We’ve got gadgets aplenty around here- desktop computers, laptops, and Ann loves her iPad. I love it too, but there are two of us an one of it. I thought it silly to buy another when there are tablets out there for half the price and less which might be perfectly fine for my purposes, which is to accompany my ADD, workaholic, always connected self to every room when I’m home. Tablets are so much easier than a laptop- mouseless, a touch screen, light, and the battery life is enormously longer. 

So I’ve decided, after perusing Amazon and Bestbuy, that for 200-300 bucks I can get my self a tablet which will do what I need- mostly Internet and email. I have to trade off MLS access for now- Rappatoni, our MLS software, doesn’t translate well to anything outside of Windows. 

The operating system for the tablets in my price preference is Android, but ironically, it seems hit and miss with Active Rain of all places. I haven’t tried WordPress yet. 

My question is this- does anyone know of a tablet, preferably a 10″, that interfaces with Active Rain that doesn’t cost a ton? The Motorola Xoom has Android 3 OS but for that money I might as well get another iPad. Android 2 OS doesn’t seem to allow commenting. Amazon has a ton of inexpensive, highly rated tablets but if it doesn’t work on Acive Rain it sort of defeats the purpose.

Thoughts? Suggestions? 

I took Catherine out for a little drive with Daddy, just us two, so I could go to Best Buy and scout out my next piece of technology. I live in Briarcliff, so to get to Hartsdale you take the Taconic Parkway south, and Catherine asked me about that big building on the right, which happened to be Westchester Medical Center. I told her it was Grasslands. 

Fellow residents and natives of our fair county will understand the error. Westchester Medical was known Grasslands when I was Catherine’s age. It got me thinking- and remembering. 

I remember when you referred to someone who was rich, the reference wasn’t “like Trump” but “like Rockefeller!” The governor lived in nearby Pocantico Hills. 

I remember my bicycle shop was in Pleasantville. It is a restaurant now. 

I remember when the big employer in Tarrytown was General Motors. They had a big plant on the banks of the Hudson. 

I remember when everyone knew someone that worked at IBM. 

I remember when Croton wasn’t just known for their huge train station- they were known for the landfill at Croton Point. If you ever lost something, you’d shrug your shoulders and say it must be in Croton Dump by now. 

I remember when the Ossining High School vs Sleepy Hollow football game was a rivalry heard ’round the county. Bruce Jenner even played in that game! They haven’t played in 20 years now, but will resume in 2011. 

I remember when the entire Hudson Valley was area code 914. Now it seems like you need a passport to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge into Rockland County, 15 minutes from my house. Only Westchester is 914 after the 845 split, and the local magazine calls our county “The 914.”

I remember when the Galleria in White Plains was the big swanky new mall. 

I remember when Brewster, where my uncle and grandmother both lived, was far away. 

I remember Yankee games on channel 11 and Met games on channel 9.

I remember people lamenting that Joe Namath’s knees were shot.

I remember people in disbelief that the Giants played in New Jersey.

I remember wondering if Heaven was actually better than Rye Playland.

I remember my mother listening to Arlene Francis on WOR 710 AM 

I am sure my fellow Westchesterites can add a few recollections of their own. 

The other day I got a call from a rude and obnoxious representative from a well known template based provider of real estate websites who sounded like he poured red bull and expresso on his morning cereal. I’ve blogged about annoying telemarketers before, but this is the second time this company has had someone call me claiming to be on my website right now and then basically insulting me. It was a short conversation. 

Coincidentally, a professional group I belong to switched their website from that very company’s to a basic wordpress format, saving them $1200 per year. When the site administrator and I spoke about the change, he had a similar story. 

In reviewing the online solutions from which I derive the most value, it is clear that I found all of them through my own searches online. Shocking, no? In reviewing the biggest Edsel-like disasters where I poured money into something that didn’t work, they all found me. As a matter of fact, I found Active Rain initially when I was researching a guy out of Colorado that scammed me. It was the subject of one of my very first blogs. 

We’ve all heard the pitches- be on the top of Google, buy our overpriced leads, use our website template, and many other things preordained to appeal to a population of people hungry to increase their earnings. Yet the biggest promises have always turned out to be the biggest busts for me.

I find it incredibly ironic and contradictory for people to chase, badger and pester me for their service which is meant to help me avoid having to chase, badger and pester people to make my living. I mean, if your medium is SEO and online marketing, why wouldn’t you prove your worth by actually doing that instead of sending Johnny Obnoxious after me? If you are so great at “pull” why the “push?” The guy got more than he bargained for after he told me my Internet presence was crummy. He said that.

I must have missed the sales and marketing principle that tells us to insult people to get them to buy from you. Was it Tom Hopkins? Zig Ziglar?  Brian Tracy? Someone help me out. And pass me a Jolt or Red Bull. 

I have been asked in recent months about the market for building lots in Westchester County. While I am far from a high transaction land guy, I’ll tell you what I do would if I had a double lot, an adjacent building lot to my home, a spot lot nearby, or a small parcel that could be developed with a house or two. 

I’d keep it.

That’s what I’d do. I’d hold on to it until more development made values higher. It doesn’t make me money as a broker to advise people not to sell, but if you don’t need to sell your land, why you let it go when the market has gone so low? 

If you have a small lot that a spot builder could build a spec house on, the market value of that land is far lower than it was a few years ago when they were gobbling up every available parcel. No one is gobbling anything right now except in a few choice, exceptional areas. 

Here’s the method to my madness: If you are paying taxes of $500 a year on a vacant lot that you might only get $150,000 for, why wouldn’t you hold on for when the market recovers and you can command a better, higher price when builders come back to the table? Land doesn’t have the same appreciation curve as homes, and the fact that we can’t just go make more of it gives it a specific scarcity that plays to the advantage of those that have the land once the recovery is more sustained. 

Even if you held on for another 5 years, that is only $2500 in carrying costs for a price that could be 10, 25 or even 50 thousand higher than what you might get today. What instrument exists where you can pay $500 in annually and make 5 figures in 5 years? Am I being overly speculative? I think not, I see people pay $2500 for minor improvements to make a home ready for sale with no guarantees. Land doesn’t have tenant headaches, you don’t have to fix leaky toilets, plow driveways, or put up with loud music. You simply pay the taxes until the market improves. In the scheme of things, it is incredibly low risk if you don’t need to sell. If you need to sell, then you have to take what comes, naturally, but if you don’t have to, you are in the driver’s seat. As Will Rogers said, God isn’t making any more of it, certainly not in Westchester. 

Karen Crowson wrote a thought-provoking post asking whether it was a good idea or not for buyers and sellers to meet before closing. In spite of many examples of my own transactions where buyers and sellers did hit it off well, my vote would be “no.” There are two main reasons. 

1. Potential for conflict. 
2. Sellers can’t sell. 

Potential conflict is a huge problem and should be avoided. So what if the principals meet and like each other? The deal closes. It was supposed to close. So there isn’t an advantage that I can see, but huge downside potantial. As I type this, I have a seller client in her driveway with her arms folded, watching her buyer, who closes next week, load his belongings into her garage. The pre-possession agreement didn’t specify where the stuff would be stored, but she agreed to the basement. The buyer, who is acting like the house is his already, is putting her off with his attitude as he piles his belongings in her garage. We should have insisted they put their stuff in storage for a week- but buyer and seller spoke, and that was that. Now my client has boxes of her things in the same garage as her buyer’s possessions. Not good. 

On another transaction, I represented the buyers buying a home from retired sellers who were present for all showings. The owner breathed down our neck every visit and didn’t know how to shut his yap. Toward the end of the process near the closing, we needed to get back in to walk contractors through. He wouldn’t let us. Why? We “stayed too long” in previous walks through the house. Ridiculous. 

Sellers can’t sell. Some sellers think they can sell. And they know the house best. But that is often the booby prize. I listed a house once where the buyer agents would call or email me with bizarre, arcane questions on the structure of the house-qustions about the stucco siding, the crawl space sealant under an addition built 50 years ago, and weird stuff like that. We the sellers present for showings? Yup. And they were non stop chatterboxes about every physical detail of the structure with such granular detail that the buyers heads were spinning when they left. Instead of asking themselves if the place felt like home, they’d ask themselves if they heard my clients right about the date the windows were installed, if the attic insulation was R-30 or something else, and so forth. 

Information overload doesan’t make a place feel like home. It kills sales. I know sellers want the showing agents to be jumping up and down “selling” and “pushing” and “closing” but it doesn’t work that way. A house is the largest transaction of a lifetime. It isn’t jewelry or a car. If it doesn’t feel like home, no detail in the world will matter. If it does feel like home, then buyers will make the best buying signal I know: They’ll ask questions. And that is your chance to show your peacock feathers- through your agent. 

For these and many, many many other reasons I have personally seen in my 16 years in the industry, I am for buyers and sellers working through their brokers. It is the best way, it minimizes exposure to risk, and it gets homes sold. 

We held my listing at 8 Harwood Ave White Plains open yesterday, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to create a walking tour of the home, a marketing strategy which has been getting good feedback for me lately. I have blogged recently about the better results I have been getting at open houses; this was no different. I was greeted by a cooperating agent who presented an offer to me at the open house, which I have never had happen in 15 years in this industry. 

As it stands now, we have three offers on the property. 

The tour is one take and very informal; the point is to give you a feel for what it is like to walk through the house, not have high production values or be overproduced. That said, I think future tours will be steadier and easier to watch- the project is a work in progress. I’d redo this one, but I think it won’t be needed after this week. 

Both homes that I have produced walking tours of this past week have had offers come in. 

Imagine you are in real estate. If you are reading these words, not a stretch. Now imagine you’ve busted your buns long enough to start your own firm, like I did after 17 years. You decide you’ll name your firm after something very personal about you- let say your dog. Not a stretch, right? I had a dog named Bella, which means beautiful in Italian. So You decide you’ll call your firm Bella Homes (if the name is taken-which would be ironic-, please work with me) and you work hard and build your enterprise honestly and ethically.  

Now, after 5 years of business, you look around and not only is your firm successful after the miserable economy we’ve expereinced, but you are also the author of a well-known real estate blog and you enjoy the respect of your peers. 

Then, you get served with court papers. You are getting sued. Why? Because someone on the other side of the continent who doesn’t broker real estate but markets to agents also named something that they do “the Bella Report.” And these characters are claiming you have damaged them by knowingly and mailiciously stealing your brand. Frivolous? Yes. Expensive and time consuming? Absolutely. Harmful to you? No doubt about it. 

This is pretty much what has happened to the Real Estate Zebra, Daniel Rothamel, by some outfit on the west coast whom I won’t even name because they don’t deserve the search engine tickle. They have a report named after the aforementioned 4 legged beast ( which wasn’t even Daniel’s source-he was a referee for $%^& sake) which you have to register to get in your email. 

This is a good man who is being attacked ad hominem by my understanding, with no rationale basis for a complaint other than billable hours by some hack attorney – that’s my take, and if they don’t like it they can piss in the wind. 

Jay Thompson has written a far more cogent summary of the matter on the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, and a legal defense fund-ZebraDefenseFund.com – has been set up. I wanted to bring this to the attention of the Active Rain comunity. 

As Jay said, if you can contribute, do so. If you are short on Scratch, blog about it. 

Stand up for what’s right, and defend a good colleague. The Real Estate Zebra is one of my favorite blogs, has been in my reader for years, and I’m not going to be silent about it. 

I posted a photo of a pie I got at Grandma’s earlier this week and got over a dozen comments that gave me a collective sense of cyber salivation. With good reason: Grandma’s makes the best pies around. They have been in business for decades and have quite a following. 

I first learned of Grandma’s last year when Luke’s cub scout pack went on a trip there. We saw the kitchen, bakery, “back of the house” kind of stuff, and how they made their delicious, homemade pies, then we all had dinner and…what else? Pie. 

It is a family restaurant with a menu that is thouroughlyy American fair; think of a bistro if June Cleaver were the chef. They have a private parking lot, close proximity to the Taconic Parkway (Grandma’s is closely identified with Yorktown; however, the address is actually Cortlandt Manor), and the place is clean and friendly. The first thing you see when you walk in is that glass counter with all those pies, and that is great marketing. Hungry people buy more at a restaurant, right? 

I was by recently for a “quickie” a cup of coffee, a hunk of fresh, warm apple pie, and then I left with a pumpkin pie to go. The total damage was $19.00 and it was worth every penny. 

Grandma’s is located at 3235 Crompond Road in Cortlandt Manor and they can be reached at 914-739-7770. 

It won’t go to print until this Sunday’s paper, but the article that I blogged about expecting is now live online. Entitled “A For Sale Sign with Brains,” the piece discusses how real estate brokers are embracing technology to sell property. The story behind the article is actually not one of the reporter finding my blog, but rather, another broker at another company who is.

Barry Kramer, broker owner at Westchester Choice Realty and my friend, was contacted by the reporter and he suggested that she contact me because he considered me a tech savvy agent. She did. We had a good interview where I told her how I saw our technology toolbox evolve since my entry into the business in 1996, and the photos were taken two days later. 

For the shoot, a filmed a walking tour of the home at 374 Quaker Road in Chappaqua, put it on Youtube, and then, on my mobile printer, created a brochure with a QR code that would connect a smart phone to that Youtube tour. This would enable the consumer to see the house and get questions answered without having to make a phone inquiry. I am in the process of doing more of these walking tours on other listings. They work, as the listing where we did this tour has already been given an offer. 

The piece has three photos of me in the online version, plus a great one of the house, and we’ll see what makes the paper Sunday. I am of course very humbled that Barry would suggest me to the reporter, and while I still encourage Barry himself to blog because I think he’d be great, I am happy he reads my work.