We Buy Houses Fast With No Credit Check Required

How fast do some investors buy homes from homeowners? Very fast, actually - some investors will offer you cash upfront for your home within at least 24 hours from the time you contacted the investor. Such investor specialize in buying homes for cash and make a living doing so because there are actually people who want hard cash in their hands without the hassles of filling up paperwork and seeking legal and real estate advice from professionals. The types of homes that can be bought for cash may be your usual family-type home (such as bungalows and two-storey residences), or perhaps condominium units used by singles and young couples with no children, and even other types of real estate properties as well.

Some people opt to sell their real estate properties because they are facing foreclosure on their mortgage. Such real estate properties have varying levels of home equity left in them - some have very little equity left, others have quite a lot of value in them because equity has been hardly touched. Even for the worst cases - where equity has almost been depleted - there are still investor who are willing buyers for the property. The investor who wants to help prevent complete foreclosure of the property of the homeowner will negotiate with the bank initiating the foreclosure to get better terms for the homeowner. The homeowner would then have the option of selling his home to the investor.

You would be surprised what types of houses and real estate properties fast cash offer investors will snatch up given the opportunity. Even pretty ugly houses that need a lot of work to spruce them up and make them attractive again get pretty good prices from these types of investors. When the investors firm gets its hands on your ugly property, they can transform it with the right amount invested into a thing of beauty again so that it will fetch a better price when re-sold.

Oh yes, that is how these investors make a living. They buy houses from homeowners, invest in their renovation and refurbishment, then turn and sell the same properties to other people at a profit. There is nothing wrong with this kind of business - it operates on the free enterprise system and nobody deludes anyone. People who need cash money immediately profit from selling their homes and real estate properties to the investors, while the investor has to assume the risk of having to invest in the home sold to him or them. It is just part of sound business to spruce up the property in the hands of the investor so that other people will become interested in buying that property - and that is how the investor makes a living.

Some investors also specialize in no credit checks when selling properties to potential buyers. Though this means additional risk for the investor (because a good credit history usually means the other party is a good risk), there are many people who do not qualify for good credit risk for various reasons. For example, a young couple who have just started out in their respective careers would have little to no credit history to speak of but that does not mean they are poor risks instantly. Rather, they just need a chance to build up an adequate credit history over time.

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A Brief History of Queen's House in Maritime Greenwich

QUEENS'S HOUSE IN MARITIME GREENWICH

The house was commissioned by Anne of Denmark, the wife of James I, in 1616. It is said that James gave Anne the house in the form of an apology for having sworn at Anne when she had accidentally shot one of his beloved hunting dogs two years earlier.

The house was originally designed as a country place, in a very rural Greenwich at the time, far from the hustle and bustle of London town. Anne assigned the design of the house to Inigo Jones, who had just returned from Italy. The result was one of the very first truly classical buildings built in England, in the style of a Renaissance villa.

The proportions of the building are quintessentially classical. For example, the size of the Great Hall with its iconic Italian and Belgian marble floor, is a perfect 40 foot cube. Work was temporarily halted with Anne's untimely death a few years later.

It was left to Charles I, son of James, to oversee the completion of the house in 1638 for his Queen Henrietta Maria. Paintings for the ceilings by Gentileschi were an ideal embellishment, but were later removed to Marlborough House in London, where they remain. However, important features remain such as the spiral stairway, which was the first unsupported stairway of its type to be built in England.

This is the famous "Tulip Stairs" - although upon closer inspection, the flowers are meant to be fleurs-de-lys, by way of a compliment to Henrietta and her French Bourbon family. In 1661, Charles II added the east and west bridge rooms, creating a matched set of apartments on the "King's side" as well as the "Queen's side".

The house was originally built with the Greenwich to Woolwich road running through it, now identified by the cobble stone courtyard. The road was finally moved towards the end of the 1600's.

Civil War in England saw Henrietta, a Catholic, forced into exile in France. Charles was beheaded.

The House lost many of its paintings and sculptures during a period of neglect when it became an official government residence. It was used as part of the Royal Hospital School beginning in 1806 and lasting until 1933, when the building became part of the National Maritime Museum, opened in 1937.

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Brief History and Types of Curtains

Curtains, also known as drapes or drapery, is a piece of fabric whose uses are to block light, drafts, water, and even prevent heat from going out the room. Curtains have the same purpose as with the window blinds. Both of them give you a sense of privacy. Their only difference is that curtains can be used in the shower area, hang before the door, hang on an arch, and can be used for theatrical purposes.

Types of Curtains

Voiles - They are made of lightweight fabrics. They are usually found in tropical countries. They are easy to clean and easy to put up.

Lace - They have a classic style to them. They can soften sunlight and are usually partnered with heavier fabrics since they are see-through.

Shower Curtains - They are used in the shower area of a bathroom. They provide privacy while preventing water from spraying all over the bathroom.

Brief History

Decorating the place where we live in has become a natural part of mankind. Like the desert dwellers that use wet cloth to cover their windows for protection against the heat and dust while cooling off their homes. Fabric curtains were also used for theatrical purposes.

During the Middle Age, fabric was so expensive that only the upper class uses them as curtains. Then in the Industrial Era, the development of textile trade drove fabric prices down making fabric curtains available to most people.

When the glass industry came, houses were installed with glass windows requiring fabric curtains or window blinds to protect the people inside from heat and drafts. This is also to keep prying eyes off.

Fabric manufacturers increased their production and lowered their prices as the demand for it greatly increased. This paved the way for the common person to buy their own fabric curtains.

When China opened its door to international markets, fabric production shifted to Asia because of the large labor force and low wages. This made fabric to go cheaper making fabric curtains available to anyone who can buy it.

As technology grows, there are now different materials in manufacturing curtains. Different print, patterns, and colors are now available in the market. In most Asian countries, it is popular to have your curtains customized according to the size of the windows and doors.

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Farmcote, Gloucestershire

History in the hills

For my third reprise in this busy month, I offer a place I’ve actually already posted about twice. This multiplicity is an indication not that it’s somewhere of great architectural richness, because the building I’m focusing on is modest to say the least. It’s because the place means a lot to me: for the atmosphere (especially for the quietude that surrounds it), for the layers of history visible in and around and beneath it, and for memories associated with it. So here’s Farmcote once more, ten years on from when I first wrote about it. I called that original post The End of the Road...

Take the steepest and narrowest of the roads leading out of the town where I live, a route that rises rapidly up the Cotswold escarpment. Turn left along a narrower lane that leads up again through remote country dotted with the odd farm and racehorse stable and bounded with fields where the brown ploughed soil reveals thousands of fragments of Cotswold limestone. Turn off once more up an even smaller lane that passes sheep pastures and offers glimpses from the high hills northwards and westwards towards Worcestershire and Wales. And at the end of the track you reach Farmcote, a tiny, isolated hamlet consisting of a few stone houses and a church.

From this angle, St Faith’s, Farmcote, could almost be a Tudor building – the windows and doorway are probably early-16th century and the furnishing inside is a satisfying mixture of Tudor and Jacobean. But in the end wall is a blocked archway indicating that this building was once bigger. Small as it is, the arch would have led to a demolished chancel, and the stonework of the arch is unmistakably Saxon. People have worshipped here for over a thousand years.

The evening light is often beautiful on this west-facing slope. When I first came here is was dusk, and I felt I needed a candle to see the medieval roof timbers and Jacobean furniture. Today there was more light, but it was fading as the sun began to drop behind the next hill. The farm dogs were quiet. The only thing moving was some smoke from a nearby chimney. Restored by the silence I crept back to the car, and drove off, making as little noise as I could.

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Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire

Stone from the wold

Here’s another repost from ten years ago to entertain my readers during my stretch of pre-Christmas work hyperactivity. It’s a house in the Cotswold town of Stow-on-the-Wold, and a place I always glance at when I pass. Its architecture gives me pleasure – although I do worry that some of the unusual bits of carving on the front are eroding away. The old-fashioned tea shop that used to occupy the ground floor has now closed (there’s a lot of competition in Stow, some of it very impressive), and last time I went by the building looked empty. But the architecture, albeit crumbling at the edges, is still there to enjoy.

Here’s what I wrote about it back in December 2008.

There are some buildings that just make me smile, no matter how often I see them. This is one: a house of about 1730 (now a café) on the market place in Stow-on-the-Wold. What I love about this house is the decoration. It’s Classical, up to a point – look at the fluted pilasters with their Corinthian capitals. But whoever built this place was determined not to stick to the rule book. Those pilasters begin, not with a base, anchoring them to the ground, but with a peculiar block of stone sticking out from the wall, a couple of feet above pavement level. The strips that run up from either side of the central niche, dotted with carvings of flowers, are another odd, but charming, touch.

Pevsner (who describes this façade as ‘rather gauche’) tells us that there’s a local tradition that the building was the work of a pargetter named Shepherd. That’s odd, as pargetting (the art of decorative exterior plasterwork) is native to eastern England. It’s not something you see much round here, where the decorative medium is stone. And yet the exuberance and richness of the carving, especially the flowers, is not unlike the sort of thing you might see on a pargetted house in Essex or Suffolk. It certainly sticks out here, not in the manner of a sore thumb, but like an elegantly manicured digit raised in defiance of convention. Stow off the wall.

As an extra, I add a photograph taken earlier this year showing a detail of one of the stone benches positioned in front of this building. As you can see, they are supported by rather fine lions. A few months ago some protective tape had been put around them – I’m not sure if it’s visitors or the stonework that was being protected, though. 

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Winchcombe, Gloucestershire

Sounds familiar

Christmas is approaching and, as has happened before, I find myself with various uncomfortable work deadlines. Why does the publishing industry organise things in this way? It would take too long to explain and my time is limited at the moment. So I thought I’d look back, see what was happening ten years ago, and repost some of my thoughts back then. Turning to December 2008, what did I find? On 3 December 2008 I was sitting looking at the view of the church tower and thinking virtually the same thoughts. Plus ça change, as they say.

Here’s my post from 3 December 2008:

It’s customary, even in these difficult times, to count the number of shopping days to Christmas. But this year I’m counting the number of writing days left before the publishing business shuts down the corporate computers for the festive season, because I have a Christmas deadline. Travelling to look at old buildings has taken a backseat, and my blog posts may shrink in length and number. I’m fortunate, though, to live in Gloucestershire, a county rich in interesting buildings, so I’ll be putting up some posts about local buildings in the next week or two.

And for me, this is as local as it gets. If I crane my neck a bit, this is the view from my desk. It’s the tower of St Peter’s church, Winchcombe, its Cotswold stone walls glowing in the golden light of a winter’s afternoon a couple of days ago. The church was built in the 1460s, during a building boom in the area that saw many churches acquire new windows, extra aisles, taller towers, or complete makeovers. Winchcombe got its new church through the generosity in part of the abbot of Winchcombe Abbey, whose own church, long gone, was a close neighbour, and of Ralph Boteler, a local grandee – well, not that grand: his name suggests that he came from a rather distinguished family of butlers. The tower is not that grand, either. No elegant spire, as it might have in Northamptonshire; no elaborate carving as there might be in Somerset. Just good honest building in beautiful stone.

The fine weathercock was regilded recently and looked about 5 feet five tall when, swathed in bubblewrap, it was hoisted back up the tower. It came here in 1874 from the much larger church of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. According to which version of the story you believe it was either too small or too big for the spire of St Mary Redcliffe. A stonemason who worked on the Bristol spire claimed he’d climbed on to, or into, the cockerel, ‘which was the size of a donkey’. Having seen the bird close-up, I can tell you that’s not such a cock and bull story as it sounds.

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Into the light

Adrian Barlow, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe
Published by Lutterworth Press

Most people who visit churches admire the stained glass, but how many of us know more than a smattering about the people who designed and made church windows? Stained glass certainly isn’t my own area of expertise, and like many others, my knowledge is limited mostly to those who are famous for doing something else – people like Edward Burne-Jones or John Piper. Many stained glass artists are shadowy figures, even if we know their names. One figure whose name is familiar (from countless church guidebooks, from Pevsner) but whose life is little known is the Victorian designer and maker of stained glass Charles Eamer Kempe. Adrian Barlow’s new biography is here to put us right.

Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe tackles the life in the opening chapters . Barlow leads us through his subject’s upbringing: the unhappy prep school years of a shy and stammering boy, the happier times at public school and university. It was a good time for a young man interested in church art to be up at Oxford, with G E Street’s office in the city, William Morris and his friends around (and painting the murals in the Oxford Union library), the study of ecclesiology rife, and the Oxford Movement that worked towards a more ritualistic approach to worship getting going. Oxford also gave Kempe the chance to make visits to churches such as Fairford, across the county border in Gloucestershire, with its stellar late-medieval stained glass. His time there also forced on him the realisation that his stammer would make him unfit for his chosen career in the priesthood. Following Oxford, there are accounts of post-university travels, including Kempe’s discovery of the 15th-century stained glass of Normandy, which influenced his own, and his early work, especially with the great architect G F Bodley, and the setting up of his own studio.

From then on, the studio became Kempe’s life, and the life is one of friendships with colleagues and patrons. Kempe never married, but he was a good friend, and the book deals at length with his relationships with three people who became (if not by name at least in practice) his chief draughtsmen: Wyndham Hope Hughes, John Carter, and John William Lisle. This is where the book is variously illuminating, because these three, and Kempe’s final notable colleague, Walter Tower, all get the attention they deserve. Barlow is able to correct several misconceptions about them. Until recently for example, even the identity of Wyndham Hope Hughes was unclear – he’d long been confused with the Pre-Raphaelite painter Arthur Hughes. Barlow is also able to be more even-handed in his assessment of Walter Tower, who has not had a good press in some quarters, and that’s a useful and revealing redress of the balance.

More that all this, there is the glass. These biographical accounts bring out much about how it was produced, and by whom. Kempe is given his considerable due as a creative artist, but so are the other people in his studio – one should not, as the book makes clear, run away with the idea that being a ‘draughtsman’ involved merely the mechanical skills of the copyist. These people were creative, and Kempe’s relationships with them were creative, as were those with Bodley, and with various patrons. Barlow’s assessment of the work is further clarified by case studies of some key projects, backed up by some excellent photographs by Alastair Carew-Cox.

One comes away with a sense of the shape of Kempe’s life, an interesting set of insights into his working methods, and, above all, the sense that he’s a considerable artist. There’s no doubt that Kempe has been undervalued. My own view of him had been tainted by no less a person that Sir John Betjeman (whom I revere, generally), who proclaimed that Kempe’s glass was green and gloomy and, apart from some of the early work, not very good. A rare slip, and a great shame given Betjeman’s prominence and influence. Adrian Barlow’s Kempe will send people back to the work, with much more background knowledge, with a clearer understanding of how his big Victorian studio worked, and, above all, with new enthusiasm and new eyes.

- - - - -

* Kempe chose Pembroke College, Oxford (or failing that, Corpus, he said, but Pembroke took him).

† Betjeman did not slip up that often, but he did sometimes speak too quickly. He could change his mind though. He began, in his early years at the Architectural Review, as a thorough modernist, but then ditched the white boxes when he realised how wonderful Victorian architecture could be. That change and his subsequent campaigns for threatened Victorian buildings were to his and our lasting benefit, and showed a kind of courage when architects and architectural writers had turned away from everything Victorian. This engagement with the Victorians makes his lapse regarding Kempe both puzzling and sad.

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