Properties, Homes & more

<< Tips to use candles to enhance the warmth & romance in your home

In my earlier post, I talked about how Candles can be used to induce warmth and romance within your own home, and how little imagination can turn around the entire ambience to something serene. Combine candles in varying shapes and sizes to create a display that is attractive even when unlit. You could also place a candle in a clay pottery bowl and fill the bowl with stones or pot pourri.

Let’s look a little ahead and talk about the precautions you must take in order to ensure no unforeseen incident / fire happens in your home. You must ensure safety while having lit candles, more so if children are around. Here are a few tips to prevent fires:

• Keep candles out of bedrooms
• Place candles away from any inflammable fabric or material, especially curtains
• Ensure there are attentive adults around the lit candles - very important if there are children in your home
• Always places candles on a stable surface
• When using candle-holders, ensure they are non-combustible
• Try not to use candles that have inflammable materials embedded in them - such candles may look flashy at first, but believe me they are the most dangerous to your safety
• Place candles (both, lit & unlit) out of reach of children and pets
• Always keep a fire extinguisher at home. You never know when it might come in handy!

<< Jerry Rao’s interview on creating low cost housing the professional way

Jerry Rao, founder of IT firm Mphasis, wants to deliver low-cost good-quality homes to buyers like drivers, housemaids, plumbers and electricians. Jerry Rao’s new venture, Value and Budget Housing Development Corporation, is targeting building a million homes in 10 years in 17 cities. Excerpts of an exclusive interview with ET, Jerry Rao (JR) defends his new mantra…

Interviewer (I): How will you address the backend challenges? Your buyers constitute the unbanked part of the population!!

JR: There are two big demand-side challenges. One, unlike in Manila and Sao Paolo, where poor and rich neighbourhoods are far away, in Indian cities, the poor live inside the city. Now, we are giving them housing far away. So, there is a commute cost and a commute time. That is a demand-side dampener.

The second is they may want to buy but how many of them will qualify for a loan. That certainly reduces the size of the market. But, believe me, these people have the ability to downpay Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1.5 lakh. These people live frugally and save a lot. Over time, we believe the system will be in a position to offer 15-year mortgages in the Rs 2-8 lakh range.

I: What is your assessment of the buyer profile?

JR: They may be poor but they are upwardly mobile - these are NOT the absolute destitutes or the pavement dwellers. What they want is to get out of their present shanty / to a more secure place. They want compound walls, security, indoor toilet and privacy. Most want their children to go to English medium schools. The target buyer is someone, who has an income and also high labour mobility so that even if he moves to the city outskirts, he would get a replacement job pretty quickly. Like a driver or high-skilled construction worker.

--- As told to the Economic Times ---

We have always used traditional sources of light for illumination - i.e. electric bulbs. Have you ever thought of using the most basic source of light man have invented: CANDLE? Believe me, candles are turning out to be a hot favourite. You can add warmth and romance to your home by placing lit candles around the “intimate places“, say living room. Add to it, dim lights and fresh flowers and you’ve the perfect ambience for that special dinner or evening with a loved one.

Candles no longer just mean the mundane white ones. Innovation is the key to their popularity and nowadays you find a variety of candles in stores - aromatherapy candles, votives, gel candles, floating candles etc. Candles scented with essential oils provide not just for an aromatic treat but also have therapeutic benefits. The word votive comes from the Latin word “votivus” that means vow. They were originally lit and devoted to the memory of a loved one. Votives are meant to be burnt in a holder and you also find them in a wide variety of colours. Gel candles usually come in glass containers while pillar candles are standalone and come in varying thickness.

Elegance with holders

If there are candles, then there have to be candle-holders. You can have a fruit bowl or brass uruli with floating candles on the centre of a table or floor, to give a touch of the exotic to the atmosphere. You can also use floater bowls. Glass, brass, pewter, and silver are some of the other materials used in decorative candleholders. Candles can be placed strategically around the home to add to the decor and as they are available in numerous hues they can add a touch of colour to any space.

>> Tips to prevent fire while using candles at home…

In a major jolt to the already depressed real estate market in Jaipur, more than 1,000 investors were allegedly duped of at least Rs. 80 crore by a big-time city realtor, the Narayan Group. Some others were also duped by Subhash Sindhi Co-operative Society and Mahaveer Nagar Co-operative Society.

This shocking fraud came to the light when the Special Operations Group (SOG) recently arrested six persons, including Narayan Group’s owners Gyanchand Agrawal and his partner Sanjay Gupta. The SOG claimed the proprietors of Narayan Group have confessed to duping at least 1,000 investors. However, the number could be higher. According to SOG, the Narayan Group issued lease deeds to more than 2,200 people. After the group made huge profits in a project called Narayan Vihar A, B, C and D blocks in Mansarovar, they announced some more schemes, but in these schemes, they issued fraudulent lease deeds to people without having enough land.

Of the 2,200 people who had invested in the projects, many were given plots elsewhere instead of the places where they had been promised plots, while more than 1,000 people were not given possession at all. Three persons — Gyanchand Agrawal, Sanjay Gupta and one employee, Ravindra Pal Singh — of Narayan Group, were arrested. The SOG has seized documents related to properties and prima facie it seems that the number of those duped could be much higher than 1,000. The maximum number of fraudulent lease deeds were issued between 2004 and 2006.

In yet another fraud, one Jeevraj Singh approached the SOG alleging that proprietor of the Mahaveer Nagar housing co-operative society - Nankishor Mittal - took Rs 7.20 lakh from him for a plot at Shriram Ki Nagala in Sanganer, but did not give him possession. The SOG arrested Nandkishor and two others —Vipin and Shailendra.

--- As reported in the Times of India ---

As more and more people flock to metropolis (for whatever reasons), the stress on its housing resources is multiplying and the direct impact is on accommodation. A significant part of our income in any metropolis is spent on the living: house rent if you’re living on rent or maintenance if you own a home. Typically many people tend to live on rent and this tendency has given rise to a whole new business: renting out. A few years back, renting out was not a big deal. You just need to decide on the locality and the budget you can afford and you will easily get a nice house. However things have changed after incidences of terrorist attacks.

I would not go in depth about the terrorism, but investigations revealed that these terrorists have rented out places in the metropolis and managed to get unnoticed. Hence, it was recommended that everyone who wants to rent a property must undergo police verification. Well, this is a good move, but not always practical. The most important question is: how would you find good people to rent your property out? I am sure you will not simply rent it out to anyone. After all, it’s YOUR home and you’d like it to remain as lovely as you’d keep it yourself.

Hence, it is quite important to find out good people to give your house on rent. That’s where GoRenter will help you out. Once you subscribe by paying a small fee and specifying details of your property and what type of people you’re looking for and the budget, GoRenter will match with its extensive database and provide you notifications whenever a suitable match is found. It also acts as a middle-man in sorting out differences, if any, between the two parties. It will also take care of the police formalities and will ensure that the rent agreement and other procedures are done hassle-free. True that this is, for the time being, limited to Arizona Property Management, I am sure it will soon expand to other locations. If you would recollect, GoRenter was in a big mess earlier with lot of unresolved disputes between previous owner and customers. However, it has now undergone lot of restructuring and the new management is quite promising, determined, focused, and supportive. I have gone through GoRenter.com Reviews and I must say that it offers good quality service at very affordable rates. I have not faced any issues / disputes with them and am sure no one will. If you’re looking for Homes for rent in Arizona, GoRenter is THE place. If I have to say my opinion, just go for it…