Since so many of us wrote on a local enterprise yesterday for Small Business Saturday, I thought it would be a cool idea for us to put our posts on local small business in one place like so many other themes. Moreover, why blog on local small businesses once a year or once a week? With that in mind, I have started a new group, Small Business Spotlight, as a place for you to post your articles on hyper local businesses in your market area. 

This is where you can pimp the best coffee shop, ugliest bartender, fastest service, top bowl of pasta, and a thousand other hardworking local “Main Street” ventures you want to support. There are some distinct advantages to creating the directory: it is a one-stop shop for fellow members if and when they find themselves in your city, and it is also an awesome way to bolster the comment flow on these hyper-local posts, since they are typically very light in that department. 

We all know and appreciate the importance of hyper-local blogging and the urgency of keeping commerce local. Here is our opportunity to put our money where our blogging mouths are. This is the red meat of long tail SEO, it is a big part of Raincamp, and it is something all of us can support. 

I’ll need some help; if you are up for assisting in the moderation, please email me and we’ll talk. In the meantime, join, post, participate and sharpen your skills. This is big time Google juice and will build good will for you with local entrepreneurs. I am actually ging to go back and edit (note: don’t put anything back to draft or you re-date thepost) many of my restaurant reviews, etc and put them in the group to get my contribution to the “directory” in motion. You can too. 

Get jiggy with it. Post photos, video, maps, directions, backlinks to their site, interviews with the owner, whatever you think will separate the place from the crowd. Hopefully, this will make hyper local blogging a little more sexy, and get the comment discourse going as well. 

Click here to join the group and start pimping promoting your local businesses! 

When you hear a name like “Briarcliff Classic and Imported Car Service” you might envision a garage filled with Porches and Fiats with a temperamental guy in a beret acting more like a chef than a mechanic. With BCI, however, you’d be wrong. I remember Briarcliff Classic from when I was a kid in the 1970s and through the years in their out of the way place on Woodside Avenue and knew that nobody wore a beret, but it wasn’t until this past week that I experienced firsthand how down to Earth and committed they are. 

I have a BMW which has always run well, but was completely dead one morning. It seemed like a simple dead battery, and after calling the dealership and hearing there was a wait I thought of BCI. They did work for us about 10 years ago, and I did recall they were good. I forgot how good. 

Curveballs tell you how people run their business. It wasn’t a simple battery replacement, it was far more complicated, and the explanation I was given made some prior issues with the electronics of the car make sense. A fluid leak caused a chain reaction that would make even a new battery drain in a matter of hours. Everything was not just fixed, but explained. Throughout the process, the owner, Bob Millstein, remained in close touch with me. Anyone whose car has been held “hostage” at a McMechanic can relate to how nice that is. Bob is a genuine, funny guy, and as a business owner myself I was impressed with how important it was to Bob that my experience with his business go well. He took nothing for granted. 

Next was Ann’s Mazda, and an inspection, new brakes and servicing we all done in a day. In the process (I have to admit that Bob and I tended to kibitz on more than cars whenever we spoke) I found that he graduated from the same high school as Ann. The renowned Stuyvesant High school in Manhattan, the crown jewel of the NYC magnet school system has some notable graduates- James Cagney, Eric Holder, some Nobel Laureates, you get the picture- produced not only my wife, but now my mechanic. Good stuff.

One cool thing they do here is something I never see at any mechanic- the office has a huge glass wall where you can see the work being done. Talk about transparency! Believe me when I tell you that you could eat off the floor. 

Another cool thing we have discovered is that BCI gets social media and the web- their website is very sharp, and Bob has even recently started a blog. None of that helps if you have a bad experience, but it is clear to me that there is a reason they have been open since 1974- they get it, and they aren’t resting on their laurels even a little. Since I spend a great deal of time in my car in my chosen field, a resource like is is crucial. If you have a classic or imported car and you truly want white glove service, this is the place to go. 

Briarcliff Classic and Imported Auto Service
90 Woodside Avenue
Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510
(914) 762-1200
www.BriarcliffClassic.com 

Today is one of those rare days where I can marinate in the begotten all day with no fear of neglecting chasing the buck. So we’ll have some fun. This is probably boring to most, but Mommy thought it was cute. I agree. 

Mark is our spokesman this year. Art Linkletter’s legacy is quite safe. I have to give myself credit for centering the view by guesstimating, as the camera was being held in my left hand. 

From our family to yours, a happy Thanksgiving and may the end of 2011 be the precursor to a far better 2012 for us all. 

This has happened before, but I have never written about it. Today at my office, right after an appointment with a nice lady who listed her home in Yonkers with me, I was alone and catching up on returning phone calls. Line 2 rang while I was on line 1. Line 2 doesn’t have voice mail, so I asked line 1 to hold briefly, answered the phone quickly and the person said that he was calling about selling his daughter’s home in Mahopac. I explained that I was wrapping up another call and asked if he could hold or if I could call him back in 5. 

“Nope,” he answered. “I am walking out the door.”

Walking out the door? You just called me! 

Now, am I crazy to think that making a call about a possible 6-figure transaction is not something one does right before they run out for an errand? Would a reasonable person budget, say oh, I don’t know…10 minutes for a real estate discussion? Are we pricing perennial bulbs? Confirming show times for a film? Why do people make a phone call on something as significant as real estate when they are running out the door? 

As it turns out, he did call me back 15 minutes later and we spoke, but it isn’t the first time this has happened. As a matter of fact, I have had people make offers on my listings which were accepted, and when we began the discussion of inspection and contracts, been told that they’ll sort that out after they get back from an imminent 2 week trip abroad.

Huh? Why would you promulgate a real estate deal the day before you leave the country? Are we to hold a vigil until you clear customs? Maybe I am unreasonable, old fashioned, or set in my ways but some things require just a tad of planning. Real estate is not an afterthought in between Thanksgiving errands. 

Oh, our friend in Mahopac- as I said, we did catch up a little later. As it turns out, I already saw the house in 2009. They didn’t do business with me. It has been on and off the market, unsold, since 2008. I do not believe that to be a coincidence. 

I seem to recall a Twighlight Zone episode where a bigot wakes up one morning and is transformed into the ethnicity that he has been persecuting. That was the first thing I thought of when I read that the law firm of Steven J Baum is closing and laying off 89 employees. The closure comes as a result of the firm losing its major accounts in the wake of the New York Times running an article on a recent Halloween party at the firm where employees dressed in costumes mocking borrowers in foreclosure. 

I read that article on my tablet while at a home inspection last week. It was incredibly vulgar- at the party, Baum employees dressed as debtors, people in squalor, and even set up a mock subdivision called “Baum Estates” which were all homes that were repossessed. There was a a significant show of derision for people who sought to prevent their own foreclosure, and even a mock set up to ridicule someone who made a critical Youtube video of the firm. 

The Times article caused Baum to lose their big accounts with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they then filed to dissolve the firm. 

How incredibly ironic. Loss of a job and loss of income is the surest way to default on your mortgage, and you can bet that some of those 89 people -70 of whom are apparently attorneys- are going to get a fat envelope from their own bank down the road informing them that they are in default and face foreclosure. I have seen that fat envelope, and the people who had them, my clients, were scared. And when they reached out to the firm issuing the letter to try and work things out, they were faced with people who couldn’t care less.

We see it all the time in short sale negotiations, mid management grunts who worship the holy trinity of coffee, lunch and 5pm. They lose faxes, act nasty, and in general make the borrowers feel like garbage for having gotten sick, losing their job, or losing their business. And the worst, by far, in the whole industry are the law firms that were at the root of the robo signing scandal in their zeal to separate people from their homes. 

I am not for people living for free or shirking their debts. But I am for due process and compassion. And before we start celebrating that the witch is dead, believe me, most of these people will regroup elsewhere and keep doing what they do best under another roof. But a few of them will learn a tough lesson: turnabout is fair play, and when you know the person on the other end of the line is the same troglodyte as you were 6 months ago, you’ll have to swallow hard. 

Be careful who you mock. 

Quick preface: 

In 1997, the brokerage flavor of the month was pre-recorded property hotlines with voice mail. Instead of dealing with a salesperson to get information on  a property, consumers could call a recorded hotline and get the details on the listing pressure-free. They had the choice of hanging up or leaving a message. I had such a system, but on one listing there was a glitch with the voicemail. The seller, an imbalanced guy with an anger management issue, had a friend act as a mole, call the hotline and he got no call back. When I was asked to meet with the client a few days later, in about 45 seconds he went from calm to a screaming maniac who assaulted me in his kitchen. 

I have never been much of a fan of spies in real estate since then. 

Earlier today, on the Active Rain Network, there was a featured blog post suggesting that licensees act as secret shoppers so they could examine the sales and follow up skills of the agents in open houses. Invoking some reality show where CEOs pretend they are janitors or waiters, the author also suggested that a broker like myself could get insight into how my team handles themselves by pretending to be a buyer, perhaps via email, perhaps by proxy. 

There are huge ethical and pragmatic issues with such a practice. Let’s set aside for a moment the pragmatic, which is the incredible waste of time it would be for a colleague to chase me around thinking they might make a sale with me. We all know the frustration of having a neighbor walk into an open house and pretend to be an interested prospect. And let’s set aside the instant loss of respect my 26 agents would would experience if they know I were spying on them. 

It’s um, wrong. It is wrong (wrong as in against the Code of Ethics) to impersonate a consumer and not disclose my status as a Realtor, and I am pretty sure it is not real kosher with the nice people at the Department of State in Albany to do so either. There are plenty of things I might do to decode the secret sauce of a competitor. I suppose I could have lunch with an ex agent from the firm. Or I could contact a former client who is looking for new representation. But whatever I do, I would do it as Phil Faranda, licensed broker. 

The fact that you can learn something by breaking the rules is not justification for the practice. There are no nannycams in real estate, unless you are a client watching your own property. But lying about my status as a broker? Impersonating a buyer when I am not one? Am I supposed to sign a nom de plume in an open house registry? Have a buddy waste one of my agent’s time pretending to be a buyer to observe their technique? No way. If I wanted to see how my agents work, I’d simply go out into the field with them, like I do now. 

Just as that old hotline was the thing back in 1997, the new thing in real estate is transparency. Just tell the truth. Just be real. You won’t give away the store, you’ll be so incredibly refreshing that you’ll have more people wanting to be your client than ever before. Don’t use an alias. Don’t even have the pretense of being someone whom you are not. Disclose your identity and your license status. It is the right thing to do, and the public is starved for agents that do the right thing. 

There is nothing we like more than an enthusiastic, gung -ho buyer in this market. 

There is nothing we like less than a stressed out buyer who makes life hell for all involved. 

So, when that gung-ho buyer locks their rate in for 30 days and we haven’t even signed contracts yet, it doesn’t take a clairvoyant to know there will be trouble down the road. And yet, every so often this occurs. We get an accepted offer on one of our listings, inspections are done,  the lawyers are talking contract (remember, here in New York we do it backwards- no inspection contingency and a minimum of a week or more before signed contracts), and then we get that phone call or email from the other side that we have to hurry- the buyer locked in their rate last Friday. 

Even in a cash deal, a 30 day closing in Westchester County is a rarity. 45 days is zippy, and 60 days about normal. Why that is so is another post entirely. The point is you don’t lock your rate in before we have a deal contractually. The buyer goes in stressed out already as it is, and in a state where a hiccup can cause a 2 week delay, adding that deadline unnecessarily throws gas on the flame. Knowing that we won’t close for 2 weeks and hearing that the buyer’s rate lock expires in 72 hours isn not fun. Just trust me on this. 

You have to have a plan. You lock your rate in once you have a deal and there is light at the end of the tunnel. You have to have a plan and an understanding of what to do when after what and why. For example, once contracts are signed and the appraisal is done, the file should be sent to underwriting. Many buyer attorneys wait until the approval is issued to order title, which is too late in my view, but whenever you run title is probably when you should be ready to lock your rate in. That way, if there is a title-related delay, you know whether or not to hold off or proceed. The idea that this will cause you to lose an plum rate based on shifts in the market is a fallacy- a super awesome rate is less advantageous if you have to pay through the nose in cash for an extension, which is essentially paying discount points. 

Understand the process, confer with your agent and loan officer, and plan accordingly. And if your loan officer allows you to lock in without really knowing where you are in the process, you might be working with the wrong person. This is a collaboration, and lone wolves don’t help.  

In plain language, the old adage “lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Rate locks are serious business, and once done are irreversible.

Measure twice, cut once. 

Any REALTOR association will have the inevitable news on our web page on the passing of a current or former member with some frequency. It is never a happy thing to read, and today’s announcement was particularly significant for me- not because we were very close (we weren’t), but because I knew firsthand what a good man we had in George Groves. 

And with the sad announcement of his untimely passing I will share my own personal George Groves story. 

In late 2007, I was the listing broker for a particularly difficult sale. After about 7 months on the market, at long last we had a buyer with an approval. The closing date was all set and everything looked good. I remember getting the phone call on a Wednesday, with the closing scheduled for that Friday. 

“Phil, this is George Groves. I need you to take your lock box off the house. The bank foreclosed on the property, and I was assigned the listing today.”

“Wow,” I said, “what a bummer. We were scheduled to close the day after tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

There was a pause, and then I heard him sigh. 

After a brief discussion of our status and the journey we thought we were about to conclude, George then proceeded to do something I have never seen any agent do before or after. 

He began to explain to me how I should have my client’s attorney contact George’s asset manager at the bank and get the loan reinstated so we could close with the buyer in our sale. 

Over the course of the next 2 weeks, he methodically coached us in the maneuverings of a strategy that would cost him his own commission, and ensure that I would get mine. We were successful, and the house did close, albeit with his lockbox on the door and re-keyed doors, because George had to fulfill his own duties as he helped me save my deal. 

I estimate that this cost him somewhere between $7,000-$14,000. It also got him my undying respect forever. I ran into George plenty of times thereafter, and he was always cordial and authentic. What’s more, while I never forgot what he did, I think George actually did. It was no big thing to him. It was what he did. 

One thing George did recall, however, was funny. I ran into him at an event in Scarsdale some years later where he was on the panel, and he asked for his lockbox back! I reminded him that I returned it.

George was a giant- a former board president and broker owner who remained active in the field to the very end, he was a top selling agent and the picture of class and character. He was also lauded as the person who introduced open houses way back when in the prehistoric time when they were actually an innovation. I am sure my colleagues will all have good memories and stories of the fine man George was, and now you know mine. I am a better man for having known George Groves, and hope I can be more like him. 

Like anyone else, I love it when I get a cash offer on one of my listings. That is rare, but it is also nice when we get an offer that has terms including a healthy 20-30% or larger down payment. That doesn’t happen all the time either. What is keeping the lights on in Westchester real estate is the FHA mortgage, which was unheard of 5 years ago, but is now more common than any other program for starter and medium homes. 

The minimum down payment on an FHA loan is 3.5%. For the math-challenged, that means the buyer will be financing 96.5% of their purchase. In a county where FHA loans were once as rare as hens’ teeth, this causes some consternation among some attorneys who have grown accustomed to picking the low hanging fruit for decades. I always shake my head when we have a perfectly good offer torpedoed by the seller’s attorney simply because they have never closed an FHA loan. Here are some of the stupid things these lawyers say:

• How can these people qualify for a loan if they are only putting 3.5% down? 
• I can’t let us get tied up under contract with buyers with no money. 
• I won’t send contracts to anyone putting less than 20% down. It is irresponsible to get in bed with such a risky loan. 

If one were to do a heat map of population density for Westchester, Putnam and the Hudson Valley, they would discover an amazing fact about Philipstown- of all the river communities from Westchester to Poughkeepsie, Philipstown -including Cold Spring and Garrison- is the least populated and perhaps most pastoral river town for 60 miles. 

That’s a good thing. That’s a great thing. That means you can live on the Hudson line, commuting distance from New York City, close to the river, but not be in a crowded place. 

Philipstown has two school districts, and this market report for the 3rd quarter of 2011 will center on Haldane schools. Garrison will be forthcoming. Haldane includes the Cold Spring post office, which is mostly the village of Cold Spring, neighboring Nelsonville, and the town of Philipstown. 

For the 3rd quarter of 2011, Cold Spring and the surrounding area had 9 single family homes closed at a median price of $459,000. 

Two homes are under contract at a median lst price of $239,900. 

57 homes are available with a median asking price of $549,000. 

Buyers have incredible choices. There is village living in Cold Spring, or an outstanding, more pastoral lifestyle in Philipstown with Cold Spring close by. But more than just that, the high inventory makes this a unique opportunity for buyers seeking quality of life at enticingly affordable levels. I seldom speak in superlatives. But the facts are hard to argue. Buyers are in a great position, and the options before them in Philipstown are awesome. 

One good example is this home in Philipstown. It is a 4 bedroom ranch on a private 8 acres with its own pond- stunning! It is only $499,000. Click on the photo for more details, or for a walk through video, scroll down. 

Not far away is the village of Cold Spring and all it offers. To see this and more home in Philipstown, register for a free Listingbook account and search the MLS database of homes effortlessly.