Realty Insights for Home Buying, Home Selling, and Indy Info

In the real estate section of a recent issue of the Indianapolis Star, a reader posed a question about the usefulness of formal dining rooms. In many new home plans it seems that the formal dining room is being replaced by open and flowing floor plans with connected kitchens and dining areas. Writer Rose Bennett Gilbert answers, "With our daily lives increasingly busy, and therefore more casual these days, it makes sense to gather the whole family in one place for meals, relating and relaxing. On the other hand, these increasingly busy times are leading many other families to rediscover the importance of sitting down around the dinner table to eat. There are many ways to preserve that ritual, and they don't all depend on walls that physically separate the kitchen from the dining room...even where there is no wall, you still can find a way to the lifestyle you envision, whether it's truly casual or totally 'proper.'" The choice to have a formal dining room depe...

Even though winter isn't over yet, it's not too soon to think about getting outside this spring and enjoying all the parks and recreation opportunities the city of Noblesville has to offer. Noblesville has three public parks and two public golf courses: Forest Park -- 701 Cicero Road on State Road 19 North 9-hole golf course, the Forest Park Inn banquet facility, "Tom Thumb" miniature golf course, playground equipment, swimming pool, shelters with grills and volleyball sand lots, picnic areas, tennis courts, horseshoe pits, the "Little Beauty" Carousel and the Indiana Transportation Museum Seminary Park -- Between Tenth and Eleventh Streets and Division and Hannibal Streets Gazebo, small playground and landscaped, open green space Southside Park -- Between Second and Third Streets and Washington and Pleasant Streets picnic shelter, a softball field, a basketball court, and playground apparatus Fox Prairie Golf Course --www.foxprairie.com Forest Park Golf ...

Technorati Profile

MSN Money contributor Liz Pulliam Weston recently addressed the problems with the current formulas for determining mortgage affordability. An excerpt from her article: "Here's what's changed in the 30 years (or more) since your parents bought their first house: Inflation. Rapidly rising prices in the 1970s and early 1980s meant you could count on hefty annual raises. Today, you can't rely on double-digit income boosts to make your mortgage payment less of a burden each year. Two-income couples. A generation ago, single-income families were more common. If the breadwinner lost a job, the other spouse could go to work to save the house. With more two-income families needing both paychecks to make the mortgage payment, there's no one on the sidelines to take up the slack -- unless you put the kids to work. The lending industry. Thirty years ago, it was pretty tough to get a mortgage for more than you could really afford. Today, it's fairly commonplace. More len...