Must-reads
“Fixer Upper’s” Joanna Gaines will help you spruce up your home. In the former HGTV star’s first interior design book, Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave (Harper Design, $24), Jo offers practical tips on how to find your unique sense of style and make a space reflect those who inhabit it. The best part? She uses real homes— including her own family’s Texas farmhouse—as examples and inspiration
If your vibe is more e
clectic than rustic, let Suzanne Kasler: Sophisticated Simplicity (Rizzoli, $55) be your guide. The A-list designer, known for her sharp, timeless aesthetic, walks readers through the entire design process in her second tome, from fundamentals of furniture arrangement to perfecting those finishing touches.
Finally, Wendy Goodman’s May I Come In?—Discovering the World in Other
People’s Houses (Abrams, $65) lets readers peek inside 75 beautifully unique homes the author has been privy to during more than 30 years of designing
Cook quick!
Is there a bigger waste of time when you’re hungry than waiting for the oven to heat? Not an issue with Brava’s new Pure Light Countertop Oven, which uses its Pure Light Cooking technology (with infrared lights) to reach the equivalent of 500 degrees in less than one
second. Pepare a meal of medium rare steak with 
a sear, golden roasted potatoes and baby broccoli in under 20 minutes. Just enough time to set the table.
Here’s How it’s Dunn
Rae Dunn, a designer known for her whimsical ceramics adorned with bold lettering, has debuted her exclusive collection at Kirkland’s home décor stores (kirklands.com). The line features inspiring words like “love,” “glow” and “grateful” strewn across mugs, storage containers, frames, pillows and more. We know what we’re grateful for: Items range in price from $5.99 to $39.99.
Paint by (Home Sales) Numbers
Paint your front door black or charcoal gray and don’t paint your kitchen raspberry red if you’re looking to sell. Zillow’s 2018 Paint Color Analysis compared more than 135,000 photos of home listings to assess how different paint colors in and about a house affected the sale price. Houses with
red raspberry kitchens sold for $2,310 less than expected, but a black or charcoal gray front door added $6,271—not a bad profit for a gallon of paint and a brush.
Where Home Sales are Headed
Good news if you’re looking to buy a home in the Garden State—the ultracompetitive spring/summer homebuying stretch is officially over. Consider these October 2017 stats from the New Jersey Association of Realtors to
see where the market might be going:
5.8% Higher inventory of new listings from October 2017 compared with October 2016.
67 Average days homes stayed on the market in October 2017.
6,777 The number of single-family homes that sold in October 2017.
49,749 Homes for sale in October 2017, down 18.3 percent from the previous year.
$299K Median sale price of a single-family home in October 2017, up 1 percent from the previous year.