Pat Kennedy - Your Washington, DC Real Estate Connection

When I first moved to Washington, DC from New York, I was struck by the abundance of trees in the city.  And lining the street of my new home in the Valley Vista Apartments (now the Valley Vista Condominium), where about twenty beautiful Ginkgo trees.

What's noteworthy are the beautiful leaves.  They are fan shaped, and come out a bright green in the spring and turn into a rich, darker shade as summer progresses.  In the fall, they turn bright yellow, and they covered the streets and sidewalks as I walked down the hill from Connecticut Avenue to the front door of the building.

As we move from fall to winter, the Ginkgo trees are among the last to lose their leaves.  I took these shots a couple of days ago right after a wind storm cleaned the branches of most of the city's branches.

But springtime is when you can really notice these beautiful trees.  While they produce bright green fan-shaped leaves, they also bear fruit - unless the city remembers to spray them in late summer!  And for several years during the time I was in the Valley Vista, our Ginkgos did not get their dose of tree birth control.

The Ginkgo fruits would fall to the ground, get stepped on, and get slippery - we worried about the old ladies in the building slipping on their trip down the hill.   

But there was something else.  The fruit of this lovely tree smells really, really bad when someone steps on it.  Like the most intense dog poop you could imagine!  And once it gets onto your Ferregamos, it takes years to dissipate. 

My apartment would take on aura of Ginkgo!

Yikes!

We now have an energetic young mayor who has our Department of Public Works on full alert for picking up the trash, filling potholes and spraying the Ginkgo trees.  And this will help to make Washington a much more beautiful and livable city!

Conventional wisdom says to avoid listing your house between Thanksgiving and New Years.  Nobody looks then except for the Scroogiest of the bottom fishers.  

Oh, yeah?

So, is there any way to make the best of trying to sell a house when everyone is at the mall buying Christmas presents?

Yesterday, I showed a house that really made a case for decking the halls and the For Sale sign.  It’s a pretty place to begin with.  The big, healthy, tastefully decorated tree looked and smelled wonderful.  There was greenery on the mantel.  The dining room table had festive candles, and I was waiting for the stuffed goose to materialize.  

This house was a shameless flirt – I couldn’t imagine it looking more inviting at any other time of the year.  I’m convinced someone will buy it before Christmas.  

Bottom line?  It depends a lot on a sellers’ motivation to sell.  It’s hard to deal with the invasions during a time of the year when you cherish your privacy.

A lot of agents try to take the month off  to spend time with their families, but there are agents like me who work like a dog during December.  

There may be fewer people out there looking, but those who are looking are likely to be as motivated as sellers willing to open their homes during this festive season.  

If you do have to have your home on the market over the holidays, you’ll have it listed during a time of year when it’s likely to look it’s absolute best.  That could be a plus that helps you get your place sold for top dollar.

When I came into the real estate business, interest rates were creeping down from eighteen percent.  There were agents in my office who hadn’t sold a house or apartment in four years.  In many ways, this was the best possible time to get into real estate.

I had to learn quickly to solve problems, put together complicated deals with rubber bands and paper clips and make them work.  I was lucky enough to meet some amazing agents my first year, and having no clue how hard it all was, I picked up lots of knowledge and many skills that made me successful.  

For the first 15 years, it worked well for me.  Then, the market got first red hot then white hot, and it worked, but just barely.  The agents who really made out well were the ones who were able to convince people to do very risky things without thinking about it in order to get a house.

In some of our bidding wars, I’d write an offer that was one of 50 on a single house.  When I was one of 8 or 10, I usually won.  But I didn’t always feel good about what my clients had to do to be victorious in one of these fierce battles.

So fast forward to the past couple of weeks.  I’m still working on my Thanksgiving deal – it’s not dead after all!  This was the less than perfect offer, and some listing agents would have looked at it and said, “This dog won’t hunt!”

But I got lucky with a good listing agent.  He’s tinkering with the dog chow.  We’re still in counter, but we’re still alive.  

The last time this agent and I did a deal was a couple of  years ago, and it was full-priced and clean.  The market was fast, and I was counting my lucky stars that he presented right away instead of waiting around for more offers to come in.  But times have changed.

Today, he came by my office with the counter-counter-counter-counter.  We had a few issues that looked impossible.  I figured out a way to fix one of them, and the listing agent came up with a totally brilliant way to fix another!  

We’re nibbling away at the differences.  We’re crossing our fingers.  And toes!

My colleague in this transaction has been around longer than I have.  He is smart and creative.  He loves to get offers on his listings that are clean and full-priced, but the one I brought him was below the list price by a bunch and complicated.  And today, I saw him exercise the muscles it takes to make something complicated work.  I think he was even enjoying himself!

It was like Dancing with the Stars!

It’s days like today that I feel like we’ve earned our keep for our clients.   And having an agent on the other side who is creative and fun makes me the same way.  Of course, I also listen to Zip-a-dee-doo-dah for inspiration!

Once I listed a house that was a total dump.  It had been inhabited by a group of wild and crazy graduate students who shared quarters with a pet goat.  The goat had actually eaten several sections of an antique oak staircase.  The place was truly awful.

And it smelled like a freakin' goat! 

I sat in front of my computer screen at the office trying to think of how to write an ad that might attract a buyer. 

There were all the euphemistic cliches:

• This Old House!
• Bring Your Decorator!
  
• Bring Your Architect!
• Rehab Opportunity!
• Sweat Equity!

Nothing felt right.  Then a wise old colleague suggested that I stop trying to be subtle and just tell it ike it was, and together we wrote an ad that totally captured the house.  The ad read:

Abominable Condition:  4-level Victorian bayfront has seen too many toga parties. 

We included the price, neighborhood, address and Open House hours. 

So the next Sunday, I stuck my arrows in the ground, tied on some balloons, and people started to come by - in droves!  The most common remark was, "Wow!  This place really isn't all that terrible!"  

It's like they expect real estate agents to exaggerate!   

At the end of the day, there were several offers, and one of them worked out.

In this case, my sellers were in Dublin and less likely to see the Washington Post ad that we ran.  Had they been local, we would have had to prepare them for the ad, hoping it wouldn't hurt their feelings.

I learned an important lesson from this - often, lower expectations give you a higher chance of attracting a buyer!  Go figure!  

On this Saturday after Thanksgiving, I have something to be thankful for. 

Willy's back!

He's my incredibly cute, though incredibly energetic, Labradoodle.  

While my bathrooms were being redone, and with all the lead paint dust loose in the house, my sister, Bairbre, and her dog whisperer boyfriend offered to dog-sit.  Now that the work is pretty much done, we decided it was time for Willie's return.

Octavio, the dog whisperer, has had crazy Willie doing a boot camp.  He made great progress, I was told.

Yeah, right 

But I'm the one that needs a dog training boot camp!  I know that dog training isn't for the dog.  It's for the humans!

He's chewed a bedroom slipper.   My George Kovaks lamp has a chewed cord, and there is a black smudge on the outlet it was plugged into. 

Luckily for Willie, God made him cute.  He was a cute puppy, and he's an adorable, affectionate dog.

So tomorrow, we're going to the neighborhood doggy play group - where they can run around like little lunatics and wear each other out. 

When Willy and I figure this out, he' going to be my real estate mascot.  I don't kow that I'll ever put a picture of him on my business card - he'd upstage me!  But I will use him in some of my marketing stuff.  

Maybe I can get my neighbor to slip me some of her son's Ridelin. 

OK, I don't like to whine in a post.  So, this isn't a whine, it's me blogging my way out of a whine!

Evey year of my real estate career, I have had some transaction work over the Thanksgiving holidays - you know!  I give myself something extra to be thankful for.  It's a little tradition of mine.

So, the holiday isn't over just yet, and I do have a contract in counter that I wrote about two weeks ago.  And at least 3 out of the 4 principles are attorneys, and they're all incredibly busy.  

It took over a week to get a counter-offer from the seller, and he wasn't even in Sri-Lanka!

In a few minutes, I'm leaving to pick up the counter-counter, try to find the listing agent, and take the next step.  And in all likelihood, that next step is going to be over a cliff and this will be a goner of a deal.

So, I need my special pick-me-up for just this type of occasion!  If you just click this little button, I can share it with you (sorry, guys, but I'm too tech-impaired to a U-Tube right on the screen.

Try it instead of whine!  It really, really works!  Instead of worrying about losing one deal, you'll be thinking about the wonderful place you're going to find for your favorite clients and how much better it will work for them!

 
Last week, while I was flipping through comments on my posts, I noticed an unfamiliar name – Krista Fuchs from Exton, Pennsylvania (in Chester County).  Her comments were funny and made me laugh. 

So then I clicked on Krista's blog and started to read her posts.  They were funny and made me laugh!

I scrolled down and remembered when I was an Active Rain newbie, blogging my heart out, getting just a few comments here and there and feeling a little bit lonely.

Then I got an idea!

Each week, I’m going to look for newbie bloggers who are funny and make me laugh, or who are serious and make me think.  I decided to start with Krista.

Her most recent post, I Guess I was More Fabulous in High School, was both funny and goofily thought provoking.  And while reading it, I totally got that Krista is not one of those people who peaked for life during her senior year. 

Then, just under that, is How Do You Get Your Sellers to Change Things?   In this post, her graphics are definitely worth a click.  Krista!  I must have some of your fortune cookies! 

I think she’s getting the hang of this blogging thing!  Her posts are not too long or too short.  She has graphics that are clever and help to make her point.  In reading her posts, I could see a real progression as Krista found her "blogging voice".  I looked at her blog and it says, if my mother was moving to Chester County, Pennsylvania, this is who I'd want to help her find a house.

And, she's clearly a smart person!  Look at her profile!  Before real estate, she actually did medical research at some pretty impressive places, including Sloan-Kettering in New York.  

I’ve subscribed to Krista’s blog, and I’m looking forward to some good reads!  

Blog on, Krista!

Why do they need crowd control at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York?

This picture was not taken on “Black Friday” or even on the day the I-phone was released.  I took it on a normal Saturday morning, about 20 minutes after the store opened up.  The store was packed, and a line of over 100 people had already formed, waiting to get inside this electronics emporium

I used to think that Mac users were all members of some cult. 

• They all were devotees of Apple Computers like some people are devotees of a religious guru.
• They all proselytized about the virtues of the Mac to anyone who would listen.
• They were freakin’ zealots!

So, now I am a Mac user -- a proselytizing, zealous devotee.

This will sound shallow, but the first thing I fell for was looks.  My I-Mac is a hottie that has no tower (the drive is built into the back of the screen), and it takes up little room on my often-tidy desk.  

The other thing that turned my head was Mac’s resistance to various bugs and worms.  After spending hours with some guy in Bangalore trying (unsuccessfully) to get rid of a worm that infected my old PC, I decided to replace it with an I-Mac.  Then, when my Vaio melted down, I went for a MacBook.  

In addition to putting out a superb product, they have amazing support, both tech support over the phone and at their stores.  

Last week, when I took this picture, I couldn’t figure out how to make my MacBook send email from New York.  I went into the mobbed store (it had only been opened for a few minutes), was escorted to the “Genius Bar” and some kid had it tweaked and sending mail within about 4-minutes. 

As I’m working on my 2008 business plan, I’m trying very hard to channel Mac’s Genius – I want clients who are proselytizing, zealous devotees and will convert their friends and colleagues into my clientele!  Then, I want to be able to treat them as well as Apple Computers has been treating me!

My family just left, and Ms. Super Organic Heritage Turkey is a carcass that is going to turn into some fabulous turkey soup. 

I have been totally blessed with an amazing family and friends who constantly give me reasons to give thanks.  And when I’m sitting looking at the remains of today’s feast, I’m thinking about some other things that all Realtors can give thanks for.  So let’s look at a few of them.

Supra:  when I was a new agent, they didn’t have lock boxes.  When we prepared to show a bunch of houses to a buyer, we had to go by a bunch of real estate offices to pick up the keys that might or might not be checked out by other agents.  Then, after the appointment, we had to go back to return them.  What a pain!  So, I’m thankful for those wonderful electronic lockboxes you open with a magic keypad.  It’s a magic little tool of the trade!

The Multiple Listing Service:  when I got my license, there was one funny little computer for the whole office that printed out information on the inventory on paper that turned brown when exposed to any sort of light.  There was basic information – address, number of bedrooms and baths and lot size.  To get a clue to what a property looked like, you had to hop into your car and go preview (first running by the listing agent’s off to get the key, if it was there).  That was a huge improvement over the old listing books that were two weeks out of date.  Today’s MLS systems give us lots of information as soon as a property is listed.

Digital Cameras and Virtual Tours:  this is part of the MLS systems that make it possible to figure out what a place is likely to look like without driving for a preview.  It’s something that anyone in the business for less than fifteen years takes for granted, and the old-timers totally give thanks for every year in late November. 

Email:  it’s not just a way to communicate, but it’s a way to get contracts, HUD-1 forms and other documents around town.  We used to have to hand deliver a lot of this stuff.  Email is a freaking miracle that totally simplifies our jobs.

Blackberry:  cell phones are amazing.  But my Blackberry lets me read your comments when I’m on a train, having dinner with my sweetie (I have to sneak), or whenever.

Macs:  I switched from a PC to a Mac about three years ago and haven’t looked back.  There’s the big Mac on my desk and my little MacBook that has become my vade macum.  What I like best is that I needn’t worry about viruses or worms or other nasty bugs

Navigation System:  I'm no longer humiliated getting lost driving clients around the burbs. 

Piers:  He’s this guy in my  office who photographs my listings and  does the fact sheets and mailings.  He’s the god of Photoshop, and he’s been great about teaching me how to take better photographs. 

Active Rain:  You guys came into my life last spring.  You’re fun, you’re informative, and you helped to cure me of a serious Tetris addiction.  That’s something to be thankful for - trading a non-productive addiction for a good one!

So, this Thanksgiving I gave thanks to God for family, friends, all of the other blessings in my life.  And this year, there are a lot of things in the other blessings category.

Every Thanksgiving, my family descends on my house for the traditional feast.  I do the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.  And other family members bring appetizers, wine, salads, potatoes, side dishes and dessert - usually my sister Joan's sinfully delicious pecan and pumpkin pies. 

And each year, my search for the perfect turkey brings me to Maple Lawn Farms in Fulton, Maryland, about 30 miles east of Washington off Route 29. 

The farm was started by a guy named Henry Iager back in 1839.  It is now run by the fifth generation of his successors.   Today, the Iagers raise turkeys and Holstein cattle. 

Over the years, they've sold off parts of their acreage for a large school complex and shopping center - you can see them in the background.  And every year I make this pilgrimage, there's a nagging fear that by the next year it will be a townhouse complex.

So, why drive all these miles for a turkey?

These are not your typical Butterballs from the supermarket.  These guys had a wonderful life scratching around a barnyard, foraging for worms when they didn't feel like eating the organic turkey chow concocted by the staff PHd turkey nutritionist. The toms and hens cavorted with each other and made baby turkeys the way nature intended for it to happen.  They didn't shoot up drugs or eat junk food.  These were happy birds!

But what's this?  As I stepped out of my car and looked down, I saw a giant turkey feather. 

Ouch!

Then I looked around and there were lot more feathers on the ground.   A whole lot more.  I was reminded that these guys were running around the barnyard just this morning!  And then, WHACK!   My sister tell me the Iagers feed these guys a little Grey Goose before the round up so at least they go down happy.  I hope so. 

I went inside feeling a little bit queazy, but they had some spiced cider and molassas cookies to make me feel better while I waited in line for my bird, a 19-pound hen.  

I'm sure she'll taste absolutely wonderful.  Every bird I've every gotten from Maple Lawn has been perfect - quite a feat in that I am far from the perfect cook.  Right now, I rooting around the kitchen drawers to try to find directions on how to use my fancy convection oven so I don't have to get up at four in the morning to get her in the oven.

Notice, it becomes "her".  Not "it".  If she came from Safeway, I wouldn't be having these thoughts right now!

So, to all of my friends on Active Rain, have a wonderful holiday, full of good food and lots of love!