Getting Ready for Painters...

...is almost as bad as moving.
I've been boxing up the contents of my bookcases, dressers and china cabinets. The house painters will move my furniture away from the walls, but only if I empty the shelves first. Because all the boxes will remain in place, I don't have the concerns about breakage that my clients have when they pack to move, but it's still a big job. I took the cowards way out, and told the painters that they didn't have to paint the closet interiors...another big job averted!
According to "The Move Advocate," creating a simpler and less chaotic lifestyle, even without the prospect of moving, can be rewarding but requires some discipline. There are general rules to help you decide how to edit your possessions...
1. If you haven’t used something in three months, box it up.
2. If you haven’t used something in a year, sell it or give it away!
Unless the items have significant financial or emotional value, it makes sense to sell or give them away.
I sorted through my old photos and paperwork during the last month, tossing duplicates and unimportant documents, and organizing others.
Yesterday, I made trips to the second hand book store and the Sunnyvale library to donate books, and today, I went to the Hope trailer with used electronics and appliances.
Don’t forget that any items donated to charity must be in “good or better” condition. This rule was put in place to keep people from claiming deductions for items that should have been thrown in the garbage
The center of most of my rooms looks like something out of a Barb Schwarz pre-staging video, but at least I won't be wielding a paintbrush or climbing on ladders!

Combining Short Sales and FHA Refi's?

All the recent news reports I've been reading warn of a new batch of repossessions coming. This is because less than half of the homeowners trying to refinance or arrange better terms under the government's so-called 'Making Home Affordable' program have given up...wrapped in rolls of red tape and frustrated by delays.
Now FHA has announced a Short Refinance Option to help Borrowers with negative equity.

In an effort to help responsible homeowners with negative equity...the 'Underwater Group'...HUD this week announced details on adjustments to the refinance program that it unveiled earlier this year. This new program will enable lenders to provide additional refinancing options to homeowners who owe more than their home is worth.
Starting in September, FHA will offer certain non-FHA borrowers who are current and in good standing on their existing mortgages and whose lenders agree to write off at least 10 percent of the unpaid principal balance of the first mortgage, a chance to qualify for a new FHA-insured mortgage. The FHA Short Refinance option is targeted to help borrowers who have underwater mortgages because their local markets saw major declines in home values.

On the surface, this sounds like a good idea, but the long list of requirements on both the lenders and the borrowers may create another paperwork morass that puts us no closer to the government's goal of a stable real estate market by 2012.

70, Today!

This really is a milestone. In about five minutes, I'll be 70 years old, and this month also completes 38 years in Real Estate sales for me. So much has happened...both in my life and in the real estate market since I came to Sunnyvale in 1967.
Some of the biggest changes have been in the technology we use in marketing homes. We went from checking out new homes on the market by driving to the local board of Realtors office and looking at a hand written list every week, then bi-weekly It was followed by "the book" with a single black and white picture of the house. Before electronic keysafes, we all accessed a keybox with identical keys. If an agent lost his or her key, the whole system had to be rekeyed.
Then came computers, printers with rows of holes on each side of the paper, and fax machines. No more driving to deliver each document that was needed for the sale or escrow...but as the ease of delivery has increased, the number of papers has increased proportionally.
Now a cell phone can pull up a series of color pictures of a house in seconds. We can lock out a lost or stolen key, and signatures are becoming electronic. No matter what changes come in the future, one thing will never change.
We will still need caring and professional Realtors to manage the legal and emotional sides of selling a home.
I can't wait to see what the next few years have in store, for the business...and for me!

When is it a Bedroom?

In the Realtor community, the definition of a bedroom was always: a room with a closet. My nearly 40 years of selling homes and using this meaning was recently corrected in an article by John Schneider, in his "All About Homes" column. Schneider is a licensed contractor, and he cited the Universal Building Code as saying that a bedroom is one used primarily for sleeping, and complying to several health and safety requirements. These include natural light and ventilation, an installed source of heat, electrical outlets, and a way to escape in case of fire or other emergency. Because of the potential for fire and the possible spread of gas fumes, there can be no door or window leading to the garage from a bedroom. (This is interesting, because there are local homes built by AHG that have this setup.)
There are other, more detailed requirements in the code, but nowhere in the list is the necessity for the bedroom to have a closet. We learn something every day!

Sunnyvale in Top 10 "Rich Cities"

Money Magazine's annual report on mid-sized cities is out again. In this year's Best Places to Live study, Sunnyvale placed number 7 in the "Rich and Single" category, with an annual median household income of $110,226 and a 30 percent single rate. Newport Beach came out #1 in this group, but there were several other local areas in the top 10: Mountain View, Milpitas and Santa Clara...with San Jose not far behind in the #15 spot. With all the single engineers around, these figures are not too surprising.
I also checked out their list of priciest homes, and Palo Alto came out highest in the country. Sunnyvale and Mountain View were also in the top 25.
Well, at least I'm single. I'll work a little harder at the "rich" part.

Some Thoughts on the Market

This afternoon I talked to a neighbor about the real estate market and the changing dynamics of our townhouse community. The buyers here are mostly young families attracted by the ideal location, beautiful landscaping, and good schools, and the majority of sellers have been seniors who are no longer able to handle two-story living (or even independent living at all.)
Later in the day, I read an online article that went into the economic side of this equation. Many of us in the Baby Boom Generation had much of our paper wealth erased when the stock market crashed in 2008, and retirement dates were delayed. But now, with the slightly rocky rebound in both the stock and real estate markets, we are starting to regain our confidence. In the next couple of years, we should see more seniors selling, and either relocating, or buying smaller, more manageable places to live.

House Logic

Jeff Bell, the president of the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors and a friend in my office, wrote an article that appeared in today's Mercury News. It was mostly about the advantages of owning a home, and the current all-time lows in interest rates for buyers, but he also mentioned an exciting website for new and long-time homeowners...HouseLogic.com. I had a chance to explore the site this morning, and it includes everything from an article on how to request a property tax reduction, to a whole section of do-it-yourself tips. Check it out!