Urban gardening in your small yard, big yard, balcony?  This is a project that can be done easily and with little to no big effort on your part.  First, go to the garden center in your area and buy a few bags of potting soil.  I prefer Miracle Grow for vegetables and generic soil for flowers.  Next select the vegetables you want to grow, for your first foray into this type of project, buy something that doesn’t need to be staked.  Low growing vegetables like zucchini, melons, herbs, lettuce, or bush style vegetables like peppers are best.  Take a knife or sharp gardening shears and puncture the bag in three or four places on the sides so that the bag has adequate drainage.  Then decide how you want to grow your vegetables – most of the time if they are low growing you want to place them toward the corners of the bag.  Cut a crosswise section in the bag for the first vegetable and unpot it, slide it into the hole you made with the scissors and do that across the bag as you desire.  Tip, you might have to remove some of the soil to get the root of the plant inside the bag but you will use that soil to pack in the veggies after you are done if you feel any space.  Set the bag where you want it to be for the next few months and water it by using a very low pressure water hose or even a watering can.  These don’t need to be too saturated because the drainage holes are enough to keep the roots from getting water logged but enough to keep the water inside for longer.

For flowers – it is virtually the same thing, but they should be planted closer together so that the bag design makes the end result look like a flower carpet.  It is one of the most beautiful things once the flowers have filled in because you don’t see the bag.  It just goes away and all you see are beautiful mounds of colorful flowers.  Go crazy and buy only one color and fill that bag up with as many plants as you can.   If you want to give one of these as a gift, purchase a plastic tray from the .99 cent store and use it as the base to hold the bag flat, put a ribbon around the top and tie it so that the flowers look like a gift.  It is really sweet and so thoughtful – and the best part – not that expensive.  The two bags of soil, flowers, vegetables and tray cost $23.00.  The flower one was the lease expensive, as the bag of soil was only $3.50.  If you shop around for the best flower sale, you might be under $10.00 for the whole thing!

Enjoy your beautiful bounty of vegetables and flowers this year with almost no waste and little care and maintenance.  Next year, if you want to go crazy, try one cherry tomato plant per bag, but you have to make sure to get a sturdy tomato cage or stake that you can tie up to something vertical.  Tomatoes love this but that also means they get REALLY big and can topple over a small cage or stake that isn’t set into the ground.  No one wants a leaning tower of cherry tomatoes that takes over the whole space!  Well….if they taste good…maybe, but you can prevent this with a little twine and a good vertical space!  My favorite spaghetti sauce is a few handfuls of cherry tomatoes, some onion, garlic, carrot, celery, oregano, olive oil and let it cook for about 30 minutes.  Smash it up, add some salt and pepper, and you have a very tasty sauce that you grew yourself in a bag!  Nothing beats a freshly picked cherry tomato – my true love!

You might think, with all these advertisements, that all Realtors are created equal.  That is just not the case.  In every industry you have excellent skilled individuals.  Your job is to find the best Realtor for your sale.  Here are a few tips:

1. Find A Tough Negotiator:  By this I don’t mean find someone who will kill the deal, but you need someone who is vested enough in YOU and your sale to fight for you.  I see this all the time, one agent is stronger than the other and the deal goes sideways for the weaker side.  You need someone who has the ability to make the best deal for you and can also keep the other side engaged.   Ask your Realtor about what trades they have available to help get your house ready for sale, or even more importantly, address any findings the buyer might come up with during their inspection.  By the time you get to the inspection phase, you are stuck with the Realtor you chose so make sure they have a good network of people.

2. Find A Realtor That Returns Calls:  During what I call the “Honeymoon Phase” – there is excitement and lots of energy behind your sale from all parties.  Then there might be a lull in activity or time in the transaction where not much is going on.  Find a Realtor that will keep in touch with you throughout the entire process.  Too many Agents are what I call, “Last Minute Larry’s” who run up at the 11^th hour with a crisis that could easily have been adverted if everyone was keeping the lines of communication open.

3. Find A Realtor That is Pre-emptive: What I mean by this is let your Realtor know that you have a problem with the sewer up front, for example.  Don’t wait until the buyer discovers this issue during their inspection period.  There are many options, much less expensive, for the seller to choose prior to the buyer finding the problem.  The seller can hydrojet the sewer with a  skilled professional and clear it out for so much less than what the cost would be for a repair.  You must disclose this, but it is so much easier to address up front in a strong position than after the fact in a weak position.  Another thing, if you know that there is a requirement, let’s say you are selling a property with an HOA and they are requiring you to add a storage shed for $5000.00 to your property, DO NOT hold this information back from your Realtor.  It will just cost you more in the long run.

As a consumer, you have choices in selecting a Realtor but you don’t really have a choice when it comes to the buyers side of the transaction.  As a seller, you get an offer, it comes from a willing buyer, but attached to them is another Realtor.  I strongly advise you take a hard look at the Realtor you chose when listing your home because they may not be the best one in the deal and that will hurt you in the long run with extra costs of repair, credit toward closing or any number of potential pitfalls.  Ask the Realtors you are considering for references, but ask them for a transaction that didn’t go well.  I think that is the most telling.  An agent who can connect you to a seller/buyer who had a difficult transaction and remained a trusted advisor says way more about how they operate than any of their online or printed materials.

Pick me and I will give you the real deal and you will end up with someone that will fight for you and answer their phone!

Have you noticed that you can literally go almost a full day without speaking to someone if you wanted to buy something, order something, research something……there is an app for ordering a coffee before you arrive so it is waiting for you…you can go to the grocery store and check out through the self check out isle….and who doesn’t love Amazon.com?  You really don’t have to speak to anyone if you don’t want to. My parents generation (they are in their early 80’s) is all about making a connection.  They don’t like the idea of ‘self’ anything.  They want to speak with the cashier at the grocery store, they think it is rude to be so non-communicative. 

My parents generation does not drive the economy like the younger generation does.  Look at the type of programming on TV we have now.  Advertisers target age groups between 30-45.  That group loves an app, ease of use, a Tweet to get their news, something needs to peak their interest to get an indepth analysis.  When their interest is focused, they are amazing at finding stuff.  Back in the day, we had to go to the Library for an encyclopedia, now that information is just a quick Google away.  These folks get fully immersed in whatever it is they want to know about and feel like they are as good as an expert.  Sometimes they are.

In real estate we have gone from being a very individual centric business model to one that is more about the collective.  Back in the day, a Realtor had to go to the local board of Realtors to pick up daily listings to show their clients.  Now, prospective buyers and sellers can get a lot of the same information as an Agent has by going online.  Zillow seems to be dominating our local markets.  This isn’t because of my parents generation – Zillow knows that they are not the drivers of the market.  Zillow, like other online services, target the markets that are most receptive and have the most disposable income to drive sales.

Here is where that type of situation doesn’t work out well for the real estate consumer, both buyer and seller, because the transaction part of the sale is very fluid.  There are more than 40 people working behind the scenes when a deal is in escrow – if you don’t work with a Realtor that has experience, a good team and negotiation skills – the old saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know” comes into play here. 

Here is an example:  Recently I was representing a buyer in a sale where the seller had a HERO lien on the property.  HERO liens are loans that are made by the PACE program for clean energy.  People use these loans, that then turn into liens on the property, to finance energy saving central air and heat, solar panels and solar collection systems.  When a homeowner takes out a PACE loan for one of the covered items, the property now has a lien on the Title and cannot be purchased without the re-payment of the loan, which removes the lien, in most cases.  If a buyer is using an FHA loan to purchase a property with a HERO lien on Title, the situation becomes very dicey.  Here is why…..Buyers with high DTI (Debt to Income) ratios often need an FHA loan to qualify because they have higher debt than a conventional loan will allow.   Lenders are required to slide  HERO lien debt,  that can be as much as $50,000, onto the buyers DTI.  This extra debt from the HERO lien could push the buyers DTI above what the lenders allow.

A buyer or seller wouldn’t know this unless they had a really good and experienced Realtor and lender who could navigate this.  Spend less time trying to learn about the whole business of real estate and find yourself a great Realtor, like us, to help!  You will be happy and in the end your transaction will be the best it could be!

I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.   An example –  I was a Room Parent for many of my sons (I have three boys) grammar school years.    I am no longer the car pool Mom getting my sons to and from practices, several nights a week.  I am no longer that woman in the grocery store with the overfilled cart buying a week’s worth of groceries to feed my army of sons and their friends.  

And now, my middle and youngest sons are graduating in June.  As a result, I graduate too. 

No more winter or spring breaks to coordinate, no more long summer breaks to figure out what our vacation plans might be…..Now what’s happening  is they are looking for full time jobs in different states and I am wondering what the heck I am suppose to do? 

No one else is waiting on deck.

No one tells you the ‘empty nest’ syndrome is not when the kids go off to college.  Yes, it does feel a little strange to not have them home for dinner and off at college, but they come back every few months for holiday breaks and summer time.   No….the true ‘empty nest’ is actually when they graduate from college.  It is really at that point that you get a little off balance.

So now I get to reinvent my new persona.  Maybe this is the kick off of my mid-life crisis and I need a convertible?  Maybe I need a vacation home or a smaller house and less to be responsible for?   I have quite a bit of equity in my home and it might be time to sell and move to a new place with a view or an ocean breeze.  All of this sounds like a lot of work, but so does sitting in the same spot and treading water.  I have to be open to new ideas, thoughts and actions or I will end up like some of those other people who’s lives become smaller and smaller.  They don’t stay relevant – they are not engaged.  I don’t want to be that person.  It’s time to assess and change.

If you are commuting to work every day because your house is in the best school district for your kids, who have since graduated from college……you don’t need that school district anymore.  Why keep making that drive every day?   It seems like that drive, risk on the road, wear and tear on your car, wear and tear on you because of the stress would be awful.  What if you were able to sell your house and use the equity to buy something closer to work?  Maybe use the balance of your equity to buy a small place nearby that special golf course or fishing hole or whatever that perfect spot might be for you?

It seems to make a great deal of sense to me as I type this to really assess my long term plans and make some decisions to benefit me for a change.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and would do anything for them, but they are not asking me to sit and wait for them to need me.  I did my best with them, they have the necessary tools to go forward in life and make their own way.  I will be there when they need me, but I don’t have to be sitting by the phone waiting for them to call me.  That’s not what I think this time of my life is supposed to be for.  I think I am supposed to grab life with both hands and participate!

Think about where you are and where your kids are at this time in your life and if you need me to help you look at options, I am happy to help.  I got a lot of time on my hands and look forward to working through the next steps right alongside you!

I like a deal….I don’t mind admitting it.  I work hard for my money and if that money can be stretched a bit farther, then there is no shame in that.  However, and this is a big ‘HOWEVER’, I do not skimp on important things.  Let me tell you how I have learned this the hard way –

I wanted to hire a painter to paint the exterior of my home.  It wasn’t in bad shape, but it needed prep and primer and paint.  I interviewed several painters and I got many different prices.  Many of my friends talk about how they choose the ‘cheapest’, the ‘lowest price’ and I thought, “ok…..I will pick the cheapest priced painter this time, everyone else seems to be getting a deal.”  My experience was not a good one.  The painter dripped paint on my cement, on my brick, on my windows.  He touched the handle of my gate with his hand that was full of paint and the job didn’t last as long. 

I realized many of the reasons his paint job was cheaper had to do with things like watered down and cheap paint, didn’t want to use more than the bare minimum in plastic drop cloths, didn’t have the best brushes and rollers and he was sloppy because he was in a big hurry to get to another job. 

So how does this relate to a discount real estate brokerage?  Statistics show that most real estate agents do less than five transactions a year.  Using a general commission of 2.5% per transaction, that calculates to a gross commission of between $50,000 and $65,000 a year depending on where you live.  By the time they pay the broker, pay the brand they work for a royalty fee, taxes and general business costs they would be left with about $31,000.  That’s about $2,600 a month to live on.  Now – Imagine that same Realtor is agreeing to take your listing at a lower commission structure?  How much time and energy will they have for your deal?  They have to go out and get another deal to cover the cost of their loss in commission.  It’s pure economics. 

Be careful about the ‘cheaper’ deal.  If your Realtor can’t negotiate for themselves, what makes you think they will negotiate for you?  It’s not like a paint job that you can fix, oh no, once you sign that listing contract you are locked in and can’t get out.  Don’t select the cheapest Realtor because you think everything is the same – the same MLS, the same property fliers and open houses.  That is NOT the case.  The real estate industry did an audit once and reported that 40 people work on the sale of a property.  You most likely only see two, your Realtor and the other parties Realtor. 

My cheaper painter didn’t prep well, didn’t have the proper tools and as a result didn’t paint well.  It’s never a good idea to get the cheapest attorney, accountant, auto mechanic or Realtor.  You will end up paying more in the end.