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With the change of seasons, it’s a good reminder to rotate your bedrooms’ mattresses. Most brand manufacturers recommend a semi-annual “flip”, at least.

Mattress manufacturers recommend a mattress flip because, over time, mattresses can wear unevenly, the result of sleeping in the same position each night, or applying too much continuous pressure to one area of the mattress.

By the time your mattress shows signs of “sag” or imprints, it’s often too late.

Rotating a mattress is exactly what it sounds like; it’s pivoting your mattress on its axis — either horizontal, vertical, or both — and replacing it on your bed frame.

Rotating your mattress regularly will extend its useful life.

If you have a twin mattress, you may be able to flip it by yourself. If your mattress is a full-size or larger, though, follow these steps to minimize injury. Mattresses can be heavy.

1. Find a partner to help you
2. Slide the mattress out from the headboard by 3 feet
3. Rotate the mattress one-quarter spin so that’s its “across” the bed
4. Lift the mattress from the headboard toward the foot, standing it upright and turning it over completely
5. Make another one-turn to the mattress
6. Slide the mattress back to the headboard

With these steps, you will have flipped your mattress over both of its axes.

Mattresses are among the most used pieces of furniture in a Bensalem home, and often the most ignored piece of furniture, too. To get a longer, useful life from your mattresses, perform a mattress rotation at least twice yearly.

Has housing turned the corner for good?

The June 2011 Case-Shiller Index reading posted strong numbers across the board, with each of the index’s 20 tracked markets showing home price improvement from May.

Some markets — Chicago and Minneapolis — rose as much as 3.2 percent.

The rise in values is nothing about which to get overly excited, however. The Case-Shiller Index is just re-reporting what multiple data sets have already shown about the summer housing market; that it was stronger than the spring market, and that a recovery is underway, but occurring locally, at different rates.

For example, the June 2011 Case-Shiller Index shows the following :

• Denver, Dallas, Washington D.C., and the “California Cities” bottomed in 2009. Each has shown steady improvement since.
• None of the Case-Shiller cities showed negative growth between May and June 2011.
• 12 of Case-Shiller’s tracked cities have improved over 3 consecutive months.

In isolation, these statistics appear promising, but it’s important to remember that the Case-Shiller Index is a backward-looking data set, focusing on just a portion of the national housing economy.

As an illustration, the Case-Shiller Index’s “national report” only includes data from 20 cities nationwide. They’re not the 20 biggest cities, either. Smaller metropolitan areas such as Minneapolis (#48) and Tampa (#51) are included.

Larger ones including Houston (#4), Philadelphia (#5) and San Jose (#10) are not.

In addition, the Case-Shiller index fails to track sales of condominiums, multi-unit homes and new construction. In some markets, including Chicago, these excluded home type can represent a large share of the overall market.

The Case-Shiller Index is a fine data set for policy makers and economists. It describes the broader housing market and shows long-term trends. For the individual home buyer in Philadelphia , however, it’s much less useful. More than “broad data”, you want focused data that’s current and relevant.

The best place for data like that is a local real estate agent.

If you’re shopping for a mortgage rate, today may be a good day to lock one down. That’s because Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its Non-Farm Payrolls report for August 2011.

The “jobs report” tends to have a big influence on mortgage bonds and mortgage rates in Elkins Park.

The jobs report is a monthly issuance, providing sector-by-sector analysis of the U.S. workforce. It also report the national Unemployment Rate.

Wall Street expects the August Non-Farm Payrolls data to show 75,000 jobs created in August, down from 117,000 in July; and it expects that the Unemployment Rate will remain unchanged at 9.1%.

The jobs report’s connection to mortgage markets is straight-forward — as jobs go, so goes the economy. This is because when the number of working Americans rises :

1. Consumer spending gets a boost
2. Government tax collection gets a boost
3. Household savings gets a boost

These are each good turns in a recovering economy.

For today’s rate shoppers and home buyers, though, it won’t be the actual number of jobs created that matter as much as how close that jobs figure is to Wall Street’s expectations. If the number of jobs created exceeds the 75,000 estimate, look for mortgage rates to rise.

Conversely, if job creation falls short of 75,000 in August, mortgage rates are expected to rise.

Home affordability remains at all-time lows and mortgage rates do, too. If you’ve been wondering whether now is the right time to lock a rate, you can remove some risk by locking ahead of Friday’s Non-Farm Payrolls release.

The report will be released at 8:30 AM ET.

The Fed publishes meeting minutes 8 times annually — three weeks after each scheduled Federal Open Market Committee get-together. The Fed Minutes summarizes the FOMC meeting.

The Federal Reserve released the minutes from its August 9, 2011 Federal Open Market Committee meeting Tuesday.

The Fed Minutes contained no surprises and, as a result, mortgage rates across New Jersey and nationwide have idled.

Although it gets less press attention, the Fed Minutes is every bit as important as the more highly-publicized, post-meeting statement from the FOMC. With its detailed record of conversation, the Fed Minutes highlights the discussions and debates that shape our nation’s monetary policy.

For example, here is some of what was said at the Fed’s August 2011 meeting :

• On growth : Economic growth had been slower than the committee expected
• On housing : The market “remains depressed”. Underwriting standards are “tight”.
• On rates : The Fed Funds Rate will remain low until mid-2013

In addition, the Fed talked about whether a third round of asset purchases should be announced. Ultimately, that plan was rejected by consensus.

The FOMC’s next meeting is a 2-day meeting, scheduled for September 20-21. The meeting was originally scheduled for just one day, but Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke chose to extend it to two. Wall Street believes that the extension was made so Fed members could discuss new forms of economic stimulus.

Depending on the form of said stimulus — if it should even occur — mortgage rates may rise or fall. We can’t know for certain unti the size and scope of the Fed’s plan is known.

For now, mortgage rates remain rock-bottom. There’s more room for rates to rise than to fall. If you’re shopping for a loan and the rate looks right, therefore, consider locking on it.

After 3 straight months of gains, the Pending Home Sales Index slipped 1 percent in July. The monthly report is published by the National Association of REALTORS® and measures the number of home under contract to sell nationwide.

The Pending Home Sales Index is closely watched by Wall Street and analysts because it’s a forward-looking housing market indicator. Unlike most housing market data, though, Pending Home Sales forecasts a future housing market event. In this case, the Existing Home Sales report.

In its methodology, the Pending Home Sales Index states that 80% of homes under contract close within 2 months, with most of the remaining home going to closing within Months 3 and 4.

We would expect home sales data to taper into the fall buying season, but this year, they may taper more than normal. This is because, in a separate report, the National Association of REALTORS® said that contract cancellation rates are running high.

As compared to a 4 percent contract cancellation rate in May 2011, June and July both registered 16 percent. This means that fewer homes tallied as part of July’s Pending Home Sales Index will show up as “closed sales” this fall.

Contracts can be canceled for any number of reasons including more stringent mortgage guidelines, appraisals falling short of the purchase price, and changing mortgage loan limits.

For home buyers in Elkins Park , the Pending Home Sales Index may represent an opportunity. Not only are fewer homes going under contract nationwide, but with cancellation rates spiking, sellers may be more willing to “make a deal”.

Note, though, like all real estate, the pace at which homes go under contract is a “local” statistic; you can’t assume national data applies to all markets equally. Your home market, for example, may out-perform — or under-perform — the national average.

For a closer look at what’s happening on your street including the speed at which homes are selling, talk to a local real estate agent.

With seasons changing, it’s a good time to look at weatherizing your home. Whether you live in a single-family home, a multi-family property, or a condominium, your home has windows and, through those windows, air escapes.

Even with your windows closed.

In this brief tutorial from Lowe’s, you’ll learn how to use caulk to seal the gaps between your windows and doors and their respective framing to keep your home’s inside air in, and the outside air out.

Weatherizing your windows and doors is a 3-step process:

1. Find the air leaks
2. Clean the surface of existing caulk and debris
3. Seal surface with new caulk, and clean-up

As shown by the video, there are no technical skills required to repair and replace your home’s caulking. It may require a little bit of elbow grease, however. And, depending on your windows’ locations, use of a ladder may be required.

If you’d like professional help weatherizing your home, please ask me for a referral in Elkins Park.

Low mortgage rates are terrific — if you can get them.

One week after posting its lowest mortgage rate in 50 years, Freddie Mac reports that the 30-year fixed rate mortgage rose by an average of 7 basis points nationwide this week to 4.22%. To get the rate, you’ll pay an average of 0.7 “points”.

This week’s rise in the 30-year fixed rate mortgage pulled rates off their all-time lows so either you locked last week’s rock-bottom rates, or you missed it.

Mortgage rates are rising.

As a refinancing homeowner or home buyer in Philadelphia , rising mortgage rates are something to watch. This is because, as mortgage rates rise, so do the long-term interest costs of giving a mortgage, increasing your homeownership costs.

For example, if you failed to lock a rate last week when rates were bottomed, and then decided to lock-in only after rates had climbed 0.25 percent, at the new, higher rate, over the life of your loan, you would have responsibility for an extra $5,300 in interest costs for every $100,000 you borrowed.

Rising mortgage rates can be expensive.

For home buyers, rising mortgage rates pose a second problem — they erode your purchasing power. A home that fits your budget at today’s rates may not fit your budget at next week’s rates. And because mortgage rates change quickly, you can sometimes feel ilke you’re racing the clock.

The hard part about mortgage rates, though, is that we can never know what they’ll do next. On some days they rise, on some days they fall, and on some days they stay the same. Instead of trying to “time the bottom”, therefore, a good strategy can be to lock the first, low rate that fits your budget. Then, if rates are lower in the future, you can look to refinance at that time.

Mortgage rates remain at historical lows. It’s a good time to lock a rate.

CNNMoney recently released its Best Places To Live 2011 list.

The annual survey is based on data from Onboard Informatics. Using Quality of Life factors such as education, crime and “town spirit”, and focusing on towns with between 8,500 and 50,000 residents, the CNNMoney survey ranks the country’s best “small towns”.

To be eligible, towns must be have a median household income greater than 85 percent, and less than 200 percent of the state median income; must not be a categorized as a “retirement community”; and must be racially-diverse.

From a list of 3,570 eligible towns nationwide, Louisville, Colorado was ranked #1.

The complete Top 10 Best Places to Live as cited by CNNMoney, and their respective average home listing prices :

1. Louisville, Colorado ($383,569)
2. Milton, Massachusetts ($577,008)
3. Solon, Ohio ($291,162)
4. Leesburg, Virginia ($486,018)
5. Papillion, Nebraska ($218,520)
6. Hanover, New Hampshire ($643,500)
7. Liberty, Missouri ($177,678)
8. Middleton, Wisconsin ($347,770)
9. Mukilteo, Washington ($345,487)
10. Chanhassen, Minnesota ($418,607)

Rankings like these can be helpful to home buyers nationwide, but it’s important to remember that the Best Place To Live survey is subjective. You may find none of the above towns to be to your liking.

You may also find the lowest-ranked city to be your favorite.

In other words, before making a decision to buy, connect with a real estate agent who has local market knowledge. That’s the best, most reliable way to make sure you get the housing data that matters to you.

Sales of newly-built homes slipped in July, falling 1 percent as compared to June. Home buyers closed on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized 298,000 units, the lowest reading since February.

The supply of new homes, however, remained flat.

July’s 6.6 months of supply equaled June’s tally and remains near the multi-year low of 6.5 months set in May of this year. The figures suggest a new home market that’s finding its balance.

Builders are building to meet demand, and not much more.

The New Home Sales report may have read differently if not for the Northeast Region which doubled its sales units in July. The gains buoyed the broader data, re-affirming the importance of looking past national data and focusing on what’s local; the national market is not reflective of any given town

Broken down by region, July New Home Sales fared as follows:

• Northeast Region : +100.0% from June 2011 
• Midwest Region : +2.4% from June 2011 
• South Region : -7.4% from June 2011 
• West Region : -5.9% from June 2011 

However, as with most months, it’s important that we recognize the New Home Sales data’s margin of error.

Although New Home Sales showed a 1 percent drop in July, the reported margin of error was ±12.9%. This means that the actual reading could have been as high as +11.9 percent, or as low as -13.9 percent. Because the range includes both positive and negative values, the Census Bureau assigned its July data “zero confidence”.

New Home Sales appear to be stable, despite falling sales figures. Supplies remain flat and builder confidence does, too. The good news for buyers in Elkins Park , then, is that lower mortgage rates are making homes more affordable.

Mortgage rates are currently at 50-year lows.

Home resales slipped in July.

According to the National Association of REALTORS®, Existing Home Sales nationwide fell to 4.67 million units on a seasonally-adjusted annualized basis last month. It’s the fourth straight month below the 5 million mark, and the report’s lowest reading since November 2010.

An “existing home” is a home that’s been previously occupied or owned.

In addition, the Existing Home Sales report showed home supplies rising nationwide. At the current pace of sales, in other words, the complete, national “For Sale” inventory would be exhausted in 9.4 months. This, too, is the worst reading since November 2010.

On a units basis, however, the number of homes for sale actually fell in July. As compared to June, home resale inventory dropped 65,000 units to 3.65 million.

From these figures, we can infer that, despite low mortgage rates and lagging home values, buyer activity is slowing in New Jersey and nationwide. This may be seasonal, or it may be a long-term trend.

Either way, there’s opportunity for today’s home buyers.

With mortgage rates at all-time lows, home affordability is peaking. More households can afford housing payments than during any time in history and with the fall season approaching, buyers in Bensalem may find contracts negotiations to be more “friendly”.

This can mean lower sale prices and larger concessions from sellers — the hallmark of a Buyer’s Market.

It’s a good time to look at your options. Talk to your real estate agent and see what’s out there for you. Low home prices may persist, but low mortgage rates likely won’t.