Blowing My Other Cover

It’s been a while since a column generated as many e mails from fellow-agents, as last week’s.  Must have touched a chord. Or discord? An exposed nerve? An erogenous zone connected to the love/hate relationship we all have with what we do?   Maybe I inadvertently hit upon one of those odd funny bone moments. You know the one’s that make you laugh in spite of the fact that they really hurt?

If any of you were remiss in your required real estate reading and want to catch up on your home-work….go to tombrezsny.wordpress.com and  read  “Blowing My Cover.”

Here’s the basic premise:  Most good old fashioned real estate advertising is designed to shape how Sellers think about Selling rather than how Buyers think about Buying.   Although we have to tread carefully here, because eventually all buyers become sellers and all sellers become buyers.

But it is interesting to note how short memory spans can be. And how many people like to practice the “do as I say not as I do” method of selective recall.

Classic example?  Sellers, selling here,  also looking for a property in Hawaii.  They log on everyday to look at homes in Maui. They have an Agent there and are on his automated search engine. Whenever they see something that strikes their fancy – they e mail him.

But  here in good ol’ Surf City USA,   where they are trying to sell, they want their Agent to advertise in the Mercury or the Chronicle at great expense.  Or run fancy, color spreads in magazines. Or…run a big Featured Home Ad in the Sentinel (oops… don’t look now…I think I just blew another cover.)

Don’t recall too many people here subscribing to the Honolulu Times-Picayune so they could hunt for real estate in Hawaii and say “Aloha” to the market there.

We aren’t even going to get into the absurdity of listing a house here with an over the hill Agent (I mean over the hill in the geographical sense – not over the hill as in the success-challenged and seen-better-days kind.)   The huge leap of sur-real logic it takes to list with a Santa Cruz property with a South Bay Agent who doesn’t know squat about our home turf is perfect fodder for another column on another day.

As is one of those other long-hyped myths of realty – the notion that somehow a mediocre Agent working at a giant brokerage can represent you better than a good Agent working at a smaller brokerage can.

And as long as we are at it…let’s toss one more myth-ing urban link onto the bonfire of the sanities: The notion that a vast network of personal contact exists between big city Agents within the framework of mega-national real estate franchises.  Secret handshakes and everything. When you sign on, your home is spoon fed to tens of thousands of Realtors waiting with bated breath to sell your property.

Just like most real estate advertising is designed to sell the sellers on the sell rather than the buyers on what’s being sold… the sell underlying most of the sales pitches from the big guys revolves around the subtle promotion of  Dual Agency.

As in:  List with us. We have a lot of Agents. One of them probably already has a buyer for your home.   Those who aren’t quite sure what Dual Agency is might want to google it and decide whether you think it is a good idea.

Darn! I’ve been yacking away so much our time is up.  Not to worry though, Sherman has been warming up the Way Back Machine.  Next week we’ll jump on board, travel to the fin de siècle era of the 1990’s and see what changed while all us aging baby boomer analogue types were struggling to get across the great digital divide.

Blowing My Cover

There I was at a listing appointment this week.   The owner of a beautiful ocean-view property was doing his due diligence. Interviewing three prospective Agents – like conventional wisdom says a smart Seller should.

At one point, this likeable, highly-educated, sophisticated home-owner, fixed his gaze intently on me and said with utmost sincerity: “I’m  looking for an aggressive Agent to get the job done.  Someone who will target the right markets. Places where the money and the buyers are  – starting with Silicon Valley.”

Ok. No problem. Makes perfect sense.  I’m with ya’.

But suddenly out of the blue he took a left turn and started pitching curve balls in my direction.  Holding up a glossy local real estate magazine he continued on with his defacto job description:  “ You know, I want someone who’ll run these big color ads. Someone who’s going to put my place in the Wall Street Journal. Get a special mailing list of big time corporate CEOs. Send them all postcards. Run displays in the San Jose Business Journal to connect with all those up and coming Facebook millionaires.

A crash of cognitive dissonance washed over me.  Punctuated by ringing in my ears – the sound of inner “ca-ching-ing” as all those imaginary dollar signs rolled along with my eyes back into my head.

I recognized the place. Been there. Done that. Many times.  One of those lonely marketing cul-de-sacs where listings go to die.  Despite everyone’s best wishes, best efforts and best intentions.

Once again I was reminded that there are still an amazing number of Sellers who don’t quite seem to get it yet.  They are unclear on the concept. Running on autopilot with notions that were old even in the old days.  Having trouble reformatting their brains. Possibly doomed to spend the rest of their upcoming days on market as analogue people lost in a digital world.

Perhaps it would help to list a few of the common disconnects between reality and realty that are floating around out there:

- Homebuyers from Silicon Valley aren’t driving over to the car wash in Santa Cruz to pick up a glossy magazines so they can search for available real estate.  They simply log on. Why would any serious buyer window shop randomly – when they can see the entire inventory in a couple of keystrokes?

Most Sellers in Santa Cruz moving to other parts of the Country are doing the very same thing their own potential Buyers are doing – looking on-line.  Why would it be different for their Buyers than it is for them?

Advertising isn’t going to convince someone to buy something if they aren’t already moving in the direction of buying something.   Buying is a long process. Property ads don’t create buyers.

The chances that someone reading a four line classified in the Wall Street Journal is going to drop his coffee cup, get on the next plane and plop his money down are none and slimmer than none.  Who reads the WSJ classifieds anyway?

Someone who isn’t already familiar with Santa Cruz isn’t going to be moving/buying here anytime soon.  Near-term buyers are people who already are attracted to our area and have it on the same radar as their homing instincts.

Corporate execs aren’t checking their daily junk mail on the latest and greatest random real estate opportunities. Snail mail or  email. You know how you ignore all the superfluous crap you receive?  Why would they be any different?

And those Facebook millionaires?  Check our their Facebook pages. Not a lot of them are reading the Business Journal.

The majority of advertising dollars that agents and brokerages spend – are designed to sell the sellers on an Agents’ sell. Not to sell Buyers on what they are selling. We run those expensive ads mostly so more of you will list with us.  Been there. Still doin’ that.

Oops.  Now that I’ve blown my own cover, perhaps next week we can focus on how today’s real estate marketing really does work and which things Sellers should really be insisting their Agents spend money on.

The Shadow Knows

What was that tag line  we used to see on posters promoting Rasta bands at the Catalyst way back when?   All Killer – No Filler?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could channel a little more of that sentiment (and mojo) into the real estate inventory these days.  Seems like no matter how many times a day you and I and I go onto the MLS to check for new listings or download search engine e mails…nothing much new “of value” comes on. Just the same old same old.

Tired inventory.  Picked-over inventory.  Stale-inventory.  A warmed-over re-hash of all the stuff that didn’t sell last year.  Including a strange menagerie of distress properties.  Dubious short sales you can never be sure of and a smattering of REOs banks are pinching out of their systems…starting with the worst first.

The sum total?  An uninspiring catalogue of places.  Most of which aren’t qualified enough to move anyone anywhere.  As in: Move buyers in. And move sellers out.

(Quick disclaimer:  Individual Sellers, don’t get bent out of shape here. I’m talking about everyone else’s listing except yours.)

I guess we could say it’s All Filler…Very Little Killer in real estate land right now.  Not many killer views, killer yards, killer locations.   Or to lower our epxectations just a little… not many plain old, modest, middle of the road killer houses packaged up in nice presentations at reasonable price points. Specially right there in the sweet spot between $600k and $800k.  I don’t know about you…but it’s killin’ me.

Most Agents understand.  They’ve got clients calling too. Buyers ready to buy.  Or who think they are.  Buyers becoming increasingly frustrated with a market that doesn’t seem to offer anything up that fits their needs or price range.  And by extension, Buyers frustrated with their own Agents, who become more suspect each week when they fail to turn over enough rocks or the “right” rocks to uncover that special hidden gem waiting out there. Somewhere.

The same Buyers who don’t understand why it is so hard to buy in  (what keeps getting sledge-hammered into our heads as) the Perfect Buyers Market.  Is it safe to say this isn’t a Perfect Buyers Market?

There are certainly incredible interest rates. Prices have certainly come down a long way.  Those are two of the defining characteristics of a Buyers Market.  What’s missing?   Great places that people actually want to buy.  I think some people call it supply.  Or maybe “effective supply” would be a better term.

I keep having the same deja-vu experience.  Clients who’ve been looking forever, pouring over the on-line pictures of homes for sale, who keep calling and asking to see places they forgot they already saw a year ago.  Houses that didn’t work then and aren’t going to work after another 365 days on market and a minimal price change.   I call this  “Deja Viewing”. Stare at the MLS long enough and homes start repeating themselves over and over.

So when’s this slow tortuous drip of new properties coming on going to end?  When do the floodgates open? I feel like a kid staring at the classroom clock.  Waiting for recess from a hard lesson. The minute hand isn’t moving. The fabric of time is frozen.

Thursday was Groundhog Day and another shadow appeared again this year.  Was it just the shadow of a huge shadow inventory?  Or was it also the shadowy logic of would-be sellers planning to hold out putting their places on the market for as long as they can.

Either way, looks like the winter of our buyers’ discontent is going to last at least another six weeks.  If we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot that is – by kicking the groundhog down the road even further…

Of Fishes and Bicycles

A Buyer without a Realtor is like a Fish without a Bicycle.
-   Anonymous

I confess.  There are times  when I feel like the proverbial  5th Wheel on the Virtual Tour Bus.   Along for the ride.   Baggage in a BMW.   An extra appendage no longer utilized as originally intended.

Existential questions abound. Am I a glorified chauffer?  A lowly crash-test dummy in an expanded GPS system? One that’s just supposed to sit behind the wheel. Keep his eyes on the road. His mouth shut? Perhaps still absorb the impact when something goes wrong?

Are we nearing the ignominious end of the evolutionary line for my particular species of Realtor?  Isn’t the character John Cusak plays in 2012 – a chauffer?  Careening around large potholes opening up in the planet while the world as we know it comes to the end of the Mayan Calendar?

I used to like driving people around to look at real estate.  Introducing them to neighborhoods.  Learning life stories. Listening to hopes and dreams.  Sharing my decades of actually living in Santa Cruz.  Experiencing its culture, history, geography and yes, its beautiful weirdness.

But these days, a growing number of clients…er…passengers…er… end-users,  seem more tuned into their I Phones than they are to anything I have to show them.   A new breed of buyers already loaded for bear before they get into the car.  As in – loaded with  Redfin or Zillow Apps. Or any one of a host of other Real Estate App-spawn available for instant download.

And that’s it!  Buyers don’t look at houses anymore as much as download them. A window of opportunity these days isn’t a dual pane, wood framed, divided light, high quality Pella,  it’s a place in the ether with a signal strong enough for buyers to plug into the Borg Collective…and receive all the data that’s fit to digitize.

As a Realtor, there’s nothing quite as disconcerting,  as driving through one of those eclectic little eco-systems of Santa Cruz, yammering away about the micro-lifestyles prices,  traffic,  only to suddenly realize that my yammers have fallen on deaf ears and into a yawning chasm that’s opened between me and the living breathing human being two feet away.

I’m tooling around the streets pointing out various amenities. And they are tooling around the tools on their phones.  And of course, I feel like a tool – in a bad way, not a good way.

When I mention a nearby restaurant,  they already know it’s exactly  .2 miles away. They tell me what tonight’s specials are.  What the recent Health Inspection rating was.

Schools?  They’ve got all the latest test scores on tap.  Exactly where the middle school rates statewide.

Neighborhood safety? They’ve already logged onto the police statistics.  They know how many crimes were committed in the last 30 days. A map shows them where every registered offender lives within a six block radius.

Will there come a day, when I’m actually sitting in the driveway of a home for sale with a client who is content to simply take the virtual tour on his phone without getting out of the car?

Ever go to football games and notice people on the 50 yard line watching the life-size contest in front of them on their tiny screens. Head phones plugged into the play-by-play unfolding in real time.

As though real life weren’t actually out there.  But rewired into a digital format.  An altered estate of mind becoming more real than real estate itself.

Honey have we shrunk the kids? And our houses too?  And our entire lives? Encoded them into a set of remote viewing signals?

Gotta stop here. I/O, I/O off to work I go. On my way to show some property.  Once more into the breach dear friends…

The Calculus of the Narrative

Ok. Oly Oly Oxen Free. Here it comes. Ready or not.

The holiday hiatus is over. The furlough has expired. The sabbatical from real estate everyone seemed more than willing to take at the end of the year, with or without pay, has run its course.

When the principal actors (buyers, sellers, agents) tacitly agree to shut things down for a month – it’s the perfect excuse to limit expectations. No one can be too disappointed because nothing much was supposed to happen anyway.
Real estate lite. Tastes bland. Less filling. But a great self-fulfilling prophecy that helps lower the bar.

Wouldn’t it be tempting to stay here in our real estate of unanimated suspension forever? Floating weightless? Going through slow motions? Void of emotion? Thoughts adrift?

A no man’s land-escape filled with the illusion that there’s always going to be plenty of time to fix things? Maybe this spring!! For now…the market dissolves. The future seems a long way off. And life is but a dream… until it isn’t again.

The real world calls. The gravity of the situation is kicking into gear as we re-enter earth’s atmosphere. Time to re-engage the thrusters. Push the reset button. Get back to business as unusual.

It’s the cusp of a brand new year and here we are. Game on.

So where exactly is here again? Where did we leave off before we were so rudely waylaid by the holidays? Hard to figure.

Real estate in 2011 came and went. Moved in and out like a ghostly apparition. A lingering echo but no tangible progress. No mandate. Firm footing. Wholesale change. Or proof positive.

If real estate was going to reinvent itself and design a comfortable new place to live in our hearts and minds in 2011, it didn’t get very far. The as-built structure looks nothing like the plans on the drawing board last January.

Looks more like the architecture of surreal estate. Unfinished doorways leading to narrow precipices. Windows opening onto tight corridors. Escher-like stairways incorporating strange tricks of perspective. A series of never-ending steps looping back on themselves.

We went back to the future with interest rates from the 50’s but ran head-on into the credit crunch. So we went forward into the past as the median price receded to 2000-2001 levels.

More Buyers wanted to buy and waited for better properties. Sellers didn’t offer better properties because more Buyers didn’t buy. By default, distress sales loomed larger. Values declined further. Short sales weren’t short. Closure didn’t arrive at the end of the foreclosure tunnel. The shadow inventory got shadowier. First time buyers couldn’t compete with all-cash investors. Rents rose counter-cyclically.

While the economy was waiting for Real Estate to lead, Real Estate was still waiting to follow.

Newsmakers are working hard to conjure up a few bold headlines to start the year. Spinners are spinning. Indicators are indicating. Pundits are postulating. Everyone is positioning for change.

It all feels disingenuous. Like the little boy crying recovery. We back-dated the end of the recession to 2009… shouldn’t it feel better by now? Shouldn’t good news sound more like good news and less like the rehabilitated absence of bad news?

The real story of Real Estate right now is: there’s no discernible narrative. Just competing storylines that don’t fit. And the calculus of the narrative doesn’t add up. No one can possibly do the math and figure it out.

The goal of 2012 has to be a completely new story. Enlist some real resolutionaries to come up with a radical new set of New Year’s resolutions. We were still looking at the tip of the iceberg last year. Not the tipping point.

Circling Birds

This goes out to all you circling birds. You don’t mind if I call you that do you? Ok. It might help if I told you what circling birds are…You decide for yourself if the flight pattern fits.

Whenever I sit down with Sellers thinking about putting their home on the market, the conversation inevitably turns to active imagining of who their buyer might be.Everyone wonders. What does the profile look like? That mysterious Buyer X who is going to emerge from the shadows of the mysterious “marketplace” – made up of a constantly shifting mix of people. All different ages, demographics, life circumstances, future goals, desires, needs.

Sometime, somehow, someone is going to decide on their one right place, out of all the other possible places lined up like addresses on the lottery board. A buyer that’s going to pull it together. Summon up courage, and resources. Proactively take steps to make it home.

My answer to most Sellers is that the Buyer most likely to step up sooner rather than later isn’t someone who just started looking or is just thinking about looking. Rather, it’s one of those circling birds out there. One of those anxiously active, slightly frustrated buyers who has already really been looking for months – without arriving at their destination.

Yep. Circling birds have been at it for a while. Applying themselves. Doing their homework. Making the rounds. Defining what they want as they go.

Circling birds are tracking the market. They are hooked up to an intravenous fiber optic line feeding them search engine e mails and a steady dose of new listings and price reductions. They are remarkably knowledgeable about what has sold. What’s gone into escrow. What prices used to be. They know their own little market niche better than most Agents.

Circling birds have tromped through those atrocious bank-owned properties that give us the creeps. Some have already made offers on short sales. Exhausted their patience waiting for a response. A few have lost out in multiple offer bids for a really great place. Felt bitter pangs of disappointment. Dragged their hearts up and gone back into the trenches looking.

Each of these experiences, every house they have seen, has sharpened their focus and desire. Circling birds have already narrowed their parameters by looking high and low. They’ve grown more sure of what they want – through the process of elimination. They’ve looked at everything in their price range.

And that’s the whole thing Sellers… Circling birds are ready to go. But the inventory is exhausted. There’s nothing else to look at except that next best thing that comes on the market – your place.

When your house goes on, all those ready, willing and able buyers are going to sit up and take notice. They are going to bug their Agents to show it to them. They’ll be doing drive-bys coming home from work. They’ll be doing virtual drive-bys on google earth. If it looks right and priced right, they’ll swoop in for that first open house.

In a market that is supposed to unequivocally be a “buyers market”, there’s a fascinating irony that keeps inserting itself into the proceedings. There are a remarkable number of all cash offers, and multiple offer competitions happening, despite all the stories about seller desperation we keep hearing.

Thank those circling birds. They know that if they don’t grab it, someone else will. Sellers, get your homes on the market. Forget all the bull about waiting till next spring. You want to be on the market when the fewest other homes are. The circling birds are out there waiting.

Through The Glass Darkly: Real Estate for 2012

What’s ahead for real estate in 2012? Tough question. Gazing into the old crystal ball feels more like the looking through glass shards darkly these days.

But here goes… I picked up one of those old cans we’ve been kicking down the road and converted it into a homemade collide-a-scope. I’ve got it pointed forward towards the light and here’s what my own colorful, mosaic view of the future looks like:

- More big banks will convert their shadow inventories of foreclosed homes into long term rental properties offering attractive new incentives to subprime renters – like low 3 month teaser rate rents and negatively amortizing rent-to-own programs.

- Disenchanted Agents will join the Occupy movement. Calling themselves Doc-cupy Real Estate they’ll begin camping out at Bank of America branches until underwriters agree to approve loans and generate loan documents for well-qualified borrowers already in their queue.

- As more Americans adjust to simpler lifestyles in the wake of economic recession a dramatic increase in the number of Near Life Experiences will be reported.

- More Sellers will purchase Do-It-Yourself Home Cryogenics Kits – vowing to dig in even deeper for the long haul waiting for prices to return to 2005 levels.

- Sweeping new legislation designed to protect future homeowners will require builders to install Air Bags in all new homes.

- In a desperate move to counteract tanking sales, a local Real Estate Brokerage will substitute Nitrous Oxide for Helium in all Open House Balloons.

- Realtors will expand efforts to lure Gen X home buyers with cutting edge branding techniques like company tattoos and personal marketing piercings.

- A large pharmaceutical firm will begin clinical trials of a mourning after pill designed to relieve symptoms of Buyers Remorse.

- When Baby Boomers universally declare that old age doesn’t start until 75, defiant members of the Boomerang Generation will immediately proclaim that adulthood does not begin until the age of 35.

- Agents holding Open Houses will begin handing out insulated booties to encourage more buyers with cold feet.

- The Letterman Show will feature an ongoing series of bits called Stupid Lender Tricks.

- A new pest control franchise called The Termite Whisperer will promise to rid houses of termites without the use of toxic chemicals – by convincing them to leave voluntarily and move on to neighboring houses.

- When neuro-scientists discover that consumer brains respond most directly to smells rather than sights and sounds, Aromatherapists will be in great demand as Home Stagers. Sell the Smell will become a common catchphrase..

- More frustrated home buyers will turn to online Virtual Dream Homes in the coming year, where their Avatars can easily move into custom comfort. California will also begin exploring a Virtual Property Tax.

- In a massive effort to transform societal stigmas about the homeless, self-styled Homeless Billionaire Nicolas Berggruen will invite tens of thousands of homeless families to hotel-hop and couch-surf with him at 5 Star Resorts.

- EXTREME MORTGAGE: HOME EDITION will make its debut on Realty TV this year. First time buyers will compete for loan approval while a panel of celebrity underwriters comes up with a new set of performance anxieties each week.

- Remote Viewing will be just one of the innovative new forms of Psychic Marketing that begins to replace old fashioned, web-based, virtual tours in the coming year.

- A prestigious group of spin-doctors will accuse the National Association of Realtors of implanting false market memories in the minds of vulnerable and unsuspecting members.

- The Conversation Pit will make a comeback in American homes. More and more of them will be located in lead-lined safe rooms, where no electromagnetic television or cell phone frequencies can penetrate.

- Al Gore will once again rise to national prominence with a new film exploring global financial weirding and the meltdown of the international monetary system – called An Incoherent Truth.

X Mas for Realtors

Well, it’s Christmas Eve and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of anything stirring in the House (or the Senate for that matter). Everyone’s gone Home for the Holidays and it looks like Real Estate is going to have to forego any of the “big” presents it asked for this year.

No big jump in jobs. No big sigh of relief loosening up tight credit. No big reduction in the shadow inventory hanging out on the horizon. No big sea change in consumer confidence headed our way. Maybe we’ll have better luck next year near the end of 2012 when those Mayan Promotional Calendars we sent out tick closer towards ground zero.
But there are only a few shopping hours left and we’ve got to get Realtors something or we’re going to get stuck putting euros in everyone’s stocking. Since this is Real Estate of Mind and it’s always the thought that counts…I’ve come up with a list of last minute gift ideas for Realtors that you can at least think about buying your favorite Real Estate Agent.

The Ultimate REALTOR Fanny Pack: Everyone in Real Estate can use a little help covering their behinds these days. This beautifully crafted leather fanny pack is crammed full of the latest/greatest ass-saving devices – plug-in carbon monoxide detectors, water-heater strapping kit, smoke alarm batteries , low flow shower heads, fireplace damper clamps and more….

UnVanity License Plate Frames: For cutting edge Agents in sync with the new normal . Those who know that too much success is not a good thing. Four Models to choose from that fit all late model BMW’s and Lexus’ ….. “My Other Car Isn’t Leased”, “ I’m Short Sale-ing this Car”, “ The Bank Owns This Car – Just like Your House” and “Used to be in the top 1% now just a Real Estate 99%er.”

Wallmart Brand Pepper Spray Dispensers: For use in those difficult multiple offer situations when clients want to dissuade the competition and move to the head of the line.

Mock Realtor Sock Puppets: Perfect educational tool for hard to convince clients. Works equally well on Sellers determined to chase the market down and Buyers who can’t pull the trigger. With these on hand, Agents can be brutally honest and say all those things they couldn’t say before.

Realtor Door Mats: Promotional door mats handcrafted in Agent’s own image. They can personally greet every prospective buyer of every listing right at the front door. Boosts their ego by letting people walk all over them literally rather than figuratively.

Orange Oil Massage Products: Perfect for on the spot termite control , bed bug infestations, or persistent client cooties.

Road to Nowhere Bumper Stickers: Do you Know Where Your ARM is? Flip Real Estate – One Finger at a Time! Mortgage …Why do you think they call it Death Tax? I’m Addressed for Distress are You?

Real Estate I PHONE APPS: Random Number Generator App – ideal for choosing a list price. Vanilla Extract App – generates that warm and cozy open house smell. Marble App – put that phone on the floor and see if it is level. Slumlord Map App: Instantly pull up every student rental in a 3 block radius.

Market Periscopes: Easy assembly. Perfect re-gift for Underwater Homeowners who want to keep an eye on prices and know when they can come up for air.

Niche Gifts for Clients: Seed and Stem Packs – a sensitive way for Agents to tell down and out clients they care. Forget-You-Nots – flower seeds to send out after that next escrow from hell. Recession Recipe Cards – delicious menu tips using spilt milk, sour dough, entrees stewed in juice and guaranteed to stick in most craws. Pot Pourri: A delightful blend of medical marijuana selections designed to light up homes even on the most dark and depressing days.

Home Inspection Coming…Duck and Cover!

Another Home Inspection this week. Another reminder just how risky daily life is. Will most of us even survive the night under the false-security and un-protective custody of our not-so-safe-houses?

Homes used to be a places of refuge. Bastions of comfort. Sanctuaries from all those bad things – out there.
They used to say that most accidents occurred within five miles of home. But after reading this 60 page tome of a Home Inspection my listing client paid $750 for, I’m not so sure.

Now that I’m more aware of all the insidious dangers lurking in every room, closet and corner of the one place that’s supposed to nurture us the most, I don’t see how anyone makes it out the front door in one piece – let alone down the driveway.

Nothing like a Home Inspection Report to make you feel incredibly paranoid and insecure. Nothing like a Home Inspection to make a million dollar place feel like a loathsome den of inadequacy.

I call it the 60 Minutes Syndrome. Goes something like this. Morley Safer (fictitious name?) does a riveting expose on the dangers of automatic garage doors – evil snares for unsuspecting children and small pets – waiting to pin them helplessly underneath.

By the following week consumer protection advocates are up in arms calling for new codes and retroactive auto-reverse safety mechanisms.

On the front line of the Center for Dis-Ease Patrol are the Code Talkers. The Home Inspectors that cite chapter and verse of all the new codes to live by. They understand after a lawsuit or two that if they don’t warn everyone about every possible thing that could potentially harm everyone, their own asses are in grave danger. CYA rules. Absolute CYA rules absolutely.

And so we are moving into strange territory –Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) is slowly morphing into Caveat Venditor – which means Seller Beware of all those things that will scare you about your own home and scare the heck out of potential home buyers too.

Home Sweet Home. How can it kill, maim or injure thee? Let me count the ways… Here are just a few of the things you never knew you had to worry about…until now.

Does your oven have an anti-tip device? Ever see an oven fall over on someone? Not pretty.

That naked light bulb in your closet? Stack those sweaters high enough and there’s a fire waiting to happen.

That dryer vent? Filling up with combustible layers of lint even as we speak.

How many dyslexic plumbers have installed hot and cold water lines backwards?

Is every stairway a potential stairway to heaven? Risers too high? Too wide? Treds uneven? Handrails too hard to grip?

And God Forbid. Deck rails more than 4 inches apart? Wide enough for small heads to get stuck? My own baby crib had bars wider than that. You are all witness to the end result.

Those sharp screws that secure the electric panel? What if the tip of one of those screws pierces a wire coming in?

GFCI’s? Carbon Monoxide Detectors? Smoke Alarms? Pool Alarms? A ban on all extension cords? Installing tempered glass? Clamps to hold open the damper on your gas fireplace?

When I was growing up we had the good old overriding fear of the atomic bomb. As long as we listened to Bert the Turtle – ducked, covered and didn’t stare directly into the blast, we were ok.

Everything else was gravy. Well, except for remembering not to run with sharp pencils in hand or put those plastic dry cleaning bags over our heads. Life was a gift with all it’s imperfections. But that was a different day and age.

Long before fear came home to roost.

Time To Spring Backward

Let’s recap…Last week I put my counter-intuitive,counter-cyclical,counter-cultural-contrarian advice out there in no uncertain terms.

If you really want to sell your house…quit stalling. List it today. Get it on the market. In the middle of December. Right in the heart of holiday flux-time. Forget about next spring. Or next summer. Don’t waste any more precious time or shrinking equity.

Since I didn’t see a lot of bright and shiny new listings coming on this week, your overwhelming response was decidedly underwhelming. Looks like we’re going to surrender to the holidays once again. Succumb to the status quo. Choose the myth of realty over the reality of it.

Tell people to get their houses on the market these days and all you get back is a cacophony of collective excuses echoing:
No one buys this time of year. The weather is bad. My house looks better in the spring with flowers blooming. The market will be better then. Everyone moves during the summer to get settled before the new school year. There will be a lot more buyers then.

Did I miss anything? Any other old chestnuts about why this is such a terrible time to list a house? Funny. Over the last four years virtually every single thing we thought we knew about real estate has been turned upside down.
And yet, we still cling to old notions about how it works. Perhaps to give ourselves some illusion of comfort? Permission to kick the can a little further down the road? Hang onto the belief that there’s still a traditional world waiting for us somewhere around the bend?

Here’s the irony Sellers: There are ton of buyers out there. What’s holding them back? The lack of decent homes to choose from. They are tired of bank-owned bomb-shelters. They are wary of interminable short sales that remind them life is too short to wait for idiot lienholders to respond.

They are ready to plunk their money down on real homes offered by real sellers. There are plenty of recent multiple offers to prove it.

You can wait until spring when the flowers bloom but while you are waiting, the market will still be going down in value. Whatever you hope to gain will be eroded by the time you get there. The grass will be greener but your net proceeds won’t be.

And it’s true that a higher number of homes sell in the summer than in the winter. But it is also true that lots more homes don’t sell in the summer than in the winter. In other words, a higher percentage of homes available in the supposedly slow months between November and February actually do sell, than in the “good” months between May and August. Would you rather be selling, when there are fewer competing properties or when there are a whole lot more homes for buyers to choose from?

Perhaps in the 50’s there actually were more Ward and June Cleavers buying new houses in the summer so Wally and the Beav could settle in before school started. But these days nuclear families are a minority demographic in the Bay Area. The bulk of those brand new beautiful schools and family neighborhoods are quite a distance due east of here. And overall, California ranks close to last in terms of public schools. The school syndrome is simply not a huge market motivator. There is no there, here.

So each year around this same time…we tell ourselves that Christmas for real estate is really going to arrive in April. We did it last year and the year before and the year before that. And we are still waiting for it like April Fools. This year, make your Christmas list early.