I came across a useful website that helps you determine how walkable a home or neighborhood is. Walkscore.com allows you to enter an address, and it shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. A property’s walk score is determined by how far away nearby stores, restuarants, schools, parks, and other destinations are from the property you entered. The idea is that the higher the walk score, the easier it is to get to local establishments by walking.
I like the idea of getting to know how close local stores, shops, etc. are to a certain property. I guess you could do the same type of search on maps.google.com, but Walkscore.com puts it together in a nice, easy to use package. I would definitely put this site into your home buyer toolkit.
From the nightly news, to friendly banter between parents at soccer games, the credit crunch is an issue we all have to deal with. Potential home buyers may be emotionally and financially ready to buy a home, the problem many face is getting the initial financing. As an ongoing series on the PopCasa blog, we are going to post information and links to resources to non-traditional forms of home financing such has county of city specific programs.
Through their Department of Housing, The County of San Mateo offers various home buying assistance programs. It looks like many of the programs that were once available, are now gone. However, they list a few. Many of these programs have some type of restriction (income, city, etc.). FYI…when considering using a county/city buyer assistance program find out if the county or city will be entitled to a portion of any equity gain when you sell the property.
Below is a nice document outlining the various programs currently available via the County of San Mateo. Check back often as we plan to keep searching for more assistance programs offered throughout the Bay Area. If you know of any programs, please let us know through the comments.
The agents at PopCasa are passionate about helping people buy homes. This blog is dedicated to providing home buyers with real estate advice, the latest real estate news affecting the Bay Area, and our opinions on the latest trends and news.
I came across a useful website that helps you determine how walkable a home or neighborhood is. Walkscore.com allows you to enter an address, and it shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. A property’s walk score is determined by how far away nearby stores, restuarants, schools, parks, and other destinations are from the property you entered. The idea is that the higher the walk score, the easier it is to get to local establishments by walking.
