Category: Vacation Homes

How Wells Fargo Home Equity Loans Work

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Wells Fargo & Company is a specialized financial services company based in San Francisco, and is a provider of insurance, mortgage, investments, banking, consumer finance catering to more than 23 million customers across the United States and a few other international countries. Wells Fargos distribution channels include 6,200 stores, the internet, and several other outlets.

Being listed as one of the United States top-40 largest private employers, Wells Fargo has $500 billion in assets, and employs about 154,000 people. In 2006, Wells Fargo was ranked fifth in assets and fourth in market value of stock, and is the no.1 prime home-equity lender in Wells Fargos banking states.

Well Fargo has three main Home Equity Loans and Home Equity Loans Lines of Credit products. These, along with general account details, include –

Home Equity Line of Credit – EquityLine with FlexAbility Account

The EquityLine with FlexAbility Account is a variable-rate HEL line of credit with which you can convert credit balances into a fixed-rate for a fixed-term. This Home Equity Line of Credit is intended for ongoing access to the equity in your home, along with options including flexible payment and rate. It also features 10-year draw period with repayment period of up to an additional 30 year. Primary Residence loan is up to $500,000; Second or vacation home, up to $250,000; Non-owner-occupied, up to $100,000; and minimum is $10,000.

Home Equity Loan

With the Home Equity Loan, you receive the entire amount upfront, along with fixed payments and rate, without ongoing ability to redraw funds. It is ideal for people who dont need additional future financing, and those handling immediate expenses when they want a fixed rate and monthly payment. Based on loan amount, the term is for 5 to 30 years. Primary Residence loan is up to $500,000; Second or vacation home, up to $250,000; Non-owner-occupied, up to $100,000; and minimum is $10,000.

SmartFit Home Equity 1 Account

SmartFit Home Equity 1 Account allows you to receive up to the entire amount as fixed-rate advance, and convert credit balances to additional fixed-rate for fixed-term advances. It is ideal for handling huge upfront expenses for ongoing access to the equity in your home because funds become available as you repay principal. The term is 10-year draw period with an additional 30 year repayment period, including term of 3, 5 or 7 years as initial advance. Primary Residence loan is up to $500,000; Second or vacation home, up to $250,000; Non-owner-occupied, up to $100,000; and minimum is $10,000.

You can apply online (http://wellsfargo.com) for any of the above home equity loan accounts, schedule a free consultation with a home equity sales specialist, or call a toll-free number for help.

Vacation Rentals At Hill Stations

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Going for a holiday either on weekends or for longer duration is perhaps the most relaxing and enjoyable part in our lifestyle. Proper planning of your tour keeping in mind the budget is sometimes taxing and time consuming. Vacation rentals all over the world have added a new dimension to tourism. You can now hire apartments or even bungalows fully furnished at places of your choice for brief periods during any time of the year on transitory basis. These flats or suits are sometimes found to be better than a hotel with all amenities and homely food.

Whether it is Almora or Bhimtal in North India, Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, Gangtok and Darjeeling in East India or Simla and Nanital, you will find our vacation rentals offering services in assisting you to find a stay of your choice and liking. We give you the advantage of selecting the exact furnished accommodation from a wide range of rentals. You may go for one bedroom, kitchen, and dining during any period of summer at Patnitop, or you can select a resort type accommodation at Manali during any time of the year. You will no doubt cherish your memorable stay at resort rentals in Kodaikanal amidst an aesthetic ambience. Just imagine experiencing the adorable beauty of nature in Ooty from the lounge of your rented bungalow, and enjoying the hospitality of the caretaker who is always at your beckons call.

The most notable advantage of going for rentals is to have the food of your own choice and not the items in scripted on the menu card of any hotel. Facilities of car parking and indoor games can be availed in these vacation rentals. If you want to try out a hand to golf, lush green golf courses are there to greet you at these places where a weeks stay at any time of your disposal will add vigor to your lifestyle. If you are a businessman, some rental apartments offer you the facility of Fax and Internet. Contemplating to spend some time during the summer at Kufri, is the right thing. Accommodation in cottages suiting your needs is available through rentals. Every single room will give you the comfort of your home being furnished with classical taste and painted with splashing colors. You will also come across some well maintained rented houses resembling the features of historical monuments through rentals for vacations.

Sitting in the comfort of your drawing room you are able to get information about rentals in hill stations at just the click of the mouse. Our portal for such rented apartments has been designed to be as much informative as possible offering you the option of place, time and money. Rental house owners have often been advertising with us. Vacation rentals are profitable and will allow to enjoy your holiday with much more ease. Our professionals will help you get a perfect home of your choice at an affordable price. So it is high time that you go for rentals instead of breaking your head in planning a tour through any package.

th Birthday Gift Ideas Which Can Turn The Celebration Into A Special One

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Some wonderful gift ideas you can give to someone special celebrating a 75th birthday are: go platinum; record greetings for the celebrant; give a creative gift basket; touch the heart of the celebrant by making a collage or scrapbook; consider the celebrant’s hobbies and interest; surprise the celebrant with a ticket for two to an extraordinary vacation destination; or get sentimental by framing a portrait, painting, or a poem.
Choosing the right gifts for a person who will celebrate a birthday is a difficult task to prepare. To make the celebration meaningful and full of love, you need to make the gifts as special as the 75th birthday celebrant. Consider these great gift ideas which can help you achieve a special birthday celebration:
Platinum gifts are ideal
A person’s 75th birthday is a platinum birthday, and platinum 75th birthday gifts are simply fitting for the occasion. Excellent choices for presents are home decor, picture frames and jewelry made of platinum. If you find platinum items too expensive, you may also choose to give gifts that are platinum coated. Giving a gift that is engraved with the honoree’s name and date personalizes the gift to make it special to that person and more memorable.
Give the recipient a disc of recorded good wishes
Visit the celebrant’s family, relatives and friends to make the event more special. All audiovisual complements meant for the celebrant be recorded and kept on a CD. Surprise the celebrant during the party and play the recording as part of the program. The celebrant will appreciate your gift and also cherish it all through his or her life. To gather the greetings and save time and and effort you can search the Internet.
You can gift a basket which has been beautifully decorated by your own
If you would like to gift a fun birthday present, you could opt for a gift basket that appeals to people of all ages. There will be plenty of interesting stuff in a single package which the celebrant will definitely enjoy. For someone celebrating a 75th birthday, you can put in some old-fashioned goodies, a personalized 75th birthday shirt, a good book, tickets to plays, a lottery ticket, and maybe a page from a newspaper or magazine published on the day the celebrant was born.
Make a collage or scrapbook
Generally, as people age, they tend to get more sentimental. Touch the heart of someone special by making a collage of pictures or a scrapbook. Do not forget to include pictures taken during the different milestones of the celebrant’s life. Chronicle the life of your intended recipient. Don’t forget to include photos from important life events: baptism, school photos, graduation, weddings, etc. Include photos of the celebrant’s favorite stars, sports team, favorite movies and even favorite food if you decide to make a scrapbook. Post the lines of favorite songs, poems, quotes, and other stuff which will truly touch the celebrant. In order to make the surprise even more sentimental, you should have visits from grandchildren, children, in-laws, and any other close friends who are available.
You must take into account the hobbies and the preferences of the celebrant
Another gift that will truly delight someone celebrating a 75th birthday is something that relates to the person’s hobbies and interests. Some great ideas for gifting would be to give them something that contributes to their collection or to a favorite hobby. You can consider coins, stamps, and other collectibles that are meaningful. If the birthday person is a fan of cooking, you can give him or her a customized and humorous apron and cookbook. You could even gift a set of gardening tools in a favorite color if the celebrant loves to potter around the garden.
Give the celebrant a pleasant shock with a ticket for a couple to an exquisite holiday resort
A plane ticket for two to a special vacation destination, will surprise the celebrant, if you have the budget to offer the vacation. Take the celebrant’s age into account, along with other factors, and decide if traveling would be a good idea for him or her. In order to make your gift everlasting memorable, opt for a spot for the birthday celebrations which is almost near to the residence of the celebrant and the celebrant would really love that idea.
Get sentimental by framing a portrait, painting, or a poem
Get sentimental with your gift and frame a portrait, a painting, or a poem. If you want to frame items make sure to include one of the celebrant’s favorite. The children can be asked about their favorite photos or recite a poem or scene if you are a friend or relative. Select a platinum-coated frame to go with the platinum birthday theme or a vintage-inspired frame which older people often love.
To finalize your gift to a person’s 75th birthday, make sure to creatively wrap it and with a heartfelt dedication inserted to make the gift complete. You can give a gift that is both memorable and touching.

How To Overcome Work Addiction

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In the mind of a workaholic, the life seems only to work, work and work. They have more enthusiasm and strong physical stamina to work late every day. What is the difference between workaholics and hard workers?

Hard workers usually increase their work rhythm of a particular time, such as during the deadline, preparing presentations and making year-end reports. After that time-period elapsed, the work rhythm is back to normal.

Workaholics have a consistent high work rhythm. Workaholics will feel guilty if they are not working. For each of them a task is critical that must be completed as soon as possible. All the energy and time of workaholics are used for works. Can you see the difference?

Are workaholics also perfectionists? A perfectionist very emphasizes the importance of the work quality, even to things that are very detailed. Workaholics tend to prefer quantity or the large number of works performed. Their work quality is classified as moderate or even below the standard due to lot of works to be completed. As we all know; the human physical endurance has a limit. The fatigue will reduce the concentration and work creativity so that the job performance is declining.

For workaholic employees, they usually have poor relationship with the colleagues. They feel other people are too relaxed so that the colleagues are insisted to follow their rhythm works. The presence of a workaholic in a team work can even be harmful. The big potential conflicts can arise and there will be also the lack of team cooperation. Usually a workaholic will be deported by other members of the team.

There are not only problems in the work place; most likely workaholics social life can be also disrupted. They dont have enough time to socialize because most of their time is taken to work.

It is very obvious that this addiction should be handled seriously because the negative impact for themselves and their environment. Here are ten ‘yes or no’ questions to help assess whether your colleague or yourself classified as a workaholic or not.

Do you feel always be pursued during the times in the office/ at home?
Are you happy with the lot of list of tasks to be completed?
Did you begin to forget the birthday date of your spouse, parents, children or friends?
Do you hate holidays because you can not work in the office?
Do you always bring work to home every day?
Are you always on edge with the work unfinished?
Do you often require colleagues to work more quickly?
Do you rarely or never even take a vacation right?
Do you often feel too tired to only speak with your family at home?
Do you often call your colleague just to discuss the job while you at home?

You have the tendency of work addicted if you have 5 or more yes answers. If your colleague or friend is a workaholic, you can help him. The key words are still appreciating his work productivity. But you can tell him that the condition will be far better if he does not sacrifice the quality of work, health, relationships with family and office colleagues.

There are simple tips to overcome your workaholic colleague:

Set the standard work procedures and work instructions guide.

Help your colleague to prepare a list of tasks based on priorities. Not all tasks must be completed as soon as possible.

Remind him always on the priority tasks that have been set.

Do not criticize the long work hours. You can criticize the quality of work if it below the standards. Tell him that the quality and quantity of work are the same importance.

To pull a workaholic out of his world, try to get your colleague to join in activities outside the office tasks such as workout in fitness sport club after office hours, lunch together, and others.

It is required your patience, but with the right steps, your colleague can usually begin to overcome his work addiction.

What if you are a workaholic? The most important thing is that you have already realized and recognized the symptoms that happened to you. Without any recognition, it is very difficult to overcome this addiction. You must have a strong desire and make the right steps immediately.

Applying these steps below to overcome your work addiction:
Try to reduce the work rhythm. Any time you feel tense, talking on yourself, say that you need a little more calm. Take a breath several times slowly until you feel relaxed.

Make a priority of the task based on a better level of significance. Do tasks based on priorities.

Select each additional task or project offer that you receive. Make assessment of whether a task or project is beneficial for career development or only add the burden of your work.

Learning to create a balance between working and not working activities. Choose other activities that can truly make you relaxed.

Join and do activities together with people who pay attention and want to help you out of this work addiction.

Take a vacation. During the holiday, do not think the task of the office at all. Do new things of interest. Watching movies, reading favorite books, try new foods or to go to places that you want to go. After you complete a holiday, immediately planning what you want to do on the next holiday. You can create a plan for every week end. Making a holiday plan make you wait for something fun, so you do not feel trapped in routine work.

Do all these steps consistently. If you have a strong desire, the good results usually will be able to achieve in just a short term.

A workaholic actually has a positive potential for success in the job. What should be done is to make and direct this potential as well as possible so that it does not become a boomerang for himself.

The Florida Panhandle A Terrific Place To Invest In Real Estate

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We have vacationed in Northwest Florida, Walton County in particular, for twenty years – and love it! The best, uncrowded beaches in the country – reasonable cost – great restaurants – terrific beach properties to lease! So we are very enthusiastic about the area – but what about the economic realities of investing in Florida — at this time?

Northwest Florida has a vibrant and steady tourist business, with low unemployment. The brand new Panama City International Airport, projected to open in January 2010, will make the area quickly accessible from virtually anywhere in the United States and Europe. It is expected to provide a major boost to the areas economy, and should increase demand for real estate.

We believe the Florida panhandle is a solid place to buy real estate, and that real estate values, though flat right now (January 2008) are likely to move sharply upward, especially for oceanfront and Gulf view properties. But thats our view! Here are some other folks opinions on the area.

CNN Money.com (Feb. 12, 2007) highlighted Panama City, Florida as the #1 place to buy real estate in the United States.

American Express says that the Florida panhandle is one of its Top Ten tourist destinations in the United States. The Florida panhandle is second only to the Orlando area in Florida tourism. Northwest Florida beaches are among the best in the world, attracting over seven million visitors annually – more than any other East Coast beach area.

Real estate professionals in Walton County say that prices are less than during the peak year of 2005. But they are expecting closings to increase, as more deals become available. Many residences are priced below the cost to build. “If you are looking for a property to hold on to for the next five years, the time to purchase is now. We are still very undervalued compared to other regions of Florida.”

The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE), whose corporate headquarters are in Jacksonville, FL, is the largest landowner in the Florida panhandle, owning some 718,000 acres of development land – half of it less than ten miles of the coast. St. Joe has been a big player in the area for a long time, beginning as a timber company but realizing in recent decades that the value of its holdings was far greater as investment property. So now theyre in the vacation home development business, with a great deal of activity centered on Walton County.

According to St. Joe’s Investor Relations Department the long term outlook for Florida panhandle real estate is particularly upbeat.

Long-term economic and population trends continue to favor Florida, whose economy is fundamentally solid and diversified. The state’s population is forecasted to increase by three-fourths (to 28.6 million) by 2030. Its demographic growth rate regularly outperforms that of the rest of the United States: since 1970, the State’s yearly rate of growth has outpaced the national average by 100%. By 2010 Florida will pass New York to take its place as the nation’s third most populous state.

Florida’s solid, diversified economy regularly outperforms the U.S. mean, with a burgeoning tourism industry, plenty of high-tech jobs and a strong high-tech manufacturing sector. A large military presence with a number of active and expanding bases provides stability to the region’s economy. Within the Florida panhandle, Walton County has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Florida and the U.S.

Florida is the commercial center of the Americas. Geographic location, as well as economic and political stability, places Florida at the heart of trade and business throughout the region. Vacation property sales to retirees remain robust, and Florida is a favorite spot for retirement relocation.

Northwest Floridas beaches are the states second favorite tourist destination, behind only Orlando. They draw over seven million visitors each year, more than any other stretch of beach in the eastern United States.

Beaches in the Florida panhandle rate as some of the most beautiful in the country and the world. Beaches in Walton, Bay and Gulf Counties have been selected for the number one ranking by Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, an authority on beach quality and author of America’s Best Beaches.

Northwest Florida enjoys a very favorable climate, with mild winters, lots of sunshine and clear days. Northwest Florida is located in U.S. Climate Zone 8, the same climate zone as renowned vacation areas such as Hilton Head (SC), Amelia Island (FL), Kiawah Island (SC) and St. Simons and Sea Island (GA). Floridas beauty and variety of landscape is well-known. The Emerald Coast has a distinct geography, culture and cuisine that is very different from Miami or Orlando.

Northwest Florida entertains approximately seven million visitors annually. According to Visit Florida, the states tourism and visitor agency, 33 percent of these visitors are from households with incomes over $75,000 and 16 percent are from households with incomes over $100,000.

The number of private resort developments in the Florida panhandle is increasing. At communities like Seaside, Rosemary Beach, WaterColor and WaterSound Beach, oceanfront lots have sold for $40,000 per linear beachfront foot to prosperous families who have chosen Northwest Florida.

The new Panama City airport now under construction is expected to be in operation by February 2010. It will be a major international airport, thus opening the Emerald Coast to easy access from both coasts, the Midwest, Canada and Europe. Previously, access to the area by air was limited to regional airports.

Economists expect that the new airport will become a strong economic development engine for the area. Throughout history airports have a powerful track record for increasing economic development activity.

The new Panama City airport will be the first major airport built in the United States in almost fifteen years. As a large-scale greenfield airport location, it offers unique opportunities and unmatched flexibility for companies dependent on air transport and logistics infrastructure.
Examples of how airport construction stimulates local economies may be seen in Huntsville, AL, Savannah, GA, Jacksonville, FL, Fort Myers, FL and Northwest Arkansas. All of these airports have stimulated significant adjacent development.

The State of Florida projects that over its first decade, the new airport is likely to create 8,000 new jobs and at completion a total of 13,000 jobs. An important comparison is the construction of the new Southwest Regional Airport in the Ft. Myers/Naples area in 1983, which had a tremendous impact on real estate values. Since the airport opened in 1983, total residential real estate values in the region have increased an average of 11 percent annually.

Fortune Magazine (October 14, 2007) highlighted the St. Joe Company as one of the Ten Best stocks for 2008, citing the long-term potential of the company and its development business situated in the Florida panhandle. The article says: “When Florida real estate does rebound, investors will be kicking themselves for not recognizing today’s $28 stock price for St. Joe Co (JOE) — Florida’s largest private landowner — as a rare opportunity.”

In the quickly shifting economic climate, it is important to research and ask questions before making any investment choice. Yet the truth is that the Florida panhandle is a rarity, with a delightful climate and stunningly beautiful, mostly empty beaches. As you sit on the pristine, white sand with your feet in the emerald clear Gulf water, with pelicans and gulls flying overhead and dolphins cruising by you can see that there are some very important intangibles here. Northwest Florida is a very special place – and they’re not creating any more beach property!