Believe it or not, one of the most important appliances in your home – your water heater – also has the potential to be the most dangerous. That’s why it’s so important to make sure it is well maintained.

Water heaters have a thermostat designed to monitor and prevent super-heating. If the thermostat fails, a temperature and pressure relief valve (TPRV) is installed to relieve the pressure. The TPRV is that little metal lever you see on top of your water heater.

A water heater can accumulate more than 85,000 pounds of pressure. If the tank ruptures with super-heated water inside, and there’s no TPRV, the result is a severe explosion. So protect your home. Double check to make sure your water heater has a TPRV.

The Fallbrook Farmers’ Market is “Lincoln’s Most Family-Friendly Farmers’ Market”, and we strive to expose young people to fresh, local healthy foods and give them an opportunity to engage with local farmers. Our poster not only highlights our SNAP, Market Match and Double Up Food Bucks programs, but also highlights the weekly themes of each market. These themes are used to drive families to experience the market in a fun and inviting atmosphere.

Every buyer wonders, “What is my credit score?” But the correct question is “What are my credit scores?” When you apply for a mortgage to buy a home, your lender will pull three credit scores, not just one.

You have credit scores from three different credit firms: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. And none of these three credit scores are likely to be the same.

Each credit firm bases its score on its own formula that, while similar, are not exactly the same. They may also have different information. It’s therefore important to pull a credit report from each one and fix any errors before you apply for a home. Remember, if there are errors, you will need to fix them with each credit firm separately.

It’s the one thing that every homeowner has and hopes they never need: insurance. To make sure you are always prepared, experts recommend that you keep on hand a complete home inventory.

State Farm says that a home inventory can help expedite an insurance claim after theft, damage, or loss. It not only helps in the settlement of a loss or claim, but may also help verify tax-deductible property losses.

Most insurance companies provide some handy online Home Inventory Checklists. But the fastest, easiest way is a video walkthrough of your home. Document everything with your smartphone. Then upload the video to the cloud, such as Apple iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox, so it’s stored remotely. Supplement your video with documentation. Take photos of receipts, credit card statements, appraisals and other documents. Upload these to the Internet too.

It’s said you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That’s especially true when it comes to pricing your home for sale. One mistake you don’t want to make: overpricing it.

What are the dangers of overpricing a home? Pricing a home too high can stall your sale. The greatest amount of traffic occurs within the first couple of weeks that your home is listed for sale. Visitor traffic trails off dramatically after that. So even if you drop your price later, you have potentially lost buyers who have found other properties, or who are no longer considering your home, as they left with the impression that it was priced too high.

The best strategy is to work with your agent to price your home right to reach the greatest number of potential buyers with the right first impression.

We use color to describe our emotions: she’s feeling blue, he’s red-faced, we’re green with envy. Researches say that colors play into human psychology and can even impact how we react to what we see, and what we want to buy.

How can color psychology help you sell your home?

• Soft yellow is associated with happiness and light, making it a great color for family gathering areas, such as kitchens
• Light blues can create a feeling of tranquility, like the ocean waves: relaxing and calming, terrific for bathrooms
• Greens are associated with nature, used to convey a feeling of peace and quiet and versatile for almost any room in the house
• Gray is a neutral color, best used to connect spaces, such as hallways.

Colors to leave off your walls? Avoid reds and oranges, color experts recommend…

Buyers selected outdoor space as an important feature in a home. About half of all buyers said that decks, patios and yard were required or desired. But guess what other home feature is far more important to buyers? Air conditioning!

That’s right, according to a massive annual consumer study from the Zillow Group, most buyers – 62 percent – want air conditioning in their homes. The good news is that 65 percent of all homes in the U.S. have central air conditioning while another 27 percent have individual air conditioning units.

With those numbers, it’s no surprise that keeping cool is more important to home shoppers than decks, patios and yards!

When interest rates rise, the true impact on a home buyer is their buying power. While home values might not change, the cost to obtain a home load goes up. This means that you may be able to afford less home than you thought. The graphic above shows how you may be impacted while interest rates go up.

Did you know that homeowners are now living in their homes 50 percent longer than they did in 2007? The National Association of Realtors says the average U.S. homeowner sells a home once every nine years. Previously, it was more frequently: once every six years.

This is one of the reasons most sellers today use a real agent: 88% of buyers purchased their home through a real estate agent or broker—a share that has steadily increased from 69% since 2001.

In real estate, location is paramount. And for many buyers, proximity to work and public transportation are key factors in the selection of a neighborhood. According to a recent study of consumer housing trends, nearly half of all buyers want to be close to public transportation (45 percent), and nearly 7 in 10 want to be close to work.