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Smart home technology is advancing beyond telling your phone or internet-enabled device to play music and look up sports scores.

Smart thermostats, lightbulbs, plugs, locks and doorbells are available to homeowners, and the list of things technology can connect to within a home is growing every year.

Here are some smart devices you may want to consider integrating into your home:

Thermostat
With a variety of options to choose from, one of the most popular smart thermostats among today’s homeowners is the Nest Learning Thermostat, which is owned by Google.

The Nest thermostat uses an algorithm to adapt to your preferences, as well as when you leave and arrive home. When you’re away at work, it uses your phone’s location to determine that you’ve left and enters eco mode to save money and energy, reducing bills by up to 15 percent, according to the company.

Floodlight
The Sengled Smart LED Floodlight is an inexpensive way to monitor your home as a motion sensor, while providing light without having to turn the light switch on and off.

Unlike some motion detector lights that require installing new fixtures and possibly wiring, the Sengled Smart LED bulb connects to existing fixtures. Built-in motion and daylight sensors turn the light on automatically for 90 seconds when motion is detected within 30 feet. The light can also be controlled through voice control on Alexa or Google Assistant.

With the Sengled app, you can even receive mobile notifications when motion is sensed.

Smart Lock
The August Smart Lock Pro + Connect attaches to the existing deadbolt and features keyless access. With your phone in your pocket, you can open the door without fumbling for your keys. It automatically locks the door behind you after you leave.

The lock can also be voice activated through Siri, Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.

Smart Doorbell
Want to see who’s ringing the doorbell? With continuous streaming and video recording, the Nest Hello gives you a 160-degree view and visitor detection alerts. It also has a speaker and microphone so that you can communicate with visitors knocking on your front door whether you’re inside the house”or away from home.

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Leasing can be a smart way to test out a car for a few years without buying it. A lease can give you all of the latest technology and some time to determine if you like the car enough to buy it.

If you want to buy it before the lease expires, read the terms of the lease agreement to see if an early buyout costs extra, typically charged in finance fees. It may be worthwhile to wait until the lease ends.

To make sure you’re getting a good deal, research the different ways the car is valued. The first is retail value, which is how much you’d pay to buy it from a dealer. The second is wholesale value, or how much the car would cost at auction. Pricing is available at various websites such as Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds. Be sure to compare the same make, model and mileage.

Compare these numbers with the residual value”that’s an estimate of the car’s value at the end of the lease and will be stated in the lease agreement. A purchase-option fee may be added. Your research will help you compare your car’s value to the residual value to see if it’s close to what you’ve estimated it to be.

Don’t contact the leasing company first if you’re thinking of buying. They’ll come to you, usually 90 days before the lease expires. If they already know you’re interested in buying, you lose an advantage when negotiating.

Start the negotiations by finding financing elsewhere, since that is where the leasing company is likely to start as a way to make more money off you. Check with your bank and other lenders for lease-buyout loans.

Some leasing companies may have a policy against negotiating a buyout price, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Request that they waive the purchase-option fee and offer financing discounts and other incentives to buy.

Remember that you have some leverage when offering to buy a leased car. You can walk away and find another car, leaving the leasing company the work of finding another buyer for the car when they already have a ready and willing buyer in front of them. Remind them of this opportunity and how much higher their price is than what you’ve found elsewhere, and you hopefully can move them toward a deal.

Published with permission from RISMedia.

In your home or in your vacation cabin, a handsome stone hearth is often the gathering
place for comfy family evenings. But accumulations of dirt, soot and ash can make your
fireplace less efficient and ruin the lovely patina of natural stone.

You can help maintain its beauty and safety with this once-yearly facelift routine:

Clean the firebox. At least 12 hours after extinguishing the last fire, or preferably
before lighting the first fire of the year, lay drop cloths around the fireplace area to
protect against airborne particles. Put on gloves and a dust mask and use a small
shovel to scoop any remaining ash from the firebox. Place the ashes in a metal
container with a tight-fitting lid and store it outside, away from flammable materials,
until youre ready to discard it. Run a small vacuum cleaner in and around the firebox
and surrounding area.

Scrub the stone. Dilute a quarter cup of dish soap with hot water in a bucket and
use a small scrub brush dipped in the solution to clean the stone surface from
top to bottom. You may be surprised at how much trapped dirt and grit you can scrub out.

Gauge the need for deeper cleaning. If the fireplace has not been used for a long
time, you may find that soapy water is not enough to remove old smoke stains. In that
case, dissolve a half-cup of TSP cleaning powder in three-quarts of hot water and try again
with a stiff brush. TSP is both a de-greaser and a heavy-duty cleaner, making it more
effective than soap alone for eliminating stubborn stains and creosote.

Rinse it down. Empty the soapy water and refill the bucket with cold water. Use a
clean rag to make one or two passes over the entire stone surface, wiping away any
soap suds and loosened dirt. Go over it again with a dry rag, then let the surface air-
dry before lighting a fire.

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How medical debt and other collection items are tallied in a credit score is changing, potentially increasing the credit scores of millions of people.

Called the FICO 9, the new credit score changes how medical collections are treated from non-medical changes, such as credit cards. A medical debt will now damage a credit score less than paying a credit card bill on time, for example.

FICO 9 came out in 2014, but the improved credit scores could just now be coming to fruition for many consumers because it can take a few years for banks and other lenders to implement the new system.

The new FICO 9 score should give responsible borrowers better access to credit and lower rates on existing credit once the changes are accepted by the industry.

Part of the thinking behind the changes is that for many people facing medical debt collections, it isnt something they have a lot of control over. People get sick or are in an accident and cant control how high their medical bills are, and may not even know that their medical debt is in collections.

More than 64 million Americans have some kind of medical collection record on their credit reports, according to Experian, a credit bureau. Almost all medical debts are reported to credit bureaus by collection agencies.

The FICO score is the most widely used credit score in the country, and is used by companies selling mortgages, credit cards, personal loans and more.

Another change with FICO 9 is that older collection items will have less impact on a credit score. Other types of debt that are sold to a collection agency”such as an unpaid utility bill or phone bill, school loan or rent”can still be reported to a credit bureau, but older collections will have less impact on a credit score. If the collection item is paid back, the score will improve.

I hope you found this real estate information helpful. Please contact me for all your real estate needs today!

Published with permission from RISMedia.