Thanksgiving Wishes From AHAA

As we here at AHAA prepare today to give thanks with our families and friends, we want to extend our sincerest hopes that you have a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving Day.  

Flip the Switch For a Toasty and Convenient Fire in Your Fireplace

It’s an iconic symbol of the holiday season and of cold winter nights – a toasty, roaring fireplace. If you’re thinking of replacing your wood-burning fireplace with a gas fireplace, here are a few things to consider.

"It’s one of the greatest things I’ve done for my home,” Maryland homeowner Louise Enaid said. “It is much more convenient. Instead of hauling in the firewood from outside – because you don’t want to keep wood in the house or even near the house because of termites and other insects – then painstakingly lighting it, keeping it going and then waiting for it to go out; now I just flip a switch and ta-da – a fire in the fireplace. Sure, it doesn’t have that nice burning wood smell, but the tradeoff is that I get to enjoy it much more often now and at much less expense of my time. It’s such a pleasure.” 

Costs for a fireplace conversion can vary greatly depending on the scope of work. According to a recent tally of fireplace conversion costs by The Washington Post, gas line extensions start at $700. Gas logs installed an existing wood-burning fireplace can run $500-$900. A gas insert installed in the fireplace ranges between $2,000 and $3,500 and an entirely new fireplace can cost between $1,000 to upwards of $4,000.

And it seems that potential homebuyers are affected by the nostalgia of a fireplace too: “Definitely, buyers ask, 'Does it have a fireplace?' But it's at the bottom of the top 10 must-haves when buying a house," Jane Fairweather, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent in Bethesda, Md., told The Post. However, she said that it’s enough of a selling feature that sellers may be able to recoup installation costs.

650,000 Borrowers Benefit From Government Loan Modification Program

To-date 650,000 borrowers have received trial loan modifications through the Obama Administration’s foreclosure relief plan, Making Home Affordable.

When the $75 billion program was initiated in early 2009, the Administration said it hoped to modify or refinance as many as 4 million mortgages, affecting as many as 9 million distressed homeowners, over the course of two years. That goal has since been adjusted upward to span three years.

The largest numbers of modifications have occurred in California (135,000) and Florida (82,000) – two states that have high rates of foreclosures.

“The program is having a pronounced impact in areas particularly hard hit by the housing crisis," Treasury Assistant Secretary Michael S. Barr said yesterday.

Some Unexpected Side Effects of H1N1 Flu Spread

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned in a report last week that the spread of H1N1 flu could have an unexpected side effect that has nothing to do with the nasty cough and fever associated with the wicked bug: vast numbers of homebound Americans logging on to the Web from home could overload local Internet networks.

The report said that pandemic-type numbers of homebound adults telecommuting and kids doing homework, playing games or accessing video files could create an overload that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is in charge of communications networks during national emergencies,  may not be prepared to deal with.

Internet access is an essential resource to keep financial markets going and residents informed during national emergencies like a flu pandemic, the GAO said, and DHS hasn’t yet created guidelines for how telecom, cable and satellite providers could minimize congestion or prioritize traffic in such an emergency.
Some expensive options for Internet service providers exist, including adding bandwidth capacity and laying private lines for essential employees, but with the flu spreading so rapidly, such actions would take too long.

Regulatory and contractual issues are additional hurdles, the GAO said: "Private Internet providers have limited ability to prioritize traffic or take other actions that could assist critical tele-workers. Some actions, such as reducing customers' transmission speeds or blocking popular Web sites, could negatively impact e-commerce and require government authorization.”

Click here to view the report summary.