Pat Kennedy - Your Washington, DC Real Estate Connection

Last November, an adorable fluff ball joined my household.

My expectation was that he would be one of those adorably cute little creatures who could ride around in the car with me, come into the office, and sit in on my business card photo session.  OK, so exploiting your pet is a little hokey - or is it?

I am unlikely to find out first hand - at least not any time soon.  

Willie is a wonderful friend, but as a real estate partner, he has issues.

He humps everything.

He gets carsick 

He chews cables and electrical cords.

He eats pillow stuffing and Italian leather (probably that's what makes him car sick).

He is really, really hyper active - the only way to get a clear photo was to have my sister hold onto him.

Basically, he channels the Labrador Retriever in my favorite doggy book, Marly & Me.

I do have an all time favorite friend and colleague who's got this dog thing down.

Wallace, seen below, is the perfect puppy.  She poses for photos - she is not only on Mary Lynn White's business cards - Wallace poses for the annual calendar her human companion sends to clients each year.  She is too short, not to mention polite, to hump legs.  She comes to the office and takes a nap curled up on Mary Lynn's desk with one eye open.  The lamp cords and computer cables are safe.  Everyone loves Wallace, who Mary Lynn bills as her assistant.

And, I gotta say, Mary Lynn is listing and selling everything in sight.  She's had a bunch of gazillion dollar months, and on the photo of the company's monthly top producer, the caption is "Wallace and White" with both in the photo.  

Oh, gosh!  Writing this post, it occurs to me that it's not just that Mary Lynn uses Wallace in all of her marketing, it's that she consistently markets to her neighborhood and especially to her center of influence - not to mention Wallace's center of influence (the doggies and humans they meet at the local dog park).  Du-uh!

Some day, Willie Boy might grow out of his crazies.  Or I might be able to convince his vet that I will stay out of any drugs he might prescribe to mellow him out.   But, in the meantime, I need to follow Mary Lynn White's good example and develop some strategies of my own, even if I have to delay the beginning of Willie's career in real estate!

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One of my favorite cousins and clients is a handsome young Secret Service agent.  An important part of his defensive driving training was learning to do a 180 degree turn in every imaginable vehicle, from a Hummer to a stretch limousine.  And I've been thinking that this is a good skill for real estate professionals to acquire.

Back in the 1980's when I got into real estate, it was a strong buyers' market.  And yet my manager was stressing ways to get lots of listings.  And during that first year, I pretty much ignored her advice, and stressed finding lots of buyers - a strategy that made my rookie year amazing.  

This was both good and bad.  I honed my buyers market skills, and while I had listings (four were big ones), it was the buyer end of the business that I really loved and focused on.  And while the listings all sold, I made a lot more money selling other houses to the buyers I met from marketing these properties.

Then, the market shifted.  In the late 80's we began to see multiple offers, and working with buyers got to be a challenge.  And all of those agents who spent the buyers' market farming and establishing themselves as listing agents made out like bandits.  Until, that is, things changed again.

My second strong buyers' market began as buyer brokerage took off in this area.  Once again, I was in Realtor Heaven, at least for a few years.  Then during the period between 1998 at 2005, the listing agents were in the driver's seat.  

So, now the market is slowing down.  I'm starting to have fun again.  But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking that I want to do some serious farming of one neighborhood and one condo building where I've done a lot of work.  The agents who had been farming there are all scurrying around hunting up buyers!

Like my handsome cousin, Adam, I think I need to be able to swing a Hummer to a 180 degree turn.  

The other day, a favorite colleague asked me to help her price a house.  She would be competing against two other top agents.  She was psyched!

So we drove over to the house in a less than chic DC neighborhood.  The seller had purchased it two years ago, and was a fixxer upper.   It needed a whole lot of fix.

When we got there, I noted beautiful landscaping, but peeling paint on the trim.  Inside, there was peeling paint, a funky kitchen, bathrooms that looked like instant athlete's foot, a 50 amp breaker box, and the list could go on and on.  

At least there were no mice.  But then, they probably succumbed to lead poisoning from all the peeling paint. 

The seller was feeling some duress.  She's lost her job, and even if she won the Power Ball, she might not want to spend her winnings renovating this place.  She didn't overpay originally, buy she's spent a lot already, and she hasn't even gotten to the electrical upgrade!  To get her money out, she would probably have to sell it for more than she is likely to get in this market. 

As we walked out, I noticed red bumps on my ankles.  Oh, yes, there was a kitty litter box in the basement, and while it didn't reek, little Fluffy's fleas were in evidence.

On our way back to the office, I realized this colleague was a far better agent for this seller than the other two super stars she was competing against.  

But, I had to ask myself and my colleague, "Do you really want to list this place?" 

I remembered some of my own listing disasters where I was so into winning a competition against some colleague I perceived to be a super star that I pulled out all the stops to get a signature on the dotted line for something that was going to be the listing from hell!  I mean, I am pretty impressive when I want to be.

I beat out a really smart colleague, or did I?  

So, I might save a colleague I really like and respect from a listing with a nice, but needy seller, who has no money available to stage the place or even to remove the peeling lead paint that is killing the neighborhood mice.  And even if she finds buyers, they are likely to be scared off by any self-respecting home inspector.

So, as in love, it's not about just the chase!  It's about the life you have after you grab whatever you are chasing! 

And the fleas! 

Between 1908 and 1940, Sears Roebuck is said to have sold about 100,000 homes from their catalogue.  They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and Rosemary Thornton’s book, The Houses That Sears Built, gives lots of details on how they were built and how to spot one.

They became popular after World War I, filling a demand around the country for homes for returning servicemen starting families, as well as immigrants coming through Ellis Island.  They were affordable, and supposedly very easy to build.

My former in-laws owned a one of these homes on Morrison Street here in Washington.  It is one of many Sears houses located in Chevy Chase, a favorite Upper Northwest neighborhood in the capital.  

The original owners ordered it from the Sears catalogue, in 1930 according to the public records.  It was delivered to Union Station, and the streetcars attached a flatbed that transported the kits to what was then a far suburb with scattered houses and farms.  The shipment included every piece of mill-work, plumbing, hinges and everything else needed to build the house.  The contractors had to lug it all from the streetcar stop on Connecticut Avenue to three blocks east.  Then they assembled the house, which today is still an example of wonderful workmanship.

Ms. Thorton’s book has great information about how to identify these homes.  The Morrison Street house is pretty classic – one giveaway is the front porch mill-work, and another is the wide overhang of the roof on the house and porch.  

The styles range from bungalow to foursquare to Adams Family.  Many Sears houses have been messed with (those darned architects!), and it can take a lot of research to make sure whether a particular house is or is not an authentic catalogue home.  If you want to learn more, I thing that Rosemary Thornton's book is a great place to start.

For about five of my twenty-four years in real estate, I was lucky enough to work with an amazing broker named Charlie Krogman, another one of my patron saints of real estate (yes, he is now St. Charlie).    It was the mid-1980s, and Charlie was wise, a character and a legend in Washington, DC real estate.  He managed the Uptown office of the old Shannon & Luchs Company (now Weichert) during its hay day.  And he was amazing.

There were also a lot of legendary heavy hitters in the office, as well as a few legendary pills.  

And the most legendary of the pills targeted me.  When I had phone duty, she hung around the duty desk to make sure that I did it right – and she was probably trying to make sure I didn’t steal leads.  Since I never stole a lead in my life, I wouldn’t have minded, except that she had really bad B.O.

One day, I showed up for floor duty feeling a little queasy.  You know, hung over and it wasn’t manifesting itself with just the usual bad headache.  Well, this agent was swooping around the duty desk with an aura of strongly perfumed soap and arm pits.  

So, I said something.  I told her that I was having some sort of allergic reaction to the perfume in the soap she must have used when she last showered, and I asked her if she would please go back to her own desk until my shift was over.  She lost it, but she did leave the duty desk area.

When my shift was over, Charlie called me into his office – something he rarely did with any agent.  He closed the door.  Then he asked me, “Did you tell _____ that she had B.O?”  

I lost it!  I not only told my side of the story, but I went on a rant about how she made me, and everyone in the office, crazy!  She was awful!  She was nuts!  She was negative!  And, I explained, while I did not say to her “You smell like incredibly nasty arm pits!” she certainly did!

Then, I got a dose of some of the best advice I’ve ever had from anyone – broker, therapist, or best friend!

“It’s never the other agent.”

Huh?  

He repeated himself.  

No, no!  That might be true a lot of the time, but this is an exception.  

No, he said.  It’s not.  Then he asked what about her did I see in myself?

Yikes!

I thought about it for a while and realized that she was reflecting back my suppressed dark side!  She was what we are all was afraid of turning into – a non-productive, negative pest who does not smell good and has no friends.

I did not try to make this woman my friend. I didn’t bake her cookies.  But I did learn to ignore her and to slough off her negative energy.

So now, thanks to Charlie, whenever I encounter a colleague or even a client who is making me nuts, I take a deep breath.  And I look at whatever it is about me that this person is reflecting back.  

Recently I met my match – an agent who was a total control freak who made me crazy until – Oh!  Wait!  She’s being me!

Then, I let go of it and got to really like and respect her!  We had a totally fabulous transaction!

Now, a lot of the posts I read here are about agents who are making themselves nuts over really awful clients, colleagues or whoever.  

My advice?  Just remember the wisdom of Charlie Krogman, and get over it!

The other day, I was in the car with the radio tuned to my local NPR station.  They were doing their financial market segment, and interviewed the adorable teenage boy I forgot to have!

This kid spent his summer trying to figure out how to make an I-Phone work on his family's plan for T-Mobile.  He did it! 

He's supposed to have a web site somewhere that explains how to do it.  He said that he's now hearing from people around the country who used his method successfully.   

So now I'm trying to find his web site with instructions so simple a cave man could do it.  Well, not that simple, because you have to do some soldering.   I'm not great with tools. 

I've tried Google and Blackle.  No luck so far.  

If anyone out there also heard the program and did manage to find this wonderful young man's web site, I'd love to have it.

At a recent Open House, a really nice woman came in, spent a long time looking the place over, and then struck up a conversation.

"So, is this a racially mixed neighborhood?" she asked.

I explained to her that I answered that question, I could wind up in the slammer with a revoked real estate license - in my case 4 revoked licenses!  

"But you don't understand, my husband and I are an inter-racial couple, and I want to be sure we find a neighborhood that would be comfortable for us."

Now,I live in our nation's capital, which happens to house the Department of Housing and Urban Development - um, they would be the Fair Housing police, among other things.  And we probably get more than our fair share of "shoppers", HUD investigators posing as buyers.  While I thought this nice lady was probably a for real buyer, I was not about to break the law to answer her question.

So, what can an agent do? 

Most neighborhoods now have web sites.  These often give the names and phone numbers of people who are officers or active on various committees. 

I've started to put web site links on my fact sheets,  And it's not just for the demographics, but because they often have lots of interesting stuff on the history and neighborhood amenities.  

So, I look at them as my little Stay Out of Jail Free cards! 

St Joseph is the widely recognized patron saint of real estate agents.  Many of my colleagues and my own clients have planted his statue, head down, in next to a for sale sign so he will help the house sell. 

Ah, but there is another saint who I’ve found to be even more helpful.

Soon after I got into real estate, my grandmother, now St. Tootsie, told me that St. Joseph is too busy.  St. Anthony, she said, is our family's special saint when it comes to real estate.  Now, I know he's great for finding lost car keys.  I mean, jeez, he found my whole entire car when it was lost last week!  But real estate? 

She explained that he is the patron saint of things that are lost. If you have clients looking for a house, it's a lost house until he helps them find it. For an unsold listing, the buyers are lost, and a little St. Anthony statue in the front yard or on the windowsill will help find the lost buyer. And I must admit that during my long real estate career, I have been a major customer of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception's gift shop. They have the area's best selection of St Anthony statues. 

Finally, for the jobs that are too tough even for St. Anthony, we have St. Jude, the patron saint of impossible cases. Now, I haven't run into too many St Jude jobs, but I may go over to the National Shrine's gift shop to buy a couple of his statues. I'm getting a lot of new listings, and this market is sending mixed messages.  A good recovering Catholic real estate broker has to be prepared. 

Still, St. Anthony is the mainstay of my working saints.

But what about agents and clients who are not Catholic?

Some Hindu sellers welcomed St. Anthony onto their front yard, and he found their buyers.  

A Jewish seller placed him on the windowsill of her Georgetown condo, and we had multiple offers when nothing else in the building was moving.

A favorite agent who is a wiccan is one of St. Anthony’s major devotees.  

Now, it helps if he's on the windowsill of one of your listings to have it priced right, looking wonderful and easily shown.

St. Anthony is a really good guy!  I should send him referral fees!

My very tech-savvy across-the-street neighbor invited me to our weekly block Cocktail Club meeting and had some exciting news - especially for laptop users.  Google has a new search service called "Blackle".  It works the same way that Google does except that the page is black instead of white.  This saves energy, because a black screen uses less battery power than a white screen does.  I never knew that!

On the screen, there is a little box showing you how much energy you are actually saving.  And as near as I can tell, it's just as fast as a Google search. 

Is there anyone out there who knows how to recover erased messages from a Blackberry's email?

Early this morning, I was going through my email, and there was a nice note from someone who said he had seen my profile on Active Rain.  He has a house in one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city, and he is interested in selling.  OK!  Great!

Then, there was another email with even better news.  I just won 500,000 British pounds in the Liberian State Lottery!  

OK, my intention was to zap Liberia.  Instead, I seem to have erased the wrong email.

I have already tried, without luck, to find it in my Mac.com erased emails, and it isn't there.

Yikes!

And thanks!