Home buyer workshop to offer financing tips

Home buyer workshop to offer financing tips

YOUNGSTOWN — An educational home-buying seminar will be Aug. 6 for families and individuals interested in the basics of home financing.

The Family Service Agency, a Mahoning County nonprofit group, is sponsoring the First Home Buyer Workshop to residents, and will cover topics like determining affordability, budgeting, credit problems and the loan application process.

The event, which satisfies the education requirements of some mortgage programs, will be at the agency’s office at 535 Marmion Ave.

Participants are asked to register to attend by Aug. 5 by calling (330) 782-5664.

Disposable cutlery has a biodegradable option

Eco-Products has a line of disposable plates, cups and utensils that are biodegradable, yet they’re not paper.

The cold cups, hot cups, cutlery and straws are made from a corn-based polymer, and the plates are made from sugarcane pulp.

All will break down fully in a commercial composting facility within 90 days, the company says, although home composting will probably take longer.

Going green comes at a price, however. Medium-weight utensils, for example, cost $5.95 for a pack of 50 or $54.93 for a case of 1,000; 10-inch, three-compartment plates cost $9.50 for a pack of 50 or $75.50 for a case of 500. Discounts are offered for large orders.

The products can be ordered at www.ecoproducts.com.

Over a million home listings available online

If home listings are all you’re looking for, you won’t be disappointed by Propsmart.com.

The independent real-estate search engine compounds more than a million property listings from online sources and private sellers and makes them searchable with a Google Map-based visual interface.

Listings in the top 25 U.S. metropolitan areas are indexed.

The site has an online community of buyers, sellers and service providers that share their information, which gives them more exposure and increases traffic to the site.

Want an update of new listings? Sign up to receive RSS feeds.

Gain design solutions from ordinary people

When it comes to home-design solutions, you can probably learn more from the success stories of ordinary people than from the rich and famous.

That’s the idea behind “Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Real Design Solutions” (Chronicle Books; $27.50; hardcover) by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan with Jill Slater and Janel Laban.

Illustrated with more than 400 photos, the book features 40 homes, all decorated by real people living from Brooklyn to San Diego to Miami.

Each chapter includes an introduction of the home dweller and overview of the home; home profile with floor plans; detailed resource lists; and “how I did it” explanations from the subjects.

Combined dispatches