Club Chaos Agents - All Things Hollish, Wacked, and Jacked

When you're tired of romantic moonlight dinners on the ocean, try Merriman's Cafe at King's Shops in Waikola. Because instead of dancing barefoot in the sand to some Hawaiian crooner, you can walk around the shops to admire outrageously expensive trinkets. We stopped at Coach bags so I could stroke its new winter line of red patent leather. I had the clerks in the store doubled over in laughter as I described to them the new trends I see coming down the line.

Except I wasn't really kidding. Amusing as it may sound. Trendspotting. I'm pretty good at it. The newest thing in women's bags will be a bag in which almost everything can be attached to the exterior, not the interior. Tired of digging for your cell phone? See, it should easily attach to an exterior pocket. Ditto with the display key for a lockbox -- agents will love this. A loop for your sunglasses. A hook for your car keys. The only thing you need a pocket for is a tampon.

That will be the future of bags. Because companies need to keep selling them. And someday, I predict the coveted symbol of a woman's fertility will be reflected in a gold-plated bracelet adorned with dangling miniature tampons.

However, if you prefer to go back in history, take a look at these petroglyphs at Puako on the Big Island. We've got Steve Martin's Walk Like an Egyptian. A guy throwing a baby. Guy holding huge butcher knife over his head. These date back 1,000 years or more. Nobody knows for certain why they were carved into lava or even what they depict. These petroglyphs at Puako feature Mauna Kea as backdrop.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Today I will be closing out fiscal year 2011 for my business. And while the numbers were not completely disappointing, the amount of stress and hardship really was not commensurate with compensation.

Which begs the question: “WHY?”

Why indeed. The real estate world has become one of complete chaos. There are those that follow the rules and those that don’t. And even when there are no shenanigans afoot, new twists and turns tend to wreak havoc on EVERY transaction.

It is a natural law that entropy will continue to erode stability. Order will continue to deteriorate with each passing moment.

We can continue to choose to ignore the handwriting on the wall or we can make preparations.

Perhaps the Mayans were on to something after all!

I couldn't get my purple shorts on. That was an astounding discovery to make only halfway through our Hawaiian vacation. I tried them on before we left home and they fit. It's not so much that I couldn't get them on exactly as I could not fasten them. There is one sure cure for that. Fewer desserts. More salads.

Besides, some of the desserts are not worth all of the calories. When a server asked me how I liked the apple pie concoction, I told her the truth: You know those apple pies they sell at McDonald's? The kind that are deep-fried, devoid of nutritional value, little fat bombs served in a sleeve? She nodded yes, and a smile spread across her face.

Well, this apple pie was worse than that!

Call me cynical, but I imagine that was a mistake. Because now she'll go running to her boss and proudly announce that they need to make apple pies like those served at McDonald's.

Rather than gripe about fattening desserts that disappoint, I decided it made sense to take up an activity. To learn a new sport. You're never too old to learn something new. In fact, yesterday marked the 6-month countdown to age 60 for me. Paddleboarding looked like a lot of fun. The stand-up padde surfing kind of paddleboading. We signed up for lessons.

First, carrying the board to the beach required a bit of maneuvering. Oooo, look at me carting along this surfboard with one hand like an old pro -- do, do, do, do -- until oopsie daisy, a smidgen of wind caused me to go sideways. I almost bashed a 4-year-old in the head. Man, people were everywhere on the beach. Trying not to smack one of 'em with a board was really difficult.

Once I got it to the shoreline and dropped it on the water, I leaped on it. Grabbed my pole and started to paddle. Except I didn't go anywhere. Didn't move an inch. That's because my rudder was sunk in the sand. After I got moving, I got stuck on the rocks. Pace was paramount, my instructor said, keep paddling before standing up. With my ankle strapped to the board, I struggled to stand. My knees wobbled. My feet felt unsteady -- I heard my instructor yelling: bend your knees.

I plopped back down on the board and paddled my way out of the beach toward the open water. Too many people. Well, I did runover one person who, unfortunately, had a broken leg, so it was like running over 2 people. Of all the snorkelers, I had to pick the one with the broken leg. She was pretty grumpy about it, too.

I tried to stand up again. It was a struggle. I sat down again. Screw this. I was feeling the wave of failure come over me. It was frustrating. Maybe this was one of those things that I just cannot do. Like water ski. I gave up trying to water ski when the skis came off, slapped my legs and bruised me up pretty badly in my teenage years.

Then, I don't know what happened exactly. It was a beautiful day, in the low 80s, high 70s, with relatively calm aqua waters and little wind. Stand-up paddleboarding was a sport I really wanted to learn. North Kona, Hawaii, is the perfect place to do it. Why was I giving in so easily and about to call it quits? I am not a person who is easily defeated, least of all by myself. After all, I am a Sacramento short sale agent -- I triumph over some of the most difficult real estate transactions on the face of the Earth.  I can do anything I set my mind to do.

To my astonishment, I stood up, paddled and voila! Found my center of gravity. It arrived out of nowhere, just as I was about to give up. It really is true that each failed attempt puts me one step close to success. Soon, I was buzzing all over the ocean, riding over small waves, moving in unison with the board. I wouldn't say I went so far as to dance, but I put on a presentable performance. For my husband, anyway. Who was back on shore, sitting in the surf with his board. Stand-up paddleboarding was evidently not for him.

I like this sport so much that I might have to buy a rack for my roadster. I don't think a paddleboard will easily fit in the front seat, even with the top down. Stand-up paddleboarding is really a lot of fun!

The moral of this story is if there is something you want to do, go do it. Don't let failure set you back. Maybe that short sale negotiator rejected your short sale. Don't put your tail between your legs and go home. Try again. Analyze what went wrong and fix it. Resubmit. Because your second time or third time could be a charm.

I just closed a short sale yesterday for a seller whose previous short sale fell apart. It fell apart because there was no permit for the family room and the FHA-approved lender would not approve the buyer's loan. We tried for a long time to find an all-cash buyer until a VA buyer came along. We got the property preapproved by the underwriter prior to offer acceptance, and this transaction closed.

Oh, and one more thing: if you're gonna eat a dessert, make sure it is worth the extra calories.

Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub

Giving Back with 1 Hour of Your Time

On Monday I spent one-hour helping out a NYC real estate professional who needed marketing help.  People move around in their careers for many reasons and for most change is hard so I figured let me help Aldo out and see if there was a way for us to work together.  After all I am a marketer with years of experience and hands on knowledge that I can share.  In addition, my work experience has giving me the opportunity to work on many real estate marketing projects.  It was time to give back and share.

During the conversation it became clear he didn’t have an online presence and for the most part did not show up as an expert in his local area.  Well, we are now going to work on changing all of that.  While he has accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and even Zillow, Trulia and Active Rain (not linking now until he builds out his profile and starts getting active) he doesn’t use any of them!

He is/was posting his listings to Craig’s list and feeding the listings to a few other local sites but nothing that sets him apart as the “go to guy” for his local real estate market or why he was any different from any other real estate professional.  He does have a good understanding of what needs to happen.  He said he is meeting with all the local stores and business (probably more for networking) so I told him to start writing, taking pictures, videos etc and sharing his interesting finds and points of view on his market.  I have high hopes for Aldo so keep your fingers crossed that he follows through.

So in the spirit of the holidays and with the idea of what goes around comes around we spent a productive hour together and now Aldo has to get to work on building out his marketing program.

Best of luck Aldo and if anyone from the AR community has suggestions please leave them in the comments and I’ll point them out to Aldo.

Now what can you do to give back with an hour of your time?

The question I have been asked most often in the last few weeks is: What is the outlook for the real estate market in 2012?

It’s an interesting question, because there are many dynamic factors involved in the state of housing in North America.

First and foremost are the immutable laws of supply and demand. If there is more product than there are consumers, the market will continue to decline.

And while we can’t change the rules of the axiom, we can certainly control the variables. Either the supply of homes for sale has to be reduced or the number of buyers has to increase, a bit of both would be great.

The best way to increase demand is to make mortgages easier to obtain. We don’t want to return to the debacle of the early 2000’s but a little sanity in the underwriting process would help.

Many consumers with good credit scores want to buy houses but they can’t because of guidelines that have caused such trepidation regarding default that the money is kept safely tucked away and out of the hands of would-be buyers.

Alternatively, we need to figure out more ways to keep people in their houses that want to stay but have suffered a financial or personal setback. The flood of foreclosures continues, and many of the displaced homeowners that I have spoken indicated that they tried to work out an arrangement with their mortgage holders but were unsuccessful.

Unfortunately, nothing has been done to significantly affect real estate in the upcoming year. And so any real estate recovery is totally dependent on the economy as a whole. As the economy goes, and as jobs are created, so goes the real estate market.

And since 2012 is an Presidential election year, one should expect some temporary economic remedies being set into action to skew the numbers by November.

As a result, the real estate market should fare slightly better in the second and third quarters of 2012. The market will be far from robust, but it will be a bit stronger than 2011.

2012 offers some promise for better times ahead. However, just how much better it will be is still anybody’s guess.

My hope is to encourage anyone and everyone that reads this to DREAM BIG and then LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

What will you do with your future? You really only have two choices...

You can choose to just survive, or you can choose to succeed. Know this though, if you do choose to succeed, and you decide to prosper, and commit to focused and clearly defined goals, then anything is and will be possible because YOU were born to succeed!  Your very BEST can still be in front of you.

YOUR future is in YOUR hands. Inside you is untapped potential. You have unlimited value and your dreams can definitely come true but ONLY if you believe they can. You are unique and very special which NOBODY can ever take away.  You can achieve whatever you put your mind to so choose to enlarge your vision.

Retrain your brain, increase your confidence, attract the GOOD around you, and seize the profitable opportunities in and around your path. Step forward daily and positively engage relationships. Unleash your maximum wealth and don't forget to "DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT!" 

Prepare for your success and believe in yourself.

Plan before you do anything. Ask questions and question everything. Avoid the negative and move outside of your comfort zone. Let go of the past and remember, NEVER GIVE UP!!

Share this with anyone you know that might need a bit of encouragement and inspiration in these challenging times. It might make a difference in their day . . . and maybe, just maybe . . . their entire year! 

I wish the VERY BEST to you all in 2012~

I once put a hole in my eardrum by diving into a pool too quickly. So much for SCUBA lessons when I was younger. Never even made it into the ocean. Nope, I managed to mess up in 8 feet of water. That's what happens when you don't equalize -- which made me a little bit concerned about diving 100 feet to the ocean floor in a submarine. I wasn't sure how my eardrum would react. Turns out, though, that was not a problem at all.

There were other things to think about. Like, once they closed the hatch and the submarine began to submerge, there was no way to get out. Not only was there no way out, but what if a small leak happened and it quickly mushroomed into a flood, filling the room with water -- like Sigourney Weaver in Alien -- and I drowned? Or what if a tsunami hit Hawaii, like the one from last March, and spun the sub like a toy, eventually smashing it into the coral reef?

A normal person who was not a Sacramento short sale agent would have sat in the 48-person submarine and quietly looked at fish through the glass window. But not me. I know horror intimately. I close short sales. My imagination kicked into overdrive. Soon as I realized it was happening, I stopped those thoughts from continuing. My stomach immediately calmed. My fingers unclenched. I acquiesced to the circumstances at hand. There are worse ways to kick the bucket; I concluded, I was not going to die in a submarine.

But that episode reminded me of how some of my clients react. I don't blame them. I sent each client who is closing this week a long list that explains each procedure that leads to a successful closing in a short sale. I didn't want them to worry that their files would not close with me on vacation in Hawaii. One of them worried anyway. He emailed a member of my team, asking how was it possible to close on time when we were scheduled to close in 5 days and he hadn't yet signed docs. It sounded like he was freaking out.

Sometimes I explain too much, I suspect. I realize to a person outside of the short sale process, it can appear as though it's impossible to close. However, much of the action happens in the last 2 to 3 days, and it happens quickly. We have some files that fund and record on the same day. Once the short sale HUD is approved in California, closing escrow is dependant on the buyer's lender.

I reassured the seller that we will close on time. In fact, we're closing a day early. I hope he feels better. What made me feel better was learning that our submarine, at a 100-foot depth, can ascend to the top in less than 40 seconds.

Photos by Elizabeth Weintraub and Adam Weintraub

With each passing year our standard Georgia Association of Realtors (GAR) contract forms are revised to adapt to an ever changing real estate universe.

Generally speaking, most changes to preprinted real estate contracts are reactionary and not preemptive. Whether successful or not, litigation drives change and most contract updates are specifically designed to avoid lawsuits.

These annual tweaks cost money. A lot of money. And the money comes from the dues paying members of the Board of Realtors. For years non-members have been getting a free ride.

Beginning in January 2012, the GAR contracts forms will no longer be available free of charge to brokers or agents that are not Realtors. Any agent or broker that wishes to continue to use the GAR forms that is not a Realtor will have to pay an annual license fee of $199.

It is not a punitive measure. The intention is to share the burden of expense with everyone that uses the forms, board member or not.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. There is some expectation of contract chaos in the first few weeks of the year.

Only time will tell.

Life With Wee People: Fifty Cents Tuesday

So I'm in the garage sweeping, mopping, hunting for creepy-crawlies (because Florida is full of live things perfectly happy to set up residence in your house) when Mikey pokes his head through the laundry door to inform me it's Fifty Cents Tuesday. That's the part of the show where the movie theater in the Palm Bay Mall lets you watch movies all day for $0.50 per ticket. 

The kids get very excited because we want to see Puss-and-Boots, however 30 seconds later the squabbling begins... Noah (Mr. Autism) wants to take the station wagon (his fave ride). I (the anal retentive ADD mommy) want my sedan. Stephen (Mr. PDD-NOS) wants The Big Hot Wheel. Hubby (who has us for issues) has to break the three way tie so of course we decided to take the Mustang beach-side to Indialantic for dinner after taking my car "shopping-cart-side" to the mall for our lunch time entertainment.

How wicked was that round of reasoning? (evil grin) There is a method to my madness. Translated: I like using my own bathroom and had the boys go before we switched cars. Besides, it's got less miles than our fingers and toes so we all agree it needs to do something besides sit on our lawn, block the play side of the drive and/or sleep in The Man Cave (silly grin). 

Discovering the movie was really only $0.47 cents and the 3 penny tax brought it up to $0.50 was my gawking New Yorker moment of the day. Our snackage was $15 so they're not stupid (very shrewd marketing move - LOL). ;-)

Were we tempted to stay all day and just hop from movie to movie? You betcha! However, if we watch them all what are we going to do for the next Fifty Cent Tuesday? They do this a lot which is waaaaaaay cooooooool! :-)

It's an excellent movie with some really fun jokes so do go see it if you haven't already. I can't wait to buy the DVD when it comes out. My kids have an extensive movie collection. They like scripting and both suffer from Echolalia. On our way to Indialantic for dinner Stephen, the Blur Minion was horrified to discover the back windows in Mikey's Mustang do not open. Shorty also has limited visibility and made quite a stink about not being able to sit in the middle so he could see. "There is no middle" immediately replaced the "Are we there yet?" conversation (oh horror - LOL).

Thank goodness we're only minutes away from the ocean (happy sigh). Gotta go. My Editor is expecting chapters and January is only days away. If I want to make my deadline I have to spend more time offline and working (LOL). Will blog about our Indialantic adventure tomorrow. I have more eye candy to share... ;-)

Where does coffee come from? That sort of question is right up there with why is the sky blue? And who put the salt in the ocean? You know the answers but who cares? Really. It doesn't make any difference in our normal day-to-day lives, if you're like me, a Sacramento short sale agent focused on closing short sales.  Because if you're a person who needs caffeine, you're gonna drink it anyway. Unless you're addicted to Starbucks, which for some reason is often the example used as a way to justify spending more money -- why, this new expensive techno gizmo doesn't cost anymore over a year's time than what you spend per day at Starbucks!

Although, I rarely go to Starbucks unless it's to spend a gift card. However, some coffees are better than Starbucks. And, if you really like coffee, you can get a kick without drinking it. Did you know that? If you don't have time for a cup of coffee in the morning, you can gobble down a handful of chocolate-covered coffee beans and be zipping along in no time at all. But don't eat too many of them. Six chocolate-covered beans are equivalent to a cup of strong coffee. If you eat an entire bag, you might get sick.

I also discovered that some cherries (those little red things -- inside of which are your coffee beans, normally a pair of beans per cherry) contain only one bean. Those beans are peaberries. They are fruity and sweet. You can make coffee from peaberries, and it's different because it's fruity. Only 2 to 4% of all coffee bean trees produce peaberries. We picked one cherry and guess what? It contained a peaberry!

Kona, Hawaii, is famous for coffee. Seemed like a good thing to do on vacation, tour a coffee farm. This one has been in business since 1850, the Greenwell Farms. Can't sit at a pretend resort forever or your brain will rot. Greenwell Farms is located about 1500 feet above sea level in the coffee belt. It gets a minimum of 300 days of sunshine, bright sunlight early morning with cool breezes, followed by warmth and a late afternoon misting of rain. Perfect climate for great coffee. Greenwell buys cherries from other farms but also grows, hand picks, processes and roasts its own coffee on location.

This farm is run by a fourth-generation Greenwell dude. It features a bunch of different types of avocados. They never pick them. They wait for the avocados to ripen and fall to the ground before they are bagged and given away to customers. Along with other types of fruit such as papayas and apple bananas. There is also the farm dog. Her name is Lola. That's the nickname my dad used to call me when I was a kid. Guess it was because I was so darned cute when my mother dressed me up like Shirley Temple. I got whatever I wanted. The lasted all of 6 months.

Good movie if you've never seen it -- those Damn Yankees. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets . . .

I hope you enjoy the photos! Greenwall Farms, by Elizabeth Weintraub