For our customers remodeling their home in order to move to a new city or state, take notice of the USDA’s Home Loan program if you are moving to a small town and not a big city.

The USDA Home loan program was created in 1991 as a way to boost homeownership in rural areas and has been relatively little used over the years until recently. Tightening lending standards and increased loan application scrutiny has forced homeowners and their real estate agents to dig deeper to find money for property purchases.

The USDA Home Loan program may be a viable option for those who meet the criteria of the program. To qualify for a USDA backed loan, borrowers must be living in or moving to towns of about 25,000 or less people, they must have an income that does not exceed the moderate income limit established for the area, and they must be a US citizen.

The program in the past two years has been “rediscovered” by many in the real estate and home building community and has become one of the primary tools sales agents are now using in communities that qualify.

If you are looking for a home in a smaller town or community that you feel may qualify, find a lender in your area on the USDA Home Loan website and call to learn more about any specific requirements in your area.

For those homeowners renovating a home built before 1978 stand up and take notice. The EPA’s Lead: Renovation, Repair, and Paint rule went in to effect April 22, 2010 and requires those who work in homes built prior to 1978 to be EPA certified. Those not in compliance face fines of up to $37,500 per day.

The EPA has agreed to extend the deadline and now is requiring contractor firms to enroll in training no later than September 30, 2010 and complete training by December 31, 2010.

The National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) has been pushing back hard on the April deadline to become certified because a lack of trainers has caused a log-jam and delay in the number of contractors who have been able to complete the program. For example, there is just one EPA trainer in the state of Oklahoma and only three in the entire state of Maine.

The extension of the deadline is a direct result of the efforts of Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), who in May successfully amended the Fiscal Year 2010 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to provide more time to receive the lead paint training.

As reported on the website of the National Association of Realtors yesterday, Congress has extended the closing date deadline for those who have binding signed home purchase contracts put in place by April 30, 2010.

In a note posted on the NAR website, the association writes:

“Congress has passed an extension of the Homebuyer Tax Credit closing deadline, the Homebuyer Assistance and Improvement Act (H.R. 5623). The extension applies only to transactions that have ratified contracts in place as of April 30, 2010 that have not yet
closed. The legislation is designed to create a seamless extension. The new closing deadline for eligible transactions is September 30, 2010. There will be no gap between June 30 and the date the President signs the bill into law. NAR worked closely with Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to enact this important legislation.
Extending the Tax Credit Closing deadline will help provide additional stability to real estate markets across the nation.”

The fear was that up to 200,000 people would miss out on the Tax credit as the deadline loomed and many of those houses would come back on the market. Both Houses of Congress worked quickly to get this measure passed to try to calm any fears and maintain stability in the Housing market.

We were happy to announce last week that we opened a showroom in Tempe, AZ where our local customers can visit us and view our range of tiles and designs in person. In addition, any customers local to the Phoenix, Arizona area who can pick up their orders at our showroom in Tempe will enjoy Free Shipping for any products shown on our website.

We’ll post photos shortly once we tidy up a bit and get everything moved in. Stop by if you are in the Tempe area. Our address is 6202 S Maple Drive, Ste 128, Tempe, Arizona 85283.

We took a mini vacation this past week to Boston and were fortunate to stay in a hotel located in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. We were busy with seeing parts of the city during the day which allowed for ample time to stroll around beautiful Beacon Hill by night. Not knowing much about Beacon Hill beforehand we were pleasantly surprised by the sheer beauty of the neighborhood once we walked around a little bit.

Beacon Hill is a small 19th century residential area of Boston housing slightly more than 10,000 people. The Beacon Hill area is situated directly north of the Boston Common and Boston’s large Public Garden. Charles Street and Cambridge Street are the city’s main commercial streets and we were fortunate to take a stroll on both.

The residential areas of Beacon Hill are known for their beautiful brick architecture on the many row houses and brownstones commonly found in the area. The building styles range from Federal, to Greek revival and Victorian and feature some stunning touches such as beautiful doors and door surrounds, brass door knockers and brick sidewalks, as well as the ever present gas lanterns along the residential streets. Beacon Hill is one of only a handful of communities in America still using functioning gas lanterns as the main source of residential street lighting.

Above are some photos of this beautiful community. Do take a walk through the Beacon Hill neighborhood if you are ever in the Boston area.

We are hearing from our industry contacts around the country that on a community by community basis, the Home Buyer Tax credit has in fact stimulated sales in many communities. Communities of moderately and lower priced homes are seeing the biggest boost from the first time home buyer market. Those who have been on the sidelines waiting to buy figure this is the last time that the government will offer the credit so it is now or never for those wishing to cash in on the governments generous offer.

The credit goes away on June 30th so buyers are in the final stretch of getting paperwork in, completing appraisals, and meeting any last minute underwriter requests. Watch the flurry of closings in the next 2 weeks in the Real Estate market in your community. We hope agents, banks, and title companies can actually uphold all of the commitments they made to borrowers who bought with the expectation of closing by June 30th.

Let’s see what happens!

At various points in the next several weeks we will be introducing several new product lines which we have been busy working on this Spring. We will have new ceramic tile products, new glass tile products, and a new line of bamboo tiles to compliment our Bamboo Subway Tiles. We have been so busy we haven’t had the time to add some of the better content we like to write for our Blog but we should be able to get back to our normal schedule once the calendar moves in to July.

In the meantime stay with us and as the products become available we will be sure to place them on our website as soon as we can.

As always, we appreciate your support!

We are proud to say that our Bamboo Subway Tiles were recently featured in the online version of Hospitality Design magazine. The hospitality industry is moving rapidly towards incorporating more sustainable products in their hotel projects and our Bamboo Tiles fit their product profile quite well.

Bamboo is considered by the US Green Building Council as being material from a rapidly renewable resource. Bamboo can be harvested ideally between 5 – 6 years and will re-grow naturally without the need for pesticides and other chemicals. Our customers have really embraced our bamboo tile products and we hope that the hospitality industry and other industries will follow.

Thank you Hospitality Design magazine for your support.

I guess it doesn’t hurt to take a moment to say Thank you to those who appreciate the work that you do. We’d like to Thank Betty over at the Top Online Engineering Degree Blog for recognizing the DiyThisnThat Blog as one of the top 100 DIY Blogs in her post here titled The Ultimate DIY Library: 100 Blogs to help you make or build anything.

We try to keep things interesting and change our topics from post to post to provide variety while always staying around the home improvement, DIY, Real Estate, and Housing field. We also sprinkle in some product reviews for good measure as well as a post here and there about our products and what we may have new coming down the pipeline.

Thanks again to Betty for the mention and we hope our readers will continue visiting our Blog to see what we are up to. Don’t forget to tell your friends where we live…….digitally that is.

We decided to start the week off with an offer for our Blog readers with an incentive for those considering purchasing any of our Solana Glass Mosaic Tile Blends in 1” x 1”. Beginning today through Wednesday May 19th we are offering a free Visa Gift card to those who purchase our Solana Glass Mosaic tiles in specific quantities.

For any order of 20 square feet or more receive a $25 Visa Gift card with your purchase. For any order of 30 square feet or more receive a $50 Visa Gift card with your purchase. All gift cards will be shipped separately to each customer and they will be shipped within two weeks of a customers order date. All Sales under this offer will be final with no returns allowed.

For those who have been considering the purchase of our Solana glass mosaic tiles now is the right time to move ahead with your purchase and take advantage of this special offer. To order you must phone in your order to us at 1 888 260-7371. We look forward to speaking with you this week.