Radon is a radioactive gas that has been found in homes all over the US. It comes from the natural breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water and gets into the air you breath. Radon typically moves up through the ground to the air above and into your home through cracks and other holes in the foundation. Any home can have a radon problem. New, old, well seals and drafty homes are all possible. Home right next to each other can have different radon levels. Radon can be mitigated, but not eliminated or guaranteed to remain below EPA recommended levels. From the Surgeon General Health Advisory: Indoor radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US and breathing it over prolonged periods can present a significant health risk to families all over the country. It’s important to know that this treat is completely preventable. Radon can be detected with a simple test and fixed through well-established venting techniques.” January 2005 Radon testing http://www.epa.gov/iaq/states/epa_region9.htmlRegional Offices and R And how can discover if there is, indeed an increase level of Radon gas in your home? You can test it and see. Short-term radon tests remain in a building for two to ninety days. Charcoal canisters, alpha track, electric ion chamber, continuous monitors, and charcoal liquid scintillation detectors are common types of short-term tests. Radon levels change from day to day and season to season. Therefore, short-term test are less likely to indicate the year-round average radon level. ? Long-term radon tests last more than 90 days, and therefore are able to more accurately quantify average radon levels of a home throughout the course of a year. Alpha track and electric detectors are commonly used for long-term tests. The average indoor radon level is about 1.3 pCI/L and outdoor average level is about 0.4 pCi/L The goal set by congress is that the radon levels indoor be no more than the outdoor levels. While this goal is not yet technologically achievable in all cases, most homes today can be reduced to 2 pCi/L or below. Building codes in your state or local area may require radon-resistant features. Ask if the new home has such radon-resistant features. Mitigating radon levels may be as easy as installing a vent fan to a passive ventilator system.

When you put your house on the market, what is the cheapest way to get most bang for your buck? And recommended by 99% of realtors? You know the answer – de clutter and clean the house. Really, you have no idea. This is what I do not understand, the frantic cleaning, improving and organizing and painting that my clients do only when they are leaving their homes. Shouldn’t they have been cleaning and de-cluttering while still in their homes? I read countless articles (because I’m obsessed) with suggestions like – Before you put your house on the market, fix that leaking water faucet and make sure all the kitchen drawers open easily. Really, fix those things just before a sale? If I was standing in my kitchen spending my evening jerking the stuck junk drawer open for the 1,000th time because the sissors opens up inside and catches on the underside of the drawer and the faucet to my left started that infernal dripping again, I would go mad and there would be more to fix than just the sticky drawer. So what interests me is the source of all this helpful information. What prompted a magazine to pay a writer to give advice like: before strangers wander through your house for the sole purpose of judging your housekeeping, make sure you empty the cat litter box in the guest bath and wipe the ketchup off the kitchen counters. For the longest time I thought, well, this is just hyperbole, no one really lives in a pig sty with sticky drawer and un-swept kitchen floors. But no, I was wrong. I have walked into houses that are “open for showing” and you cannot see the bedroom floor for all the clothes strewn about. The bed is unmade and the huge fifty inch TV looms over the master bedroom space like Darth Vader on a tear which makes it pretty clear why this couple is getting divorced and has to sell. So frankly, when it comes to mess, I don’t recommend picking up your house because you may sell it. I recommend picking up the house before your spouse comes home from work. I recommend hiring a monthly house cleaner if you can’t face the bathrooms anymore. I recommend recycling the playboy magazines from 1976, I don’t care that they make you feel patriotic every time you read the articles. Get rid of the stuff. Clear and open up the house while you are living in it, just seeing nice dusted surfaces will reduce your stress and maybe just save your relationship in the first place. And here’s another rant. If you have so much stuff that you must rent a storage container to keep the stuff, re-consider the stuff. Consider this, if there was a fire, what would you grab? Children? Pets? The pewter soup spoon collection? Don’t answer right away. Really, start from fire and work backwards. For a more beautiful home: re-think the crap. Disclaimer – the author would like to point out that no matter what I say, she is not giving away her books any time soon. Allison Little first appears in Death Revokes the Offer – part of the Little Book series. Read about Allison on www.missbehaved.com. Learn more about Real Estate at www.CatharineBramkamp.com or www.Century21.com

Allison Little is the main character in Death Revokes the Offer.  Allison is as real as anything virtual can be, follow her here and in the book when I come out.

I consider myself quite real, but for disclosure sake,
my views are not that of the author nor are they
representative of the author’s “real” business.  I’m
here because I’m funny and I’m always right, so you
can listen to me, you can be entertained, and you
won’t do much better.

What does a Blog do?  Besides assuage the latent
desires of the author to be published.  You don’t even
want to hear the saga of this author and her
publishing adventures. It’s a very, very long story.
Or, as her father use to say – don’t use very, if it’s
big enough, use damn. So her publishing saga is a damn
long story. There is your writing tip for the day.
And boring, the writing saga, or any saga towards fame
and fortune is boring, that’s because there are long
stretches of practice – if you’re an athlete,
education if you’re a surgeon and failed experiments
if you’re a researchers. But we, as a group, think
that everything happens over night, because when some
famous person is being interviewed for Vogue or
Newsweek or for the Nobel prize, the boring parts, the
years of working on a project, the years of working in
community theater or writing copy for a catalog or
making commercials are passed over in one sentence –
Like, he tried for a long time. He worked for a long
time.  A family friend directed Little Miss Sunshine,
a subject that his sister is heartily tired of hearing
about so she moved back to Paris.  Anyway Joan Dayton
commented that yes, he certainly is an over night
success, and to think, he’s only fifty years old.
See, it’s like that.  And on the way to overnight
fame, did he max out credit cards?  Oh probably. Did
he spend years on other projects, working up to this
one?  Oh yes, and did he spend years of hearing the
word no, sorry and maybe next time – guaranteed.  
So, Were you bored yet?  See, Stick with me, I don’t
have a boring back-story, that’s the advantage of a
fictional character. I’m all right here. No hang ups,
no psychosis. Okay, when you meet my mother, I’ll
probably have to back up on the psychosis thing.
So I’m a Realtor, I work for New Century Real Estate.
No, do not look it up. You can look up Century 21 and
get the same idea.

What do you want to know about real estate? Nothing,
you know everything don’t you?  You’re on the web
after all, you visited Zillow.com and now you have the
price of everything and the value of nothing.  You
have great inner confidence about your own skills, and
they are vast and deep. You know that that really, you
can certainly buy a house yourself; any moron can do
the work (think about that, good.) And market your own
house? How hard can it be? Sure, just because you had
a successful lemonade stand in the third grade and you
sold the most girl scout cookies in the sixth grade,
and in college you successfully traded favors for,
well never mind.  All these cumulative experiences add
up to one dynamite marketer. Yep, all you need is a
sign and you’ll “save” thousands of dollars.
Sure you will. Keep thinking that, And let me know how
it goes, I’m on your side, really, because if you know
that much and you are bound and determined to save
thousands of dollars because you are under the
impression that Real Estate agents just get too much
money and you want it in YOUR pocket, I don’t even
want to talk to you.  Put up your sign and watch those
savings roll in.

I could save thousands by coloring my own hair too.
For argument sake, let’s say selling a house is a bit
more complicated than begging your aunt to buy 100
boxes of thin mints.  Hang out here, or give the
author a call, because she has more real time than I
do.

As for the Blog. If you want to learn random pieces of
information about my own favorite subjects. Real
estate, wine, Sonoma County living and how to have
Serious Attitude, come here and check it out.

For dos and don’ts visit the web site
Catharinebramkamp.com For more about me, Allison
Little, New Century Realtor and inadvertent solver of
mysteries you can read the first three chapters about
me on missbehaved.com – yeah, the author has been
doing this long enough to snag a great domain name.
If you have any questions and you want a more than
honest answer. By all means contact me, Allison at the
authors address.

If you have any questions and you want a more than honest answer. By all means contact me, Allison at the authors address. Catharine@CatharineBramkamp.com make sure AllisonLittle@CatharineBramkamp.com and get a flat out true answer, one that is not about selling you anything, we know that won’t happen because you’ll talk to me for about three weeks then get distracted by something shiny and you’ll either forget you were suppose to buy a home, or you’ll buy a plasma TV instead (true story) or you’ll trip across another real estate agent who will claim to have great bargains and you’ll wander happily off with him or her. I know this, so come on and get an honest answer. Or not, I’m busy so it’s not like I’m waiting around the computer waiting for your question. Thanks for reading so far. Allison Little first appears in Death Revokes the Offer – part of the Little Book series. Read about Allison on www.missbehaved.com. Learn more about Real Estate at www.CatharineBramkamp.com or www.Century21.com