Solana Beveled Glass Subway Tile in Mint

Call in your order to us at 1 888 260-7371 to receive the 10% discount and tell us how you plan to use our Beveled tiles in your home or business location. And don’t forget, where trim or edge pieces are required, use our Solana Glass Tile Quarter Rounds in matching colors as the edge piece for your tile project.

We are encouraging call in orders with our discount offers because we like to talk to our customers to gain their feedback and opinions on our products, how our customers use them, as well as our customer service with your suggestions on any way we might improve. Call in now to place your order and we look forward to speaking with each and every one of those customers who support our efforts.

Elements Tubac tiles

So please check back with us soon as we are just now putting the finishing touches on the final few designs and colors. We think that you will be excited at what is in store.

We always welcome our customers input and we encourage the two way conversation we have with our customers. That conversation will improve in the next several months as we join the social media bandwagon. Hopefully by doing this will allow us to gain an even better feel for the pulse of our customers. Always feel free to send us your comments to customerservice@anchorbaytile.com

We appreciate the comments and the feedback and we welcome any additional input that would help us to improve and make the customer experience better for our AnchorBayTile shoppers.

It might take us a few weeks to get used to the adjustment since we have been operating with Flat Rate Shipping almost since the start of our business. So please bear with us as we respond to our customer requests and inquiries and we work through any growing pains that may come as a result of this change.

As always, we appreciate your business and your support and we look forward to working with each and every one of our customers that trust our company and our products for your home remodeling projects.

Last week the nation’s number-two Homebuilder PulteGroup posted a profit of $76.3 million dollars which was the first profit for the homebuilder in 14 quarters. Part of the reason for the profit is the federal Home Buyer tax credit though the Pulte has worked hard to cut overhead in the past several years and the company is hopeful that these efforts are starting to show results.

In another bit of good news, real estate website Zillow.com said on Monday that a smaller percentage of U.S. homeowners were saddled with “underwater mortgages” in the second quarter vs. the first quarter That is the good news, however, the bad news is that much of that improvement is due to more homeowners entering the foreclosure process thereby removing some of these underwater homeowners from that “stat sheet”.

We agree the news could be better but hopefully some of this will translate in to more good news from other builders and by the end of the year or the beginning of the next, the housing market will begin to show some signs of life.

The improvements that LIRA measures are not your smaller general maintenance jobs, rather, they are the larger kitchen and bath remodels and room additions mostly. These jobs are the bread and butter of the remodeling industry and are the areas researchers are looking at for any sign of a market turnaround.

“The recovery in home improvement activity appears to be moving beyond simple replacement projects and energy retrofits to broader remodels and upgrades” says Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies. This is exactly the direction the market needs to take for this segment of the economy to be on more solid ground.

Stay tuned folks to see if the fine folks at Harvard University are right.

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.

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.

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.