One in five reported reducing their prices in the past month to increase sales and limit contract cancellations. But a better outlook may be on the horizon, says NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.
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St Kitts and Nevis is the latest Caribbean destination to officially remove all of its travel restrictions, Caribbean Journal has confirmed.
The update means that travelers no longer have to show proof of a negative test or show proof of vaccination to enter the Federation.
There’s also no quarantine of any kind.
All travelers to St Kitts and Nevis do still have to fill out an online customs and immigration form before arrival. (You can find the Immigration and Customs form here).
The move comes under the guidance of new St Kitts and Nevis’ new Prime Minister, Dr Terrance Drew, who also serves as Minister of Health.
“The removal of entry testing and vaccination requirements comes at a time when traveler confidence is on the rise. The combination of increasing demand and more seamless travel processes will make St. Kitts even more desirable to visitors abroad,” said Ellison “Tommy” Thompson, CEO of the St. Kitts Tourism Authority. “We are pleased to communicate the removal of restrictions which would improve the destination’s travel experience.”
The change comes as St Kitts is holding its Sweet Side of Summer travel program, which includes three nights free at all participating hotels.
In November, the destination launches its annual Grill Fest, a showcase of local grill masters and “exceptional food and drink.”
“We’re excited to be taking this crucial step to fully open Nevis’ borders to the world,” said Devon Liburd, CEO of the Nevis Tourism Authority. “Lifting these protocols will allow us to further share our rich culture and offerings to visitors coming to the island.”
For more, visit St Kitts.
The post St Kitts and Nevis Just Lifted All Travel Restrictions appeared first on Caribbean Journal.
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When it comes to selling a house, there will be a point where you’ll need to prepare for a home inspection. But what is a home inspection?
What tasks need to be undertaken before the home inspector arrives?
And what do you need to do to prepare for this?
Let’s look at some of the basics first.
HomeAdvisor says the average home inspection will cost between $280 – $401.
The variation in cost is determined by location in the country, size of the property, and how easy it is to inspect. If your heaters and furnaces are in hard-to-reach places, you could be served a more extensive bill.
As an FYI, home inspections are optional, but if there are any undisclosed issues, you could be liable in some states.
This means it’s in your best interest to hire a professional to inspect your home to avoid future liabilities.
So when should you start preparing for a home inspection?
A home inspection should occur before an appraiser arrives from a potential buyer’s financial institution. An appraiser will verify that the property’s listing price and agreed-upon offer are equal to at least market value.
The timing around when you call in a home inspection isn’t stipulated into law, but we’d suggest doing it as soon as possible.
Your inspector will go through your home and generate a report on what they think is required to meet an independent appraiser’s standards.
Bear in mind that an appraiser will conduct research into the home and will be armed with a comparative market analysis (CMA) to generate their report for the bank. So they will be well informed.
The CMA will list the prices of homes that have sold in the area over the last nine months and information gathered on the surrounding properties that have sold within a three-mile radius.
This information will give them just a general idea of pricing. For the appraiser to get a better picture, they will also need to investigate:
While this may seem like a comprehensive list of elements to investigate, your home inspector will be looking for issues buried out of sight and mind.
So, what is a home inspector’s checklist comprised of?
When wondering, “How to prepare for a home inspection as a seller?” You need to know what elements of the home the inspector will analyze.
These include the following:
The curbside appeal of your home can increase the perceived home value by up to 11%. While this has more to do with paint and landscaping, your home inspector will look closely at every detail. Such as:
And that’s just the outside. So what’s next on their checklist?
If your home has a basement, your inspector will be keen to take a closer look at it. In the basement, the home inspector can gauge the foundations of a building and more. But they will also be reviewing:
As this is the base of the home, the home inspector will want to ensure that everything is above board here. Issues with foundations can automatically end any ideas you have of selling your home unless you find a cash buyer.
What’s the next room on the home inspector’s checklist?
After completing the groundwork, it’s time to investigate the roof and more. The attic is the first line of defense from potential leaks in the roof. Other elements a home inspector will want to view are:
Now it’s time to investigate the rooms, starting with the heart of the home.
The kitchen is one of the rooms in a home that can turn a potential buyer into a person with an offer. The home inspector will be looking at:
If you live with a smoke detector, they will test whether it works, which means one of the most straightforward tasks when preparing for a home inspection is checking its batteries.
Next up is the bathroom.
One of the essential rooms in the home is the bathroom. It’s where you take care of your business, after all. But what are home inspectors looking for? Well, they’re concerned with:
Now it’s time to review the other rooms of the home.
This is a blanket term for all rooms in the home, including the living room, bedrooms, lounge, and dining room, to name just a few.
In all these separate spaces, the home inspector will be viewing:
While your home inspector has investigated all the plumbing and electrical systems in each room, they will review the entire system again.
Out of all the tasks the home inspector will be investigating, electrical and plumbing is one of the most important.
If there is an issue with either of these elements, it will affect the entire home. This can be expensive. So, what are the most important plumbing areas?
With electrical systems, they will be reviewing:
While this is an extensive list, there are bound to be others that are unique to your property. This will mean the home inspector is going to want to investigate them, too.
Some spaces and elements aren’t a concern to home inspectors. They include:
So, now that you know what they’re looking at, here’s how to prepare your house for a home inspection.
When welcoming a home inspector to your house, you need to ensure some essential elements have been taken care of, which include the following:
It’s essential that the inspector can see all the corners of your home. Dirty walls and floors can mask problems.
No one is amused by having to climb over odd ends around the home. Make sure to declutter spaces. And as the realtor will want to stage your home after this, you might as well.
When clearing away clutter around the home, easy access to spaces storing furnaces and water heaters.
The same goes for crawl spaces. As the seller, it is in your best interest that the home inspector can identify issues.
Your home inspector will want to view the guttering and exterior of your roof. This might mean doing some trimming of trees and shrubs.
If other utility points are covered with foliage, you will want to make it easy for them to access. This leads us to the next job.
You might have switched off the utilities if you are not currently living on the property. When the inspector does arrive, these need to be on to prove they are functional.
Also, check all your safety shut-off valves and switches as this can be an easy issue to highlight when they arrive.
Other general maintenance jobs should also be completed to help the inspector identify issues.
And if you have a record of maintenance work being carried out, sharing this with the inspector will help immensely.
Making sure problematic pets are taken for a walk and children are out of the way will always be a benefit. Also, schedule the inspection with enough time to take care of the list above.
You will probably need to walk through the property with the inspector to point out the issues to the contractors who are resolving the problems.
But what if this is all too much to handle? You could sell your home as-is to an iBuyer.
When contacting iBuyer.com, you get an instant offer without having to show the home, make repairs, and there’s no need to hire home inspectors.
So, don’t worry about learning how to prepare for a home inspection when you could just let us match you with the buyer of your dreams, us! Submit your address today and create an account to get no-obligation cash offers.
The post How To Prepare For a Home Inspection appeared first on iBuyer Blog.
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Inflation Reduction Act leaves out tax measures that would have derailed real estate investment.
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It’s the purest expression of sugarcane in spirit form: rhum blanc, or white rhum agricole.
Unaged white rum made from pure pressed sugar cane juice is as close as you can come to the cane: a raw, visceral, complex spirit that has a real terroir.
And it just so happens that this is the primary ingredient in the Caribbean’s ultimate rum cocktail: the ti’ punch.
Ti’ punch, short for petit punch, is the essential drink of the French West Indies, a local, easy-to-prepare drink that’s part of the ritual of daily life in Martinique and Guadeloupe.
It’s ubiquitous, often accompanied by those endlessly delicious codfish fritters called Accras. And it’s a key to immersing yourself in the culture of the French Caribbean.
You cannot begin to understand this enchanting part of the Caribbean without a ti’ punch, a drink whose preparation requires a ceremony on par with tea in Japan.
And it’s deliciously simple to make.
Because while there are myriad dressed-up versions of making the ti’ punch, there’s one truly authentic way to make it — the way people actually drink it at a bar or restaurant in the FWI.
Show up at a beach bar or a cafe (or just about any restaurant at all) in Martinique and Guadeloupe, order a ti’ punch (it’s often cheaper than a bottle of water), and you’ll soon be welcomed with a tray.
There you’ll find three things: a bottle of white rhum, some quarter slices of lime, and a ramequin of brown sugar.
Because white rhum is so affordable, the restaurant will leave it to you how much white rhum you decide to put in the rum, joined with just the quarter lime and, ideally, a teaspoon of sugar.
How much rum you add is up to you, but I like to pour enough that the rum levels right above the top of the lime.
Most importantly, there is no ice in this drink. Ice will rob you of the delicacy, the complexity and the nuance of the cocktail.
I wouldn’t even recommend squeezing the sliver of lime; wayward ti’ punches you might find in places (typically in Saint Martin) far overdo the lime, stuffing the glass with multiple, squeezed lime slices and flooding the drink with abundant, obnoxious citrus.
While sugarcane syrup has become popular in lieu of sugar, for me, syrup can be too sweet, and corrupt the balance of the three ingredients.
Indeed, this is a delicate cocktail, a dance of three players. A small amount of patience is required to give the rum (best between 50 and 60 degrees), the sugar and the lime time to harmonize.
And that’s when the drink hits you, when it all makes sense, when you realize just how wonderful a cocktail this is.
I call it the moment du punch, that instant when the flavors of the rum and the sugar and the lime come together and become something far greater than the sum of their parts, when a ti’ punch really becomes a ti’ punch.
That’s always when a neophyte taking his or her first ti’ punch becomes a ti’ punch partisan and, soon, begins the journey down the rabbit hole of rhum agricole.
Now, you might have had a daiquiri or a caipirinha, two cocktails with largely identical ingredients. Both are fine cocktails.
But without the dimensionality of the rhum agricole, without the right proportions of lime and sugar (or with unnecessary ice), you have a very different, far less interesting experience.
There’s nothing like this drink in the Caribbean, something so perfect, so simple and, most importantly, so local.
If you drink this in Martinique or Guadeloupe, it’s a drink all of whose ingredients are from Martinique or Guadeloupe — the rum, the limes and the sugar are all made there.
If you’re in the United States, the best rhum blanc options are Rhum JM and Rhum Clement, the most widely available agricoles in America, although you can find HSE, Neisson and La Favorite and certain fine spirits shops in the US).
For this year’s National Rum Day, the ti’ punch I prepared was not quite as local as that (limes and brown sugar from, well, not the French Caribbean), but it was splendid, made with one of the most celebrated white rums of all time, the HSE Parcellaire 2016.
That rum is a great example of what makes the rums of the French Caribbean so different.
Parcellaire means the rum was made exclusively from sugar cane grown from just a tiny corner, or parcel, of the sugarcane plantation in Martinique. It’s the terroir of a single corner of a cane field.
That the kind of thoughtful devotion to rum you find in that part of the Caribbean, where this cocktail is part of the soul of the French West Indies.
And when you reach the moment du punch, it all begins to make sense.
The Ti’ Punch
1/4 lime
1 teaspoon sugar
Rhum Blanc agricole; the amount is up to you; typically pour the rum to just above the top of the lime in the glass).
Best enjoyed on a beach in Martinique, Guadeloupe, St Martin or St Barth.
The post The Joy of the Ti’ Punch, the Ultimate Caribbean Rum Cocktail appeared first on Caribbean Journal.
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