I have written before that I do not recruit or solicit first-time investors. Real estate mistakes are expensive, they can ruin you, and I don’t want to go head to head with a newbie who won’t take my advice, gets hurt,  but still reserves the right to blame me. Not my idea of fun. 

There is a home that is in the final stages of renovation in my marketplace that I am well familiar with; I looked at it when it was on sale in 2007, and I showed it as a bank-owned foreclosure last year. The investors I showed it to passed on it. 

A Lesson for Would Be Investors: If the home is listed on the MLS for 30 days or more, then the savvy investors who flip or rehab and re-sell deemed it not such a great bargain. Most amazing bargains never make it to the open market. 

So the home sold to a first-time investor, and I was referred to the person as a possible listing broker. They interviewed two other agents, and wanted my price quote. They did not like my number. It didn’t give them the profit margin they were shooting for. 

A lesson for Would Be Investors: The buying public does care a lick about what you want or need. 

There were some emotions about our meeting. The folks are personally invested and subjective about their property, and that bias clouds their judgment. They don’t see that time is their enemy, or how a stale listing can doom their investment if it does not sell in an expedient fashion. 

A Lesson for Would Be Investors: Never get emotionally attached to an asset you are buying and re selling. The property is not your friend. The numbers are. Math should dictate your actions, not personal bias. 

The people have done a fabulous restoration of the home. It is a credit to the neighborhood. They should rightly be proud of what they have accomplished. And they should make a profit. But how much profit? I’ll give you a hint: Not as much as they’d “like.” Only what the buying public will pay. 

A Lesson for Would be Investors: “Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered.” -Scott Forcino

If the house goes on the market overpriced and they chase the market, these folks will see their carrying costs pile up while the buying public watches the house sit unsold, asking what is wrong with the place that it won’t sell. In a war of attrition, the buyers win. It costs them nothing to sit and watch. 

A Lesson for Would Be Investors: Time is your enemy. 

My fear is that if this project becomes unprofitable or stresses them out over a long period of time, their real estate investing career will be short. And that will happen if they don’t price it right from the start.  Great effort will be squandered, and the mind boggles at the financial damage. 

A Lesson for Would Be Real Estate Investors: High bidder gets the house-including the current owner. 

My choice is simple. Take the listing priced right, or tell them to use another broker if they aren’t going to take my advice. 

And that, my friends, is why I do not recruit first-time real estate investors. Westchester is expensive, and mistakes cost dearly. I want graduates of the school of hard knocks as clients, not freshmen. 

I understand the importance of voice mail. As a broker, I value it as a tool to retrieve and leave messages since I and my fellow agents cannot always be available to answer calls.  

Some of the messages I get are priceless. Greetings amuse me too.  

Like, for example, the agents who have a 90 second voicemail greeting about their integrity and commitment to follow up who take a week to call me back. That is always fun to sit through. 

I also get messages from folks who feel that their first name is ample information for a complete, thorough follow up since we met for 5 minutes last week. Or better yet, the guy who tells me how important it is that we speak ASAP but neglects to leave his phone number, leaving me to jump through forensic hoops. And you have to love the people who don’t disclose they are an agent until you call them back. 

That does not mean, however, that I have the hang of it. Far from it.  As a leaver of messages, I leave quite a bit to be desired.

My offense is a Jackie Gleason-like, hemana hemana stream of consciousness yapfest that people have to endure which never seems to come out right upon reflection after I hang up. It is typically long, stuttering, and completely unlike me because the silent absence of a pulse on the other end gives me no feedback as to whether I should zig or zag in my tone, pace or delivery. In rare cases where the menu allows me to review my message, I cringe when I hear myself, and I almost always delete. 

My solution is what I prefer when my own recieved calls go to voicemail: a name and number, or, better yet, a missed call on their readout will also suffice if we are familiar. So if you ever see a missed call from me, just call me back. Ignore the message- we’ll catch up when we speak in person. It’s better that way!

According to the Journal News, the legendary Leatherman will be reburied today in a more fitting place in Sparta Cemetary, further from Route 9. His original burial place was mere steps from the ever widening highway. The controversy that stemmed from the issue is now meaningless, as the Times reports that little more than coffin nails were found in his burial site. 

Scientists hoped to study his remains for some clues as to his ethnicity and medical condition, as the mysterious man was known to speak a French and little English, and made a 365 mile loop every 34 days between the Hudson Valley and Connecticut for decades, living off the land and the kindness of locals. Some people objected to the exhumation and especially the analysis of his remains, but no remains could be found. 

I drove past Sparta Cemetary this past week and saw the tent up where they were doing their work, and figured that I would see a story about it in the media shortly. He may be back with the Earth, but the Leatherman remains a fixture in local lore, and while other kids heard dumb stories about the New Jersey Devil if they got lost in the woods, we heard stories of a kindly soul who helped others in his wanderings, and our guy was rooted in true events. 

Godspeed Leatherman, wherever you are, and we’ll never forget you. 

The best posts featured on the front page on Active Rain, the ones I love to see on the dashboard even more than my own, are those written by my own agents and invitees. This past September, I almost had the vapors when the firm’s own Tom Ricapito wrote a terrific post that was featured entitled Is that my commission in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?  I in turn wrote a a convoluted yapfest about my initial reaction, which was less than calm. The great thing about Tom’s post (and Tom) was the raw authenticity about his feelings on the challenges and quirks we experience in the field.  

Just this evening, I logged onto Active Rain and saw none other than our own Stephanie Solano featured for the first time as well. What an absolutely cool thing to see. It is almost surreal. 

Stephanie’s piece is in the same vein as Tom’s- a great offering that we can all relate to on her thoughts about being asked to show a property that her buyer was not qualified to see. It doesn’t just happen to me. Or you. It happens to all of us. But that it IS happening, to one of my own, is highly cool to observe. 

It is one thing to do something yourself. It is another to see one of your own team do it themselves. I never taught Stephanie to blog. I never taught Tom. I just suggested it. They took it from there. It is the same with how a good, new agent gets clients right out of the starting gate. Tom needed little help in the beginning. Stephanie has two deals pending already, and while I’m bragging on the crew, Tom Liberati has two listings and counting and he’s in his first 90 days of licensure. Do they listen to me? Yes. Are they coachable? Certainly. But they are going out there and doing it. 

One of my favorite therapies is working in my yard. When you plant a lilac or trim a shrub, they don’t argue. You water, they grow. No lawyers. No underwriters. No last minute title surprises (can you imagine getting an email from the azelea that they wouldn’t blossom this year because you didn’t use the right hose?). Helping human beings get results and grow in this business is altogether different. However, when they do grow, as I see with Tom, Stephanie and Tom, is is a great thing for a broker to behold. 

Agents who get results early have huge odds in their favor for success over agents who do not. All three of my guys have bright futures, and I am very proud of their progress, online and offline. 

Salud to my Murderer’s Row! 

And we’ve got more! 

There has been quite a bit of discussion within Active Rain membership about the changes in the corporate team. I have to say that in an industry known for high attrition and where we see a ton of movement among our own, it is a little ironic to see any hand wringing. 

The years of working 35 years at one company and getting a gold watch at retirement and pension were over a long time ago. And, being an IT company, Active Rain Corporation is in an industry where movement is incredibly common. So why should we be surprised that people move on after two or three years? 

Frankly, I really don’t care who is at what desk in Seattle as long as they do their job. Don’t get me wrong- I like Steven Graham a bunch, met him in person multiple times, was mesmerized by his presentation at Raincamp, and I’ll miss him. But that is a different animal from losing confidence in Active Rain as an entity. As long as there is a community here and I can do what I do, I don’t care if Max Headroom replaces Steve. 

All things being equal, I like that I know and like so many people on the staff in Seattle. I met Kerrie, Kelly Pflugrath, and Kelly Clifford at the Atlantic City Raincamp and thoroughly enjoyed their great efforts and wonderful selves. It was a pleasure and added to my experience here. But if Kerrie announced that she was accepting a position at the White House or Kelly Clifford was moving on to the United Nations, as much as I wished them well, it wouldn’t stop me from blogging or create a crisis of confidence about the company. I have bigger and better reasons to participate and contribute than liking them. 

Here are some examples of what would be a problem for me:

• An email to membership announcing changes to the fundamentals of the terms of service. 
• A change in the moderation of user content that resulted in an increase in spamming, abusive behavior, or otherwise undermined the community.
• Harvesting of membership for outside commercial interests or excessive upselling from the corporation. 
• A fundamental change in customer service resulting in more frustration and fewer problems resolved.
• Wholesale turnover or complete reorganization of departments to the point where you can’t keep track of who does what.  

I first heard the word “cantilever” when the renovations to old Yankee stadium were described. The old support columns holding up the upper deck were removed because they blocked the view of the field, and the upper deck was thereafter a cantilever. A cantilever is something like a balcony or deck that is supported only on one end, held up by stress on one side, with no support on the other end. We see lots of cantilevered balconies on apartment buildings in New York, but I seldom see them on a regular residential home. Today, I saw a good one. 

The support beams of this balcony go far into the house, and really only a small part of the whole beam sticks out. It almost seems like an optical illusion, but we probably see so few because running those beams in is such an intrusive project. On this home, we saw how it was done with the beams sistered to the floor beams through the drop ceiling. 

There was another deck directly next door to us, so it was easy to see the contrast between a cantilever deck and a post and beam design, which is far more common. 

Why would a cantilever make sense? For the same reason they removed the columns at Yankee Stadium- to avoid obstruction. In this case, there is a patio below the deck, and they wanted to maximize the available space without the encumbrance of beams. And in places like Yonkers, where yards can be small, every square foot of space counts. 

Although it looks unbalanced, the thing is quite strong. The ways of calculating stress and the sheer number of beams running underneath that thing distribute the stress evenly. It works. It looks awkward, but it works. 

I got a call this morning from a seller client who had two showings scheduled for the day. She was concerned she might have to postpone the appointments. It seemed that she discovered an ant colony outside a window of her condo, and was concerned that the development might repel the prospective buyers.

“NO!” I insisted, “let them in! They might be turned off by the ants, but if they get canceled there is a 100% chance they won’t make an offer today!” I explained to my client that the best thing to do is call the superintendent, post a note explaining the ants were just discovered and were being addressed, and assurethem that we were aware of the situation.

With literally dozens of competing listings, we had no guarantee that anyone would reschedule if we canceled. We needed to show, period.  Just tell the truth and believe in a good outcome. Reluctantly, she agreed. She would trust my advice. 

And a few hours later, after 84 showing requests, 6 months, and one deal that fell through, we got a very strong offer. It is funny how that happens. 

You never know what magic will happen when you err on the side of possibility, especially when it is a little scary to do so. 

We’ve just listed a very special home in Armonk on 2 Anthony Court, 3 minutes from the downtown area and close to the highways. It is a 3415 square foot 4/5 bedroom  3.5 bath center hall colonial built in 1999. It has a large granite kitchen with an island, family room with fireplace, formal dining and living rooms, a spectacular master suite with two walk in closets, a hall bath with a double vanity, and all on a level quarter acre. It also boasts a two-car garage, a finished basement with a guest room, rec area full bath and den, and central air conditioning. It is priced at $1.1 million. Call us at (914) 762-2500 for more information or to schedule a showing. More information on the property at Homespotters.com. 

If you’d like to see this and other homes like it in Armonk, get yourself a free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 

In New York, attorneys prepare real estate contracts. I’m no fan of this, but when in Rome, well, you know. I am involved in one particular transacton where contracts have been held up for a month while the buyer’s attorney contemplates her navel. This morning, after reading an email from this lawyer, I had enough. The following has been edited to protect the moronic: 

Ms Dingbat Esq: 

Attached is a copy of the lead based paint disclosure. Open it using adobe acrobat reader, print it (page 1 only), and have your client sign it. Please return it to the seller’s attoney along with all the other paperwork sent you over a month ago.

Once received, we will have the seller sign the disclosure, as well as every other form germane to the transaction, and provide you with a copy for your records. At that point, all fiduciaries in the transaction shall have conformed to New York State and Federal law, and a thousand legions of Cherubim and Seraphim will praise the name of God.

Please get going. Print the form. The seller is losing her patience.

Phil

I think I made my point.