We’ve just received our real estate tax assessment this year. The assessed value of our house rose 33%! This would be great if we were looking to sell… Some houses on our block had their assessments go up 200+%. One property went from $36k to $112k — and it’s a boarding house as far as we can tell.

This Old House Magazine is looking for Victorian houses in Richmond. The magazine will choose a house and then will commission a dog house built in the same style. The homes will be featured on the cover of the June edition. Homeowners who are interested can simply email a digital photo (.jpg) of the exterior of their homes to Eileen Smith. The deadline is the evening of Monday, March 14.

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“In 2001, only 8.3 percent of all U.S. homes were built before 1920. That’s roughly 9.9 million old homes out of the nation’s 119.1 million housing units. Most of the pre-1920s homes are in the Northeast (4.3 million) or Midwest (3.4 million). There are fewer in the South (1.4 million) and even fewer out West (800,000). By contrast, 19.1 million homes were built between 1990 and 2001. Almost half of those, 9 million, were built in the South.”
[ via houseblogs.net ]

We recently took a day trip to Petersburg, Virginia. It is only about 25 miles away, but it is enough of a different city so that we know we’ve left town. There are many interesting old houses and buildings in Petersburg, and some really weird sh*t, too.

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