With the housing market softening in many areas

With the housing market softening in many areas throughout the country, some homeowners are choosing to remodel to create their dream home rather than buy a new house, while others are opting to spruce up their homes with a fresh look in order to gain top dollar at resale. Many people do summer remodel projects, but now, with children back in school, some homeowners are ready to finally get a long-wanted project underway.

Whether you’re looking to create a more spacious modernized kitchen, a welcoming great room, or a calming meditation room, you’ll find that deciding on a specific plan and sticking to it will pay off.

Create Your Dream. The first step is often the most fun. Visualize what you intend to do with the current space you have. Will you knock out a wall, simply change color, redo a floor or add a story? Let your imagination run wild. You might come up with ideas that seem too lofty, but don’t worry. It’s better to consider them and later pull on the reins to slow down the imaginary fast-moving remodel than it is to finish the actual remodel project and then wish you had considered something else.

Use easy-care materials. Items such as cedar, colored concrete, colored plaster, and stainless steel help to make a home durable over the long haul. When cedar is used over time it oxidizes and turns gray. It’s often used on exterior walls of homes. Coloring concrete is an alternative to painting it. The color is mixed in with the concrete to create the desirable look and can be used on the interior and exterior on walls, steps or floors. A colored plaster can help minimize scratches because the color goes all the way through. Stainless steel, because it doesn’t rust, is an appealing option for not only appliances but also for railings.

Study trends. Before you head out to hire contractors or start your remodel project on your own, make sure that you spend some time flipping through magazines and visiting homes you’d like to model your project after. This way you can learn from others’ mistakes and you can also pick up good ideas that you may not have considered. Most remodel projects are aimed at creating comfort for the homeowner, but sometimes a remodel is being done before the sale of the home in order to make it more appealing to general public. If that’s the case, it is particularly important to study remodel trends. Again, using easy-care products and materials will likely help increase the resale value of your house.

Use the Internet. There is a wealth of information, resources, and ideas available to homeowners without even leaving their home. There is even software that you can purchase or sometimes get free based on a trial basis that helps you draw your remodel project.

Start a remodel book. This is a great tip for people who are moving as well. Put everything that has to do with your remodel in a three-ring notebook binder. This will help prevent you from endlessly searching for a telephone number, receipt or business card during a chaotic time. Collect articles, brochures, estimates, etc. and place all of these items in see-through plastic pages or envelopes in your binder. Take before, during, and after pictures and place them in the binder as well. Your budget should also be put in this binder.

Consult experts. Even if you’re going to do your own work for the remodel, always consult experts; it will pay off. You can still do the work yourself but you’ll have a better understanding of how the experts would tackle the remodel project.

Foreclosures jumped 27 percent in a single month and 45 percent in the past year according to a new report from a company that's repeating a refrain of growing concern -- rising rates and softening home prices are lowering the boom on home owners. RealtyTrac said its January foreclosure report reveals a 27 percent increase in foreclosure activity from December and a 45 percent increase from January 2005 -- almost double the rate last year of 25 percent.

"This is the first time since we introduced the report in January of 2005 that we've seen back-to-back months with increases of more than 20 percent," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. And it's not just seasonal. "While some of this might have to do with the seasonality of normal real estate cycles, it appears that rising interest rates and softening home prices are beginning to push foreclosure inventories close to the historic average of one percent of all us households," Saccacio added. The RealtyTrac Monthly U.S. Foreclosure Market Report offers foreclosure percentiles by state, as well as a national and state-by-state accounting of the total number of homes in some stage of foreclosure Pre-foreclosures or Notice of Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS); Foreclosures ‹ Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale (NTS and NFS); and Real Estate Owned, or REO properties foreclosed and repurchased by a bank.

Georgia had the highest foreclosure rate of any state -- one new foreclosure for every 422 households. The foreclosure rate jumped 144 percent in a single month as the state reported 7,342 properties entering some stage of foreclosure, more than twice the number reported in December. Other high foreclosure rates were found in Nevada with 1 foreclosure for every 483 households and a 60 percent increase from December and Colorado, 1 foreclosure for every 488 households and 196 percent increase from December. Texas and Indiana were also among the states with the highest foreclosure rates. Apparently, foreclosures are not an equal opportunity financial malady. Foreclosures among minority home owners are often higher, perhaps due to the growth in the subprime market which offer loans at higher interest rates than prime loans which are designed for the most creditworthy consumers.

Unfortunately, numerous studies have shown that minority borrowers are often targeted with subprime loans even when they could easily qualify for prime loans and that practice could reveal itself as devastating to communities where large groups of home owners hold subprime loans. According to a recent New York Times report, Cleveland State University research found that in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland, the ratio of auctions to regular sales was 23 per 100 last year in the eastern portion of the county, which is 52 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic. That was up from nine foreclosures per 100 regular sales in that area in 1995. In the 82 percent white western portion of the county, the ratio was 11 foreclosures per 100 homes sold, up from 2.5.

The Times also reported that the number of Chicago foreclosures has tripled since 1993. Neighborhoods where the population is more than 80 percent non-white account for 65 percent of all cases, up from 61 percent in 1993.

The increases in foreclosure rates could be the first wave of financial disruption in other communities including Philadelphia and Atlanta where minority neighborhoods are loaded with subprime adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) expected to jump to higher interest rates in the coming years, according to analysis of data lenders must disclose under the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

Other higher foreclosure rates are expected in generally high cost regions with or without minority communities. RealtyTrac also found that along with Texas and Georgia, five states reporting the most new disclosures in January included Florida, California and Ohio. In California, where the median price of a home hovers around a half million dollars, the state registered a foreclosure rate below the national average despite documenting the third most new foreclosures of any state. So far, massive equity gains during the past five to 10 years are helping protect Californians and those in other high-priced markets, from foreclosure, experts say.