Abberly Village Apartment Homes

The great thing about living in an apartment in West Columbia, SC is you can pick any football team you want to go to the big game. So even though South Carolina doesn’t have an official NFL team, you are still going to watch the big game, even if it is just for the commercials!

Are you going to host the party for the “Big Game”? How should you prepare for your Super Bowl Party?  Is there a set way that a Super Bowl Party should be hosted? Of course not. But if you are throwing a Super Bowl Party in your apartment, we’d like to help.

In your apartment there are certain things that you may do differently from hosting some other kind of party.   ForRent.com does a “great” job at giving the basics of what is expected to host a great Super Bowl Party in your Apartment at Abberly Village. Enjoy!

At our apartments in Columbia, SC the fall season is about to start. As you look around your apartment home, do you long to redecorate? Read on for low-cost suggestions to brighten your space.

Paint!  For under $100 you can dramatically change any room’s appearance with paint and a few basic supplies. Pulling a vibrant color from a room’s patterned upholstery or rug and putting it on the walls can have a dramatic effect.

Warm Up Your Space! Now is the time to think about what the floors will feel like on chilly mornings. Roll up or throw down a rug as the seasons change. A soft area rug could really pull all the colors together in a room, and reduce echoes from hardwoods and tile.
 
Add Fabrics!  Textiles can really brighten up a room.  Plain sofas can be livened up with patterned pillows. New place mats are a fabulous way to change the presentation of a meal. Pair a contrasting color or a pattern with plain plates. Dining room chairs or bar stools can be recovered for a whole new look.

Fill that Empty Wall! Use family photos and mismatched frames to fill a blank wall space in a family room or hallway. Lay them out on the floor and make a grid. Play with the design until it feels balanced and looks good. If you have trouble following the pattern, make paper bag cut-outs of the same pictures and tape them to the wall for the placement of the frames.

Replace the Towels! Take a look at your bathroom. Can it use a fresh  look? New towels and a bath mat in a bathroom can completely change its look.

Here’s hoping that these tips will inspire residents at Abberly Village to make some colorful changes in your apartment homes.

When deciding whether to rent or buy, you are making the choice to rent an apartment home or renting the capital needed to buy a home. Most Americans don't consider that they are renting equity (from the bank) to buy a home. As you are aware, very little equity is built in the first few years of paying a mortgage. Many people are surprisingly still very unaware of this fact.

This following article explains how renting is financially better than buying in about 75% of cases!

For the Past 30 Years, Renting Was Generally Better Than Buying

If homeownership is the American dream, then the nation had better wake up. That's the message from a new research paper that examines whether buying or renting a home was a better financial decision over the past 30 years. Most would find the result surprising: over the period Americans were better off renting between 65% and 75% of the time, depending on the investment alternative.

The article essentially looks at eight-year periods and assumes that a person invests the money he or she saves by renting. Since buying is generally more expensive than renting, renters have extra money to invest. It also makes a number of assumptions favorable to homeownership, including gains from the mortgage interest tax deduction, the option to refinance, and the ability to walk away -- loss-free -- from an underwater mortgage. Still, renting wins approximately three-quarters of the time.

The staff at economic research organization e21 explains why this result actually shouldn't be so shocking:

Counterintuitive as the finding may be to some, it is actually quite logical. Unless someone possesses the cash necessary to buy a residence, he or she will be renting one way or another. The choice is between renting the property directly or instead renting the capital necessary to buy the property. The amount of capital to be rented is a function of house prices, while the bulk of a mortgage payment is interest, which is the rental payment on this capital. After 2 years, the typical 30-year amortizing mortgage balance has been reduced by less than 3%. This means that a household that took out a $300,000 mortgage with a 5% interest rate to buy a home has only reduced its mortgage balance by $8,600 after two years despite spending nearly $39,000 in total over this period.

Housing advocates may respond by pointing out that at least the $8,600 in this scenario went towards home equity rather than simply being squandered on rent. But, as demonstrated in the Real Estate Economics article, the principal component of each mortgage payment - i.e. the portion of the mortgage payment that goes towards reducing the principal mortgage balance instead of interest - is an added expense renters don't have.

This turns the real estate industry's biggest talking point on its head: you aren't throwing rent into the wind each month, you're casting away equity.

Of course, that equity also provides a potential benefit. The analysis's eight-year rolling methodology appears to miss the biggest reward of owning a home: living rent-free once the home is paid off. After that 30-years is up, the longer a family remains in that home rent-free, the more buying pays off. Taking this into account would almost certainly change the result in some, if not all situations. Renting may be a better option initially, but there's no eventual reward.

An important point still needs to be made here: buying a home that you don't plan to live in for an extended period of time probably isn't a great idea. The rent you pay in the form of interest on a 30-year loan for five or even 10 years won't be any better than if you had just rented outright. But if you're planning on living in a home for 30-plus years, then you could potentially get some benefit from buying rather than renting.

Original article by By Daniel Indiviglio, The Atlantic