It seems that the housing market decline is no respecter of persons.  People who are in high positions of power and authority as well as people who have plenty of money are running into the same problem the rest of us have — they can’t sell their homes.

Two recent articles help to highlight this situation:

• Shelia Bair Can’t Sell Her House as reported on The Business Insider

evidently the Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) can’t get her house sold even after dropping the price $100,000.  So she has decided to rent it out until the market turns around.  My only hope is that she lets the rest of us know when that happens.  I know a lot of people who would love to sell their home “when the market turns around”. When?

• For Sale, Still: Grander Homes in Gracious Neighborhoods as reported in today’s Washington Post

this is a story about homes in the $1,000,000 and more category in the DC Metro area that are really having a tough time of it.  Part of the challenge with selling homes in this price range is the mortgage situation.  Jumbo loans are hard to come by and the interest rates and credit requirements are prohibitive.  Not everybody has the actual cash to plunk down on these homes and a lot more have their money tied up in the stock market which has seen a huge decrease over the past couple of years.

I don’t know about you but I take a small bit of comfort in knowing that even if you have lots of money and a great, high profile job (note: Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner can’t sell his place either) it’s just as hard to sell your home as it is for the rest of us.  Hopefully, they’ll have some empathy for the “little guy” and get this economy back on track knowing that as soon as they do they’ll be able to sell their homes.  This might be a little bit of “enlightened self interest”.  You don’t need an expensive lobbyist to tell you the real estate market is in the tank when you can’t sell your own home!

Yesterday, during the height of the rush hour commute, two Metro trains collided resulting in the death of at least six people and the injury of many others.  This is a huge tragedy for the families, friends and co-workers of the people who died in the crash and for thsoe injured.  The results are still not is pointing to any specific cause of the crash.  My heart and thoughts go out to those involved.

You can Click Here to read a detailed report in today’s Washington Post.

It’s always flattering when a local TV station stumbles across you blog.  It means that something good is happening and that the wonderful search engines are doing their thing.  Either that or I’m a cutting edge blogger.

In any case, News 4 Washington sent this along to me and asked me to post.  I figure it’s a good deed and I’ve been complaining about this weather for so long on my Facebook page it even makes it kind of relevant.  So…..

WILD WEATHER

Plumbers and cleaning crews in our area have been busy with flooded basements over the last few weeks.  Julie Carey is checking in with some of them today and will react to breaking weather news as it happens. Plus, our meteorologists say tonight’s rush hour maybe affected by heavy storms.  Check out News4 before your commute for the latest information.

Good suggestion.  Tune into Channel 4 tonight!

Tomorrow, June 6th, in Washington, DC (right over the line from the MD Suburbs), the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure begins their Global Race. RE/MAX, of course, is a huge sponsor and I, personally, donate 1% of my commission in the name of every home buyer and home seller who settles a real estate transaction with me (note: I started this program with the sister and brother-in-law of Geogre Tansill — see my Client Spotlight for June 2009).

There’s still time to participate and it will be a global event.  Help with breast cancer research and help eliminate breast cancer…

Today’s the day — May 10th, the second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day.

Although there had been a Mother’s Day movement since 1872, it wasn’t until May 9, 1914 that Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamaiton making the second Sunday in May the national day of observance for Mothers.

My own mother died in 1972 and my maternal grandmother a few years later.  My wife’s mother lives in far off Michigan (but she’ll be visiting her mother in another week anyway). So for us, it’ll be a quiet day.

The great upside is that it has finally stopped raining and the sun it out and the temperature is tolerable.  So it’ll be a good Mother’s Day regardless.

Hapy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there!

I guess this swine flu thing is really starting to take hold.  According to a front page article in today’s Washington Post at least one school in Rockville, MD has closed because of the swine flu outbreak.  No one is calling it a pandemic yet but people are starting to “close up shop” because of it.

Will Swine Flu Affect Real Estate Sales?

This si a great question.  Just when the media were getting around to reporting positive news about a possible “bottom” to the real estate market we now have the media blowing full blast into this swine flu thing. Sure, swine flu is something to be concerned about. Sure, swine flu is something to take preventive steps to stop.  However, has it really spread as far and wide as the media would have us think?  More to the point, does a couple of hundred cases or even a couple of thousand cases really mean a lot in a country with over 200,000,000 people?

I don’t know.  I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV.  I don’t work in the public health sector.  I’m just a regular schmoe Realtor who thinks that maybe the swine flu thing is being blown out of proportion by a media that has nothing better to do.

Can I see myself showing homes to potential home buyers with a face mask and bottle of Purell® in the glove compartment?  I don’t think so. If  a client who is also financially qualified to make a purchase (i.e., pre-qualified or pre-approved for a mortgage) I am more than willing to show them homes that meet their criteria.  I’m pretty sure that other Realtors would do the same and I’m almost positive that all the other professionals involved in the real estate process — mortgage professionals, appraisers, home inspectors, title company settlement officers — will also be “on the job” making sure the wheels keep turning.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

There is a lot to be said for that old cliche´.

If you have your house on the market, it’s probably a good idea to keep it clean and to make sure that you and your family are doing everything it can to prevent yourselves from getting sick.

Click Here for a information sheet from Johns Hopkins Medicine about the signs of swine flu and what to do to prevent it.

Signs of Swine Flu - Johns Hopkins Medicine

Thanks to my great lender associate — Alan Gross of National City Mortgage — for providing this timely information.

April 22nd is Earth Day.

Since it’s inception in 1970, Earth Day has served to remind us that we are stewards of the environment and guardians of our future. Lots has happened from legislation about clean air and water, creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the embrace of Green technology, Green-collar jobs and all things Green.

Let’s hope that this new found love of environmental stewardship is not a fad.

Enjoy the day and remember that Earth is where we live. We should take care of it.

Some links:

• History of Earth Day
• US Government Portal for Earth Day
• Environmental Protection Agency Earth Day site
• Links to other Earth Day Activities and Information

Jim Randel is a self described “attorney and real estate broker who makes his living buying and selling properties” and he has come across a unique method for explaining sometimes complex and convoluted concepts and practices into an easy-to-read format.

He has authored a series of books called: “The Skinny On:™…” and also referred to  as “stick people books™”. Why?  The books are heavily illustrated with, well, stick people.  You know.  The kind we used to draw (and sometimes still do) when we were kids.

The idea, as I understand it, is to create a book that people can read quickly and, since most people take in information visually, has a lot of illustration to explain what they are reading.  It seems that people don’t like to read non-fiction and, as a result, miss out on a lot of good information they might otherwise obtain.

The Upside (Or Why You Should Read This Book)

The Forward and Introduction to this series of books reminds me a little of a TV column in The Washington Post.  “We watch so you don’t have to….”  Jim Randel say as much in this book. He is the one who has read all the books and studied the subject and then has distilled the information into short, concise, readable book.  I’m not really sure how many pages it has (pages are not numbered, captions are numbered) but it’s not that big.

It is easy to read with it numerous illustrations of Billy and Beth (the stick people) and large print.  Jim references many of the books he has read in order to convey his knowledge and provides a bibliography in the back of the book. The content itself is solid, if a bit biased, and provides a good understanding of why things got of control.

Jim Randel does allow that there are many thoughtful and professional Realtors, mortgage professionals and appraisers in the world. You might miss that point in this book, though.

The author’s larger point about educating yourself and doing your own research and reaching out to obtain objective advice is a good one.  I can’t help but think that if many of the people who bought homes using “creative financing” with unscrupulous real estate practitioners stopped and thought about what they were doing and checked in with an objective third party we might not be in this mess.

The Downside

The real challenge with putting out books like this is that the information in them becomes dated very quickly.

Mortgage rules and credit standards have changed drastically since this book was published (way back in 2008). Tons of both real estate agents, mortgage brokers, settlement officers and others have left the profession to go back to “real” jobs.  Many of the “creative financing” schemes have disappeared.  In short, no one — not the home buyer or home owner, the real estate agent, the mortgage broker, appraiser, title company, home inspector or anyone else connected to the sale or purchase of real estate — can get away with the type of shenanigans that were prevalent in the early part of the decade.

The good part is that there is a website that hopes to keep people current with ongoing developments by way of a free newsletter and free eSupplements to this book and the others in the series.

Every so often I run into a situation where the customer service is so good, I just have to write about it. So here’s today’s story:

I started getting interested in the Apple iPhone and getting tired of my Motorola Q right around the same time.  Everything I read or heard about the iPhone said it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and, if I really wanted to be cool, I should own one.  The big catch was that I would need to switch to AT&T in order to use the iPhone.

Sigh.

I liked Verizon Wireless just fine and I sure didn’t want to end my contract early and get dinged with the early termination fee.  So I waited it out.  Probably a good thing since the iPhone moved from the original to the 3G version while I was waiting.  My Verizon Wireless contract ended and I toodled on down to the Apple Store in Annapolis Mall to pick up my new iPhone.  Woooo! Hooo!

How Many Minutes Should I Get?

If you hadn’t know it before, I’ll tell you now.  Realtors are notoriously cheap frugal.  I didn’t want to spend a boatload of money month-to-month on minutes so I took the cheapest most frugal plan AT&T had to offer. Heck, they even offer rollover minutes so I though I was set.

As if….

I went about my merry business as if nothing was different and yakking it up on the phone with my clients and friends and, lo and behold, I started going over my minutes.  Forget the rollover stuff.  There was nothing to rollover and plus I owed AT&T more money. I was not being a happy camper.   I decided I wanted to up my minutes so I went on the AT&T website to check out the different plans.  That was easy enough but there was another little wrinkle.  Since I work with RE/MAX and AT&T is a RE/MAX Technology Partner, I was entitled to a small discount.  I looked all around and couldn’t find anything.  The website is great for phones and plans, not so great if you want to do much else.

So I Called Customer Service (cue up the big, scary music)…..

I was prepared to wait an hour and talk to someone I could barely understand and I knew would be reading from a book.  Much to my delighted surprise I was able to navigate through the “press 1 for this” and “press 2 for that” pretty quickly and waited about 15 seconds before someone that sounded friendly and knowledgeable came on the phone.

We talked about my minutes, about my plan, about the RE/MAX discount.  It was all very pleasant and all very efficient. She really did lots of stuff I never considered a mammoth company like AT&T would do.  She implemented my new plan and e-mailed me an adjusted bill.  She e-mailed me a website that had the RE/MAX discount, waited while I clicked through the various pages and input the information I needed to in order to qualify.

She held my hand through the entire thing.  I could just feel the love.  The whole thing from beginning to end, including a smallish discussion about my plan took maybe 15 minutes.

I know there are lots of people that have had less than optimal experiences.  I’m here to tell you that my recent adventure with AT&T Customer Service, at least for me, was a delight.

Oh!  I love my iPhone, too.

It seems that the Prince Georges’s County Council has finally woken up and smelled the coffee.

In this morning’s Washington Post Metro section there is an uplifting article by Ovetta Williams and Rosalind Helderman entitled United’s Shot is Blocked by Vote. It seems that members of the Prince George’s County Council have finally developed the good sense and backbone to say “No” to multi-billionaire Victor MacFarlane’s proposal to have the Maryland taxpayer build a brand new professional soccer stadium for his team, DC United. Now, don’t get me wrong.  A new soccer stadium is probably in order for the team.  I agree that RFK Stadium, their current home, is falling apart.

My beef is not that the stadium needs to be built or even where it is built.  It is who pays for it.  In this case, Victor MacFarlane tried to get the taxpayers of both Washington, DC (the DC in DC United) and Virginia to pick up the tab before coming, hat in hand, to Prince George’s County and the State of Maryland taxpayers.  At first, it looked like it was going to work.  Photos were everywhere of the smiling Council and the smiling billionaire.  However, there was a small catch. The funds had to come from bonds which had to be approved by the State Legislature (and, ostensibly, the voters) to be issued through the Maryland Stadium Authority. So, it wasn’t quite a done deal.

The Prince George’s County Delegation in Annapolis Comes To The Rescue

Lucky for us that the Prince George’s delegation in the Assembly decided to take a deep breath before committing close to $200,000,000 in bond money to a soccer stadium that may or may not ever pay off.  I’ll let you read the Post article but the gist was that the new stadium was supposed to pay back about 75% of the cost through ticket sales and the like. Never mind that Prince George’s County has the highest foreclosure stats in the State.  Hey, no big  deal.  I’m sure people would gladly forget about their troubles by paying for an afternoon of soccer instead of paying their mortgage or looking for a place to live once they realize their house is going back to the bank.

Eventually, the Prince George’s County Council came to its senses. No thanks to Councilwoman Marilynn Bland (Clinton) who first supported the stadium, than didn’t (in her committee vote to reject the stadium planning), than did (by back pedaling and saying the committee vote wasn’t “final”) and then finally voted with the unanimous Council to send a letter to the State delegation withdrawing Council support of the stadium.  What is ironic about Councilperson Bland’s back-and-forth on the stadium issue is that the section of the County she represents is one of the hardest hit areas for mortgage defaults and foreclosures.  You would think that if there was any State money to be had that she would be working hard to get it to help the thousands in danger of becoming homeless or by using the money to rehabilitate neighborhoods blighted by vacant and vandalized houses.  Instead, she seemed gung-ho to put soccer into Prince George’s County and have the taxpayer foot the bill.

So, cooler heads have prevailed.  The Council has voted 8-0 to reject the planning leading to these interesting observations:

The Council action,

“…guarantees a quick and final death…”

—Doyle Neimann (D - District 47 - Prince George’s)

and

“Why are they still voting?  The chairman’s position was that he wanted to see council support for the bill, and it doesn’t appear to be there. . . . Once it’s dead, you can’t keep shooting it.”

—Michael Vaughn (D - District 24 - Prince George’s)

The Maryland taxpayer is off the hook, for now, to pay for a new sports stadium.  Now, how about some money for housing or infrastructure or schools?