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December 2006
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When you put your house on the market, what is the cheapest way to get most bang for your buck? And recommended by 99% of realtors? You know the answer – de clutter and clean the house.
Really, you have no idea.
This is what I do not understand, the frantic cleaning, improving and organizing and painting that my clients do only when they are leaving their homes. Shouldn’t they have been cleaning and de-cluttering while still in their homes?
I read countless articles (because I’m obsessed) with suggestions like – Before you put your house on the market, fix that leaking water faucet and make sure all the kitchen drawers open easily. Really, fix those things just before a sale? If I was standing in my kitchen spending my evening jerking the stuck junk drawer open for the 1,000th time because the sissors opens up inside and catches on the underside of the drawer and the faucet to my left started that infernal dripping again, I would go mad and there would be more to fix than just the sticky drawer.
So what interests me is the source of all this helpful information. What prompted a magazine to pay a writer to give advice like: before strangers wander through your house for the sole purpose of judging your housekeeping, make sure you empty the cat litter box in the guest bath and wipe the ketchup off the kitchen counters. For the longest time I thought, well, this is just hyperbole, no one really lives in a pig sty with sticky drawer and un-swept kitchen floors.
But no, I was wrong.
I have walked into houses that are “open for showing” and you cannot see the bedroom floor for all the clothes strewn about. The bed is unmade and the huge fifty inch TV looms over the master bedroom space like Darth Vader on a tear which makes it pretty clear why this couple is getting divorced and has to sell.
So frankly, when it comes to mess, I don’t recommend picking up your house because you may sell it. I recommend picking up the house before your spouse comes home from work. I recommend hiring a monthly house cleaner if you can’t face the bathrooms anymore. I recommend recycling the playboy magazines from 1976, I don’t care that they make you feel patriotic every time you read the articles.
Get rid of the stuff. Clear and open up the house while you are living in it, just seeing nice dusted surfaces will reduce your stress and maybe just save your relationship in the first place.
And here’s another rant. If you have so much stuff that you must rent a storage container to keep the stuff, re-consider the stuff. Consider this, if there was a fire, what would you grab? Children? Pets? The pewter soup spoon collection? Don’t answer right away.
Really, start from fire and work backwards. For a more beautiful home: re-think the crap.
Disclaimer – the author would like to point out that no matter what I say, she is not giving away her books any time soon.
Allison Little first appears in Death Revokes the Offer – part of the Little Book series. Read about Allison on www.missbehaved.com. Learn more about Real Estate at www.CatharineBramkamp.com or www.Century21.com
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Date: Dec. 24, 2006
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It is always ironic that the beach I consider one of the safest beach is the one that reported the most recent shark attack. A surfer was bitten, then released, he’s as fine as can be expected with big teeth marks decorating his torso.
As soon as the shark attack was featured in the local paper, my clients asked me repeatedly about the danger of shark attacks off the Sonoma coast. Frankly, I worry about traffic accidents, sneaker waves, corked wine and slick roads. Sharks are at the bottom of my fear list. Sometimes I tell them that, and sometimes I tell my clients about my friend Joan.
Joan has children, well the children are big now so I can say she had children, anyway, when I asked her about the shark attack, Joan reported that she always took her children to Dillon Beach which, by the way, is technically in Marin, but you have to travel through a great deal of Sonoma county to get there and it has the gestalt of Sonoma County, rather than the high end, aren’t we fabulous yet organically grown, attitude of Marin.
So Joan regularly schlepped her boys to that beach because the beach was flat, in a bay, safe, shallow and they allow dogs. How could you miss? Plus, added bonus, this beach has logged in the most shark attacks of any Marin or Sonoma county beach. And here Joan was focused on the safety.
Perhaps if you take your children to potentially dangerous places, you spend more energy watching out for them – and end up with – ironically – safer children. Joan says she likes Dillon Beach better than most beaches around the area because there is no undertow and no sneaker waves. Joan waves away the “danger” of sharks since her five year olds were not surfing or behaving like seals. To her, sneaker waves are far more disturbing because, well, they sneak up on a person, or persons, and the sudden wave sucks you out and under – straight out to sea. And unlike our friend the Great White Shark, sneaker waves don’t spit you back out because you taste bad.
Allison Little first appears in Death Revokes the Offer – part of the Little Book series. Read about Allison on www.missbehaved.com. Learn more about Real Estate at www.CatharineBramkamp.com or www.Century21.com
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Date: Dec. 20, 2006
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The Holidays. I have two obnoxious brothers. They used to pull the wings off flies, for all I know they are sitting at their desks doing the same right now. Since my brothers married women exactly like their mother, my sister in laws are obnoxious too.
There you go; it’s all bad. So the holidays can be somewhat of a burden, because I have to come over to sister in law number one’s (as soon as we think of a name for her, we’ll let you know) house and watch my nieces pull apart a mile of wrapping paper and try to look pleased. My nieces are never pleased with their haul at Christmas.
Me, I learned to give them – and the rest of the family – gift cards. Gift cards are a great invention, not terribly concrete, but it’s the thought and dollar value that matters most. That, and at Safeway there is rack of gift cards for all occasion and I can toss them on top of the coffee from Starbucks and the Ben and Jerry’s and take care of all three girls, plus my brothers in about three seconds. I spend that much time on family gifts because they spend that much time being grateful and appreciative.
Because, in our family, it’s not about appreciation, it’s about volume and expense. When it comes to Christmas - we’re very traditional.
So for advice on the holidays, if you are selling your house during this time of year, good for you. As you probably read over and over, the holidays are a great time to sell because only serious buyers are looking around and only serious sellers are out selling. So – its bargain time baby, come out and shop.
A decorating tip? Try tasteful. Really. A tree, Santa on the mantelpiece, a holiday themed centerpiece on the dining table. We’re good. You may want to leave the life-size crèche in the garage for the time being. I have heard that realistic plastic Jesus babies creeps out even the most devout Christian.
So, loading up your house with more than a few holiday items and you will run the risk of looking like Santa’s workshop. In fact, I toured a house that was filled with Santa-like objects and a full collection of a hundred nutcrackers in sizes ranging from small to frightening. One agent on the tour summed it up nicely when she said, “My, you have a lot of Christmas decorations don’t you?”
Don’t do this, it’s too distracting. In the suburbs it’s difficult enough to distinguish homes from one another, now all I can remember about the Elm Tree property is the five-foot nutcracker at the bottom of the stairs. Have you seen the teeth on those things?
Then again, I remember the Elm Tree property as the nutcracker house, so maybe there is a place for reverse psychology. That’s a thought as well. So you may not choose to listen to me at all.
That’s all I have to say about the holidays. Okay, one more thing; consider working hard during the holidays. If you are working hard at productive activities, then you won’t have the time to stress over un-productive activities, like delivering the perfect holiday experience for the family. Really, stop stressing. Because you know what? You won’t deliver the perfect holiday experience, no matter how many hours you devote to the process. Unless your house is made of gingerbread and you have padded walls in the living room to safely deflect the Wii controls as they fly out of the children’s hands, it will not be perfect.
Neither is anyone else’s holiday. Be grateful if you’re not flying to the mid-west in weather. Be grateful if you already live in California. And be grateful you don’t have my nieces, because sometimes I don’t even get the gift cards right.
Allison Little first appears in Death Revokes the Offer – part of the Little Book series. Read about Allison on www.missbehaved.com. Learn more about Real Estate at www.CatharineBramkamp.com or www.Century21.com
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Allison Little is the main character in Death Revokes the Offer. Allison is as real as anything virtual can be, follow her here and in the book when I come out. I consider myself quite real, but for disclosure sake,
my views are not that of the author nor are they
representative of the author’s “real” business. I’m
here because I’m funny and I’m always right, so you
can listen to me, you can be entertained, and you
won’t do much better. What does a Blog do? Besides assuage the latent
desires of the author to be published. You don’t even
want to hear the saga of this author and her
publishing adventures. It’s a very, very long story.
Or, as her father use to say – don’t use very, if it’s
big enough, use damn. So her publishing saga is a damn
long story. There is your writing tip for the day.
And boring, the writing saga, or any saga towards fame
and fortune is boring, that’s because there are long
stretches of practice – if you’re an athlete,
education if you’re a surgeon and failed experiments
if you’re a researchers. But we, as a group, think
that everything happens over night, because when some
famous person is being interviewed for Vogue or
Newsweek or for the Nobel prize, the boring parts, the
years of working on a project, the years of working in
community theater or writing copy for a catalog or
making commercials are passed over in one sentence –
Like, he tried for a long time. He worked for a long
time. A family friend directed Little Miss Sunshine,
a subject that his sister is heartily tired of hearing
about so she moved back to Paris. Anyway Joan Dayton
commented that yes, he certainly is an over night
success, and to think, he’s only fifty years old.
See, it’s like that. And on the way to overnight
fame, did he max out credit cards? Oh probably. Did
he spend years on other projects, working up to this
one? Oh yes, and did he spend years of hearing the
word no, sorry and maybe next time – guaranteed.
So, Were you bored yet? See, Stick with me, I don’t
have a boring back-story, that’s the advantage of a
fictional character. I’m all right here. No hang ups,
no psychosis. Okay, when you meet my mother, I’ll
probably have to back up on the psychosis thing.
So I’m a Realtor, I work for New Century Real Estate.
No, do not look it up. You can look up Century 21 and
get the same idea. What do you want to know about real estate? Nothing,
you know everything don’t you? You’re on the web
after all, you visited Zillow.com and now you have the
price of everything and the value of nothing. You
have great inner confidence about your own skills, and
they are vast and deep. You know that that really, you
can certainly buy a house yourself; any moron can do
the work (think about that, good.) And market your own
house? How hard can it be? Sure, just because you had
a successful lemonade stand in the third grade and you
sold the most girl scout cookies in the sixth grade,
and in college you successfully traded favors for,
well never mind. All these cumulative experiences add
up to one dynamite marketer. Yep, all you need is a
sign and you’ll “save” thousands of dollars.
Sure you will. Keep thinking that, And let me know how
it goes, I’m on your side, really, because if you know
that much and you are bound and determined to save
thousands of dollars because you are under the
impression that Real Estate agents just get too much
money and you want it in YOUR pocket, I don’t even
want to talk to you. Put up your sign and watch those
savings roll in. I could save thousands by coloring my own hair too.
For argument sake, let’s say selling a house is a bit
more complicated than begging your aunt to buy 100
boxes of thin mints. Hang out here, or give the
author a call, because she has more real time than I
do. As for the Blog. If you want to learn random pieces of
information about my own favorite subjects. Real
estate, wine, Sonoma County living and how to have
Serious Attitude, come here and check it out.
For dos and don’ts visit the web site
Catharinebramkamp.com For more about me, Allison
Little, New Century Realtor and inadvertent solver of
mysteries you can read the first three chapters about
me on missbehaved.com – yeah, the author has been
doing this long enough to snag a great domain name.
If you have any questions and you want a more than
honest answer. By all means contact me, Allison at the
authors address.
If you have any questions and you want a more than honest answer. By all means contact me, Allison at the authors address. Catharine@CatharineBramkamp.com make sure AllisonLittle@CatharineBramkamp.com and get a flat out true answer, one that is not about selling you anything, we know that won’t happen because you’ll talk to me for about three weeks then get distracted by something shiny and you’ll either forget you were suppose to buy a home, or you’ll buy a plasma TV instead (true story) or you’ll trip across another real estate agent who will claim to have great bargains and you’ll wander happily off with him or her.
I know this, so come on and get an honest answer. Or not, I’m busy so it’s not like I’m waiting around the computer waiting for your question.
Thanks for reading so far.
Allison Little first appears in Death Revokes the Offer – part of the Little Book series. Read about Allison on www.missbehaved.com. Learn more about Real Estate at www.CatharineBramkamp.com or www.Century21.com
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