Pat Kennedy - Your Washington, DC Real Estate Connection

Tomorrow late afternoon, a colleague and I are headed south to Richmond, Virginia for The Turning Point.

And, don't you know it!  I wound up writing an offer today on a house with the sellers in Sri Lanka and sketchy email.  The listing agent is a buddy from my Pardoe days, so that should help.  That's why God invested the Internet and the Blackberry.

I'm pretty psyched!  For the last couple of days, I've been listening to some of Buffini's CD's in my car, and what he says is pretty consistent with my values.  What is not consistent is moi!

Most of my business is word of mouth.  And the rest is from Open Houses.  I've never made a cold call, chased an expired listing or knocked on doors in my long career.  I was blessed with a lot of friends and former colleagues who gave me business from the beginning, and it's all been pretty accidental.  

Listening to the CD's, one thing surprised me.  Buffini is an Irishman!  He even has a big of a brogue!  The thing that didn't surprise me was how he got that people love their homes!  And I so appreciate him for flying across the country to put on this workshop so soon after fires destroyed his own. 

Assuming I can find internet access in Richmond, I'll keep you posted!   If I can't find Internet access, I will probably get the shakes from Active Rain withdrawal DT's - I am such a freakin' addict!

Pat, take a deep breath - it's Richmond, not Sri Lanka.  Of course there's going to be an Internet hook-up. 

Halloween is a couple of days away, and the haunted house theme is creeping into more and more posts on Active Rain. 

Now, my house really was haunted when I moved in.  I think it was handled, like she’d moved on.  But tonight I’m hearing sighs – and I don’t’ think it’s the cats.  

My ghost’s name was Amy Pratt.  She lived here for a long time and was, by all accounts, a good neighbor.  I think that she’s the one who wallpapered the ceilings – something that really is haunting me to this very day!  

While living here, she helped to raise a niece who grew up to be DC’s mayor in the ‘80s, Sharon Pratt.  Aunt Amy’s pipes burst, too.  The neighbors were still talking about it when I moved in years later.

I’m not sure how or when she died, but I think she just got old.

Soon after I moved in, I woke up in the middle of the night with the hair on my neck sticking out straight.  In a corner of the dark room, there she was – a column of light wearing a long flowy thing.

She was a benign ghost – even a good ghost.  She got rid of some houseguests once who had totally overstayed their welcome.  Another time, I had a basement tenant who I really wanted to move out.  Amy stepped up to the plate and scared the begeez out of her, and she was gone.

And eventually, Amy moved on, too.  Some airy-fairy buddies of mine were visiting from California.  I’d been out all day showing property and when I got home, the house smelled a little funny.  

My friends sat me down.  They explained that they had met my “entity” and they had helped her to “move on” with some incense, chants and holy water.   

Now, I knew she was in a better place and all that.  But I kind of missed her!  

So when I’m reading all the haunted house posts on Active Rain, and when I hear funny noises, it’s a little disconcerting, because I know it’s not Aunt Amy!  

Maybe it is the cats!

Yesterday, I called a favorite colleague who, like me, had some major home renovations this year.  Her lovely old house in upper Northwest Washington has a fabulous new kitchen and two renovated bathrooms. 

The conversation was about how, when you do a couple of things to fix up an old house, all of the stuff that remains to be updated looks really, really awful.

In my house, I have 2 new bathrooms that look fabulous.  Each abuts a bedroom that just looks like hell.  The little old lady who owned my house from about 1940 to 1970 wallpapered the entire house a bunch of times – including the ceilings!  So today, the walls and ceilings look like a wrinkled shirt!  The floors (heart of pine) are beaten up, and the entire second floor is still cluttered and messy from stuff that had to be moved around to get it out of the contractor’s way.

The clutter is new, but for years, I haven’t paid much attention to the plaster and floors.  Now it’s making me crazy!

So my friend talks about visiting her favorite psychic after her kitchen was done and she was suffering from renovation fatigue as well as a depleted bank account.  And she passed on the advice she got from this wise seer:

“Replace all of you light bulbs with very, very low wattage.  You won’t notice as much.”

On a recent Tuesday tour, we went through the home of a Famous American.  This person has advised presidents and has to be one of the more influential people in the country.  And one thing about this house that was a little bit off.

There was not a single book in his lovely upper brackets house.  Nothing on history or politics.  Nothing about economics.  Not even any murder mysteries or travelogues.  There were some decorating magazines, but not a copy of any journals or even a GQ, Vanity Fair, Newsweek or Time Magazine.

There were some bookcases, although they would be more accurately described as shelving – there were knick knacks staging them, but no books.

So, did this guy read?  Maybe he did but just kept all of his reading material in his office downtown.  I sure hoped so.

A lot of my buyers are big readers.  They are attracted to homes with walls where they can build bookcases, and better yet to homes where these walls already have built-in bookcases.  And they like to check out what the sellers read. My buyers, even if they didn't know who lived there, would wonder where the books were.  And on the Tuesday I was there, a number of my colleagues also wondered aloud.

Oddly, a week after seeing this house, we did a pricing party at a new listing one of my office's agents was going for.  She got it, and one of the reasons was that the other agent and her stager had recommended that they lose the books in the impressive, custom-built wall of bookcases in the family room.  We suggested that they tidy it up.  The  house, of course, sold to book people.

Go figure! 

It’s home - safely (well, as safe as a car can be on the streets of DC) parked in front of my house!  All of the wrinkles, not only from the accident, but also from all of my parking mishaps, have been removed.   It looks like a new car, and drives really well, too

So for those of you who missed the earlier car drama, a young woman yakking on a cell phone made a left turn from the right lane right into the side of my car.  And it was, ironically, during Realtor Safety Week, about which I’d just written a very flip post.  And it happened a week or so after the car was stolen and miraculously returned.  Then State Farm lost it for a couple of weeks after it was towed to their storage lot, but found it again.  And it was fodder for more than one blog post.

So, on the way to pick it up, I got lost finding the body shop (I think of it as the “car spa”).  It was hidden on a back street out in Silver Spring.  But getting home was easy, as my navigation system pointed the way – all I had to do was press the “home” button.  During the ride down 16th Street, the soft leather seats felt a little chilly, so I turned the seat warmer on.

Then, I pumped up the sound system with a CD of an old boyfriend playing one of the Vivaldi Piccolo Concerti.  Driving doesn’t get much more fun than this, at least not in city traffic.

It’s silly to think that the car I drive should in any way determine how I feel about myself or my abilities as a real estate professional.  And I don’t think it really does – I’m not all that shallow.  I hope.

But I gotta say, when I step into my beloved black cherry pearl Lexus, it majorly tops climbing into a Kia Rondo (although I’ll have to admit, it was a fun car to drive).  And what the heck!  I’m worth it!

If I am writing an offer in a multiple contract situation, I advise my clients to write a big, fat earnest money check.  If mine is the only one on the table and under the asking price, I do the same thing.  A big check makes it easier for me to sell their offer to the sellers.

If I am the listing agent, a sizable earnest money check gives me a warm fuzzy feeling about the offer accompanying it. 

The big check is supposed to make it easier for the sellers to hold the buyer’s feet to the fire should those feet get cold.  If the buyer backs out, the seller shouldn’t particularly care, because this windfall will come their way, and they will be able to pay the mortgage until more buyers show up.

OK.  Not so fast.

In twenty something years in the business, I’ve seen a lot of buyers get cold feet and threaten to move to France – even Baghdad – to get out of the deal.  Sometimes, we can talk them off the cliff.  Other times they walk away.  And there have only a couple of times I’ve seen the seller keep even a part of the earnest money.

First, most people getting out of a contract do so during a contingency period, and the contract says “Give the money back to the buyer” under those circumstances. 

Even after the contingencies have expired, a terminal buyers’ remorse case can usually come up with some excuse.   I’ve seen buyers come up with incredible accusations against the sellers or their agent, usually involving some form of misrepresentation made about the property.

And the sellers are left with a difficult choice.   Do they go after the deposit in an attempt to keep the buyers in the deal?  Do they hire lawyers and try to enforce the contract?  Or do the let it go and focus their energies on finding other buyers.

The escrow agent can’t really release the funds to either party without mutual agreement or a court order.  Most of the time, there is some sort of compromise worked out between the buyers and sellers.

I’ve seen buyers behaving badly who got most or all of their deposits back.  One of mine called me two days before settlement on a fabulous coop saying, “My psychic told me not to do it!”

I shrieked!  So did the ordinarily staid listing agent.  The place resold within hours, and the seller agreed to return most of his deposit – there really were no damages.

And sometimes the sellers know they have to give it up, but they refuse to sign a release just to be ornery.  They put the fear of God into the buyers, and then they put them through the hassle of finding (and paying) a lawyer.

Still, I’ve seen a lot of transactions held together when buyers contemplated the possibility of losing a big deposit.  And if I’m looking at an offer on one of my listings, I don’t care that the seller isn’t likely to see a dime of the huge deposit if the buyer defaults. 

Thank you Chris Elizabeth Griffin for your 6-pack idea!  

So here is mine:  

Your Active Rain Mug Shot 

Me and My Crackberry

Taxation Withuot Representaton

Should You Let Carl Kasell Record Your Voice Mail Message?

Puppy Envy

and

Two Buck Chuck As a Metaphor 

This was a chance to do a post where I didn't need to think up an idea.  Also, it was great fun to look back over the old struff I had long forgotten.  

So, thank you, Chris! 

OK, it's time to go find flood plain kids their house! 

This morning, after our weekly office meeting, I was sitting at my computer when a favorite colleague came up with a question about bank owned properties and short sales.  Now, there are not many of those in our market area, and I’m not certain that anyone in my office has actually had a transaction involving a short sale or foreclosed house or condo.

So, I logged onto Active Rain and said, “Start by reading this.”  

It was Dan Forbes’ series on short sales.

Then I moved over to the next computer looking for something on bank owned properties when I came across Broker Bryant's post about expired listings and clicked on his video clip.   Before I knew it, there were a bunch of people crowding around the computer, and I turned up the volume – I had to so we could hear Bryant’s booming voice over their laughter. 

“Wow!  What a caricature!”  someone remarked.  And if you haven’t seen it, it’s one of the funniest things ever posted on Active Rain.

Then it became Small World Time!  A colleague mentioned she is working on a transaction with Debbie Cook, and Debby had mentioned she knew me from Active Rain.  

So I emailed a bunch of invitations after that.  Maybe we can get some more people from Evers & Company hooked!

There is this couple I’ve been working with.  I’m their second agent, and a dear friend and veteran of many buying and selling transactions as a client referred them.  

By the time I met them, they had found a neighborhood they liked in Northern Virginia.  Since I’d not familiar with this subdivision, I took a couple of hours to blitz every house in the neighborhood that was currently listed, and there were two standouts listed well within their comfort zone for price.  We went back together, and they really liked one of them.  Yesterday, we went back for a second time, and they decided that, yes, it’s Dream House.

We went over the listing information (it hadn’t been out on the previous visits) including a survey, and something caught my attention.  There was a creek forming the boundary of the back yard.  

“Is this in a flood plain?”  I asked out loud.  

Well, there was a survey from when the current owners bought the place that said it was not in a FEMA-designated flood zone.  And most agents would have left it at that.

But I am the daughter of the guy who headed the office at the US Geological Survey that was responsible for designating flood plains, and the type (10-year, 50-year, 500-year, etc.).  I knew a little bit about it from dinner table conversations.  And I knew that the survey was dated 1999, and the maps were redrawn every 2 or so years, and there’s a creek not all that far from the back door.   It was like my father’s voice was calling down from heaven, “Check the maps!”

On my advice, the buyers decided to do some homework on flood plains.  And after a couple of phone calls, they found out that, yes, the house is in a 100-year flood plain  - not just the back yard, but about 10 feet of the rear of the inside of house.  They were informed that a lender would require them to obtain flood insurance as a condition of making the loan.

So, we just concluded a discussion about what the risks were. 

• If they had to buy flood insurance, what would it cost? 
• If the creek did flood the house, how much would they likely have to pay to clean it up? 
  
• Are the risks of a house built on a flood plain having the basement flood out any greater than having any other house’s basement flood?  (My basement has flooded 3 times in the 20-some years I’ve lived here, and I am nowhere near a creek or stream.)
• Were there ways to mitigate the risks - taking up carpet and putting down ceramic flooring?

But the space in the fully-finished walk-out basement was one of the big attractions.  So, they changed their minds about this super adorable house that, except for this one little thing, was completely perfect.  It was more than completely perfect.  

And I have to ask myself if I really did the right thing.  Did I over-react?  Chances were they would have lived in a home they loved for decades with no water in the basement. 

And in this part of the country, we’re starting to wonder if it’s ever going to rain again!

Here in Washington, one barometer of the local real estate market is how far listing agents will go to get their colleagues to preview a listing.

Here's the rationale:

On Tuesday, the sort of official tour day, there might be 150 houses listed on the tour sheet.  And then there are all of the condos.  

So, you're planning to put your gorgeous new listing in Champagne Hills Estates on the tour list, and since it is a mansion with priceless artwork and knick knacks all over the place, you will, of course need to be there during the entire open.  You must ensure a thoughtless colleague does not sniff the Picasso or track cooties onto the antique Persian rugs.  And, you want your colleagues to show up for the preview, since one of them might have a buyer for the place.

Or let's say your listing is a more modest home in Beer Manor, where agents might actually have buyers in that price range, and where there are tons of homes on the tour.  You have to compete for their interest.

How do you get your listing to stand out?  If it's Champagne Hills, a lot of agents will come out of curiosity, even if they've never had and are not likely to ever have a buyer in that price range.  Still, if you serve food, your turnout may also include at least some of the agents who actually work the market.

Now, a Beer Manor listing is likely to be a bore.  So here, an elaborate lunch might be the only thing that will get colleagues in the door. 

Back in the slow market of the 1990's, agents in Washington included, not information about the listing, but information about the menu and the caterer.  And there were small caterers who specialized in tour lunches.  You know, mostly finger food, simple to serve, hard to spill on the orientals, and easy to clean up.  We knew if it was "Lunch by Kate" we would be treated to the most mouth watering salmon mousse on the planet!

My friend, Lynn, and I shared a bunch of listings back then, and we got it down.  Sushi.  It attracted the right crowd.  It was simple.  It impressed our sellers.  

In Washington, we're still not seeing all that many listing agents serving food on Tuesday broker tours.   And when they do, it isn't nearly as elaborate as it was in the last true buyers' market of the early 1990's.  But my advice to those of you with interesting listings that need exposure, serving lunch can be a fun and relatively inexpensive way to get your colleagues in the front door.

We had this old saying, "Hang your pork chop in the window, and they will come!" 

And more often than not, it worked.