The emerald coast real estate market has been booming lately, and last year was certainly no exception. So this has home buyers and home sellers asking, what is the emerald coast real estate market going to be like in 2020? Is everything slowing down this year? Or are we still on the climb?
2020 Real Estate A Mixed Bag
Local realtor, Ginny Lee Deptula, recently posted a great update video breaking down the numbers released by the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors at the end of last year. It looks like the answer to the question of what 2020 will be like really depends on what community you’re talking about. As Ginny Lee points out, the Emerald Coast is not just one region. There are several micro regions within it that vary quite a bit.
Seller’s Market in Niceville, FL:
Inventory is down 29% with 1.7 months currently
Supply is down 28%
Prices are up more than 10%
Buyer’s Market in Santa Rosa Beach, FL:
Inventory is down 28% with 6.3 months currently
Supply is up 2.6%
Prices are up over 18%
Neutral Market in Destin, FL:
Inventory is down 33.5% with 5.6 months currently
Supply is down 7.6%
Prices are up more than 18%
Watch Ginny Lee’s full video breakdown here:
So it’s a really good time right now to be selling a home in Niceville and buying in Santa Rosa Beach. But there are also exciting opportunities in our little niche communities all across the Emerald Coast, from Seaside to Freeport to Fort Walton Beach, and all in between.
If you’re in the market to buy or sell a home, let us help you navigate this confusing 2020 market. Contact us right away for a free consultation.
We sometimes have clients who like a lot of do-it-yourself type projects, and we get a reoccurring question: what are the things I should not DIY? After all, some projects around the house you can handle yourself if you have some time and are a little handy. But other things you definitely should not handle yourself. So what are the top types of projects a homeowner should not do themselves? What projects are best left to the trained professionals?
1. Don’t DIY Structural Projects
Anything having to deal with structural support should be left to the professionals. For instance:
Load-bearing walls
Floor systems
Decks/Docks
Anything that would support a large amount of weight, you should usually leave that to the professional.
Why?
Because constructing things is a science and not an art. You can’t just paint with broad strokes or pick your favorite color. You have to build it a certain way. If you don’t know which board goes where, how you’re supposed to secure it, what your fasteners are rated for, what your boards are rated for, etc. – then you could have a very serious situation on your hands. When it comes down to a matter of safety, let the professionals handle it. They’re the ones that are licensed and insured and regulated, and they’re the ones who know exactly what they’re doing. So anything that deals with structural floor systems, decks, porches, roofs, load-bearing walls, don’t DIY.
2. Don’t DIY Electrical Projects
Stay away from electrical work. Electrical work requires a lot of training and a lot of knowledge – specialized knowledge like:
Different gauged wires
Circuits
Electrical currents
Anytime you start dealing with power, you’re dealing with a safety issue. If you’re not intimate with the knowledge of electrical current, how power flows from one side to the other, and grounding, you could really cause some problems and get hurt very bad. So we recommend if you’ve got any electrical issues, don’t mess it with it yourself. Call a service professional who can come out there to take care of it for you. So again, it’s a matter of safety best left to the professionals.
3. Don’t DIY Most Plumbing Tasks
Most plumbing should be left to the professionals. Well, you say that’s not a matter of safety, right?
But really it is.
Plumbers are required to be licensed for very specific reasons. The entire house system is tied to either the septic system or sewer system. And as a result, extremely large amounts of methane gas is able to pour back into the house through the pipes.
Now, if your plumber is not licensed or properly trained, then he may not know how to trap the gas to keep it from getting into your house. And if you can’t do that, it could cause some very serious health issues and hazards. So they’re required to be licensed for a reason, and it deals with gas. But also, if you have a pipe that’s not fitted correctly or not glued or clamped correctly, then you could be looking at tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage because of just a 99 cent part.
So it’s important to get somebody who knows what they’re doing when handling your home’s plumbing issues. Don’t risk the safety and damage associated with incorrect work. Don’t DIY your plumbing.
4. Don’t DIY Roofing
Roofing is a difficult job. Hats off to the roofers of the world! It’s not only an extremely hard job, but it’s also extremely dangerous. And it’s got a lot of overhead. Professional roofers are required to have all kinds of different insurances and safety training. There are just millions of ways your roofing project can go wrong.
If you don’t thoroughly understand the principles of watershed and waterproofing, you ‘ve got no reason to attempt patching your own roof or changing your own roof or anything like that. Call service professional. It’s not worth attempting to DIY your own roof.
5. Don’t DIY Flooring
Finally, while this is not a safety issue, it is certainly a cost-effectiveness issue. Don’t DIY your flooring. This includes any type of interior flooring, such as:
Wood flooring
Tile
Carpet
Or any floor covering
We strongly recommend you call or hire a service professional who is experienced in flooring installation. And the reason for this is that your floor is the most used appliance in your house. People walk on it every day. It gets very amounts of traffic in different areas more than others. And if it’s not installed correctly, if it’s not installed right and in a quality manner, then it can be damaged. Improper installation can even void the warranties for your flooring.
There are all kinds of unexpected things that can go wrong if you install your flooring wrong. Don’t spend your money twice. Get a professional to install your flooring for you.
Again, everyone loves a little DIY from time to time. And it can be a great way to save money on small projects. But here are five things you definitely don’t want to do yourself. Some DIY projects might cost you more in time, money, and safety than you’re willing to pay.
Whenever you stain raw wood, it’s important to varnish or seal it before use. Otherwise, the stain could absorb oils and grime from use, and you might ruin that stained surface. Let’s look at the proper way to varnish a stained surface. Here are your steps.
1. Apply in a moderate climate.
When you stain or varnish, make sure you have an even climate. Make sure you are not applying in a spot with part shade and part sun. Otherwise, it will dry unevenly, and you don’t want that.
Also, it’s important if it’s really warm outside, not to apply in direct sunlight. Otherwise, your varnish (or stain) will dry too quickly. You want to apply in temperature that is moderate so that it doesn’t heat up too fast and dry uneven. Go for all shaded or full sun in the evening or cool temperature.
2. Load brush with a conservative amount of varnish.
Load up your brush with a conservative amount of varnish. Dip it a couple times and strain it out. Repeat. Now we’re ready to apply.
3. Apply on a flat surface first.
Just like with applying stain, start with a large flat surface. We’re varnishing a newel rod, so we will start on the flat surfaces near the top and bottom. Spread it until the brush is almost empty.
Make sure you go with the grain of the wood if at all possible. So get all the varnish out of the brush with broad strokes on a flat surface before moving on.
4. Work hard-to-get areas before reloading.
After getting most of the varnish out of the brush, work in the hard-to-get areas. The reason we do this last is because varnish runs very easily.
5. Repeat the process until the whole surface is covered.
Reload your brush again and hit a broad, flat surface again to work out the majority of your varnish in the brush. Then hit those nooks and crannies again until your item is covered.
It’s difficult to go with the grain when you’re working in the little grooves. So you obviously need to work it in however you can and then feather it out in broad strokes so it doesn’t have any runs or any varnish going against the grains.
6. Keep an eye out for runs.
When you roll your wood over, you can sometimes see where you’ve put a little too much varnish, and it built up. This is not good. Keep an eye out for that – especially on the underside.
When you rotate a newel post over to get at the bottom after having applied varnish to the three other surfaces, keep an eye out for running varnish. Any excess will have run over to the bottom side, and you want to fix this before it dries.
7. Fix any runs you find.
Sometimes you miss a run, and your varnish runs. So load up your brush just a little and get the majority out of it on a flat surface. Come over to where your run is and level it out. You don’t want any runs. Get a nice even coat. Get in there and work it out, back and forth until it’s even and consistent.
8. Do a final sweep.
Go over the whole piece of wood you are varnishing and make sure you leave no surface unsealed. Look for any blemishes or uneven spots. Feather everything the way it’s supposed to be.
Go back and look for brush hairs or any foreign objects in your varnish. Make sure it comes out, and then feather over to put the grain back in the varnish.
9. Sand it smooth.
After your first coat has thoroughly dried, come back and repeat the above steps as many times as needed until you get the sheen you’re going for.
Then come back with a sandpaper that is at least 1500-grit. Dip it in water and sand down all surface area. Don’t worry about scratching it. You’re not going to. Just make sure the sandpaper is dipped in water and keep a wet edge. What you will do is turn a course varnish into something that feels as smooth as glass.
What are the best tips and tricks for staining raw wood? We’re going to show you the proper way to stain raw wood by walking you through the steps for staining a raw newel post for a set of stairs. We will turn the post into a much darker and prettier wood.
Setting Up
For our stain, we’ve chosen to use Honey Minwax 272.
I want to show you the correct way to apply, so that you don’t stain your wood too dark or too light. It’s important to start with a good clean and smooth sanded surface on all the wood you’re going to stain. As we see on our newel post, everything’s been sanded down. Everything’s smooth.
Before you start, make sure you clean your hands really well. You want your hands to be free from oil and grime. You don’t want it to interfere, because this is an oil-based stain. And if you’ve got extra oil already on the wood or on your hands, it’s not going to apply very well.
Then we will get a conservative amount of stain on our rag. Use a clean cloth – something that doesn’t do a lot of shedding. And then we’re going to apply it in a large field area and spread it quickly. The reason to do that is because the longer stain sits on the surface of wood, the darker it gets.
If you want your wood item to be darker, then you can always apply a second coat. But once it’s dark, you can never make it lighter, because the wood sucks ups the stain.
The Application
So what we’re going to do is apply the stain quickly and spread it thin. Cover a lot of territory fast. Get the largest portion of the stain off of your rag quickly by covering as much territory as you can right off the bat.
Now that we have the stain largely off our rag, we’re not going to let it sit. We want to work it into the grain of the wood. Work it into the grooves as much as possible. There is always a lot more than stain in your rag than you realize. So get the majority off of it quickly.
This way, you don’t have dark spots or light spots. It’s all real even. As we can see from our newel post, it’s all starting to come together as we work into the grain and grooves repeatedly.
So you can see with just one cloth how much of the post we covered. With just one dip of stain on our cloth, we covered practically the entire piece of wood. It’s nice and even and beautiful. There are still some areas to touch up, but that covered the majority of it.
Next Steps
Next, we want to make sure everything is very lightly sanded again, and then we’ll apply a coat of clear semi-gloss polyurethane to give it protection. And the reason is because, if you don’t seal or urethane your stained surface, then it will still be susceptible to soak up oils. So if you walk with your hand across this piece of stained wood and you have any grease or grime on your fingers, it will soak it up and give the wood dark spots. We don’t want dark spots. So anytime you stain anything, come back with a clear coat and seal it.
I like to use Minwax polyurethane for my varnish. But use whichever you like best. This tutorial shows you the basics for the proper way to apply a stain coat to raw wood. We’ll show you in another post how to apply the polyurethane varnish.
Please share this video with anyone who might find it helpful, and let us know in the comments what you think!
Weather it be a fireplace mantle or accent wall or wood on a vaulted ceiling, I’m finding that popular demand is calling for stained wood inside high-end homes. And more specifically, the trend is for cypress inside their homes. Cypress is extremely big right now. We handle a lot of million-dollar homes down in south Walton county, and everyone is trying to get a line on some cypress. It’s very hot.
Pond Cypress v. Bald Cypress
So let’s discuss where the Cypress comes from. In the southeast part of the country, which is where we’re at, there are basically two common varieties of cypress trees. We have pond cypress and we have bald cypress. Both varieties are extremely hardy tress. They are slow growing and prefer wetlands. And they have an expected longevity of over a thousand years. If you leave a cypress tree alone, it’ll grow for a thousand years.
Pond cypress are a little more versatile because they don’t require wetlands. They can be in dry or wet areas. In fact you find a lot of landscapers will use these on high-end homes around ponds, down drain fields, and in irrigation areas. They can they can handle the drought as well as the floods. And that’s where you’ll find pond cypress.
They grow a little bit faster and mature a little quicker. They’re shorter, smaller, and a little bit fuller than their native cousin, the bald cypress – which is the one that I’m most interested in.
The bald cypress grows almost exclusively along rivers and in the swamp. And the bald cypress is known by many different names:
southern cypress
red cypress
white cypress
yellow cypress
gulf cypress
swamp cypress
bell-bottom cypress
Now, at the moment, I’m sitting on the Satilla River in southern Georgia. And I am surrounded by beautiful cypress trees. As the cypress grows down into the ground, it bells out creating a widening trunk and root “knees.” The root system is extremely complex, and these are very slow growing trees, strong and dense.
Plus these are almost entirely water-resistant or even water proof. This is why most people will use bald cypress for roof shingles or exterior doors or even for exterior siding. Cypress is used as a premium building material in high-end decor and accents almost everywhere in south Walton county. If you want to increase the value of your property or really make it pop, or if you want it to sell quick and have that curb appeal, then you want throw some cypress in there. Bald cypress is very hot right now.
Two Premium Cypress Products
But let’s discuss two specific kinds of bald cypress. There are two specific kinds that my homeowners are calling for right now. The first kind is called deadhead or sinker cypress. This is when a cypress tree falls into the water or dies and the cold water preserves it and knocks off the fat and holds the heart intact. All the sap condenses inside, and the cold water almost petrifies it. It makes it extremely dense, extremely rich, and absolutely gorgeous.
A pure deadhead cypress can sit in the river for a hundred years before it’s pulled out and milled and sent to your home for premium decor or a structural pillar or fire mantle, etc. It’s an ultra premium building material and very classy. If you want to impress your friends, throw some deadhead cypress products in your home.
The other kind is pecky cypress, something that I’m finding is in high demand around here. Pecky cypress is the product of a fungus that develops on the tree bark. It eats through the bark into the actual wood itself creating little caterpillar-shaped cavities. It goes on for tens and even hundreds of years and threatens the life of the tree. It can even kill the tree at times. But when this is milled, it creates an unbelievably beautiful effect in the wood.
If you’re looking for a way to increase the value of your home, blow people away, and help your house sell quicker than your neighbor’s, throw in some cypress for a touch of class.
If you have any questions on how to use cypress in your home, what kind of cypress to use, and where you might put it in your home, please reach out. I love to hear your comments and question. And we’re always happy to help.
![The Proper Way to Varnish Stained Wood [WITH PICTURES]](https://i0.wp.com/joscobayhomes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/AdobeStock_55539292MED.jpg?resize=1080%2C675&ssl=1)
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So let’s discuss where the Cypress comes from. In the southeast part of the country, which is where we’re at, there are basically two common varieties of cypress trees. We have pond cypress and we have bald cypress. Both varieties are extremely hardy tress. They are slow growing and prefer wetlands. And they have an expected longevity of over a thousand years. If you leave a cypress tree alone, it’ll grow for a thousand years.
