One excellent home safety tool is the use of dead bolts. Keeping your doors protected by sturdy dead bolt locks is a great way to keep your home safe from would-be intruders. Of course, it’s vitally important to find the best deadbolt you can purchase. Some are simply far more effective and thus more discouraging to burglars than many others. You’ll want to be sure to install deadbolt locks on every exterior door, even between the garage and home’s interior. Burglars aren’t big fans of sturdy deadbolts. They prefer picking a much easier spring lock, or an inexpensive, flimsy deadbolt to a secure model. Often, burglars will avoid buildings with strong dead bolts in search of an easier target.

Grade 1 or ANSI-designated Deadbolt Locks

This grade specification means that these locks can’t be easily picked, pried, hammered or drilled out. These dead bolts have been tested to show that they can withstand up to ten hammer blows, and that they can work effectively long term. Grade 1 locks are tested to see that they can open and close two hundred and fifty thousand times, and that they can project a minimum of one inch into the door frame. Grade two dead bolts are also considered recommended for home use, but the grade one specification is a much more secure locking system.

Two of my favorite deadbolt locks are the Schlage B60 609 Grade 1 Single Cylinder Deadbolt and the Kwikset 99800-092, which are two reasonably priced yet top of the line models. Another solid deadbolt lock choice is the Signatures 980 Grade 1 Security Single Cylinder SmartKey. This option has a customized security system allowing simple lock re-keying if you lose a key.

At the high end of the price scale for deadlocks, you’ll find another good choice – the Medeco Maxum 11WC60L, one of the toughest out there. Also popular are electronic keyless deadbolts such as The Suunect AP501AB and the Schlage BE365VCAM619 Camelot Deadbolt Keypad, which are both excellent keyless dead bolts.

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News of Abbott Realty Group’s decision to stop syndicating its listings to real estate aggregators such as Trulia and Zillow renewed the discussion in the industry regarding the value of third-party sites in marketing properties. To summarize the point made by the likes of ABR and Edina, which made the decision in November, is that third-party aggregators take listing information (which is ‘owned’ by the listing brokerage) as content for their sites, which drives traffic to these sites. The resulting traffic then becomes a valuable commodity which can be leveraged into selling advertising, whether to individual agents, brokerages, or add-on services (i.e. moving companies). A consensus among the anti-syndication crowd is that data is often outdated, automated-valuation models (i.e. Zestimates) are inaccurate, and that ultimately these portals are using listings to attract traffic to their sites, so that they can sell those ‘leads’ and ad space to real estate agents.

The flip side of the argument, at least as made by Zillow’s CEO Spencer Rascoff, is that portals such as Zillow are ‘most likely to provide the most exposure to the most buyers,’ which results in listings selling faster and at a higher price. He goes on to say that ‘not putting listings on Zillow, Realtor.com and Trulia is tantamount to abandoning any hope of finding a buyer who is using a mobile device’ (emphasis added by Mr. Rascoff), which would lead one to believe that the big aggregators have a monopoly in mobile technology – a point that many leading innovators could argue against.

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Snow is on the ground here in Park City Utah which can only mean one thing– time to ski! Every year Park City is one of the premiere destinations for skiing and snowboarding in North America. Known for having the “Best Snow On Earth”, Park City provides three of the largest resorts, with another five top rated-resorts within an hour’s drive. Ski Magazine recently rated Deer Valley the #1 resort in America, and PCMR the #1 family resort. Park City provides many options, whether you’re planning a fun-filled ski vacation for the whole family, or here to enjoy the luxuries of “Skiers Only” at Deer Valley Ski Resort.

Having skied and snowboarded all of the resorts in the area, I typically choose Deer Valley for skiing and The Canyons Resort for all of my snowboarding. The Canyons’ newly updated resort is great for on location lodging and is known for some of the best open terrain in the world.

Opening Dates:

• Deer Valley Resort: December 2nd
• The Canyons Resort: November 25th
• Park City Mountain Resort: Opened November 19th

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The State of San Francisco

Jay Greenberg reports on Q1 results for 5-9 unit and 10+ unit sector in a good article for the SFAA magazine. All in all it was encouraging in that multi-family sectors are certainly showing bullish signs after the housing bust. Sales are up, rental demand is strong and better pricing makes a compelling case for value.

5-9 Sector
This sector is now at the lowest price per sq. foot in five years. The price in 2007 was $296 and peaked in 2008 at $325. Q1 2011 is at $296 per sq ft. In 2007 the gross rent multiplier (GRM) was slightly better than 17. Q1 2011, we are looking at an average GRM of 12.09.

10+ sector
Price per sq ft in 20007 was $290. For Q1 2011 we are at $227. GRM in 2007 stood at 14.77. Today the average GRM is 11.22. Continue reading this post

Candy Evans is one of the nation’s leading celebrity real estate reporters, bloggers and consultants. She writes for AOL Real Estate and runs her own blog, SecondShelters.com

Based in Dallas, Candy was a longtime contributing editor to Dallas’ D Magazine and sister pubs. In 2007, she founded the wildly successful Dallas real estate blog, DallasDirt, where she broke the news on where former president George W. Bush bought his post-presidential home.

We’re excited to have Candy on board and we’re looking forward to her first post!

Buying a home is never easy. It takes a lot of time and energy to find the right home. By the time you find ‘the one’ you have likely looked through hundreds of properties online and viewed at least a dozen homes. Unfortunately, all that work was the easy part, now the negotiation. Here are 5 tips to help you get a great deal on purchasing your next home.

Use comps – Ask your agent for a list of comps. It would be best if you are there with them while they are searching. Be sure that the list is recent and relevant. These should really be comparable properties in large part. Once you have this list be sure that your Realtor uses ones that will work to your advantage. This is your best chance to defend your price.

Put forth your best, almost – Your goal is to get a great deal – right? Put forth an offer that is less than market but not by a lot. Don’t give the seller the impression you are goofing off. Extend to your agent that this is you putting your best foot forward. Give the impression to the sellers that if they reject, you are gone. This point is not to avoid looking like a jerk (that does not matter in real estate). The point is to leave a legitimate carrot, which if accepted, still leaves you with a favorable deal.

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