Pat Kennedy - Your Washington, DC Real Estate Connection

"CSI Washington" just left my house.  It was full of hunky guys in blue uniforms fingerprinting doorknobs and looking for clues.

Some idiot broke into my house this afternoon, apparently right before I came home.  He (don't know why I'm assuming it's a he, coulda been a lady burglar) took my Big Mac, my MacBook and my MacBook Air.  And they were backed up to one another, but noplace else. 

Stupid!  Stupid!  Stupid! 

And where was Willie the Hyperactive Labrodoodle puppy during all this?  He's staying at my sister's this week.  Bet her place won't get broken into!

Anyway, blogging will be a challenge for the next few days, though I'm sure I'll manage somehow.  Meanwhile, all of my contact files, appointment records, tax stuff - including a carefully kept milage log, are on all three of the machines, but not on a CD.

The worst part, I had some wonderful photos of my father taken when he was still at home.  I meant to back them up, along with some great photos I took at the Cape, in Barbados and my various parties.

Oh, and my "home inventory" that would come in really handy right now is, guess where?  On the Big Mac.   Grrrrr!

The desktop is so old, it never occurred to me that some idiot would steal it. 

Yikes! 

So back up your computers!  Do it now! 

And please say a prayer to St. Anthony (the patron saint of stuff that's lost) that maybe the police find the jerk who did it - and my computers!

Every morning now, I get my coffee, head for my computer and check email.  And along with the overnight Active Rain comments, I find a bunch of stuff from area agents who are spamming colleagues with the latest information on listings, Open Houses and what not.  While I'm usually pretty fast with the "Delete" button, once in a while there will be something to peak my interest.

One such message landed in my box this morning.  It was about a new construction project in Virginia, complete  with floor plan and location information.  The plans looked fabulous, and I looked in the message for the price point.  Um. Nothing.  Nada.  So was it free?  Doubtful. 

There was a link to the project's web site with a few more floor plans, pictures, architects renderings and other stuff, but no price point.  Call for that.

Now, if you are spamming buyers, this strategy might generate a few calls or emails that would enable the spammer to "capture" email addresses or phone numbers.  But if you are targeting your colleagues, you really need to make it easier for us. 

Otherwise, "Delete"!

Some agents use this strategy wisely.  They include address, photos, and, yes, price!  If I have a client looking in the neighborhod and price range, I'll make a note and check it out on MRIS. 

And remember, this little missive, this email that goes out with your name on it, will annoy many of your colleagues who resent getting spammed so early in the morning! 

Yes, to you it's inexpensive marketing!  To me, it could be something else.

Back in the 1970's, I dated a mild mannered guy who was an economist by weekday and a race car driver by weekend.  And one of the highlights of this relationship was a weekend of at the track at  Lime Rock, Connecticut, where Dick was racing his cute little Mazda in the showroom stock category, and I helped out in the pit crew.  It was over that weekend that I bumped into two of my heros, who were up there with their race cars - Walter Cronkite and Paul Newman.

Paul Newman had an amazing life.  He was not only a great actor and decent race car driver, but he was also a great humanitarian.  His Newman's Own made yummy cookies, tasty salad dressing, and lately his own wine.  And the profits went to good causes.  One of these is Hole in the Wall, a summer camp for very sick children.  

And his marriage to Joanne Woodward was a love story that defied the Hollywood stereotype.  

I was saddened to hear of his death today.  The Webster Street Cocktail Club will be planning a Paul Newman Film Festival over the next couple of months.  He left some great stuff behind!

I spent today kicking Igor in that place where guys don't like to be kicked.  And I found a new sweetie with a nice, sweet little bird on his shoulder that whispers positive "it'll be fabulous" messages in his ear.  And he, in turn whispers them in my ear.

And, don't ya think, he's so much cuter than Igor!

All joking aside, we all have empowering influences, and in times like this, it's important to stay in touch with the people who make up feel like we walk on water.  And for the last 24 hours,  I've  been doing that. 

And I've been getting down to the basics that I tend to ignore when things are going very well.  I"m updating my front burner list, making calls and organizing my files.  And I'm reminding myself that people buy houses in every market - including this one.

During my first year in real estate, I had frequent panic attacks.  They took the form of a nasty little guy whispering in my ear, "You will never sell another house!  You will never sell another house!"

"Oh, no!  Get outa here!  Will so!"

"Will not!"

So over the years, this little nasty fellow has gotten quieter.  But guess what?  He's back this week!  With a vengence!

When the market shifted from hot to normal, I welcomed the change.  A buyers' market - yippee!  I love working with buyers!  And I've been having a great yeat.

But this week, a series of events made it really hard for me to stay optimistic.  In a transaction involving one of my listings, the buyer lost a high paying job at a law firm.  I think this one will bite the dust.  I'll have to sell it again. Ugh!  And if Washington lawyers can be affected by this screwy economy, anybody can.

Yikes!  Washington may not be so recession-proof after all!

And Igor hopped back on my shoulder, whispering in my ear!  And I'm fighting off panic attacks that are the worst I've had since 9/11, when we were waiting for some idiot to plant a dirty bomb in Georgetown.  It didn't happen.  The market came back.  And I did sell another house - a bunch of them. 

I think I'll give myself another twelve or so hours to wallow in this.  I'll watch the debates tonight with my friends at our weekly meeting of the Webster Street Cocktail Club.  I'll drink enough wine so nothing these guys say will bother me.

And tomorrow, I'm dumping Igor and gettin' me a new boyfriend!

Next weekend, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church invites you to their annual Octoberfest celebration in Georgetown's Rose Park.  This historic church is on the corner of P and 26th Streets, and they'll take over the park on Saturday, October 4th between 10:00 AM and 5:30 PM.

This is a fun afternoon both for the festival and for the chance to see this church.  It was founded in 1816 and is the oldest African American church in the District of Columbia.  I'm planning to drop in between showings!

Last week, I previewed a house on the brokers' tour that I thought was really, really overpriced.  It was a largish brick center-hall colonial that was a sort of Washington, DC cliche house, resembling the one in the photo.  And it was what I call a "granny house".  The kitchen was state of the art for about 1958.  And the bathrooms were the originals, although they must have been a builder's upgrade.  The fixtures and tiles were great shades of pink, turquoise and purple. 

Yesterday on tour, I ran into a buddy (in another overpriced house) who was talking about how goofy pricing has gotten here in DC.  And then he told me that overpriced house from last week was under contract!

Huh?

What?

And get this.  There were multiple offers!

Huh?

What?

I know there are a lot of improvements that people can make on a house that won't pay for themselves.  But we're talking a house that needed help with everything from kitchens to baths (unless you really love pink, purple and turquoise) and the basic systems - the wiring, plumbing and central air were more dated than the kitchen.  And it's in a neighborhood where nicely renovated homes with two story additions sell for what this home reportedly brought. 

Go figure!

Matt Heaton is pissed.  It's about the bailouts.  And Matt's written a series of great posts explaining what's going on and why he's opposed to them.  So, instead of my reblogging his posts, just click the link and read them.  Then come back here if you want to do something about it.

I agree with Matt, but living in Washington, DC I do not have a Senator or Congressman to contact to say "Whoa, Nelly!"

The rest of you do.  And this would be an excellent time to voice your opinion to your representatives here in our nation's Capital.

First, you'll want to find out who they are.  You'll have two Senators and one Congressman.  If you don't know who they are, you can click on this link, type in your address and find out.  This site gives their names, phone numbers and email and snail mail addresses. 

When mail and calls start to come into congressional offices, the staff starts a running tally.  And the communications are weighted:

• Some lobbying organizations send out letters or cards for their members to sign and send mail in.  Or they email their members with a message to cut and paste.  When the staff sees hundreds or thousands of communications that are identical, they will carry less weight.
• When you call, you may not get your congressional member, but again, the call and your opinion are tallied.
• Emails and letters that sound like the rants of crazed lunatics will probably be forwarded to the Secret Service.
• Emails and letters that are sent in your own words, and that clearly and rationally express your opinion, are the best.
• Never underestimate the impact of snail mail.  A well written letter to your Senators and Congressman is probably the most effective way to make yourself heard.  Of course, you can always try all three - calls, emails and letters.  Keep 'em coming!

This week has been a little scary for me.  And rather than point fingers and accuse other arms of government and wall street of sloth and greed, I'd like to see it fixed.  And I don't have all the answers.  Right now, I don't think anyone does.  But if Wall Street needs a little help from it's friends in Washington, these are some of the elements that I'm concerned about:

• I don't want to give them a blank check, which is what the Administration proposal seems to do.  It could be, probably will be,  more than $1 trillion - nobody knows because nobody has a clue to the actual bottom line here.
• Are there ways to minimize the risks to the taxpayers?  Are these going to be built into any proposal?  What will they look like?  Some bail outs in the past have actually earned money that went back to the Treasury.
• Is it a gift?  Or is it a loan with a pretty high interest rate?  It better not be a gift - which is what "bailout" implies.  The IRS charges taxpayers who have to work out a payment plan about 18% a year.  I hope the corporations will have to pay it back with something substantial in the way of interest.
• Will any safeguards they put into place actually keep the high fliers from reinventing the kind of stuff that got us into this trouble?
• Finally, I'd like to think that the members of congress who vote on this stuff actually understand what they are passing.  A lot of them don't.  This stuff gets extremely complicated.  They rely on staffers old enough to be my grandchildren, and the kids don't always get it either.

So, when you watch the news about this stuff, you can't talk back to your television set.  But you can talk back to your Senators and Representatives, many of whom will face the voters in just a few weeks.

If I did have two Senators and a Congressman, I think I'd tell them to please, please be careful!

OK.  I'll admit it.  I avoid bad news like the plague.  I just don't want to read or hear it.  Not in the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal or CNBC.  I even skip most of the bad news blogs here on Active Rain.

Yes, so I am a Pollyanna!  I admit it!

Even so, I'm sorta kinda aware that the economy is going down the beautiful new water saving Toto toilet in my remodeled bathroom, and I know just enough to understand most of what I do read and hear.  Still, I try not to let it interfere with my work of helping my clients to buy and sell homes.

Then yesterday I had a conversation with my favorite guy.  He's an economist with not only street smarts, but also a string of degrees from several of the country's finest universities, and he's the smartest person I know.  He gets paid really big bucks to explain the quirks of the economy, mostly to oil company folks.  But he really understands the housing market as well, and I get the benefit of his knowledge for free. 

And he pointed out something yesterday that stopped me in my tracks:

The total amount of the bailouts to our financial institutions now exceeds $1trillion dollars when you add it all up. 

Then I started to wonder how much is out there in mortgage loans.  If you added up every mortgage balance for every home in the US, how many trillions would that be?  So I checked some web sites and finally called the National Association of Mortgage Brokers.  When nobody there had a clue, I got a little nervous.  If they don't know, who does?

Couldn't find it on any of the government web sites either.  Hmmm.  Troubling.  Very troubling.

Anybody out there have the answer?

Last night on The Daily Show, there was a clip of one of the news channels many talking heads trying to explain the numbers to idiots could understand.  As she put it, the bailout involves the amount of money that it would take to buy 2,000 McDonald's apple pies for each man, woman and child in the country.  I got a little sick to my stomach thinking about eating just one of the things.

So there are all of these numbers being thrown out there.  And I, for one, am finding them way too big to get my arms around.

Oh, yes, and then my very friend went a bit of a rant about how they are running the printing presses at the mint overtime to pay for it - and I got a very scary explanation of what is likely to happen to our currency as a result.

Ignorance was bliss - at least for a while.

Four times, I've been interviewed by artists who wanted to sell their homes, and I was reminded of these experiences at a house I looked at today.

The first was a well known area painter who had paintings all over the walls, and they were not hanging there.  There were murals all over the place.  My big mistake was suggesting that we summon Mr. Carroll, my favorite painter, to hit the place with a few cans of Benjamin Moore - a nice neutral tone!  I got shown the door.  This seller was convinced that the murals would make the house sell for a bunch more money than I thought it would fetch.  Maybe it did.  They were pretty cool murals.

Next time, I was much more diplomatic and got the listing.  It was a big old funky "as is" house and the buyers made a point of telling the sweet elderly gentleman artist who lived there how much they loved the mural in the dining room.  Then they summoned the guy with Benjamin Moore and lost the mural.

The third and fourth times, most of the art work was hanging on the walls, and a lot of it was pretty fabulous.  Both of these artists sold a lot of their work.  Still, I'm convinced that these houses took longer than usual to sell because of the quantity of stuff on the walls - and the sculptures in each room of one of the homes.  It was all pretty amazing stuff that people paid lots of money to own, but it distracted buyers who came to see the place.

When artists list their homes, it's harder for them to go through the de-personalization process than it is for most of us.  And it's harder for agents, at least this agent, to get the message across that the artist in residence can't overdo it.  Some of the stuff (or if it's a little odd, most of it) needs to go into storage.

One of the fun parts about having artists as clients, is that I've wound up with some amazing stuff on my living room walls!