The decision has been made and the preliminary steps have been taken; this is the year you have decided to buy your first home. You have worked diligently over the past six to twelve months to get your credit score in order and it’s now time to start saving for the down payment.

Today is the day that you finally decided that it’s time to start down the path towards buying a home. Whether it is your first home or your fifth home, the path forward needs to start by checking and gaining an understanding of your credit score.

Spring cleaning is a great way to declutter your home but, even the most disciplined of us accumulate more each year than we dispose of. The average American homeowner moves approximately once every eight years. Eight years of extra clutter is a lot to deal with at moving time.

The Green Party may not have had the impact on national politics that it set out to achieve in 1984 but it did manage to make “going green” part of the American and international vocabulary. Today, going green is something every producer and consumer strives for, albeit at varying levels of effort and success.

If it is time to move on and provide someone else with the opportunity to fulfill their dream of homeownership, there are some important steps that you should take to maximize the value of your home before any prospective sale.

Home-buying season is in full swing. Above all else, those who are considering selling their current home need to focus on curb appeal, kitchens and bathrooms. Most surveys of potential homebuyers will list community and neighborhood among the top of their ‘must haves’ list for home shopping.

Over 60 percent of private residential water use in the Inland Empire occurs outdoors. Updating a home’s internal plumbing fixtures is important but, even the most dramatic changes that we implement indoors will not be a drop in the bucket (pun fully intended) compared to what can be saved by focusing our attention on water conservation in our landscaping.

In his book, The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams defined for all what it means to be an American and why each citizen can obtain the American Dream. In 1931, he wrote “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

As the nation celebrates National Homeownership Month in June, new research shows that homeownership is a primary driver of American household wealth.

For the past 20 weeks, I have penned reason after reason that owning a home is the best choice for every American who has the choice of ownership.

As they say, it’s all been leading up to this: June concludes America’s season-long celebration of the benefits of home ownership with National Home Ownership Month.

Whether for starting a home-based business, seeking greater personal convenience, increasing business efficiency or reducing one’s footprint on the environment, home offices (or “dedicated workspaces”) are among the most popular remodeling projects in America today.

‘Active Adult Community’ no longer implies a cluster of bland homes surrounding a simple community center set up for jazzercise classes on the weekends.