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1 week ago | 
nytimes.com | Jessie Schwartz |Tim Heffernan
Real Estate|Can You Guess the Hidden Costs of Homeownership? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/18/realestate/homeowner-hidden-costs-quiz.htmlCongratulations on the purchase of your first home! Unfortunately, buying a home doesn’t mean the end of significant cash outlays. How well would you be prepared for the routine expenses (and unpleasant surprises) that come with homeownership?
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1 week ago | 
nytimes.com | Jessie Schwartz |Tim Heffernan
Real Estate|Can You Guess the Hidden Costs of Homeownership? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/18/realestate/18re-homeowner-hidden-costs-quiz.htmlCongratulations on the purchase of your first home! Unfortunately, buying a home doesn’t mean the end of significant cash outlays. How well would you be prepared for the routine expenses (and unpleasant surprises) that come with homeownership?
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1 week ago | 
tsnn.com | Tim Heffernan
There’s a lot of noise right now around tariffs and shifting global trade policies. While uncertainty often dominates the conversation, moments like this are also opportunities to demonstrate leadership and expertise. It gives us the chance to also evolve and think creatively. As proposed tariffs continue to resurface, particularly on goods from China and other global trade partners, businesses are taking a closer look at supply chains, sourcing strategies, and cost forecasting.
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2 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Tim Heffernan
You know that embarrassing moment when you realize you’ve become a superfan? Or, more mortifying still, an evangelist? This is a job hazard at Wirecutter, where we’re paid to obsess, and apparently “my thing” is gaffer tape. So get comfortable, and let me tell you about the most useful spiriform adhesive you’ll ever own. My colleagues have already heard it all. The tape every home needsGaffer Power Gaffer TapeGaffer tape is strong and durable.
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2 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Tim Heffernan
Most home air quality monitors are limited in their abilities—as well as their reliability—so if you’re concerned about the air quality inside your home, the first thing we suggest you do is monitor the air outside, because outdoor conditions often determine indoor conditions. There’s no simpler way to do that than to use the Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow mobile app, available free on iOS and Android.
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3 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Tim Heffernan
In October 2024, I got an email from a reader worried about his water. A few weeks later, a second reader wrote to me. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. They all had the same basic worry: that there was something harmful in their tap water. And they wanted my advice on what to do. As one reader, who I’ll call Jaime1, put it: “I write to you out of desperation because I have been on a two-year journey to find the perfect filter, and it is amazing how difficult it’s been.
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3 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Tim Heffernan
A thorough home inspection can be the difference between a great deal and a terrible one. Here are the questions any home buyer should ask. I recently reread the inspection report for the house my wife and I bought last January. The experience was strangely comforting. The report is far more thorough than I remembered, and its 42 pages read like a road map of the little home that I've spent the last 18 months renovating.
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4 weeks ago | 
nytimes.com | Tim Heffernan |Clark Hodgin
Steel, brass, silver and aluminum tools, looking as good as newish after a thorough cleaning. D.I.Y.From creaky brass door hinges to antique silver, you can rehabilitate the metal in your home with some cheap tools and simple techniques. Steel, brass, silver and aluminum tools, looking as good as newish after a thorough cleaning. Credit... Last month in this column, we restored an abandoned wood desk to its original glory with some sandpaper, a couple of stain pens and a putty knife.
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1 month ago | 
socialistalternative.ca | Tim Heffernan
Donald Trump has called “tariff” his favourite word, showing that he must have a limited vocabulary. When he imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in 2018, he claimed it was protecting American industry. In reality, these tariffs were a nationalist smokescreen for a deeper capitalist crisis — one where working people, not corporate elites, bore the costs.
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1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | Tim Heffernan
Since 1997, New York City has purchased more than 1,800 properties to protect its drinking water. No longer. The largest single taxpayer in the Catskills is New York City. To protect its drinking water - 90 percent of which comes from Catskills watersheds - the city spent nearly three decades accumulating 156,350 acres of forest and fields. It's an area larger than all the land in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan combined.
