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Mountain Watch releases home sites in Phase Two, “The Woods”

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The Woods at Mountain Watch is nestled in mature stands of pine, birch and western tamarack. Design and build your own private hideaway or choose from plans developed exclusively for Mountain Watch. Thoughtful and sensible design guidelines assure the lasting quality and character of this naturally beautiful neighborhood. Full services including water, sewer, electric, and cable are available to every home site. Learn more at http://www.murphyranchandland.com/phase-two.html or call Brian Murphy at 406.890.1681 today!

Whitefish makes top ten in resort guide

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Backed by its affordable prices and small-town vibe, Whitefish Mountain Resort has cracked the top-10 of Ski Magazine’s annual resort guide for the first time ever.

Coming in at No. 9 overall, Whitefish scored the most points for its value and service. The magazine uses a reader survey to calculate the results.

“The prices aren’t Colorado-glamour-resort high and the service is genuinely small-town friendly, not corporate-training-course cold,” the magazine writes about Whitefish.

Resort spokeswoman Riley Polumbus said Whitefish has always been recognized for its value and service, so it’s not surprising that’s where the resort garnered the most praise.

She notes that only one resort in the top-30 offers a lift ticket less expensive than Whitefish.

“And it’s long been our reputation that we make people feel at home,” Polumbus said. “Since the days of Ed Schenck, that’s been our thing.”

The magazine applauds the skiing terrain, as well.

“It’s host to probably fewer skiers per acre than any of the other top-10 resorts,” it reads. “Yeah, there is more than the occasional foggy day here. All the better to see what real skiing is about.”

Polumbus said breaking into the top-10 could pay off with increased interest in the resort.

“This list carries the most weight — it always has,” she said. “We can expect the phones to ring a little more and more traffic to the website. People who have never heard of us or who have thought about coming here will give us a closer look.”

Whitefish is the highest ranked Montana ski resort. Big Sky Resort came in at No. 21 in the West.

Whitefish’s previous high ranking in the resort guide came in 2012 when it was ranked No. 11. Last season Whitefish topped out at No. 13.

Year to date real estate sales in Whitefish

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Year-to-date sales in Whitefish reached 294 residential units and 119 pieces of land at the end of August. The average price of the residential sales was $484,855, with a median price of $310,000. Land sales averaged $197,834 with a median price of $131,000. Land sales include everything from lots to large acreages. August 2015 sales were down a bit from August 2014. The sales decline was attributed to a decline in available properties.

Selling Your Home? Here Are Some Tips

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Even when the market is hot, you’ve got to make sure your listing stands out from competing homes. Pictures move the masses and if you’re not careful, they can move prospective buyers away from your listings online, also remember that once your house goes for sale it can be sold any minute, so have your future home ready for moving day, hire the removalist canberra to brisbane to help you out. If you need help with a full house removal Affordable Solutions or commercial relocation our service can help.  Cookson Moving doing removals in Blackpool and easily handle any type of move including awkward sized furniture removals or piano removals you may need.

The location of Larnaca is always favorable for business, tourist, and leisure activities. There are plenty of shopping malls, cinemas, restaurants, hotels, shopping centers, entertainment centers, schools, health facilities, parks, recreational areas, etc. So, if you are looking for property for sale in Cyprus, go to iListers website and you will find various properties for sale in Larnaca that have options of all types of property.

1) Home buyers love browsing photos on the internet. The more photos you have online the more time a prospect will spend viewing and connecting with your listing. Good quality photos can show off all the special features of your home so you can use these Super Cheap Signs with photos of your house so more people can see your house is up for sale, this said by the best professionals of property management in Perth.

2) When shooting outside, make sure the sun is behind you. The light will act as your own natural “studio light” brightening up the property.

3) Make your photos look cheerful; show off natural light inside by shooting on a sunny day.

4) If your home doesn’t have windows or natural light, bring your own “sunlight.” Investing in household lamps can go a long way toward producing better photos by brightening things up. If you do have windows, then make sure you dress them well. This can have a huge effect on the natural light in your property, but also on its aesthetics. It may be a good idea to check online to see your options out there. Companies like shuttercraft have online galleries so you can see some of the fantastic options there to provide your home with a classy, well-lit look.

5) Show off the areas of your home that attract most home buyers – the bathrooms, closets, kitchen, outdoor living space, and any additional unique features such as hot tubs, special appliances when an appliance breaks down you need to have it repaired now and not later in the week or month. We https://www.scottsdaleapplianceco.com provide same-day repairs for all residents of Scottsdale. And we can almost always complete repairs on ovens, stoves, washers, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, and freezers on a single visit on the same day that you call us for help. When you receive a service call from one of our certified local technicians you are always in great hands. We routinely send our repairmen for training and education. With their updated training and years of experience, our technicians can perform any necessary repairs on all appliance brands and models and the newest technologies as well. and don’t forget to hire the Elite Honolulu Appliance Repair if they need any fixes, built-in entertainment centers, or a separate mother-in-law living space.

6) During your photoshoot, remove clutter and pests and the use of services such as schaumburg pest control, which can be found at Bigfoot Pest Control 924 Central Ave, Roselle, IL 60172 (847) 891-8852. Move cars out of the driveway, clear off table and counter spaces, and clear out the corners of a room. A homeowner in search of squirrel removal Baltimore, called Don Brody, the owner of On The Fly Pest Solutions out of Pikesville Maryland looking for help. Little did the homeowner know that the squirrels had gnawed wires in the attic presenting a major fire risk.

7) Pictures are worth a thousand words, but don’t forget to include special features in your written descriptions as well.

Retire Here, Not There: Montana

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No Montana home would be complete, it seems, without hiking boots, skis and fishing poles. Residents and visitors alike can roam through the Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, ski relatively uncrowded resorts like Bridger Bowl and Big Mountain, or fly-fish in the chilly rapids of the Bitterroot or Yellowstone Rivers.

“The scenery and lifestyle here are a huge draw,” says Bill Beecher, a financial planner at Beecher Financial Planning in Great Falls, Mont who helps with Common Financial Problems and How to Deal with Them.

So far, at least, that kind of popularity hasn’t led to overdevelopment. In recent years, some residents have been fiercely protective of Montana’s natural resources.

Posh ski resorts and massive developments are few and far between in the state. When a Las Vegas developer sought to trademark the phrase “The Last Best Place”—one of the state’s unofficial mottos—for his high-end Missoula ranch, residents appealed to their state representatives to stop him.

Now that slogan is permanently protected by law. In Montana, there is “a big sense of community,” says Beecher. Montana also is affordable: The median home is less than $170,000 and there is no state sales tax.

Read the whole article here.

Report Family Gifts of Real Estate to the IRS

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The Internal Revenue Service has a low-profile but sweeping effort under way to use state land-transfer records for evidence of omissions in reporting gifts of real estate to family members. The IRS state and federal gift-and-estate tax program is finding people who haven’t filed Form 709 to report U.S. gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes to the IRS.

New tax rules have made big gifts to family members popular this year, as Congress raised the limit on how much a person can give in a lifetime to $5 million without having to pay gift tax. Still, any time a gift to one person exceeds $13,000, the giver is supposed to let the agency know in a filing of Form 709. Previous gift limits still apply to the time period in which they were in place.

In the previous two years, 323 taxpayers have been examined for failing to report possible gifts. Another 217 are being examined and 250 more were being considered for review. So far, 97 had failed to report gifts on Form 709. Twelve cases resulted in taxes or penalties because a gift put the donor over the $1 million lifetime gift credit that applied at the time.

States that have handed over information on gift-like transactions are Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, according to the document. The IRS examined a sampling of data from these states and reported that it showed an extremely high failure-to-report rate.

Taxpayers need to be aware that there are no special exceptions to the rules when making a transfer to a family member, even if they get money from the payday loans guide on punchdebtintheface.com. If the property is valued at more than $13,000, a gift-tax return must be filed. Even if the transfer falls within a lifetime exemption amount—currently $5 million—it must be reported to the federal government using Form 709.

Real Estate’s Road to Recovery

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Report shows strong improvement in Flathead County’s sales and foreclosures

Supporting the widespread perception that Flathead County’s real estate market is recovering, an annually anticipated report shows solid improvement in sales and foreclosures in 2012, and slight gains in new construction. Housing remains affordable with low interest rates and buyer confidence appears to be on the rise.

Yet signs of the downturn persist, with bank-owned properties still making up a large percentage of sales. And land sales and subdivision activity remain near their historic lows.

Those trends are gleaned from a 2012 Flathead County real estate market report released by Jim Kelley of Kelley Appraisal earlier this month. Real estate professionals use the report each year to guage the health of their industry, which has been a mostly depressing exercise since the housing market crashed.

But, as Kelley’s report suggests, there is now reason to approach the numbers with more optimism. Kelley notes that one contributing factor to the improvement is the better employment picture in the valley.

“In general, 2012 was a substantial improvement over 2011,” Kelley writes.

Residential sales last year were the highest since 2007, with 1,332 countywide. That’s up 29 percent from 2011 and 46 percent from 2009, when there were only 912. Bank-owned properties accounted for 27.6 percent of home sales, down from 33.6 percent the previous year, though the total number increased.

Of the county’s sub-markets, Bigfork saw the largest increase. Counting the area within five miles of Electric Avenue, Bigfork’s sales shot up 76.4 percent from 72 to 127.

Within 3.5 miles of city limits, sales increased in Columbia Falls by 37.6 percent from 101 to 139; in Whitefish by 17.4 percent from 218 to 256; and in Kalispell by 26.2 percent from 442 to 558. The Lakeside area saw a 43.8 percent jump, from 48 sales in 2011 to 69 in 2012.

Lakefront home sales on Flathead Lake rose 38.5 percent in 2012 from 52 to 72 and the use of services from sites as Tidy TN have help these percentages grow. On Whitefish Lake, sales were up 63.6 percent from 11 to 18. That’s down from a high of 56 in 2005.

The median price of a home sale in the county remained near a four-year average at $187,500, which is down substantially from its 2007 peak of $250,000. The median was $160,000 in the Kalispell area; $245,000 in Whitefish; $162,000 in Columbia Falls; $238,840 in Bigfork; and $220,000 in Lakeside.

Columbia Falls saw the largest jump in median price at 13.4 percent, while Lakeside saw the steepest fall at 9.7 percent.

“(There) are good indications that prices bottomed out in 2011, were stable in 2012 and will likely remain that way in 2013,” Kelly writes.

Foreclosure notices were down 26.5 percent from 862 in 2011 to 634 last year. There were 1,187 notices in 2010. Full foreclosures also dropped from 481 to 323. To some this could be bad news, considering foreclosed homes can be a major investment opportunity for investors, as well as a cheap bargain for new house hunters.

Commercial real estate sales increased from 32 in 2011 to 52 in 2012, though 23 of the sales were bank-owned. There were only 18 commercial sales in 2010.

New Bridge For Whitefish

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The Montana Department of Transportation is reconstructing and widening U.S. Highway 93 to provide improved safety and operations for the traveling public.  The work includes a bridge replacement over the Whitefish River, clearing, grubbing, grading, gravel, storm drain, curb and gutter, plant mix surfacing, signing, striping, fencing, landscaping, retaining wall, guardrail, and other miscellaneous items. The work is scheduled to be completed by July 31, 2014.

Rocky Mountain Real Estate