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The Neighborhood Wacko

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on February 21, 2014
Posted in: Mavericks, neighborhood wacko. Leave a comment

Cartoon lady with large afro freaking out!It never fails. As soon as the For Sale sign goes in the ground in front of my residential listing I hear from the local busybody about the neighborhood wacko. This is exactly the information I don’t want to know. Disclosure laws dictate that every material fact be passed on to buyers. Having been the victim of not enough information, I agree that consumers must be protected. But snitches are the bane of my career!

I’m holding a Broker Open House. The meddlesome lady-next-door wanders in and gleefully states, “Did you hear about the drive by shooting last night? The house across the street is full of a bunch of gang bangers.” This is something the seller failed to mention. But since it was brought to my attention and confirmed by local new stations I can’t plead ignorance. Still I hate Ms. Meddle for bringing it to my attention.

I visit another agent’s Broker Open House. He tells me that the guy next door howls at the moon, loudly. I know about the howler. He used to live in my neighborhood. Yep, full moon- loud howling. Actually, the moon didn’t even have to be full. I pity the poor agent.

What would happen if a seller or agent failed to disclose these items? We might be drawn and quartered, flocked with feathers, ferried out to the buoy and fed to great whites. We might be bullied into surfing Mavericks. Horror of all horrors, we might be forced to give a public speech in front of a large audience that doesn’t like the project we were proposing.

Or we might get sued.

I had a listing, very popular west side Santa Cruz location near the lighthouse. First open house for the public in walks the next door neighbor and says, “Too bad about old Hank. Died falling down the stairway. Don’t know if he was pushed, had a heart attack or what. Has a son with a loose screw. Son still lives around here, pissed that he didn’t inherit the house.”

Great I think, disinherited, crazy, angry son who lives close by. My favorite kind of relative.

I recently put a house in escrow. It was bank owned. Of course the bank knows nothing. Disclosure rules don’t apply to them. During our due diligence period we discovered that the former owner, now a tenant next door, is on Megan’s Law Database as a registered sex offender. My clients have three kids. Duh. Cancel escrow. Many escrows later the bank sold the property at a substantially discounted price to an investor. Poor sucker.

My current dilemma: New listing. A near by neighbor raced over as soon as the sign was placed, “Yeah, too bad about Fred. I shouldn’t say anything, but he’s a wacko!”

Hoarder’s House

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on February 21, 2014
Posted in: Antiques, hoarders, home staging, house cleaning, humor, ocean view, Real Estate, Santa Cruz, sellers, stuff, toxic waste, Uncategorized, vacation, Xanax. 2 Comments

Picture of hundreds of troll dollsEverybody I know has recently gone to Italy, Croatia, Africa for extended vacations. Not me. I’ve been slaving away, getting a hoarder’s house ready for market.

The first time I entered the house, I wore a mask to protect my eyes, nose and throat. The dusty blinds were closed, the drapes drawn, an asthmatic’s nightmare. Mold, mildew and the smell of mothballs permeated the air. I coughed. I wheezed. I envisioned creepy, crawly creatures in the corners.

Where to start? Draw back the curtains. Open the venetians. Admire the OCEAN VIEW, the treasure, the selling feature of this property. Get rid of everything else immediately!

I start in what-might-be the dining room. Attempt to eliminate, shred the possibility of identity theft, clear out twelve or more filing cabinets stuffed with forty years of history: bank statements, invoices, receipts, recipes, coupons, newspaper clippings, cards, cartoons, (I understand the cards and cartoons. I save them myself, intend to send them to someone, then forget.) Uh-oh.

One drawer was filled with thousands of tiny pieces of paper, clipped prices of items available long ago, confetti. Everything alphabetized, neat, orderly. This hoarder would put the Dewey Decimal System to shame.

What about items of value? I asked a friend who deals in antiques, paraphernalia, collectables to take a look. He came. He viewed. He was polite, “Yes, a lot of stuff. Too bad it’s all junk.” But what about the fifty shell-encrusted owls, like the ones in the Mystery Spot Gift Shoppe? Surely someone wants these? “Ah yes,” he said. “I have a client who likes owls. I’ll take a few.” He eyed me sympathetically and hoisted two from the mirrored shelves above what looked like might be a wet bar under much memorabilia.

A few discoveries: phone books dating back twenty years, cases of Hydrogen Peroxide- expiration date 1980, stuffed animals, Monopoly games, hundreds of shirts- some never worn, portable typewriters, rolls of adding machine paper, answering machines, calculators, heavy dial phones, decks of cards, jigsaw puzzles, a bazillion decorative owls, minus two, key chains, watches, eyeglass cases, eyeglasses, walkers, crutches, a few potties, electric heaters, framed and unframed tiger pictures, a two ton organ, a five ton pool table, an assault rifle and a pistol. No dead bodies.

It took six people working dawn to dusk for a week to empty the 2500 square foot house. I finally realized about day three that there were heat outlets in all the rooms. I had begun to think the electric heaters were there because a forced air furnace was non-existent.

The Dewey Decimal system organization existed for the filing cabinets only. Everything else was everywhere, no system, no where. A tiger here, a tiger there, everywhere a tiger, tiger: tiger statues, pictures from magazines, framed and unframed photos, postcards, fuzzy toys, plastic pumas, velvet paintings, tigers- smiling, angry, hungry, magnificent. I also have a soft spot for these incredible cats. A part of me grokked, but I resisted the impulse to score. Whew!

Ceramic ducks. Owls, did I mention owls? Brass figurines. Blown glass figurines. Figurine figurines. Figurative figurines. Figurines de jour. Figurines de tomorrow. Figurines de next week. Figurines de next month, next year, many lifetimes.

I remember lusting after similar delightful, wondrous, precious, breakable, dust collecting treasures as a child, demanding them “Or else!” My parents usually opted for the “Or else.”

I spent many an afternoon in my room contemplating my boring, empty environment, realizing that my negotiating capabilities needed improvement.

The folks did cave occasionally. My various eclectic collections entertained me for about three minutes. Then I was out the door and done with them forever. The thrill is in the acquisition.  I’m still learning this lesson. I’m not sure this is true for hoarders, but I understand the find high. Uh-oh.

I friend of mine recently asked me to talk to her boyfriend about being a realtor. She got me after a very long, dusty, musty stuff-filled day.

Dear Loretta-

Tell Freddie I’d be delighted to show him the ropes.

Take my most recent listing for example. He’ll need a gas mask, a janitor’s cart, fourteen trucks to haul stuff to the dump. a crew of twenty, patience, a sick sense of humor, cases of bottled water (my hispanic helpers don’t drink tap water,) gloves, ladders, shovels, hammers, screw drivers, hoses, big black plastic bags, paper bags, boxes, (oh wait, a lot of this stuff may be at the house,) my right arms, Sylvia and Jose.

Day two: he’ll need additional tools, cleaning supplies, PG&E (to make sure the furnace like the one I finally found won’t blow up,) different people skills, Xanax, a sicker sense of humor, four Sylvias and six Joses.

Day three: he’ll need a Bee Man in a hazmat suit to ecologically remove the swarming wasps’ nests, seven Sylvias and ten Joses. He must remember to stay calm when Goodwill shows up and refuses to take anything.

Day four: He’ll start finding all the stuff he hasn’t seen yet. He’ll need an inhaler. Actually he needed an inhaler early on- but it’s so exciting to get a listing….

Day five: he’ll need more Xanax and vodka for breakfast.

Day six: He should call in a professional to empty the house.

Day seven: He’ll decide he’d rather be a Fuller Brush Man.

He can save a lot of time by just calling the Fuller Brush Company right now.

I’m sure he can find their phone number in one of the forty, dust encrusted 1980 telephone books strewn about the house, especially the ones for Gilroy.

I can hardly wait to show him the ropes!! I’ll have to find some ropes though. This was one thing this hoarder didn’t have.

Real Estate and Facelifts

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on April 12, 2012
Posted in: Age, Buyers, humor, Real Estate, respect, sellers. Leave a comment

OMG!

I admit it. The photograph on my business card was taken in 1995. I got away with it for awhile. Now I see people squinting at the picture and peering at me to confirm that we are the same person.

I held an open house one Sunday. A younger man came in. He kept looking around and sneaking glances at me. After about ten minutes of this I realized he was not there to buy real estate, but to meet the lady whose picture is on the card and in my ads. I smiled at him, pointed to the photo on my card and said, “I’m her mother.”

We go to great lengths to improve our appearance. Today everyone wants to look and be younger than we are! I was in a women’s book club. The subject of facelifts came up. I said “If I could afford it, I’d get one.”

They all exclaimed, “We want to be appreciated for our brains.”

I answered, “Yes, and we all dye our hair too. A facelift is just another procedure in the Mirror, Mirror on the wall fantasy.”

My sister is staying with me for a couple of weeks while she looks for a job in the bay area.
She lives in North Carolina, can’t find her line of work there, and is a California girl at heart.
She says, “The people interviewing me are young enough to be my children. Who’s going
to hire an old lady?”

“Experienced, mature, not old,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbles. “Why don’t you get a new photo?”

“Gravity.” I respond. “Everything droops. I want people to think I’m perky and energetic.”

“What about when you show up?” she asks.

“Hopefully I win them over with my brilliance.” I drawl. “Look, doesn’t this look better?” I face her and pull my cheek skin back toward my ears.

“You’ve got a point,” she says. “What’s the name of that plastic surgeon? Maybe we can get a Group-On thing going.”

I must update my photo in the near future; truth in advertising. I don’t want people friending me on Facebook because they want to date me. I want them to buy a house! On the other hand, I want them to to call me. I think to myself, “buy more lotto tickets.” In the meantime, that old photo is cheaper than a face lift.

Real Estate and Staying In Touch

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on April 10, 2012
Posted in: Buyers, Car racing, Dogs, humor, Networking, Real Estate, Rest In Peace, sellers, Socializing, Sphere of Influence, Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Rest In Peace

Realtors are supposed to stay in touch with clients, friends and the grocer on a regular basis to remind them what they do and that they welcome business. We’re supposed to network and prospect all the time. Sounds simple. You try it.

I  run to Shopper’s Corner in sweats and an old t-shirt for garbanzo beans I need for the dinner I’ve planned for guests coming that evening. I don’t want to run into the lady I’m showing houses to tomorrow. She’s there buying bananas, what am I supposed to do? Hide in the peanut butter aisle until she leaves the store?

I’m tired and cranky at the end of the day. My feet hurt. My eyeliner has worn off. I don’t feel up to a chamber mixer and being on. Do I go or not?

I read that if you give a gift to someone every day, you’ll feel better. I bought a book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, in December for a friend. It’s about life and wisdom, a man whose hobby is racing cars, his family and his dog, Enzo. It’s cleverly written from Enzo’s point of view. My friend races Porsches, loves his wife and their golden retriever. The book is perfect for him. It was not supposed to be an official Christmas gift, just casual; no exchange obligation attached. I intended to drop it off at their house during my property viewing rounds. I don’t want to stop by on my way home from work, too close to dinner time and possibly inconvenient and rude. When I have a few spare moments, I sail past their street absorbed by the ten other tasks I need to accomplish, or I just forget. It’s April and the book is still on the backseat of my car.

Where does our business life end and our personal one begin? Or do they just blend? When it comes to prospecting, socializing and our “sphere of influence” is more important than advertising. Networking is more effective than nose-to-the-grindstone. For most people, it’s more fun. Occasionally my mood is too foul to do either. It’s better for me to hermit in my cave.

I’ve decided to send a postcard to the people I don’t want to work with any more. It’ll say, “Kathy died.” If you don’t receive one of these, call me for all your real estate needs!

Runyon’s Revenge Continued

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on April 5, 2012
Posted in: Buyers, Castles, heirs an omissions, home staging, home value, humor, Real Estate, revenge, sellers, stuff. 6 Comments

Take that!

Gaga couldn’t make it again….so here I am.

I don’t sing and I don’t dance. I hawk houses.

I don’t kiss and tell….I close escrows and tell!

I recently helped friends move from their country property to a condominium near the beach, which they’d wanted to do for twenty years. They wanted to take their old property taxes with them since they’ll save about five thousand dollars a year. This is possible under California Proposition 60, which allows a once in a lifetime transfer of property taxes, if the seller is fifty-five years of age or older and buys a less expensive primary residence than the one he/she sells. Contact me for details about this.

My friends spied a place and called me on New Year’s Day to show it to them. We looked. They salivated. They zillowed the value of their house and became very depressed. I told them that Zillow is useless and that we could do better than that.

The beach property was owned by four heirs, living in different parts of the globe: London, San Francisco, New York and Bangkok. They had recently inherited the property and owned it free and clear. Over priced, it had been on the market a year. They reduced the price one hundred thousand dollars and my friends decided to go for it.

We wrote up an offer contingent on the sale of their property. It was accepted and we went to work. My friends did everything I recommended, cleaned up twenty years of family life in a weekend. The house looked great.

We put it on the market, quickly received two offers that were substantially higher than the Zillow zestimate. They accepted the best one.

Both escrows proceeded smoothly. All parties removed contingencies and looked for loan documents to arrive at the title company. My client’s papers came. They signed off, deposited their down payment and were ready to close. Their buyers experienced a delay due to who-knows-what and lots of excuses from their lender. We had to extend the closing date for both escrows.

My clients had a weekend garage sale, got rid stuff that filled their basement, including beds and a dining table that they hated, but used. Their house began to resemble a campsite as we all waited not-so-patiently for their buyers’ papers to arrive.

Anxious to move into their new beach home, they got permission to install new carpets in the property they didn’t yet own. Worse case, if the escrows didn’t close, the condominium sellers would have new carpet.

Delay after delay occurred. The lender excuses were really lame. Finally the papers arrived and were signed. My client’s country house closed on Friday. Their loan funded. Their down payment was in the title company’s account. Escrow was to close on Monday.

They requested permission from the sellers to move into the property over the weekend. The sellers decided that they would have to pay $150. rent per day to take early possession. Remember, this was an unencumbered, inherited property that had been on the market over a year…. I couldn’t even bring the subject up to my clients. I paid the two days rent.

Escrow closed. My buyers are delighted with their new beach home. I’m relieved and happy. I wrote the rent check to the heirs and made the check payable to all of the siblings, so the check would have to be sent around the world for each of their signatures for three hundred dollars. On the line describing what the check was for I wrote, “Petty cash.”

Realtor’s Revenge

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on March 29, 2012
Posted in: Buyers, Celebrities, humor, Real Estate, revenge, schizophrenic, sellers. Tagged: Buyers, sellers. Leave a comment

Realtor's Revenge

I.
I replaced Lady Gaga at a friend’s open mic party. She got an offer to have dinner with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Johnnie Depp, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, so she called in sick. I don’t sing and dance. I sell real estate. And I tell stories. I don’t kiss and tell; I close escrows and tell. It’s called “Realtors Revenge.”

Names have been changed to protect the guilty….and the guilty should be glad I’m not posting their photos, but after all, I have a heart…..

I helped friends of mine sell their house. They are both artists so it was clever and charming, if small. The house sold quickly, with several offers. We had a smooth escrow and closed in thirty days. Six months later I got a call from Mrs. Seller, “I just found a check for $20,000. What should I do with it?”

“Well,” I drawled….”You could endorse it over to me.”

“No, really, should I give it back to the title company?” asked Mrs. S.

“Who’s it made out to?” I asked.

“Us,” she said.

“It’s okay to go ahead and deposit it.” I told her, honest agent that I am….and for $5,000.
I won’t disclose who she is….but for $10,000….

II
Helen called me, introduced herself and described the type of home she was looking for. I told her I’d set up some viewings for several properties. We made an appointment to meet.
When we got together I mentioned her last name and told her I’d had a brilliant college professor by the same name. “Yes,” she said, “He’s my cousin. Everyone in the family is either a genius or a schizophrenic.”

“How interesting,” I said.

We got into my car, headed for the first property. She started talking. She said she lived in Milpitas, wanted to be near the ocean breezes. She told me that Gekkie was the name of her pet lizard, Fruit Loops were her favorite cereal, Acacias made her sneeze. She informed me why she shopped at Walgreens, why she bought regular gas instead of premium, why she loved Dean Martin and hated Jack Benny, where she went to kindergarten, high school and college, why she like her doctor and despised her dentist. She listed her favorite movies, albums and vegetables, told me how many aunts, uncles and cousins she had, told me her pet peeves and about her favorite childhood bunny.  She jumped from one subject to another barely stopping for breath. There was no opportunity for me to participate in the conversation. I listened, nodded and tried to remember where to turn.

I’m a helpful, patient, codependent person by nature. I showed her many houses. I drove. She talked. It became clear to me that there was a pattern here….She didn’t seem interested in the properties we viewed. She seemed interested in reciting her grocery list.

After a long rainy afternoon of visiting nothing-she-was-interested-in-buying, we returned to her car in the downtown garage. I pulled into a space and stopped, motor running. She didn’t get out. She kept talking, talking and talking. By now I was tired, cranky and had a headache. It dawned on me that she was not going to stop talking. I gripped the steering wheel, turned my head toward her, glared her in the eye, and screamed, “Helen, you have to get out of my car!”

We never looked at property again. And I knew which one she was.

I Hawked a House to a Hooker

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on February 16, 2012
Posted in: Curb Appeal, hookers, humor, Real Estate, respect. Tagged: hookers. 2 Comments

"Come up and see me some time, big boy...."

“The best time to reach me is early in the morning. I start work about noon,” she said.

“She’s a prostitute!” tsk, tsked the female agents who declined to work with Sylvia. She was my lender friend’s roommate in college.

Laura beseeched me, “Will you help her buy a house?”

“Money is money. Many people have prostituted themselves for dollars, though not quite so professionally. Who am I to judge how she earns hers? She’s probably saved marriages.” I replied.

“I resemble Michelle Pheiffer,” Sylvia coyly told the johns that called for her services. She was pretty, fit, fifty with freckles. She looked thirty. Plastic surgery is routine in her industry.

We discussed her ideal house. She often worked at home. “It should be easy access to the freeway, good for commuters, no Brady Bunch families, or snoopy neighbors.”

There was a house for sale across the street from the one she rented. The neighborhood was satisfactorily sleazy. “How about that one?” I asked.

“Perfect,” she said and we wrote up an offer.

The escrow was like her skin, smooth and wrinkle free. “I need a ten thousand dollar deposit.” I told her.

“Give me a week,” she said.

Laura helped her with financing. Exotic dancer was her official job description.   She didn’t have much in the way of income documentation.  It turns out, she was the highest paid hooker in the Silicon Valley area; Santa Cruz being the valley’s bedroom community…

She made a lot more money than Laura or I did. While Sylvia worked, we waited for inspectors and appraisers outside the house she was buying. Johns cruised by slowly, looking for her address. They gawked. We got a few long stares and one thumbs up. One particularly handsome man in a new burgundy Jaguar had Laura and me seriously considering new careers.

Sylvia came up with ten per cent of the purchase price in cash; got a loan for eighty percent. The seller was carrying back ten percent as a second on the property. Sylvia would make payments to him for a number of years until this loan was paid off. She offered to do a trade. Sub prime loans were never this creative.

Inspections were done. The house was in descent shape. The purchase loan was secured. At the sign off Sylvia whispered, “Thank you for being so respectful.”

“Likewise,” I replied. We closed escrow; easy money.

Jack’s Castle

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on February 16, 2012
Posted in: Architecture, Castles, Curb Appeal, home staging, home value, humor, Real Estate, stuff. Tagged: Castles. 1 Comment

A man's home is his castle.

     I was invited by Jack to view their home. He was an eighty-three year old mechanical engineer, former graduate of Stanford. He hoped the house he built fifty years ago was worth a million dollars. He called me because I was marketing a property in his respectable, middle class Santa Cruz neighborhood. I excitedly drove around, located his address and winced, “Oh dear.”

    The property sloped down from the street. Gigantic oaks and various vines encircled the building preventing penetration of sunlight. Moss and ferns grew in abundance. The path to his door consisted of awkwardly placed stones. Even wearing flats I was concerned about twisting an ankle. It took awhile for him to answer the heavy, coffee colored, windowless, wood door complete with carved scenes of redwoods. Jack, a tall, thin, gray haired man finally appeared.

     I entered an open-air courtyard that had been covered with a clear plastic, make shift roof. I was confronted with a wavy patterned, colorful tile mosaic floor and more rocks, big ones. He told me his wife wanted a rock garden so he made one for her. He exclaimed, “That one weighs two tons. Those two are a ton each.” There were about five or six of them. “Had to have a crane deposit them.” And, I thought, it’d take dynamite to remove them.

     He spryly scrambled up a large boulder, must have been ten tons, indicating that I should follow him up to his office. It seemed to be suspended from the oak trees. There was a chain to grab onto and a rickety railing at the top. His office was a small room furnished with a massive desk, chair, couch and piles of papers everywhere. How did he get that stuff up there I wondered? Oh right, the crane. This room had a window with no blinds. A little light filtered through the tops of the oak trees.

     Blueprints of two duplexes he had designed and built years before were tacked to one wall. He pointed out all of their unusual benefits to me in great detail, the floor plan with no windows on the street side, the back alley access. The first was made of wood. The second concrete, “Better,” he said. “It was a tilt up.” Probably used a crane I surmised.

     Jack was friendly, charming, eccentric, probably a genius. He offered me a seat on the couch and asked with a gap-toothed smile, his bushy eyebrows lifted in a questioning arch, “Well, you think you can sell this place?” I blinked and managed a tight smile, Does he know, I thought, does he know?

     I glanced around at the thick dust covered cobwebs dripping from the ceiling. I took a deep breath remembering the monolithic piece of granite that I needed to climb down to get to ground level, “Let’s take a look at the rest of the house.”

     Nanny goat I am not. As I scooched, white-knuckled down the rock, he reassuringly chuckled, “Hold on to that chain. Haven’t lost any one yet.”

     We passed what looked like a sunken room with tattered gold carpet. “Living room,” he waved. “Use it mostly for storage now. We had a lot of meetings in there, lot of people, lot of meetings.”

     Beyond the living room was a dining room with an enormous dusty glass table with a tree root base, “Takes seven men to move that table top, seven men.”

     A narrow hall to the left of the dining room led to a small, dark, curtained room. “Master bedroom,” he informed me. The master bath boasted red-orange tiles on the counter and shower. “My wife thought they were too bright but I like something that wakes me up in the morning.”

      A second dusky hall led to another bathroom and two small, musty bedrooms. Risking as asthma attack, I pulled back a curtain exposing unruly grass, weeds and oxalis. I carefully let the cloth settle back into place.

     We returned to the galley kitchen. I was afraid to look. We thankfully ignored it and ventured into what appeared to be the family room. An old box shaped TV was tuned to a news channel. The walls were lined with shelves holding boxes of movies, not DVDs, but VHSs, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. “They’re my wife’s” he explained.

    “ She knows which ones are which?” I asked incredulously.

     “Oh yes,” he answered. “She’s got them all logged.”

     Most surfaces were covered with piles of unrecognizable stuff.  Spider spun tapestries, probably started when construction had first begun, decorated the walls and ceiling. I was reminded of Issa’s haiku, “Don’t worry spiders, I won’t destroy your house.”

     I sat on something resembling a chair and nodded, “Your place is quite amazing.”

     “We’re not selling,” he said. “My wife would kill me if she knew you were here. She’s seventy-nine, volunteering at the library today. She doesn’t want to move. We’re not ready to sell, but our daughter would like us to move to be closer to her. Maybe in a year or two. So you think you could sell this? What do you think it’s worth? Think we’d get a million?”

     I thought to myself, lot value, four hundred thousand, minus demolition.  The structure wasn’t worth remodeling. It would be disastrous to try to market it while it sheltered them, their stuff and arachnid friends. Tough one. I circled my shoulders, “Not a million. Your house is distinctly different, unique. This will limit your market. Less than a million.”

     Relocating is challenging for everyone. I couldn’t imagine them corralling stuff, much less move it; the glass top dining room table that needed seven men to carry it, the rock garden, movies, the mysterious items stored in the living room?  It would take years to sort, organize and pack their treasures.

     “We’re not selling,” Jack said. “My wife would kill me. If we could get a million, I’d be tempted. We’re not ready to move, maybe in two or three years.” I thanked him for sharing his home with me, relieved that he didn’t want to sell. He walked me to the front door, pried it open, mentioning that he had to fix the lock. I smiled, nodded and stumbled up the scattered stone path to my car as Jack bounded back up the boulder to his office.

Gerbils and Condo Rules

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on January 20, 2012
Posted in: Condos, humor, pets, Real Estate. Leave a comment

Cute little fella....

 

No gorillas, roosters or dog breeding is understandable; but isn’t “one or two pets,” a little tight? Condominium Home Owner Associations have rules, for good reason. People live in close quarters. But rules are restrictive and can be excessive.

I have clients that no longer need the four bedroom house. A condo would be perfect. But they have three indoor cats and a deaf-and-blind toy poodle. They don’t qualify.

Hmmmmm, what if I want to buy a condo and I have two kitties and a gerbil? What if I have two gerbils and a parakeet? Or two parakeets and a guppy? Or the gerbils have babies? Where does the HOA draw the line? This is a problem, especially with the current housing market and for my buyers.

My friends, George and Patti, recently sold their home. They are responsible and meticulous. They also have four rescue dogs that they saved from being gassed. George walks the mutts daily, picks up poop in the yard and on the streets. He takes the furry critters to convalescent hospitals to interact with the residents, who cannot have animals. George and Patti are model citizens, but because of the pet rules, they can’t buy a condo.

One yip-yip can out bark three quiet pugs. A big bad Rottweiler, even on a leash, may be worse than four indoor felines. A sweet dobie may be better. One loud, bratty mean kid can be more destructive and disruptive than most canines. An obnoxious, bully parent or neighbor, can be less desirable than junior. Rules help, but when you look at specifics, they may not compute.

Patti came up with a creative, if expensive, idea: offering a HOA money to make an exception. “We’ll give you a $10,000. non-refundable deposit to accept us and our current pets. We promise not to adopt any more. Our number of animals will diminish in time, as will we.” This, along with letters of reference, might work in a small complex, but a large complex will have problems with the exception because it would set an example or precedent. Still, it’s interesting.

George and Patti found a small home on a condo-sized lot, very close to their neighbors. They’re all pooch lovers and happy campers, without HOA rules. But, my clients with the three indoor cats and the deaf-and-blind toy poodle are still looking for a place that will accept them all. Their price range dictates a condo or a mobile home; hence the dilemma.

Folks that nurture animals usually make good neighbors. It’s horrible to make people give up Fido, Biscuit and Mocha to find places to live. As our population continues to grow, we need housing that accommodates reality. Perhaps the rule makers can be encouraged to take all this into consideration. The solution is hopefully not limited pet selection, like three gerbils and a boa constrictor.

Valuable Antique or Toxic Waste?

Posted by runyon's real estate rag on January 4, 2012
Posted in: Antiques, humor, stuff, toxic waste. 4 Comments
hand holding thermometer

No, you can't stay home from work!

I recently had that cold with the croupy cough that makes everyone think you are dying of TB. You rasp and gurgle and need a place to spit. People eye you like they wish you’d drop through a black hole and stop spreading cooties before you get close to them. I’m past the contagious stage, but the death rattle doesn’t make me popular.

 The day I thought I was dying, not of TB, but pneumonia, throat cancer and beri-beri, I found my mother’s fifty-year-old mercury thermometer. I took my temperature, which was normal. It did not occur to me that no one uses a mercury thermometer anymore. I still have Ko-Rec-Type in my desk drawer and my trusty portable Royal typewriter in my closet, just in case.

 I called a friend, who happens to be a nurse. I am helping her buy a condominium for her two year old granddaughter. Yes, her daughter and son-in-law too, but mostly for the adorable, curly red-headed terror, whose favorite word is, “Mine!” This of course made showing property that much more exciting. Nothing like little glass figurines on table tops to attract tiny paws. “Juanita, are mercury thermometers recyclable?” I asked. “I have five. Three of them are centigrade, which I can’t read.”

 Juanita gasped, “Mercury thermometers. You’ve got to be kidding. Nobody uses those anymore.”

 “Are they toxic waste?” I asked.

 “Probably. Or valuable antiques.” She laughed.

 So I ask you, “Anybody know? Or, who would?” I emailed all the nurses I know. None of them have replied. They undoubtedly think my message is spam? Horsnyder’s  Pharmacy! They’ll know. They recycle meds and needles and stuff. I called them. They’re closed today, open tomorrow. Answer soon.

 Meanwhile, do you have any dubious items in your medicine cabinets? Your closets? The garage? Or do you have only valuable antiques? And….does anybody want any carbon paper?

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