Virginia R Hoato's Blog – Topics That Matter: Real Estate news as well as information pertinent to your everyday life.

Hello,

I just received a phone call from Hansley Thomas (Community Marketing Specialist at Herr Foods Inc).   He said he was reading my blog and wanted to make a correction to the list of foods that have been recalled.  The MSN list showing that Herr Foods Inc. has recalled it’s sea salt flavor kettle chips is incorrect.  The product that was recalled is Herr’s “Cracked pepper and sea salt kettle cooked potato chips.”   He emailed me as well and attached a copy of the press release showing such information.

Herr Foods’ Press Release reads as follows:

Recall – Firm Press Release

Herr Foods Inc. Recalls ‘Herr’s Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt Flavored’ Kettle Style Potato Chips Because of Possible Health Risk

Phil Bernas

Sr. VP of Manufacturing

610-932-6455

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –

March 8, 2010 – As a precautionary measure and concern for our consumer safety, Herr Foods Inc of Nottingham, PA is voluntarily recalling ‘Herr’s Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt Flavored’ Kettle Style Potato Chips. The product is being recalled because it contains HVP (hydrolyzed vegetable protein) manufactured, distributed and recalled by Basic Food Flavors, Inc., Las Vegas, NV. The ingredient from Basic Food Flavors has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella, which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis.

Herr’s has a strong commitment to consumer safety and the highest quality standards. Salmonella has not been found in any Herr’s products and there are no known illnesses reported. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello,

This post is for those that are interested in flipping houses or that are already flipping but are at a point where they never thought they would be: short of funds.  It is also for those investors that want to start a journey into a field they have no knowledge of.   Like any other business you go into, before you get involved, it is imperative that you research what’s involved to see if you have what it takes to proceed. And I don’t mean read one article or talk to one person; that will not give you enough information to become an expert at flipping or at any venture for that matter.  It is not a good idea to walk into any business blindfolded.

Thus if you are a beginner, here is an article MSN posted that will help you determine if you have what it takes:

Five mistakes that make house flipping a flop

(By Lisa Smith of Investopedia)

House flipping has become the day trading of the 2000s. But in the rush to make a profit, far too many would-be real-estate moguls overlook the basics and end up failing. Here are the five biggest mistakes investors make in this market and how to avoid them.

1. Not enough money
Dabbling in real estate is an expensive proposition. The first expense is the property acquisition cost. While low- and no-money-down financing claims abound, finding these deals from a legitimate vendor is easier said than done. Also, if you’re financing the acquisition, that means you’re paying interest. Although the interest on borrowed money is tax deductible, it is not a 100% deduction. Every dollar spent on interest adds to the amount you will need to earn on the sale just to break even.

Paying cash eliminates the interest, but even then, there are costs to holding a property, such as taxes and utilities. Renovation costs must also be factored in. If you plan to fix the house up and sell it for a profit, the sale price must exceed the combined cost of acquiring the property, holding it and renovating it. Even if you overcome these hurdles, don’t forget about capital gains taxes, which will chip away at your profit.

2. Not enough time
Renovating and flipping houses is time-consuming. It can take months to find and buy the right property. Once you own the house, you’ll need to invest time to fix it up. Before you can sell it, you’ll need to schedule inspections to make sure the property complies with applicable building codes. If it doesn’t, you need to spend more time and money to bring it up to par. Next, you’ll need to invest time to sell the property. If you show it to prospective buyers yourself, you’ll spend plenty of time commuting to and from the property and meeting with potential buyers.

If you are able to make a 10% profit on a house that cost $50,000, you’ll make a $5,000 profit. For many people, it might make more sense to get a good job, where they can earn that kind of money in a few weeks or months via a steady paycheck — with no risk and a consistent time commitment.

3. Not enough skills
Professional builders and skilled professionals, such as carpenters and plumbers, often flip houses as a sideline to their regular jobs. They have the knowledge, skills and experience to find and fix a house. Some of them also have union jobs that provide unemployment checks all winter long while they work on their side projects.

The real money in house flipping comes from sweat equity. If you’re handy with a hammer, enjoy laying carpet, can hang drywall, roof a house and install a kitchen sink, you have the skills to flip a house. On the other hand, if you have to pay a professional to do all of this work, the odds of making a profit on your investment will be dramatically reduced.

4. Not enough knowledge
To be successful, you need to be able to pick the right property, in the right location, at the right price. In a neighborhood of $100,000 homes, do you really expect to buy at $60,000 and sell at $200,000? The market is far too efficient for that to occur frequently.

Even if you get the deal of a lifetime, you need to know which renovations to make and which to skip. You also need to understand the applicable tax laws and know when to cut your losses and get out before your project becomes a money pit.

5. Not enough patience
Professionals take their time and wait for the right property. Novices rush out and hire the first contractor that makes a bid to address work they can’t do themselves. Professionals either do the work themselves or rely on a network of prearranged, reliable contractors.

Novices hire a real-estate agent to help sell the house. Professionals rely on “for sale by owner” efforts to minimize their costs and maximize profits. Novices expect to rush through the process, slap on a coat of paint and earn a fortune. Professionals understand that buying and selling houses takes time and that the profit margins are sometimes slim.

(Source:  Real Estate MSN)

That’s it for now!

Remember to come back tomorrow for more!

And once again:  if you are planning to buy a house or sell your house call me!!  I am only a phone call away!

Your #1 Realtor®

Sharing a great article with you!

Virginia R. Hoato
Realty World – Blue Property Group, Inc
DRE LIC# 01781539
Direct:  510-305-3254
Fax:  209-234-2750

Email:  virginiarh at rightchoicehomes4u.com
TAMBIEN HABLO ESPAÑOL
Web Links: http://www.rwblue-virginiahoato.com
 http://www.virginiahoato.com

Skype Member: virginiarh1961

“FOR RESULTS OF EXCELLENCE: EXPERTISE AND INTEGRITY MUST EMBRACE YOUR NEEDS”.
(VRH 8-13-08)

Share the memorable experience of buying a home with others. Your personal referrals are my greatest compliment.

Hello,

Tonight I want to leave you with a quote:

“The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.” Elbert Hubbard quotes (American editor, publisher and writer, 1856-1915)

I always say:  “I am constantly learning” and by the same token I tell my son that raising him is a learning experience and I will continue to learn with him and about everything else I still haven’t had a chance to until my days come to an end.  Life has always found a way of showing me how to change for the better.  Some lessons have been hard and others have been wonderful.  I cannot imagine myself being narrow minded and sticking to my own opinions or not being capable of changing or adjusting it when wrong.  Neither can I imagine myself being satisfied with what I know or I have learned. If you have children show them that learning does not end and that everybody is entitled to have their own opinion but that it is OK to change their opinion if it was based on erroneous facts.

Well, that’s it for now!

Remember to come back tomorrow for more!

And once again:  if you are planning to buy a house or sell your house call me!!  I am only a phone call away!

Your #1 Realtor®

Sharinga great quote with you!

Virginia R. Hoato
Realty World – Blue Property Group, Inc
DRE LIC# 01781539
Direct:  510-305-3254
Fax:  209-234-2750

Email:  virginiarh at rightchoicehomes4u.com
TAMBIEN HABLO ESPAÑOL
Web Links: http://www.rwblue-virginiahoato.com
 http://www.virginiahoato.com

Skype Member: virginiarh1961

“FOR RESULTS OF EXCELLENCE: EXPERTISE AND INTEGRITY MUST EMBRACE YOUR NEEDS”.
(VRH 8-13-08)

Share the memorable experience of buying a home with others. Your personal referrals are my greatest compliment.

Hello,

Are you on a budget?

According to Holly Robinson Peete from Yahoo “eating on a budget can be a challenge but it’s certainly not impossible”.
Here are 5 foods you should eat every day she calls a cheat sheet to the foods one should eat every day for optimum health.

#1 Leafy greens
Medical experts call them one of nature’s miracle foods. Leafy greens like Swiss chard and kale are high in nutrients like folate and vitamins A and C that can lower your risk of cancer. Just one cup of dark, leafy greens a day could also prevent diabetes and high blood pressure.

#2 Nuts
Many nutritionists recommend nuts like almonds, cashews and walnuts because they’re high in natural fiber. Fiber slows your digestive process, keeping hunger and unhealthy mid-afternoon snacks at bay. Goodbye vending machine runs!

#3 Onions
Studies show that consuming onions on a regular basis may reduce symptoms of asthma and the risk of developing stomach cancer. Add them to soups and stir-fry, and just remember — the stronger the onion, the greater the health benefit.

#4 Whole grains
Refined grains, like white rice and pasta, have lost 90% of their nutritional value through the refining process. As if that weren’t reason enough to choose whole grains like brown rice, quinoa and whole oats, a recent study showed that a diet rich in whole grains actually flattens your belly by reducing fat storage in your lower abdominal region.

#5 Yogurt
Making yogurt part of your daily eating routine can improve your digestion — if you’re buying the right stuff. Check that the label lists “active cultures” to make sure you’re getting healthy probiotics, and pick a yogurt rich in vitamin D to prevent osteoporosis.

• by Holly Robinson Peete, Shine staff, on Tue Feb 16, 2010 11:31am PST

(Source:  Shine from Yahoo)

Well, that’s it for now!

Remember to come back tomorrow for more!

And once again:  if you are planning to buy a house or sell your house call me!!  I am only a phone call away!

Your #1 Realtor®

Sharing some useful information with you!

Virginia R. Hoato
Realty World – Blue Property Group, Inc
DRE LIC# 01781539
Direct:  510-305-3254
Fax:  209-234-2750

Email:  virginiarh at rightchoicehomes4u.com
TAMBIEN HABLO ESPAÑOL
Web Links: http://www.rwblue-virginiahoato.com
 http://www.virginiahoato.com

Skype Member: virginiarh1961

“FOR RESULTS OF EXCELLENCE: EXPERTISE AND INTEGRITY MUST EMBRACE YOUR NEEDS”.
(VRH 8-13-08)

Share the memorable experience of buying a home with others. Your personal referrals are my greatest compliment.

Hello,

Here is an article you must read.  ”Online Identity Theft” is a huge business! And guess what? Today it found us again! If you remember an earlier post I had talked about it because it had affected us.  Luckily this time the thief  (Lighting Styles) didn’t get the money charged to our account but it caused us the headache of having to contact the vendors receiving electronic charges to let them know the debit/cc was cancelled and we will only be able to pay by check or wait until the expedited card arrives in 4 days.

We investigated online but nothing gave us much other than the article I will be sharing with you.  I came across it by accident looking for information on IMacs.  Whether is coincidence or not and because I blog everyday I am sharing this with you.  See, I have been getting comments everyday and in order for me to approve them;

1.  I read it of course.

2.  Translate it if needed.  (If the words are not in another language and mean absolutely nothing I delete it right away)

3.  I click on the link of the comment to see the page I am taken to.  Basically because I don’t want any X rated content on my blog

4.  Translate at least the heading of the site

5.  Approve it

Lately I have been getting comments that don’t seem right.   Some are all garbage and others are great at the beginning but at the end an email address is added with a name that has a sexual innuendo.  The interesting thing is that these comments come with different IP addresses.  I deleted the comments after I checked their links.  When clicking on the links, the sites did not open, instead in both instances a small window opened at the top with an X-Rated question and the only thing it allowed for is to click OK.  Then another window opened with the same option.  Closing the browser of forcing the browser to close was impossible.  Once those two little windows were gone the sites showed up.  Both sites were blogs and had nothing to do with porn.  Because of this article I thought of the comments I am getting.  Whether there is a relation between the porn sites and the two little windows I got on those comments I don’t know.  I don know on thing.  When I tried to close both windows and at the same time tried to close the browser as well as force it to close I spent more than 30 seconds with them on the screen.  Is that enough time for a hacker to get information?  So if you are new at blogging, like I am, and you see comments that you can’t read, you find strange or have some sexual innuendo DO NOT CLICK to check the Link where the email address is.  DO NOT APPROVE IT and DELETE IT immediately.

Here is the Article:

Anti-Virus On A Mac?

Every other week, I host a Security Fix Live chat with readers, and almost invariably, one of the questions that comes up is: “Hi. I’m a Mac user. Should I be using anti-virus software?” I usually answer that while there are very few recent examples of malicious software in the wild built for Mac users, no amount of protective software should be seen as a substitute for using your head when surfing the ‘Net.

One of the more amusing statements I’ve heard from at least a couple of Mac users who are also Windows users is that they only do the stereotypically “risky” online activities — such as surfing random porn sites — from their trusty Macs.

This is interesting because it looks like some of the same tactics that malware writers have used to install malicious software via porn sites on Windows PCs have taken a step into the Mac world. For years, scam artists have been using the demand for online porn as a way to trick Windows users into installing fake video “codecs,” malicious software disguised as a program that supposedly enables the user to view protected video content (probably no one has covered this trend more exhaustively than the corporate blog from anti-spyware firm Sunbelt Software.)

According to an alert issued Monday by Intego, a company that sells anti-virus software for the Mac, a number of Mac user forums are being spammed with links to video porn sites that prompt Mac users to install one of these magic codecs. Intego says the trade-off is hardly worth it, as Mac users who agree to install the software don’t get to view any additional racy material, and yet they’re left with a nasty little rash on their machine to boot.

Intego says the bogus codec silently changes the user’s DNS settings so that when they visit certain financial sites — such as eBay, PayPal, and those of several banks — the victim is routed to a counterfeit look-alike site designed to swipe their credentials. In addition, it appears that undoing the damage wrought by this Trojan horse program is fairly tough.

So what lessons can we learn from this? Whether you use a Mac or a PC or a Linux box for that matter, it pays to avoid risky behaviors, period. For Mac users, the riskiest of those actions includes installing software of dubious origin.

That said, my Macbook Pro came with the corporate edition of Symantec’s anti-virus software installed (by our IT folks). But I’m wondering how many other Mac readers have installed anti-virus software, and if so — what software you’ve settled upon?

By Brian Krebs  |  October 31, 2007; 6:00 PM ET (Source Washington Post)

Now, if you feel you have been a victim of identity theft click on the link I added under my list of links and report it.  You can also bookmark this page for future reference. Let’s fight this crime!!!

Well, that’s it for now!

Remember to come back tomorrow for more!

And if you are planning to buy a house or sell your house call me!!  I am only a phone call away!

Have a good night!!!

Your #1 Realtor®

Sharing some great information with you!

Virginia R. Hoato
Realty World – Blue Property Group, Inc
DRE LIC# 01781539
Direct:  510-305-3254
Fax:  209-234-2750

Email:  virginiarh at rightchoicehomes4u.com
TAMBIEN HABLO ESPAÑOL
Web Links: http://www.rwblue-virginiahoato.com
 http://www.virginiahoato.com

Skype Member: virginiarh1961

“FOR RESULTS OF EXCELLENCE: EXPERTISE AND INTEGRITY MUST EMBRACE YOUR NEEDS”.
(VRH 8-13-08)

Share the memorable experience of buying a home with others. Your personal referrals are my greatest compliment.