Sea Coast Realty Opens New Shallotte, NC Office

Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Realty recently opened a new office in Shallotte, North Carolina. The new office will serve Shallotte and Brunswick County. It is located at 127 Village Road in Shallotte, N.C. and can be reached at (910) 754-6782 or toll free at 1-877-397-0942.

"The addition of the new Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Realty office will further strengthen the Coldwell Banker® presence in the Brunswick County market,” said Jim Gillespie, president and CEO, Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. “Coldwell Banker is pleased to add this new office to our network.”

“We are extremely pleased to be opening our new office in Shallotte. Over the years, we’ve built a strong relationship with our friends and neighbors in the Shallotte area. Now we look forward to providing them with an even higher level of service,” said Tim Milam, president of Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Realty.

For more than a decade, Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Realty has been southeastern North Carolina’s largest and best-selling real estate company.

The company is a perennial recipient of the Coldwell Banker Chairman’s Circle award. In 2009, recipients of this award represented the top 4 percent of Coldwell Banker affiliated companies worldwide.

Founded in 1988, Sea Coast Realty now operates 10 offices with more than 325 sales associates and staff in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender, & Onslow counties. For more information, please visit SeaCoastRealty.com.

7 Ways to Get Your Home Office in Order

1. Store your documents online.
"Scan, upload, digitize, or e-mail your docs to SlideShare, Posterous, or Google Docs. You'll never have to worry about computer crashes. And try Microsoft OneNote. I don't know how I lived without it for so long," says Stephanie Crawford of Zeiltin InTown in Nashville, Tenn.

2. Minimize Distractions.
"Your office space should be dedicated only to things that help make you money or are for the practice of your profession," says M. Colleen Klimczak, certified professional organizer with Peace of Mind in Chicago. "Are you using your office to store boxes of holiday decorations? In the interest of being ready to work when you sit down at your desk, taking out those extra personal items will help."

3. Find Tech That Does Double duty.
"Save space with multifunction or ‘all-in-one' equipment that prints, copies, and scans. The smaller footprint of these machines makes them ideal for most space-challenged home offices, and they're affordable," says Lisa Kanarek, a Dallas-based home office expert and creator of www.workingnaked.net.

4. Prevent piles.
A business can generate an enormous amount of paper, so you need to figure out what to keep and where to put it, says Garreth Wilcock of Keller Williams Realty in Austin, Texas.

"I follow a one-touch system. If I get a piece of mail or a contract, it has only a limited number of options-it can go straight to trash, it can go to storage, I can delegate it, or I can work on it right now," Wilcock says. "The system prevents random piles from forming."

5. Maintain your files.
"Just because you got organized once doesn't mean your office will stay that way," Klimczak says. "It's an ongoing process. You need to set up a document retention policy. Keep the most timely files closest to your desk. My ‘tickler folder' with information on prospective clients and pressing items is always nearby."

6. Set up an area suitable for guests.
"If you're going to be meeting with clients in your home office, set up a space with guest chairs and a table of some sort," Kanarek says. "If you don't have space in your office, you can use an adjacent room, like a dining room, for meetings. Just be sure the space is clutter-free and readily available."

7. Don't get sidetracked.
When you're doing work at home, there are so many other things calling for your attention.

"I use my trusted kitchen clock to keep me focused," says Lourdes "Luly" MacPharlaine, with Prudential Northwest Properties in Lake Oswego, Ore. "I set my clock for 50 minutes, and during those minutes, I stay on task. Then, 10 minutes are set for me. I get up and stretch, exercise, talk to the cats, munch, go outside, turn the TV on, whatever. The cycle repeats until the whistle blows at 6 p.m."

Published: April 2010 REALTOR magazine

Reprinted from REALTOR® magazine with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

12 Tips for Saving Energy in Your Home Office

Cut your power consumption, lighting, and heating and cooling costs when you work from home.

With roughly 34 million telecommuting adults in America-a number slated to double by 2016, according to Forrester Research-adjustments to your home office power consumption, lighting, and heating and cooling can impact the environment and your wallet-up to about $200 per year in energy costs.

DOWN-SHIFT YOUR POWER CONSUMPTION

1. Activate power-management settings.
Home office electronics have multiple power modes: active (or "on"), active standby ("on" but consuming less than 100% power), and passive standby (or "off"), according to the nonprofit American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, which promotes energy efficiency to consumers and government policy makers.

You can instruct your computer to move into lower-consumption modes automatically when you've stopped using it temporarily-during a lunch hour or phone call, for instance-yet also wake up when you're ready to resume working. Such tactics can reduce your computer-related electricity costs by $25 to $75 per machine annually, says Energy Star.

Energy Star-rated power management features are available on Macintosh and Windows platforms (XP, Vista, 2000). Energy Star offers tips for how to adjust settings on different platforms.

Other providers offer help, too: Software vendor Verdiem offers a power management set-up tool called Edison and EnergyStar offers a similar tool called EZ Wizard, both of which guide you through the process of setting up power management.

If you're uneasy launching power management protocols yourself, you can pay software companies' IT pros to log on to your computer remotely and adjust your settings. Symantec, for instance, charges about $20 for its"GreenPC" service.

2. Use a power strip for your computer, printer, copier, and other peripherals.
If you plug office electronics into a power strip, you can switch all of them fully off (versus leaving them in"standby" mode with one button. Power strips cost around $3 to $12 from online retailers. Standby power-the energy that's wasted by electronic devices that are plugged in, but not in use-represents about $100 per year in the average household's electricity costs, says Energy Star. Assuming your home office equipment represents about 4% of your electricity bill, you could save up to $4 a year.

3. If you're investing in new computer equipment, look for Energy Star-rated computers, small servers, copiers, fax machines, and adapters.
Energy Star estimates that using these rated electronics in your home office can save $115 over the products' lifetimes.

4. Consider a laptop over a desktop.
Laptops use one-third the power (22 watts) of a typical desktop (68 watts) when in active mode, according to ACEEE. Annually, a laptop could save you about $19 compared with a desktop.

5. Opt for a flat-panel vs. CRT monitor.
A cathode-ray tube monitor consumes about 70 watts of power, while an LCD or flat-panel eats only 27, according to ACEEE data. That's about $1 in savings over year.

REDUCE LIGHTING COSTS

6. Replace traditional bulbs with compact fluorescents.
By replacing one 60-watt incandescent bulb with an equivalent compact fluorescent in a home office where lights are on for eight hours per day, you could save up to $15 per year, according to Energy Star.

7. Buy CFL versions of halogen lights.
If you like the look or brightness of halogen or torchiere lamps, the The Edison Electric Institute recommends buying compact fluorescent versions that consume less than 25% of the power (55 to 65 watts) of conventional versions (300 watts) and cost about the same.

8. Consider task lighting.
Opting for a desk lamp versus whole-room lighting lets you use fewer bulbs concurrently, according to The Institute.

9. Locate lamps in corners.
The adjoining walls will magnify the light across the room.

10. Turn off lights when leaving a room.

KEEP HEATING AND COOLING COSTS AT BAY

11. Lower thermostats 10% during the day (to 62, for instance, from 68).
This can save up to 10% on annual heating and cooling bills, according to the DOE, or about $100 per year. Supplement with thick slippers and sweaters in winter and keep windows open in summer, with shades down in the afternoon.

12. Use a space heater in winter and a portable or ceiling fan in summer.
Both room-specific solutions cost far less than running whole-house systems at maximum capacity. Using fans or space heaters will eat into your savings for lowering the thermostat, but not nearly as much as using a central heating or cooling system throughout the house. Fans can run $25-$150; space heaters, $10-$80 at online retailers.

If your office is one-third the size of your house or smaller, you can safely estimate that space heating will be more cost-effective than heating the entire home just for the sake of the office, according to NYSEG, a utility company in Rochester, N.Y.

Optimizing your home office for maximum energy efficiency requires little effort, but can help lower your home's overall energy consumption and annual utility bill without hampering productivity.

Jane Hodges has written about real estate for publications including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, and The Seattle Times. In 2007, she won a Bivins Fellowship from the National Association of Real Estate Editors to pursue a book on women and real estate. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, CBS's BNET, and Fortune. She lives in Seattle, in a 1966 raised rancher with an excellent retro granite fireplace. Latest home project: Remodeling a basement bathroom.

Article From Houselogic.com

By: Jane Hodges

Published: September 09, 2009

Reprinted from HouseLogic with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS (R).

Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.