Twin Cities Real Estate

Be Prepared

As a young girl in scouting I was always told, "Be prepared."  I have held that as part of my living style forever.  In fact my purse weighs a ton because I have small scissors, band aids, aspirin (watch out for the heart attack) lotions, sun screen, needle and thread, safely pins, tape, plus all the usual stuff.  My suit case never makes it under the weight limit at the airlines.  I need the rain coat, the sandals, plus good walking shoes, a black dress (I read somewhere to always have a black dress with you in case you quickly need to go to a funeral) a small medicine cabinet, a mini library of books, clothes, bars and juice boxes (I don't always like the food I am served) and my hair and make-up products.  My husband always says I over-do it.  He is right, but I am always once step ahead of the game.

 

Sellers need to be the same way when they list their house. They need to be prepared for what the buyer will object to.  Here is a good check list:

1)Broken windows and torn screens

2)Furnaces and air conditioners that have not been cleaned and tuned up recently

3)Over-grown vegetation

4)Trees growing in gutters

5)Window wells with plants growing in them

6)Electrical boxes not labeled

7)Drains that do not drain

8)Leaking faucets and spray hoses

9)Basements with spider webs

10)Ants and mice and bats

11)Fences in poor condition

12)Garage door openers that do not operate correctly

 

Do you think that is a long list?  Those were objections that commonly came up on three buyers' inspections that were done for my buyers last week.  It would have been cheaper and less frustrating if the sellers had taken care of the list of objections before their house was listed.  If the showing agents miss them, if the buyer does not complain, you can bet the inspector that is being  paid $350+ for the inspection will find these issues.

 

Be prepared before you list your house.  See it through the eyes of a buyer and you will get to work on the job jar.

State Fair

Wait a minute.  I cannot type further until I wash these hands again.  I have just gotten back from the Minnesota State Fair, and I just can't seem to get my hands to feel not sticky.  I want to put up my own booth where I sell those hand washing sheets for people.  You touch things and eat food at the fair that leaves you sticky.  Okay, so all cinnamon rolls have that effect.  Those Tom Thumb mini donuts add insult to injury.  Following that with apples that you dip in Carmel and you can see why I have sticky fingers.

 

The fair was fun.  We go every 4 years or so.  There are changes but then there are the main stays of the fair.  My husband had to stand by the dairy building and drink glass after glass of milk.  For a buck he could have all he could drink.  I said they should put Sweet Martha's cookies next to the milk stand and the match would be perfect.  One has to go to the DNR building and see the fish in their pond.  Charles dreams of catching one of the big guys they have floating in the pond.  We venture over to the horticulture building and I take in all the beautiful flowers that are grown.  The vegetables are to die for.  My tomatoes are green on the vine and they have some red beauties.  We stare in the sky and wonder how those people can ride that swing that takes them up so high and then swings them around.  Hope they did that ride on an empty stomach.  I have to see the mighty horses and stroke their noses.  I feel the coat of the sheep and thank them for my wool sweaters.  I see a mother pig with 14 piglets nursing and I am happy I am not a mother pig.  One kid at a time was enough for me.  I see a wedding party taking pictures and say go for them. they got to have their wedding the way they wanted it, at the fair.

 

We are so fortunate to live in a big city but have the wonders of the farm for us to see once a year.  As a stroll the fair I attempt to pick out the city slickers from the farm folks.  At the fair we are all the same.  We eat, we laugh, we get tired and have a great time.

Rain Catchers

Everyone must have a rain catcher.  They can be purchased at a hardware or lawn and garden store.  They can be simple or artistic.  Mine looks like the old fashioned water spigot on a house.  It is orange and showy along with my flowers. 

 

The reason I say have a rain gauge is because clouds drop different amounts of rain throughout the city.  The weather people can tell you one thing, but in your yard you could have a different story.  Having a rain gauge will serve several purposes.  One it will be entertaining. You will enjoy going out after a rain and seeing how much rain you received.  Two it will be educational.  Have your kids or grandkids read the catcher and then record the amount of rain received.  It will help them with measurement and charting.  They will know the dry and wet months of the year.  Three it will help you know when you need to water your lawn and garden and when there has been enough moisture.

 

The gauge most likely will be glass so remember to bring it in come late October.  Then in the spring it can be one of your first rites of passage from winter to spring as you put it back in your soil.  Plant the gauge away from over-hangs so it catches all the rain.  Don't have it by a down spout.  Make sure it is not in the path of a sprinkler system.  Attempt to keep your pets away from it.  Male dogs might give you yellow rain.

 

Enjoy your rain catcher.  They make meaningful house warming gifts.  You will now be keeping track of mother nature's gift of life to us.

My Apple Tree

I live right in the heart of SW Mpls..  My lot is larger and special, but it is still a city lot.  About 4 years ago my husband planted an apple and pear tree along the alley.  Since we were new to the neighborhood, our neighbors had a good chuckle at this planting.  One person asked me why we did not live in the country if we wanted fruit trees.

 

Well that person is not laughing this year.  We have the largest and best tasting green apples on the apple tree. I myself am amazed.  We must have a dozen or so apples  I have picked them and am hording them as they are that good.  We did nothing but water the tree.  The squirrels have taken the pears.  I would have loved to have tasted them.

 

It is curious what you can get out of your small plat of land.  Those of us who live in the Midwest do not realize how in other parts of the country and world land is precious.  Talk to someone from New York City and they will tell you they grow trees on the roof tops of their buildings.  A client of mine from Japan could not believe how we waste land to open green space rather than crops.  We can do more and better with our parcels of land.  You might not know, perhaps next fall I will be able to bake an apple pie!

Real Estate Taxes and affordability

I have a set of buyers that love the idea of buying a short sale, foreclosure, or REO.  They are first time buyers and feel the "deal" they can make on these properties is too good to pass up.  We discussed the  issues of buying nontraditional real estate, and they were game to move forward.  My biggest concern was to get an answer back from the bank in time to close to the get the $8,000 rebate.  They wanted to go for it.

 

We hit the road and saw many of the properties available.  We say single family, village homes, and town houses.  They selected a few they wanted to make offers on and see what happened.  These were properties that had been purchased in the last 4 years for about $360,000 and now were on the MLS at $205,000.  Sounds good?  Here is the bite.  When I ran the monthly payment on these properties, the amount was higher than what they wanted to pay.  The bite was the real estate taxes and assoc fees.  Both numbers were based on the value of $360,000 and not $205.  Both the community the property is in and the association are in need of money.  It is very questionable that either one would roll back the amount due.  To further add problems to this situation, these properties are in neighborhoods where there are 6-10 such properties.  That is further evidence that it is questionable if the fees would go down.

 

My buyers were so upset.  The price of the home was good, but the PITI plus association fees were not.  In real estate the big picture can look one way, but the reality can look so different.  Tonight we are meeting at my office to see if we can search for a traditional property with taxes in line.  Oh, home buying can be a challenge.

Rain, Rain

"It’s raining it's pouring, the old man is snoring."  I never understood that song.  We sang it as kids.  I was not singing anything yesterday afternoon as I was showing houses in that down pour.  There were times I felt I would be dryer if I were in my shower.  Being the nice Realtor that I am, I insisted my buyers remain in the car until I had the front door to the house open.  Not until you are standing in the rain, do you realize how many houses do not have front porches or over hangs. 

 

We drove from house to house with the heater on trying to get rid of the chill we all felt.  Naturally, the houses we went into had their air conditioners on so we never got warm.  I passed a car wash and was almost tempted to walk through the drying cycle of the car wash. 

 

I got home and stripped my clothes.  I truly was wet down to my under garments. As a stood in the shower getting warm, I wondered how many other jobs people had where they got this wet and still had to act like nothing was wrong.  Acting, that is another word to describe the job of a Realtor.

The Number 4

The number four can mean so much.  It is a popular game for grade school kids.  I loved to play Four Square as a kid.  Four as in foursome is what you have in your golf group.  You go off together and play a round of golf.  Being four means next year you get to go to school.  That is a big thing to a little kid.  But-- in Minnesota the number four has taken on new meaning as it is applied to a purple jersey.

 

The media and everyone is buzzing about number four coming to quarterback for the Vikings.  What a surprise!  It has only been talked about since what, May?  I new he would come.  He did not want to leave football and the Vikings did not have a quarterback that could take them to the Superbowl.

 

Beware young Viking fans,  I remember the four years we fought our way to the Super bowl and the terrible performances we had at the big game.  It was embarrassing to say you were from Minnesota the next day.  The games were boring.  For awhile there we had Denver to share this record with, but then they went and won the Superbowl.  Will this man do it for us?  Time will tell.  If he does not take us to the big dance he has sold lots of tickets in one day.  The blackout Sundays most likely will not happen this year.  The front office knew they had to get #4 in town to get tickets sold.  No, I did not sell him the house the media says he bought.  That story will come out in the future.

FILL YOUR SHOPPING BAGS

This is a double edge sword.  We are always told to save.  Years ago when Americans were outspending what they made, they were told to save.  Put money away you never know when you will need it.  We were lectured that we had long forgotten what our relatives learned during the Great Depression.

 

Fast forward to today, where people are saving, and we are being told to spend.  Consumers are not buying for fear of not having a job.  Perhaps they don't have a job.  Lowes  home improvement stores will not be open the number of stores they projected.  Not only are people not buying houses at the rate they anticipated, but people are not making improvements on their present properties. Target's second biggest season after Christmas is back to school, and it is dull this year.  I guess the kids are going to be using last year's back pack.  These trends point an arrow to the fact that the economy is not recovering like we had all hoped. 

 

Here is how I see it.  You find a tangled up hose in your garage and you keep pulling it and unknotting it.  You think you have the hose ready to use and you pull some more and find more knotted hose.  Not until it is all the way out and laying on the lawn, do you see the complete hose and what you have.  Not until many months after the recovery, will we know we are out of it.  Signs are only signs.  We will know when it is over when it really is over.

 

The way to get out of this mess is to not live in fear.  We do need to do sensible spending.  You can only take toilet paper from the office for so long and then you need to break down and buy some.  The growing season soon will be over and your garden will not supply you with vegetables and you will need to buy food.  You can only stay home for so long and then you need to get out and see the light of day.  It really is better out there than you might think.

OUR WORLD IS NOT AS CERTAIN AS WE THINK IT IS

I am not a golfer, but I am married to a sports junky.  Charles will talk to me about anything that might resemble a sport.  For weeks now I have been hearing about the golf tournament that was held in Chaska last week.  The comment I heard the most was how Tiger Woods had this tournament won.

 

Many statistics were presented to me to prove this point.  If he had the lead at the start of the tournament in 8 for 8 tournaments he won.  He was playing great golf.  He had his head on straight and he was not running away with the tournament, but he was showing he was Tiger Woods.  Sunday the man proved all the statistics and all the planning we might do does not always give the outcome predicted.  Tiger did not win the PGA.  Three stokes defined him as the person in second place.  I always joke with my husband that since he is a "drop out" from Stanford, he really needs the money.  Life will easily go on for Tiger Woods.  He will beat himself up for while and the statistics will tell a new story.  What does this tell the rest of us?

 

It tells us that we can never take anything for granted.  We can do all the right things and still the outcome is not what we wanted.  Life has a way of taking the wheel of the car of life and steering us in a different direction.  We must be flexible and be able to take that different turn.  The champions are those who fall down and get up stronger.  None of us want the road we are on right now, but we must be determined to take that wheel back and get on a course that is better for us all.

 

Websites

So many times we go to the computer and look something up and take the information we receive for granted.  Few of us think of the effort that has gone into producing that information for us.  Not until you create your own website do you know what is happening behind those pretty pictures that jump out at you as you view a site.

 

I think it was 15 years ago that I first had my web site created.  At that time I went to the Univ. of MN and found an IT student who created it for me.  Realtors knew very little about the system and were far ahead of their counterparts for just having a website.  I think back on that site and I am embarrassed.  Each model improved, but I still had a long way to go.

 

You stay away from the university student and now go directly to a webmaster and those of us in real estate select a webmaster in real estate.  I have a part time staff member that works on my site weekly and makes the changes that Google wants to see.  It is amazing what they want to see. The person viewing the site would never see.

 

What does this all mean?  It means taking the correct steps and you will appear on page one.   Naturally, we all want to appear on page one and be the first person one contacts when they are seeking information.  To the consumer this might not mean much, but when you are a person selling a house, you want a Realtor with a strong presence in the market.  You are seeking someone who has a web page separate from their broker.  A Realtor who pulls consumers to their site, is a Realtor who is pulling a buyer to your house that is for sale.  We know 80%+ of buyers look online first when they want a house.  A Realtor needs to have a information site that does the job.  Wow, has real estate changed.  It used to be that the sign in the yard did the trick.