Mesquite TX Home for Sale ONLY $159,900

CLICK HERE for the Visual Tour!!


Great house and versatile floorplan. 4 bedrooms plus a study and two and a half baths. 2 Dining areas. 1 or 2 Living areas, depending on how you do the floorplan. The Current Formal Dining can be 2nd Living area & the Study can be the Formal Dining, right off the Kitchen. The 4th bedroom is downstairs and would make a great hobby or workout room. Many updates including: frieze carpet, pergo floors, interior decor paint, front door, some windows, Kitchen cabinets & appliances, light fixtures, master bath, sprinklers, gutters, & new cable wiring. The backyard is great with an oversized aggregate patio. The house features Mature Trees & Fabulous Landscaping. All this for ONLY $159,900!!!








Remember, I work all of North Dallas County and Collin County including Richardson, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Carrollton, Garland, Rowlett, McKinney, etc... my car will take us anywhere you need to go!!

ARE YOU PACKED YET?!

Do You Water Your Foundation?

I work with a lot of relocation into the Dallas area. With that, it takes a lot to educate someone not only about our market, but also about how to take care of their properties.

Most of the North Texas area is built on Clay Soil. It's usually Red Clay, but Black Clay is also common. Either way, it's Clay and Clay is a very interesting and unique material to build on. The Clay is constantly expanding and contracting. That means your house is constantly expanding and contracting. With this movement, you can get many cosmetic cracks on the interior along with the exterior. These cosmetic cracks will eventually turn into structural cracks if not taken care of.

The goal is to create as little movement as possible. In order to do this, you must water your foundation year round. What do I mean by watering the foundation? You need to keep a consistent amount of water around your slab (or even pier and beam foundation if you're in an older home). This is accomplished in a couple of ways. If you have an automatic sprinkler system, as long as you can see the water reaches up to the house, you should be fine. If you are manually watering with a sprinkler, make sure you get all over and not just the front and back yards because that's where your main grass is. You need to be watering the sides of your house too.

Where I'm getting the freaked out look from people is when I mention placing soaker hoses around the foundation. For the past couple of years, North Texas has been in a drought and we've been put on watering restrictions, which I've blogged about before. With the restrictions, most areas could only water once a week, while a select few areas were allowed twice a week. With the heat of the summer, this is not enough moisture to keep around your foundation for consistency throughout the year. Soaker hoses, since the water goes directly into the ground, are allowed everyday, though your regular watering is not allowed. Soaker hoses, to cover an average sized house, will cost approximately $50 and it's a good $50 to spend. These hoses, usually black, should be placed 12-18 inches away from the house. You do not want to put them right up against the slab because then too much water could get stuck under the slab and the house could rise. You're just looking for consistent moisture around the foundation. Using the soaker hoses about 10-15 minutes 3-4 days a week in the summer, and maybe only once or twice a week in the winter will help you save thousands on future foundation repair in the future. It's a simple, easy fix for hot, dry summers, and there's no excuse for a bad foundation when it's part of everyday house maintenance when you're a home owner.

Yes, we're having close to record rainfall this year, but we're just catching up with what we need. Our lawns are very green right now, whereas last year, everyone's looked like we were in a desert. But, YES, we're still on water restrictions. And the soaker hoses are for house maintenance, not just using them one year and not another.

Do you Water your Foundation in your neck of the woods?

BabyHarris Update

I had my 16 week appointment this morning. Everything is fine!! All those dreams I've been having are meaningless now. The heartrate was down to 154 from 160 at last month's appt. More of my pants are getting tighter, so I'll probably be in maternity clothes full time in the next couple of weeks.

They took blood for the Quad Test today. I have rolly vains, so they actually had to try both arms to get blood. I bruise easily so I'm definitely going to look like a junkie in a couple of hours.

I will go back for a full Sonogram to find out the sex of the baby on my Birthday, July 11. I figured it would be a very nice birthday present!!

Things are moving along very well, but very slowly!!!

Richardson TX becomes New Cancer Hub

People will no longer have to travel upwards of 5 hours to Houston for excellent Cancer care.

Back in 2004, the Richardson Regional Medical Center opened a satellite campus (this is where my OB is as it's about 1/2 mile from my house). To go along with the 5 story, 100,000 sqft building, the city has just broken ground for two new additions.

The first will be a 50,000 sqft Comprehensive Cancer Center. The second will be a 47,000 sqft Outpatient Hospital. Construction is expected to be completed by the Fall of 2008.

I think this will be great, not just for the area, but also for my business. Can you imagine how many doctors will be relocating to the general or immediate area?! Currently, according to recent numbers, there are about 200,000 people that live within a 5 mile radius of this area.

Extended Summer for Texas Students

For many years, the start of the school year would creep sooner and sooner into the beginning of August. When I first moved to Richardson back in 1984, I thought it was weird that school started in August right before Labor Day, but it was ok because we would go to school for a couple of days, because school never started on a Monday or Tuesday, and then we would have a long weekend to adjust to our new teacher and new classmates, and then we would come back in September.

Those days have long past. As I got into Junior High and High School, school would start towards the end of August and not that last week. Then it would go into mid-August. As school was starting earlier and earlier, we still never had a "Fall Break" in October that the kids have today, though we did have one Monday in October for Fair Day. The only good thing that came out of starting earlier was that semester exams were before the Winter Holiday. Before that, we would get a couple of weeks off for Winter Break and then we would have to come back to school for review in all our classes and then exams were the next week. Then, the next semester started the next week and we got out of school after Memorial Day.

However, and that's a HUGE However, Texas passed a new law that takes effect this year and NO school can start classes before the fourth Monday in August. For many districts in my area, that means 3 extra weeks of Summer!! 3 entire weeks added to the Summer Break. Isn't that wonderful?

From a Real Estate view, I see that as having more time for buyers to find the house they really want if changing school districts. Instead of sales hitting a high in July, I think sales will hit a high in August.

For the students, what this means is no more Fall Break in October for most of the districts, and they'll probably go back to just a Monday Fair Day. Also, each district is going to be different as to when they do their exams. I can't wait to see how Richardson and Plano set their schedules. Classes will also start going into the beginning of June because they'll need the extra time that they were getting at the beginning of the year.

What does everyone think of this new school schedule? Is this going to work better for your Summer vacations? Is it messing with plans you had? Is it going to cost you more because you'll have to spend more money to keep your kids in Summer programs longer?

Since BabyHarris will still have 5 more years before starting school, I'm curious on how this will effect others so I can start planning, as I'm a control freak!