low mortgage rate. In fact, I estimate that 25-30 million homeowners have mortgage rates around 3% or lower. Of course, homes will be listed for sale for the usual reasons of career changes, death, and divorce, but the 2023 market will not have the normal turnover in housing that we have seen in recent years.
4. No Buyer’s Market But a More Balanced One
With supply levels expected to remain well below normal, it’s unlikely that we will see a buyer’s market in 2023. A buyer’s market is usually defined as having more than six months of available inventory, and the last time we reached that level was in 2012 when we were recovering from the housing bubble. To get to six months of inventory, we would have to reach two million listings, which hasn’t happened since 2015. In addition, monthly sales would have to drop below 325,000, a number we haven’t seen in over a decade. While a buyer’s market in 2023 is unlikely, I do expect a return to a far more balanced one.
5. Sellers Will Have to Become More Realistic
We all know that home sellers have had the upper hand for several years, but those days are behind us. That said, while the market has slowed, there are still buyers out there. The difference now is that higher mortgage rates and lower affordability are limiting how much buyers can pay for a home. Because of this, I expect listing prices to pull back further in the coming year, which will make accurate pricing more important than ever when selling a home.
6. Workers Return to Work (Sort of)
The pandemic’s impact on where many people could work was profound, as it allowed buyers to look further away from their workplaces and into more affordable markets. Many businesses are still determining their long-term work-from-home policies, but in the coming year I expect there will be more clarity for workers. This could be the catalyst for those who have been waiting to buy until they know how often they’re expected to work at the office.
7. New Construction Activity Is Unlikely to Increase
Permits for new home construction are down by over 17% year over year, as are new home starts. I predict that builders will pull back further in 2023, with new starts coming in at a level we haven’t seen since before the pandemic.
Builders will start seeing some easing in the supply chain issues that hit them hard over the past two years, but development costs will still be high. Trying to balance homebuilding costs with what a consumer can pay (given higher mortgage rates) will likely lead builders to slow activity. This will actually support the resale market, as fewer new homes will increase the demand for existing homes.
8. Not All Markets Are Created Equal
Markets where home price growth rose the fastest in recent years are expected to experience a disproportionate swing to the downside. For example, markets in areas that had an influx of remote workers, who flocked to cheaper housing during the pandemic, will likely see prices fall by a greater percentage than other parts of the country. That said, even those markets will start to see prices stabilize by the end of 2023 and resume a more reasonable pace of price growth.
9. Affordability Will Continue to Be a Major Issue
In most markets, home prices will not increase in 2023, but any price drop will not be enough to make housing more affordable. And with mortgage rates remaining higher than they’ve been in over a decade, affordability will continue to be a problem in the coming year, which is a concerning outlook for first-time buyers.
Over the past two years, many renters have had aspirations of buying but the timing wasn’t quite right for them. With both prices and mortgage rates spiraling upward in 2022, it’s likely that many renters are now in a situation where the dream of homeownership has gone. That’s not to say they will never be able to buy a home, just that they may have to wait a lot longer than they had hoped.
10. Government Needs to Take Housing More Seriously
Over the past two years, the market has risen to such an extent that it has priced out millions of potential home buyers. With a wave of demand coming from Millennials and Gen Z, the pace of housing production must increase significantly, but many markets simply don’t have enough land to build on. This is why I expect more cities, counties, and states to start adjusting their land use policies to free up more land for housing.
But it’s not just land supply that can help. Elected officials can assist housing developers by utilizing Tax Increment Financing tools, whereby the government reimburses a private developer as incremental taxes are generated from housing development. There are many tools like this at the government’s disposal to help boost housing supply, and I sincerely hope that they start to take this critical issue more seriously.
About Matthew Gardner
As Chief Economist for Windermere Real Estate, Matthew Gardner is responsible for analyzing and interpreting economic data and its impact on the real estate market on both a local and national level. Matthew has over 30 years of professional experience both in the U.S. and U.K.
In addition to his day-to-day responsibilities, Matthew sits on the Washington State Governors Council of Economic Advisors; chairs the Board of Trustees at the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington; and is an Advisory Board Member at the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington where he also lectures in real estate economics.
Many have made the switch from gas-powered to electric vehicles (EVs). They help to make a household more sustainable by reducing its carbon footprint, cut down on gas costs, and present a variety of technological solutions for modern home life. With more EVs being produced by a greater number of auto manufacturers than ever before, their driving range is constantly improving; most models can travel hundreds of miles with a full charge. As a homeowner, there’s a specific to-do list you’ll want to complete before welcoming an EV into your home.
Preparing Your Garage for an Electric Vehicle
By giving your garage a simple makeover, you’ll be set up for success as an electric vehicle owner. An EV is nothing without a charged battery, so your home charging station should take precedence when reorganizing the space. As EVs continue to grow in popularity, more remote charging stations are popping up across the country. However, it is advised not to rely solely on remote charging. Having a charging station at home is simply more convenient and will ensure that your vehicle is never far from the power it needs.
Image Source: Getty Images – Image Credit: 24-K Production
Setting Up a Charging Station
To charge your vehicle, you’ll need the proper electrical setup. You’ll have two options: either a 120- or 240-volt amp outlet.
Though 240-volt outlets are more expensive and require a more involved installation process that includes applying for and obtaining a permit, they charge faster than 120-volt outlets. 240-volt outlets also put added strain on a property’s electrical supply, so you may need to hook up a new service line to accommodate for the added voltage.
It is common for garages to already have a 120-volt outlet installed, so no additional installation work may be needed if you decide to go that route. Electrical installation is usually outside the realm of DIY home projects, so be sure to talk to a local licensed electrician for advice.
Follow manufacturer instructions for installing your EV charger. In general, it’s preferable to have the charger three to four feet off the ground and no more than four feet from the outlet.
Cold temperatures can adversely affect charging times, so it’s important to properly insulate your garage. Insulate as necessary before purchasing your EV so everything is squared away by the time your vehicle arrives.
Keep the charging station easily accessible by clearing out any other items or clutter in the area.
Security Measures
An EV charger is a valuable item, which is all the more reason to make sure your garage is protected. If your home is already well equipped from a safety and security standpoint, you’ll want to extend coverage to your garage to protect your new investment. Home security cameras and alarm systems will help to ensure that, at the very least, you’ll be notified of a break-in.
For more information on sustainable living, tips on organizing your home, cleaning hacks, and more, visit the Living section of our blog:
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