I’m going to indulge on a completely non-real estate topic because I am a proud dad. On Saturday, my son Luke won first place at his pack’s Pinewood Derby event. He is on cloud 9 and so am I. Luke is in 3rd grade and in his thid year of Cub Scouts. Our first two Pinewoods didn’t go so well. He was in the middle of the group in 1st grade but last year he brought up the rear. He was very disappointed. I felt guilty about it, because I work so much and couldn’t devote much time to help. 

His mother is as busy as I am as my partner in the company, but in January she started researching how to do well in this thing. This past month she took over the advisory position in Luke’s car asembly, and just the other day he put the finishing touches on the paint job- a red lady bug. Luke’s favorite color is red, and his car stood out from the field. It wasn’t the fanciest design, but it was easy to see. 

In the first heat, Luke’s car came in a close second. I was relieved he did well; on the way in from the parking lot I was coaching him on how to deal with disappointment if he had a poor result. Little did we know, the first place car in that heat was the entry that eventually came in second overall. In his next race, Luke ‘s red lady bug won Secetariat style, and if the day ended right there I would have been happy. So would Luke. Little did we know, Luke’s little red lady bug was actually greased lightning! He would win 8 consecutive heats, including a rematch over his first loss, and won the whole derby! There were close to 40 entries. 

All he did was talk about how much he wanted to tell his mom and how proud she’d be. When we got home, Ann was absolutely blown away at the good news. 

We work very hard, and we have a tad bit of guilt that I especially can’t always be home to put the kids to bed or make the time for some things more dads do. I was really hoping that the day would be special, and my perfect scenario would be my son taking disappointment like a good sport. We never dreamed that we’d instead see what a gracious winner he really is. I love it when magic happens, and I’ll never make the mistake of not being open to it when Luke is in the mix.

Congratulations to the Champ, who shares the honor with his late Uncle Paul, who won the thing in 1966. I know he’s proud too.

Earlier this week, I called a For Sale by Owner to show their home to a buyer I am working with. We just put their home under contract and need to find that next move up home for their family. They are nice people, and while I do not work with buyers as often as I once did, I was jazzed to help them. 

The FSBO agreed to the showing and prior to the appointment one of my clients shared that she walked through the house earlier that week after I made them hip to it. No worries there, as we were going to look together with everyone. 

However, when the owner saw her, he pulled the plug on working with me involved. He felt they were “his” buyers and that I wasn’t entitled to a commission since “he” walked one of them through once already. I told the guy we could work things out to everyone’s satisfaction and that we should walk through- you never squander a possible sale in this market. He remained difficult. 

And then, my clients did something that made my jaw drop. They told the guy that if he wasn’t willing to do business with their agent, they wouldn’t be doing business. And they turned around, and walked out. 

Now, even I know that it isn’t about my fee; it is about getting a home for your family. And I encouraged them to pacify the guy and check the place out, but they said “no.” I was amazed. 

Any agent that has been thrown under the bus by a buyer client over a FSBO or an unscrupulous agent who manipulated them into working with them directly knows what I mean here: these people are honorable. 

I am humbled. I hope the degree of results I get for them is half as high as their integrity. 

Craig Daniels has challenged us to name 3 bloggers we love– the sort of folks that if a glitch in Active Rain were to erase our subscription list that we’d immediately seek them out again. I have more than three, but the limit is three, so I’ll refrain from mentioning bloggers I know are on other lists already to my knowledge. I hate to leave some out. 

There are great ones I am happy to name to my triumverate. 

Scott Hayes. 

Scott is one of the reasons why people wonder aloud if there is something in the water in Austin because there are some great bloggers there. 

Scott’s stuff appeals to me because he’s erudite, insightful, and writes moth watering local stuff about a town where I spent one of my happiest summers with my older brother, who lived in Austin for many years. 

Check out What makes for a bad closing? As a great example of a thought provoking post. 

Tni LeBlanc

Tni is also a lawyer, so I should be inclined to dislike her. Yet she’s a real estate broker, so I embrace her coming back to the light.

I love straight, in your face communication and Tni delivers like a New Yorker, and that is a compliment. She speaks her mind, her writing style is clear as a bell with great economy of words, and very enjoyable. And blunt! I love that. 

Check out Dear Seller: Your House Stinks as a great example of straight talk from the gut. 

Stephen Fells

Full disclosure: I know Stephen in real life. But we met via social networking, not the other way around.

His blog is great because it is a mix of really fun stuff and cogent, useful material from a briliant mind that did code for Fortune 100 companies. Stephen isn’t an agent or loan officer, he makes our tools, like Follr.com and custom facebook pages.

The man is brain food (and underrated at that) when he isn’t making you laugh, and he blogs in a British Accent. I can’t do that.

Those are my three, I love to see them at the top of my dashboard, and I read everything they write.  

The following is a comment I wrote this morning on this article on real estate brokers in the New York Times. The piece was on smaller brokers contrasted with larger ones, and as is common in Times articles on brokerage, the haters were out there in the comments telling us how bad brokers are. 

I begged to differ, especially in light of the week I just had. I don’t know who these people are or how they came to their opinions, but in my experience the people who hate brokers, or feel we don’t fulfill a purpose, often did a poor job choosing their agent in the past. 

I felt my reply deserved to be said here in a blog post. 

_________________________________________________

I have to laugh at the trolls who badmouth brokers in these comments. I own my own firm. In the past week, I have spent 4 hours in a cold wet basement de-winterizing a short sale (which I paid for), saved a deal from going south after the buyer found the house still listed on a “by owner” site, closed another short sale that took FOUR YEARS to conclude, and basically worked from dawn until past midnight every day on behalf of my clients.

The notion that agents only smile and unlock doors is laughable. And if you think that the work ends once you “find” the house you clearly understand nothing about the process. Banks aren’t loaning money. Homes aren’t appraising. Many “buyers” are phony. Just as you pay for every mile traveled by a loaf of bread in the supermarket, you pay for the risks brokers take, the unrealistic sellers who demand that we buy expensive paper ads for their overpriced home, the buyers who call us Sunday night at 7pm demanding to see a house (then often don’t show up) and the buyers who work us like rented mules and then buy with another broker. Every low cost brokerage found out the hard way that discounting is unsustainable.

If you had a bad experience with an agent, look in the mirror. Did you check them out? Were they a relative or buddy from your kid’s cub scout pack? What did you do to verify the claims of the agent? 99% of the haters spent more time choosing their cell phone than their broker. If you think we suck profit, try getting your lawyer to do what we do. Most of the work they’d never stoop to, and the billable hours for the rest would dwarf the flat fee most lawyers charge for a regular closing.

Want to suffer? Make the hugest transaction of your life a do it yourself project.

How to get that Westchester County Home Staged to Sell!

First, make sure the landscaping is appealing with decorative additions. A mere lawn won’t do. 

Next, consider the Feng Shui of the “regular guy.”

If you think your home might appeal to a certain niche, leverage that fact. This home, for example, would be great for a cat lover. 

Panelling is out. Consider covering yours if you can’t paint over or remove. Anything is better than panelling, even letters pertaining to your legal matters. 

Yes, these were all taken at the same house. I left out the ninja knives!

I was invited by the Larchmont Rotary Club to speak on real estate this past Friday. It was a cool experience. I was unaware of the Rotary and the good work they do, but that, along with lunch, was a cool fringe benefit. And they gave me a pen. 

Not long ago I blogged about speaking at another brokerage’s “lunch and learn,” which is something I have now done twice. It might seem counter intuitive to train the competition, but it has other good outcomes: good relations with cooperating firms and raising the bar in the industry, to name two. In May I am going to speak before the Monmouth County Women’s Council of Realtors, so I guess my speaking schedule is growing. 

For the rotary, I wasn’t in front of licensees, I was actually addressing consumers. My material dealt with selling your home in the current slump. One gratifying thing: among my small audience were two former clients. One had a successful closing. The other, a builder, never sold. I acknowledged this, and he graciously said I did a good job anyway. I loved that. 

Anyway, I’ll continue speaking, and if you want to hear me yap to your group, my contact information is all over my sidebar. And you don’t need to feed me or shower me with gifts! 

We had some massive flooding yesterday all over the county, closing most of the main highways, such as the Saw Mill Parkways and 9A. It was probably a mix of the thaw upstate along with torrential rtains the past few days. I snapped an amazing video of a parking lot in Hawthorne that looked more like a fast moving river, and some other spectacles. Getting anywhere south of I-287 was nearly impossible. 

These are some photos of VE Macy Park in Ardsley, NY which is alongside the Saw Mill River. The park is a big grass field with a soccer playing field on one end. Yesterday it was a pond. 

The picnic tables these guys are standing on were actually floating. 

9A was closed as well. I got a ticket for taking this photo! Can you guess why? 

Here is the video of the Garden Center’s parking lot in Hawthorne being overrun by the flood waters:

Don’t mess with Mother Nature. 

$295,000 will get you a solid 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath colonial in the village.

The one we just closed on yesterday was built in the 1980s at the end of a dead end street in the Sparta neighborhood, walking distance from the Arcadian Shoping Center and the Jug Tavern. It boasted a finished walkout basement with sliding doors to a patio, a 2-car garage, gorgeous landscaping, a formal dining room, hardwood floors, central vaccum, and plenty of closet space. 

We wish the new homeowners luck in their new home, and we wish our seller client Evelyn much happiness in her new life now that the home is sold and closed. We’ll remain in touch. 

If you’d like to find yourself a nice home like this one in Ossining or the surrounding area, get yourself a free Listingbook account and search the MLS database almost exaclty like an agent. 

Last year I blogged about the 1,096 day short sale I had in Putnam County getting a “final approval.” The thought entered my mind that blogging about such a snake-bitten file prior to closing might jinx it, but with a final approval and a solid buyer I thought “what could go wrong?”

Plenty. 

I won’t bore you with the details, but when we failed to close by the deadline the lender rather callously re-set the timer and made us start from scratch. They ordered a new Broker Price Opinion (BPO) and that came in $100,000 higher. The buyer’s mortgage commitment expired. We were back at square one. It was heartbreaking yet almost humorous if you could somehow divorce yourself from the fact that my clients financial life, let alone my living, hung in the balance. 

10 months later, we finally closed. The buyer came up in price $50,000 to make the deal work, and coordinating approvals from the second lender and first, coupled with the buyer’s new mortgage, took us from this past December to today. My youngest son, who was born a week after the place was originally listed in 2007, turns 4 tomorrow. It will be the first day of his life when I am not working on getting this home sold. 

My typical short sale is incredibly faster than this- as a matter of fact, my friend and CDPE (certified distressed property expert) instructor, Mark Boyland, joked with me last week that he’d like to help me get approvals in under 1000 days. Well, we can smile about it now. 

There isn’t much more to say, except that we’re relieved and glad it is over with a happy outcome. The buyer hung in for 18 months. The sellers had their hearts broken so many times we lost count. And yet there we all were at the closing table together, as if we were graduating from a 4-year education together.

4 years and 4 days. The only thing missing was pomp and circumstance.