Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category

Before you Knock Down a Wall…

Yes, I know. I’ve become a bit of a T.V. correspondent for Sacramento-Home lately, but then who else is watching out for you and bringing you the latest trends? One thing I observe again and again from clients and others is that when they start to renovate a home and / or want to sell a home (a flip or otherwise), a lot of them want to tear down a wall and make a space more open.

While there is a lot to be said about light and bright spaces, you can also consider building a wall. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. “Designed to Sell” recently had a show in which an awkward area with a platform of sorts stuck out like a sore thumb, invading the family room and drawing attention away from it.

The solution? A wall. The wall was built to hide the platform and hide the awkward space, making it more of a storage area, but in a way that didn’t take away from the family room. Of course, it was done very professionally and molding was added to make sure it matched the rest of the home.

Sometimes, adding a wall can add more value than tearing it down.

What Home Sellers Should Watch For

I was watching Oprah the other day and she had her designer Nate Berkus on. And although the show focused on makeovers for people drowning in cutesy country things and stuck in a time warp, I’ve seen enough homes and heard enough potential buyer responses to know that what Nate suggested was right.

Often I hear home sellers say, well, it’s a work in progress. Really, in this market your house cannot be a work in progress.

Here are some notes I took while watching the show so I could share them with you out there having trouble selling your homes. There’s not that many people out there looking for a house, so you must make the ones that are looking want to make an offer.

How? Price is important. But here are some other tips you might want to follow to not drive buyers away:

1. The emphasis seems to be on simplicity. Throw away things you don’t use any more and put other things in storage. Remember, we don’t show our homes the way we live in them. I wouldn’t dream of letting a buyer through my home right now – I’m absolutely not the neatest person in the world!

2. Overaccessorizing is always a problem. So stick with simple accessories. Get rid of anything more than three things on any surface. If possible, try to stick with one thing on each surface. Think an orchid.

3. Finish all projects that are not complete. Do not hide things by covering them up with rugs. That makes buyers wonder what else in the home has not been fixed.

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to let your neighbors walk through the home before you think you’re ready to call an agent. Are you wondering why? Do you have to? :)

Call for Submissions!

If you’re a landlord, or manage property for someone else, you MUST have a story to tell! We’re inviting you to tell us those stories. We’re working on putting together an e-book with axioms every landlord must follow to have a successful investing future.

Please go to www.SacramentoRealEstateGal.com and comment on the posts to submit your stories, anecdotes, advice or what have you. You will be featured in the e-book, but we could change the names of your tenants to protect their privacy.

Please contribute.

Pet Friendly Real Estate Network

Today I got a nice call from Rhona Sutter at the Pet Realty Network, a group of Pet Friendly Realtors®. Rhona and I had a discussion at one time about different marketing strategies, and I found her to be one of those really nice people who put up with me in one of my cantankerous moments.

I had argued fairly vehemently against outdoor vanity advertising and in favor of pay-per-click ads, and she called to say hello and let me know I was half right, that the vanity ad she bought didn’t work but also that she doesn’t have much success with pay per click for her particular business model.

We also talked about Mark Twain, and the jumping frogs of Calaveras County, which is beyond the borders of the Elite empire, which is Amador County. If Elite Properties were Rome, Amador County would be, I don’t know, probably Gaul. Of course if we’re going to be Rome I think we’ll need more than six people.

So anyway, Rhona’s really a nice lady, and you should go check out her web site.

Being among dogs has a humanizing influence on people.

You’d think it would have a dogizing influence, but there you go.

How to Sell A Home Fast In Any Market

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Click the Youtube above video to begin, or here’s the link to The Price Song video.

Bad News Today from Youtube

I was informed of this bad news today on my Profile on Youtube:

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Damn. How did they find out?

They must have seen the video of me.

I pasted that image in there, by the way. The new Live Writer is da Bomb!

Vacation Homes – focus on Cool, CA

If you like long walks with the leaves changing colors and a quiet town to hide in away from the busy Sacramento area, Cool might be just the place for your vacation home. On historic Highway 49, bordering a state park, Cool is a town of some 2500 residents and homes with acreage. At an elevation of just 1500 ft above sea level, the temperatures are a little Cool-er than Sacramento.

Median prices this year have Cool-ed (all right, I’ll stop!) from $454,000 last year to $385,000 so far this year. Only 34 homes have sold compared to 77 last year.

There are 59 homes currently available for sale from a low of $249,000 to $1,590,000.

Vacation Homes – focus on Pollock Pines

There’s been some talk lately of vacation and second homes are the best investments especially in a slow real estate market and I would like to offer my own hometown here as a perfect place for such an investment.

Pollock Pines, CA is a little “city” of about 4700 people about 50 miles from Sacramento. Described by many in the past as a bedroom community or a place people retired in, this friendly city is now home to many who work in Folsom, Placerville, and even Sacramento.

The great diversity in home prices seems attractive to many as well. In 2006, 156 homes sold in Pollock Pines for a minimum price of $179,000 to a high of $873,000. In 2007, 103 homes in Pollock Pines have sold for a low of $87,500 and a high of $830,000.

Currently on the market are still 147 single family homes for sale between $129,000 and $2,650,000 putting the median at just under $360,000.

But you better be prepared for snow in the winter – Pollock Pines is at 4000 feet above sea level.

Cameron Park Lake – Scenes From a Walk

Well, here it is only 2007 and I’m finally getting around to uploading some video to the Internets.

I’m so behind. I’m sure others have already abandoned video in favor of smell-o-vision and other more leading edge “new media”.

My ultimate goal in this is to have yet another place (or bunch of other places) for my clients listings to go, such as YouTube and Yahoo Video. I also want to do some real estate screencasts about topics buyers and sellers may find useful.

As an experimental first video created with Pinnacle Studio, here’s a slide show based on my walk around Cameron Park Lake. The YouTube version is below, or there’s a slightly larger MP4 Version available from my Cameron Park Real Estate page.

Be Still My Beating Heart

I sometimes find myself feeling badly about some of the information I publish here, especially the market updates, thinking that the information they contain might be somewhat boring or trivial. Given this message I read today from Amazon.com, however, I’m beginning to think my web site is the soul of profundity itself. Thank you, Amazon, for lowering the bar, and for giving me a good laugh.

Planning your Next Move in Real Estate

I’ve become absolutely obsessed lately about playing chess on my computer and likening pretty much everything I come across to it. And I began to think – well, how different is investing in real estate from chess anyway?

Besides the fact that there’s no king to kill or threaten? Well…

Both chess and investing require you to think about your next move especially in an if-then circumstantial way. You could get into serious trouble in both if you don’t plan for contingencies. The more you do both, the better you get at them.

Oh, and by the way – no one else cares about it as much as you do.

Real Estate Meetings & Why I Hate Them

I decided to write this post as a response to John’s comment (and disclaimer) – I was going to write something different, but I know our clients like to read about the other side of our business as well, so here goes!

Many brokerages have weekly meetings that are mandatory. I believe some meetings are important so that everyone in the real estate office knows the other agents and so that we may learn from one another what we’re doing right and what we could improve upon. Sometimes however these meetings – especially in larger offices – tend to get a bit tedious. What those get reduced to is advertising other businesses which we could use while conducting our business. They become shameless plugs for title companies, lenders, home warranty companies and so on. The worst part is that this is all done under the guise of “getting market updates” and “helping Realtors market themselves.”

Here’s the thing I absolutely believe – the people are successful at this are that way because they do something very authentic to themselves and very different. Even if you learned the obvious strategies, you have to personalize them to your own self. That’s what clients are attracted to. And meetings – especially training meetings – tend to leave out the individual aspect. Company meetings focus on standardizing the service, which works well for the company but not so well for the individual Realtor.

Which is what I love about being at Elite. We’re all very different and our clients appreciate our authenticity and differences. And that is my disclaimer.

More Internets Fun Stuff

Well, as ever, we’ve all been working hard, including me, except when I’m not. And we like it when I’m not best of all, because when I’m not I’m often using Stumbleupon to brew up this week’s batch of fun stuff. To wit:

  • Ever had an anonymous commenter giving you grief? You know you have. Theoretician John Gabriel explains it.
  • I’ll find a picture later.
  • Elite Properties should do this. It’d give us an excuse to wear ties and sit around a meeting table without Purva getting upset about “too many meetings.” Disclaimer: she doesn’t really get mad, she’s quite agreeable.
  • USB Necktie Cooler. Aside from the obvious fun in the concept, the real entertaining part of this is watching English as created by a computerized translator. Example? “There is ‘an issue column of the receipt book’ when ordering. In case of receipt book desire ‘the receipt book please select issue’.” Right. Just let me get my credit card…
  • Never mind that. Will it blend?
  • You think Realtors® have writer’s block? You should check out this Doctor prose.
  • And finally: If you have a bunny, please make sure it stays current on its meds. Bunnies are known for their suicidal tendencies.

Still not convinced the air conditioned necktie is a good buy?

“The air conditioner being effective, because the る room, with consequence of the necktie, the air does not go in the shirt, this season which very does not become cool. If such a time, the USB necktie cooler is used, because mandatorily the air is sent facing toward the neck origin, also the body which becomes hot instantaneously cool down! ! As a present of the father, how probably will be?”

The Mystery Exhaust Fan

I did a home inspection yesterday with my first-time buyers in Colonial Village of Sacramento and had some pretty interesting things happen. The house is a short sale and during escrow the price has jumped about $7,300. (Net sheet blunder on the part of the listing agent and banks that don’t want to talk!)

Anyway, my clients love the home, see the potential and – eventually when they have built up enough equity – will rent it out and move to a bigger, better home. The house has two bedrooms and one bath and was someone’s failed flip. A rough wall has been placed between the kitchen and dining area in the hope of turning it into a third bedroom. (By the way, I see people do this all the time – bedrooms must have closets to be bedrooms!) So we went from room to room turning on switches and then waiting for some light or something to come on.

In the bathroom, as soon as the switch turned on, there was a “whirrrr!” sound. Except there was no exhaust fan. Well, there wasn’t one we could see anyway!

Any wonder the last few flippers failed?

Things to Do In Real Estate Before You’re Dead

Are we having fun yet?

I spent most of Saturday getting annoyed at what should have been some pretty simple code for the real estate listing project, so I thought I’d take a break and post some more fun stuff.

  • For those of you who liked Mr. Science like I do, you’re sure to love Robert Krampf’s Science Videos.  I especially enjoyed walking through an index card, which, if you’d asked me, I would have guessed was impossible.
  • Feeling sarcastic, and wondering how you’re going to integrate that into your sense that you’re an advanced meditation practitioner?  No worries!  Zen Sarcasm has your answers.  #1 is #1 in my book for a reason!
  • My real estate listing project probably just needs some intelligent marketing support.
  • Yes, it’s an oldie, but it’s still a goodie:  The Cartoon Laws of Physics.

Fun Stuff From The Internets

Over the weekend I spent some time surfing for the heck of it, and I think I have some fairly credible results, including: