While curb appeal, structural integrity and a brand new set of appliances can impact a home’s value, there is one factor that seems to reign supreme.

Homeownership is one of the most solid long-term investments one can make, but it’s important to recognize just how much the location of a home can impact the value.

Consider these startling facts from a recent report: the national average listing price of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home is $302,632, but all of the top 100 affordable markets in the country have an average listing price under $135,000. Meanwhile, all of the top 25 most expensive markets are $1 million or more. The price difference between the most expensive community in California and the most affordable in Ohio is $2.2 million.

So what accounts for this major value discrepancy in similar-sized homes? Here are several ways in which “where” matters most.

Local Industry
Job opportunities available in a given sector can have a huge impact on the market. For example, the continued tech sector growth in Silicon Valley is one of the factors making it one of those most expensive communities in the country.

Revitalization
Over time, revitalization efforts can make certain communities more attractive to buyers. When a city or region sees an economic and cultural renaissance this influences the market. Buyers value related factors like safety, a walkable main street, public transit options and green spaces.

Schools
You may not have children, but it’s still important to investigate the quality of local schools. This factor can have a major impact on every homeowner.

Region
Regional factors can have a huge effect on a given locality’s pricing. These can include year-round weather patterns, proximity to natural beauty like beaches and mountains for outdoor activities like skiing and surfing, and commuting outlook.

Buying or selling a home is a very emotional process. Whether you’re listing your home or thinking of moving, take location into consideration. Doing so can help you determine your lifestyle priorities and place an appropriate value on a particular property.

Originally posted at: Lafayette Real Estate News

The most popular email apps usher in some sort of innovation: Sparrow had incredible simplicity, Mailbox had snoozes, and Inbox has its intelligent cards and bundles. Their popularity came from changing the way we work with email — so it’s easy to overlook yesterday’s launch of Airmail for iOS, which has no one standout feature, as just another app. But even though Airmail doesn’t have any one standout innovation, it does something that few other mobile apps dare to do: let you do anything you want.

Airmail for iOS has an overwhelming number of options. It’ll let you do anything you can imagine wanting to do with email — it has snoozes, filters, and third-party app integrations — and probably some things that you’d never even thought of, from setting per inbox notification sounds to bouncing emails and altering Gmail folder mapping. There are more options inside Airmail than in any mobile app you’ve used in a long time.

Airmail’s extensive list of options is something that most developers would be embarrassed to ship. An app’s designer is supposed to know everything, right? They carefully decide where each button goes, how the interface looks, and what options are, and are not needed. In most cases, that’s a good thing; too many choices can clutter up an app and make it confusing and unusable. But Airmail manages to tap into a wonderful feeling of customization that can be a lot of fun to play around with.
Most things in Airmail can changed to suit your preferences. You can change what happens when you swipe an email, you can enable and disable the appearance of actions like starring and sharing, and you can even reorder multiple core menus. If you don’t like that Airmail automatically pulls up inbox filtering options when you start scrolling, turn off that feature. If you don’t like the way it shows account icons in its unified inbox view either, switch that off and replace it with a color-coded view.

It seems like Airmail’s developers simply couldn’t decide on any one direction and chose instead to throw in everything. But Leonardo Chiantini, who co-develops the app with partner Giovanni Simonicca, says Airmail’s exhaustive options come by design. “People have different needs,” he says. “We think that with email, [everyone takes] a very, very different approach.” Airmail is meant to address the needs of professionals who are regularly working in their inbox, he says. “We know we can’t be liked by everybody.”

Airmail for iOS is now available for $4.99. It works on the iPhone and Apple Watch right now, and Chiantini says an iPad version will come later (“We don’t want [an iPad app] that is just a larger iPhone version,” he says). Airmail isn’t an app that everyone should use. It’s big, dense, and occasionally rough around the edges. But those are the same reasons it’s easy to love using it. If you have a lot of email to burn through — and you’re frustrated that your current app of choice won’t let you do work exactly how you want to — Airmail may just be your new best option.

Originally posted at: Lafayette Real Estate News

Head over to Vermilionville tomorrow to experience a traditional Cajun Mardi Gras run held by the Basile Mardi Gras Association!  

The run will take place from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM, featuring the Basile Mardi Gras Runners as they visit the six historical homes in the village, begging for ingredients to make a communal gumbo and performing other traditions.  After the performance, children will be able to participate in a chicken chase, and the one who catches the chicken will win a special prize!

From 1 PM to 4 PM, attendees will get to enjoy themselves with gumbo and live music by The Pine Leaf Boys, as well as view the “A Tale of Two Mardi Gras” exhibit, demonstrating the vastly different but equally meaningful ways Mardi Gras is celebrated across the city, state, and country.

Admission is $5, and children under 3 get in free.  If you bring a bag of beads to the event, you’ll get $1 off admission price!

Originally posted at: Lafayette Real Estate News