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So it is time to make your first real estate investment. Whether you are looking to buy a condo, a house, or turn one around for a profit, you are taking a big step. We asked experts for advice.

Don’t go investing in real estate alone

You may live alone, but you shouldn’t do this alone. Your people skills should be practiced for this as you will be speaking to realtors, homeowners, bankers, and maybe even lawyers and contractors. This is not the time to be shy, not least because you need to be bold and assertive with your offers.

This is a learning curve and you should listen to people who know what they are talking about

Choose an agent you like who has experience in the field in which you want to live. Ask them about their history and how many places they have landed in the past few years. Make sure you understand what you need to have, whether it’s a garage or a grocery store within walking distance, and what you could do without. Outline which areas you are interested in, which areas you will not be approaching and which areas you are considering, whether there happens to be the right property there. If the agent gives you feedback that you don’t like or tries to lower your expectations a bit, don’t reject them entirely; This is a learning curve and you should listen to people who know what they are talking about.

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“It is important that the buyer has a strong team behind them. They should have a buyer agent they trust, guide them, highlight any red flags, and advise them on valuation and the correct bid price, ”said Jessica Levine, one of Douglas Elliman’s top agents since 2011 on both transaction volume and volume in gross commission income.

Build trust with your agent, and if you promise them that you won’t look at any of their competitors, don’t look at any of their competitors. Be respectful of everyone involved in the process because every person you encounter has some degree of power over whether or not you get the place.

“Don’t try to be a wise man or you will lose the house,” said Shawn Elliot, executive director of Nest Seekers International. “Come in with your best foot forward.”

In a sellers’ market, homes tend to go either on demand or above demand. In a seller’s market, when interest rates are at historic lows, don’t come in and praise it.

Be prepared for disappointment

It happens all the time: several people like the house. Several people make an offer for the house. Only one person can get the house. Everyone else will be disappointed.

“Bidding wars are common in this marketplace, so strategy, approach, and timing can all be critical,” said Levine.

Elliot added, “It’s a seller’s market. In a sellers’ market, homes tend to go either on demand or above demand. In a seller’s market, when interest rates are at historic lows, don’t come in and praise it. When you walk in you have to come in with your guns blazing because there are 10 other families behind you who want the same thing. You can find it in every market: New York City, The Hamptons, South Florida. “

Don’t expect to get the first place you bid on – but be glad you did. Manage your expectations, take the time to find a place, and communicate with your agent every step of the way. Ask them questions – lots of questions. At some point when you are qualified you will achieve something, but this is usually not a one-off operation.

A “financing-independent” offer corresponds in its strength almost to a pure cash offer

Increase your chances of buying the type of place you want

“When you know you are creditworthy and bankable, as a cash buyer, you have to forego mortgage contingency, which actually means you look better because your terms are better than the people you are competing with,” Elliot said. “A pre-qualified letter from your bank also helps with the preparation of the offer and gives the seller discretion on the closing date.”

Levine commented: “An offer that is ‘not dependent on funding’ is almost the same in strength as a purely cash offer. The buyer should also ensure that they understand the mortgage they qualify for and the various products and options on the market. This helps to keep the budget and in the event of a bidding war the buyer can be comfortable with a price increase. This can help give a buyer a competitive advantage in what is currently a highly competitive market. “

If none of this made sense to you, take a step back. Run it from your agent. Stop by a homebuyer glossary and Forums for first time home buyers. The more information you read and ask questions, the easier it is to get a quote for your first home. Get out there now and schedule some visits to potential properties.

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Instagram influencers get a lot of criticism, but they also get a lot of money and opportunities in the real world – if they’re good at their jobs. You need a lot of followers to get to a good level, but there’s more to it than that. Do you want brand deals? Do you want a nice blue tick? You need to keep your followers happy as you grow their ranks. Here is how.

Don’t try to be wrong

Yes, you can edit your photos or post skits with made-up plots, but you still have to look real. It’s a fine line, but it’s what your followers want.

“I’m looking for authenticity with an influencer. I like to follow people who don’t excuse themselves, people who are easy to identify with and who are still down to earth despite having a huge following, ”said T’yanna Angeline, a 23-year-old drama student Brooklyn that keeps up with online trendsetters.

Wajeeh Mahmood, also known as Wajeeh West, a 26-year-old New Yorker with 139,000 followers on the platform, agreed, “When you start posting content that is real to you, you begin to see what your followers are into and what they want most. Much of it is just experimenting. “

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Mahmood posts about his real life experiences and interests – “Fashion, school advice, brown moms and how crazy they are” – then monitors engagement to see what his followers enjoy most.

Even if your interests and contributions are niche, there is a market for them, so don’t force yourself to fake investing in something with broader appeal. That will only turn off potential followers who can sense when you’re looking for something you don’t care about. Angeline, for example, is fed up with influencers posting ads for things like flat-belly tea. They know that they are unlikely to drink it or care about anything other than the money they are getting, and that is why she is “not interested” in them.

“I want to feel like they belong to me,” said Adrienne Charlotte, a 31-year-old in Brooklyn who doesn’t follow typical fashion influencers but loves those who post about home improvement. “I prefer to feel some connection with them, but since I live in a studio in NYC, there is a desire for a home of my own that I could improve.”

Embrace trial and error

Mahmood adhered to two main points in his advice on Instagram success: post what you love and experiment. Much.

Even if you are the hottest, trendiest person in the world it is going to take real work.

Check out your engagements. Study your metrics. Some of your posts are going to suck, and some of them are going to get very few views and likes. Instead of getting discouraged, compare those who do well to those who do well. Find out what the difference is, then post more content that gets good engagement. Even if you are the hottest, trendiest person in the world it is going to take real work. This is what the critics who make fun of influencers lack: Successful influencers work hard. The biggest brands you know hire entire companies to manage their social media. It’s a science and an industry in itself.

Since you already know that you need to be real and true to yourself, pull back the curtain and post how much work is actually put into your pictures, stories, videos, roles and life. Angeline said she’d love to see more of this from the influencers she follows.

“Transparency about influencers’ lives is something I think would give them some peace of mind and give followers some insight into the work they are putting into their social media presence,” she said.

Post regularly and make sure you take the time to do it. First of all, if you want to make money, treat it like a job. You will spend a lot of time staging and taking photos, editing them, interacting with followers, monitoring engagements, and reaching and responding to employees. Plan to invest time in this endeavor.

Be nice to your audience

We heard from two followers and an influencer about the importance of being sincere and relatable, but of course there are also high-follower accounts who post more ambitious than achievable content.

While it’s fun to take a look at closet tours by wealthy kids from time to time or peek inside a private jet, it’s not fun to indulge in. Your followers are what drive your engagement. In a way, once you start monetizing your content, you work for them. Show a little respect to your bosses.

“I think influencers should treat their followers the way they would like someone they admired to treat them,” said Angeline, who has had positive interactions with some influencers herself. “I’m not saying I will interact with everyone, but be sure to make it known that support is valued and give away small freebies or go live for questions and answers. These are just little things to acknowledge the followers and also to remind them that even though they are an influencer, at the end of the day we are all human. “

Charlotte added, “I think influencers should interact with their followers, but I don’t often feel the need to contact them myself. I’m a bit of an introvert so I don’t want to feel pressured into interacting with my followers all the time [if I were an influencer]. All I need is to get an insight into their life. “

You don’t have to reply to every comment, but you can drop a like here and there and just be friendly.

The niceness doesn’t stop with your followers either. When you get a trademark deal, follow it. TikTok is full of horror stories of small businesses sending free goods to influencers on condition that those influencers post about them just to get the poster to haunt the goods upon receipt. Do not do that. Treat everyone you encounter, from fellow influencers to your followers to brand spokesmen, with respect.

Network, collaborate and experiment

There is a lot to learn from influencer royalty, the Kardashian clan. For example, the sisters always post promos for each other’s brands or work together on double starts. Kourtney and Khloé Kardashian have created fragrances with Sister Kim’s perfume line, and all three and sister Kendall Jenner have done collaborations for Kylie Jenner’s makeup line, for example. They all, of course, post about their collective efforts.

Say what you say about the Kardashian-Jenners – even if “what you say” may be a little tired at this point – they know how to encourage engagement and make profits. Nobody is an island and no influencer is a solo act. Remember it.

Mahmood hit social media in middle and high school, but his presence only really took off when he hooked up with a new group of friends in Los Angeles. They were “actually big on YouTube and still killing it,” he said. They taught him the ropes and he ran away with it.

Beyond the value of networking, there is another lesson in this story: there is an advantage to cross-platform integration and marketing. When you do skits on TikTok or makeup tutorials on YouTube that are gaining traction, remind your followers to check out your Instagram.

Instagram also offers plenty of tools to help you build your following in-app. Mahmood pointed out that every Instagram user has access to grid posts, story posts, reels, lives, and IGTV posts. Not only that, he said, but the app wants you to use it so if you use all of the features consistently, you will satisfy the algorithm. While the algorithm is mysterious, it determines whether people who don’t follow you will see your content on the Explore page, so do what Mahmood says here.

Go now, be brave, don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself in public for the perfect shot, thank your followers every now and then and prepare for the inevitability of your first PR box or branding deal .

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In addition to all the fun in the sun and taking advantage of the extensive evening light, summer also means sweating. Sure, sweating isn’t limited to June, July, and August, but as temperatures rise, so too does the tendency to turn into a sweaty mess.

And just because it’s natural doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. When people see excessive sweating, they may wonder if there are any underlying problems that can later re-emerge as more serious problems. Plus, it’s not fun to be wet all the time. We are of course talking about toilet tanks. Here’s what to do if you sweat a lot.

Why do toilet tanks sweat?

Before we dive into solutions, let’s first talk about what causes condensation to form on the outside of toilet tanks. This is how Merle Henkenius explains it in an article for ThisOldHouse.com:

When the weather gets hot and humid, there is a lot of moisture in the air. At the same time, the water flowing into the toilet tank is comparatively cold – around 50 to 60 ° F. When the warm, moist air hits the cool porcelain toilet surfaces, the air condenses, becomes water and soon drips onto the floor.

Although a toilet only sweats on warm, humid days, it can drop a surprising amount of water in no time.

Several manufacturers make insulators for toilet tanks that they claim will cure sweaty toilets, but most of them don’t work very well.

How to stop a toilet tank from sweating

According to Henkenius, there are two possible solutions to your toilet tank’s welding problem.

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Keep your bathroom dry and cool

Before investing the time and energy on an entire plumbing project, the first thing you can do is try using a dehumidifier and air conditioner to control the humidity and temperature in your bathroom. Henkenius says. But not everyone has these devices lying around, and even if they do, they can be expensive to run all summer.

Install an anti-sweat valve

For a more permanent and sustainable solution, Henkenius suggests installing an anti-sweat valve in the water pipe to the toilet. And what will that do? For Henekenius:

An anti-sweat valve adds a little hot water to the toilet water line, raising the water temperature in the toilet enough to warm the tank and bowl. Nothing more is needed to prevent condensation from forming, even in humid weather.

Installation can be a small process. So if you choose to do this yourself, Henkenius will guide you through every step here.

Photo: Pachai Leknetip (Shutterstock)

It’s really easy to judge other people’s relationships. In fact, we may not even notice it when we do. But when you spend time with a couple, their dynamics usually become apparent relatively quickly, until you think you can identify their specific problems.

But that in our own relationships? Not as much. It is difficult to gauge the state of a relationship when you are part of it for a number of reasons, including not having the distance to see both its good and its bad. Building on existing research, the psychologist Dr. Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. Put together a set of 15 questions To help people evaluate their relationships and gain insight into them. Here’s what you should know.

The research behind the questions

In addition to his own insight into the science behind romantic relationships, Lewandowski based his set of 15 yes-or-no questions on the Keltner list, which was developed by baseball statistician Bill James to assess which baseball players are the best candidates for the Hall of Fame.

This may not be the most likely source material for a romantic relationship assessment tool, but that’s how Lewandowski explains it in an article in Psychology Today:

While James is a statistician, his Keltner list is intentionally unscientific. It is a collection of 15 questions that anyone can quickly answer to provide an overall assessment of a player’s worthiness for the hall. (Example: “Was he the best player on his team?“) The answers are not intended to make a definitive statement, but to force a careful weighing of the most important information.

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Similarly, Lewandowski’s list of 15 questions – each based on existing research on romantic relationships – was designed to highlight what is most important for serious, long-term, and sustained love.

The Keltner list for relationships

In order to benefit from Lewandowski’s tool, it is important to answer the following yes-or-no questions truthfully:

1. Does your partner make you a better person and do you do the same for him?
2. Do you and your partner both agree to share feelings, rely on each other, be close, and not worry about the other person leaving?
3. Do you and your partner accept each other for who you are without trying to change each other?
4. Do you and your partner communicate respectfully and without contempt or negativity when they have differences of opinion?
5. Do you and your partner share decision making, power, and influence in the relationship?
6. Is your partner your best friend and are you hers?
7. Do you and your partner think in terms of “we” and “us” rather than “you” and “me”?
8. Would you and your partner trust each other with social media and bank account passwords?
9. Do you and your partner have a good opinion of each other – without having an overly positive opinion?
10. Do your close friends and your partner’s believe that you have a relationship that will last over time?
11. Is your relationship free of red flags like cheating, jealousy, and control behaviors?
12. Do you and your partner share the same values ​​regarding politics, religion, the importance of marriage, wanting to have children (or not) and parenting?
13. Are you and your partner ready to sacrifice your own needs, wants, and goals for each other (without being a doormat)?
14. Do you and your partner have a pleasant and emotionally stable personality?
15. Are you and your partner sexually compatible?

Evaluation of the answers to the relationship questions

This is not a case where you will get final results by counting up the number of “yes” and “no” answers. Instead, Lewandowski says the purpose of the exercise is to not only gain insight into what isn’t working in your relationship, but what is working as well. He explains:

These questions are meant to be a self-guided tour of what relationship science knows is important in relationships – the relationship “green flags”. In other words, the best answer to any question is a quick, sure, and unreserved “yes”. When a question pauses or leads you to a resounding “no”, it is an area that needs attention and improvement.

Of course, it’s never possible to predict the future of a relationship – there are far too many other potential variables, some of which are unexpected. But the goal here is to get a better understanding of how and why your relationship is working (or not working).