Many accidents can happen during the Christmas season in and around your home. Make sure you stay safe with these Christmas safety tips:

• Double Check Lights: Before using Christmas lights outdoors, check labels to be sure they have been certified for outdoor use. Fasten outdoor lights securely to trees, house walls, or other firm supports to protect the lights from wind damage. Use insulated staples to hold strings in place, not nails or tacks. Or run strings of lights through hooks.
• Lights Out: Always turn off Christmas lights when you leave the house unattended or when going to bed.
• Use Only One Extension Cord: Never connect more than one extension cord together; instead use a single cord that is long enough to reach the outlet without stretching, but not so long that it can get easily tangled.
• Outdoor Lights: When hanging outdoor Christmas lights, keep electrical connectors off the ground and away from metal rain gutters. Use insulated tape or plastic clips instead of metal nails or tacks to hold them in place.
• Smoke Alarms: Test your smoke alarms monthly to make sure they work, and be sure to install smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) alarms on every level of your home — especially near sleeping areas.
• Live Tree: When purchasing a live Christmas tree, check for freshness. A fresh tree is green, needles are hard to pull from branches and when bent between your fingers, needles do not break. The trunk butt of a fresh tree is sticky with resin, and when tapped on the ground, the tree should not lose many needles. You should also make sure your Christmas tree is away from fireplaces and radiators.
• Fireplace Safety: Do not burn Christmas wrapping papers in the fireplace. A flash fire may result, as wrappings ignite suddenly and burn intensely. Before lighting any fire, remove all greens, boughs, papers, and other decorations from fireplace area. Check to see that the flue is open.

As a buyer looking at purchasing a new home, putting an offer on a short sale may not always sound appealing. Usually, it is due to the fact that short sales are usually are longer buying process than a standard sale or bank owned home sale.

If you are currently in the market, you have probably noticed that short sales seem to make up the majority of homes on the market.  Fortunately, new timelines for short sales will be in effect starting June.  We recently came across this article and thought it would be helpful information for our readers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to Streamline Short Sales to Help Borrowers and Communities

New Timelines Take Effect in June

April 17, 2012

Washington, DC – The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop enhanced and aligned strategies for facilitating short sales, deeds-in-lieu and deeds-for-lease in order to help more homeowners avoid foreclosure. The effort will come in stages with the first taking place this June. The new, aligned timelines include the requirement that mortgage servicers review and respond to requests for short sales within 30 calendar days from receipt of a short sale offer.

“FHFA and the Enterprises are committed to enhancing the short sales and deeds-in-lieu process as additional tools to prevent foreclosure, keep homes occupied and help maintain stable communities,” said FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco. “These timeline and borrower communication announcements set minimum standards and provide clear expectations regarding these important foreclosure alternatives.”

With the alignment, servicers will be required to do the following:

• review and respond to requests for short sales within 30 calendar days from receipt of a short sale offer and a complete borrower response package;
• provide weekly status updates to the borrower if the short sale offer is still under review after 30 calendar days;
• make and communicate final decisions to the borrower within 60 calendar days of receipt of the offer and complete borrower response package

By the end of 2012, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will announce additional enhancements addressing borrower eligibility and evaluation, documentation simplification, property valuation, fraud mitigation, payments to subordinate lien holders, and mortgage insurance.

Source: http://www.fhfa.gov/webfiles/23887/Short%20Sales%20release%20041712.pdf