I’ve had some negotiations with an attorney that rapidly became unpleasant.  My client thinks he’s sexist, the agent thinks he’s stalling for time, and I just think he’s like a lot of other counselors who want to one-up their adversary just for the sake of it.

When I reminded him that this transaction was not yet in contract despite his clients making an offer the first week of April, he snapped at me that I should “stop personalizing things” because “the parties are meaningless to putting this deal together”.  He then told me I “sounded young” and he’d “educate [me] about how things work”!  I advised him he had no idea how old I was, that I’d been handling real estate matters for 26 years, and I think almost all residential transactions are personal, because we are representing real people who have real thoughts and real reactions during negotiations.

“Listen”, says The Wise One, “I’m sure we can both agree that the problem with real estate is the clients.”  “No, the problem is usually with attorneys”, I retorted!

****

Have a great weekend.  My nephew Austin is becoming a Bar Mitzvah!  We are all so proud of him.

Here’s a conundrum one of my clients has to work through:  if you’re lucky enough to get an interested buyer, how do you get that buyer to closing if she keeps changing the terms into a progressively more one-sided deal, all to the seller’s detriment?

I have a patient but puzzled client, dealing with a buyer who has delayed going to contract for over one month, changed attorneys and then changed back, and has now proposed new terms require the seller to give the buyer another way to get out of the deal while delaying closing for at least another six weeks.

I sometimes say “a bad buyer is worse than no buyer”, but in this case my client is tired of showing her home and weary of delaying plans to move half-way across the country to be closer to family.  She doesn’t want to say “no” and be back to square one, but she doesn’t want to say “yes” and be back to that same numbered square at the end of June, either.

I can’t get a read on whether the buyer has semi-cold feet, is getting bad advice, or is just plain manipulative.  So it is hard for me to advise my client on how to proceed, though my gut keeps saying this buyer is going to be extremely difficult to get to closing.

It is my client’s puzzle to solve, but sadly, there’s no answer key in the back to check if she’s right.

A friend of mine, who has talked with me for years about plastic surgery (but never had the funds) just took a publicity photo.  She e-mailed it to me and called it “dreadful”.  Though I thought she looked lovely, I certainly understand why she’d feel less than enthused, due to her desire for facial rejuvenation.  I am experiencing similar longings, cursing the fact that my checkbook has bottomed out just as gravity is having the same effect on my physical appearance.

 
I’d seen a recent NY Times article about a decline in laser eye surgery due to diminished insurance coverage and inability of patients to pay (or qualify for the surgeons’ “easy credit financing"--that always makes me cringe).  And I personally knew of some clients and an acquaintance that had taken equity out of their homes to pay for tummy tucks and breast implants.  So I started researching cosmetic surgery’s demand in general, and found that in Slate last month, William Saletan wrote, “If your local real estate agent's face is hanging low these days, it might be more than sadness. The recession's latest victim is cosmetic surgery.”  Plastic surgeons and laser surgeons are estimating 30-40% declines in business this year (that’s a huge chunk of change in an approximately $12 BILLION dollar field).

Here’s part of Saletan’s editorial comments about plastic surgeons needing to seek reconstructive patients covered by insurance to stay afloat:   In a health-care industry controlled by tight budgets and insurers, you might even see the cream of the med-school crop shift back to the kind of work that keeps people alive. I hope they're well-paid for it, and I hope the next rising tide lifts millions more families into the ranks of the insured. But let's never forget what the bad times taught us about what matters and what doesn't.

Here I was just selfishly thinking that a recession means everyone else won’t be starting to look so much better and younger than I do!

Yesterday I thought a home buyer on the radio sounded like a garage sale shopper in his tactics.  I reflected during the day that I’ve read, written, and lectured about lowball tactics before, so I was a bit surprised that I had actually been taken aback by a bid $50,000 below the asking price.  Then an article by Marcie Geffner for bankrate.com came across my laptop, and there was no doubt that the only thing that should surprise me is a house offer even remotely close to asking price!

Ms. Geffner informs readers that in an era where buyers want bargains and sellers just want out, “home buyers deserve to make lowball offers”, though the definitions range from my understanding of less than 90% of the asking price to an agent quoted in the article of any offer less than 75%.  Another agent from Scarsdale “suggests that just about any offer could be labeled as ‘lowball’ if it provokes the seller to outrage or anger. The best definition I've ever heard is that 'lowball' is an offer that's so low the sellers can't contain themselves. They get angry. You can't come up with a percentage because not every property that comes on the market is (priced) high. It's very specific to each house."

Of course, it is also specific to who the seller is.  A pre-retiree looking to cash in on equity and move to Sun City may get a lot more easily insulted than a foreclosing mortgage lender.  The latter seller may make buyers bolder about putting in lowball offers, but the mortgagees can also (sometimes) wait for a better offer longer than can  a homeowner carrying two mortgages with family or a job in another state.

I tell my prospective clients who are sellers to never slam the door even if the worst possible offer is on the other side.  “Start talking and try to keep the conversation going as you and the buyer come closer to a price you both find comfortable”, I advise.  Talking doesn’t cost a thing and may just end in a sale, while huffing and puffing never does.  I like how one of Geffner’s experts put it:  "Don't let (the deal) die on your end."

I was trying to re-tune in the quickly fading NPR on FM and I overheard this snippet from some nearby station:  “No, we didn’t buy that house.  We arrived just before the scheduled open house and offered $50,000 less than the asking price.  The agent asked up to leave.”

Isn’t that what people who shop garage sales do?  With items priced for 50 cents?

Sunday is Mother’s Day, and yesterday was my friend Jill’s birthday.  As my Mom has been gone 20 years, and Jill six months, I started to feel quite lonely.  I thought I would express that in my blog for today, but suddenly the uplifting words of Stephen Sondheim pushed out all the melancholy thoughts pooling around in my brain.  I therefore present his words, which are a zillion times better than mine:

Mother cannot guide you.
Now you're on you're own.
Only me beside you.
Still, you're not alone.
No one is alone, truly.
No one is alone.

Sometimes people leave you
halfway through the wood.
Others may deceive you.
You decide what's good.
You decide alone.
But no one is alone.

Mother isn't here now.
Wrong things, right things...
Who knows what she'd say?
Who can say what's true?
Nothing's quite so clear now-
Do things, fight things...
Feel you've lost your way?
You decide, but
You are not alone, You are not alone.
Believe me.
No one is alone.

You move just a finger,
Say the slightest word,
Something's bound to linger,
Be heard.
No one acts alone.
Careful, no one is alone.

People make mistakes. People make mistakes.
Fathers, Mothers,
People make mistakes,
Holding their own,
Thinking they're alone.
Honor their mistakes...
Fight for their mistakes-
Everybody makes-

Terrible mistakes.
Witches can be right,
Giants can be good.
You decide what's right,
You decide what's good.

Just remember:
Someone is on your side.
Someone else is not.
While we're seeing our side-
Maybe we forgot:
They are not alone.
No one is alone.

Hard to see the light now.
Just don't let it go.
Things will come out tight now.
We can make it so.
Someone is on your side,
No one is alone.

********

Newsweek has a story that features David Lereah, the former economic forecaster for the National Association of Realtors, who kept spouting how great the real estate market was even as those of us toiling in the trenches jumped up, waved our arms, and yelled “Bad news!  Pay attention!” 

The reporter, Daniel McGinn, tries to slightly explain why so many of us hold David Lereah in such contempt as a forecaster.  He mentions the book he wrote in 2005 titled "Why The Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust" but forgets the one he wrote in 2000 about how to get rich in text stocks just before that market tanked.  He was right on the cusp of disasters in both these fields and anyone who took his advice more than likely lost big money.  But though Mr. McGinn relates that Lereah is now pontificating about how the market will continue to drop until we reach an unforeseen bottom, the reporter doesn’t seem to see the link between Lereah’s current prediction and his present advisory position to real estate investors.  So I’ll spell it out here, on a much smaller soapbox than Newsweek’s:  Lereah worked for Realtors selling houses on commission and advised the market was going up! up! up!  Now he works for rich buyers looking to get in on bargain bottom real estate deals, so he predicts things will still go down! down! down!  This isn’t forecasting.  It is shilling.

I love these two comments following the story which appears at http://www.newsweek.com/id/135724/page/1

Posted By: swampysgirl @ 05/06/2008 1:32:04 PM

Comment: This is absolutely ridiculous....as long as the media publishes crap like this the industry is NOT going to be able to heal. Yes, there are problems, but quit harping on it and let things settle - quit scaring the sellers and potential buyers. Yes, there are some people who are in rough situations, unfortunately - but I wish the media would QUIT with the gloom and doom - its really hindering the industry more than anyone knows! I'm so sick of hearing about this DAILY.

I work in real estate and when articles like this are published it just hurts the industry a whole. You don't hear stories like, while home sales may be down, property values are inching up and holding steady...no, all you hear about are negative things that I care not to mention - report on the guy who saved a life down the street or something positive...

Posted By: SlyFrog @ 05/06/2008 2:11:58 PM

Comment: Swampysgirl wants to sell a house, so the media needs to be quiet long enough for her to rip off some sucker buyer for an overinflated price. Why must the media report that housing prices are overinflated? Swampysgirl has money to make suckers!

Did you hear the one about the really smart idea the movers and shakers in Las Vegas had, to make themselves appeal to more than just gamblers?  They made the city more family oriented.  They appealed to lovers of the theater (watered down and condensed into less than 90 minutes), and shoppers, and fans of every glittery pop star.  And it worked incredibly well, until the local and national real estate markets tanked.

You see, gambling is an addiction, and gamblers will go where the “action” is (local casinos, OTBs, and on-line gambling notwithstanding).  But when there’s no more money in their HELOCs for Mid-Westerners to blow on a visit to Las Vegas, and the locals won’t come see the stars because they’re in the midst of being foreclosed on, the money is as dry in the city as the land surrounding this desert spot.

“In this market, it is not good business to be confident,” said Jan L. Jones, a senior vice president at Harrah’s Entertainment and a former Las Vegas mayor. “I’ve never seen an economy like this nationally. Nobody knows how deep what nobody wants to call a recession will go.”

Best laid plans, right?

Here’s the story in yesterday’s Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/business/06vegas.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=los+vegas&st=nyt&oref=slogin

When he was one of the “Bash Brothers”, I had no real use for Jose Canseco.  When he donned pinstripes, I had complete disdain.  But when he stuck it to baseball (pun intended) I was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt, as the old expression “it takes one to know one” easily seemed to fit.

I bought his first book.  It was practically un-readable, but nevertheless, I wanted to “support” him while all the pundits trashed him and dismissed his allegations.  Turns out Jose knew from his dopers, as Mr. “Not Here To Talk About The Past” McGwire and Mr. “What Drug Problem?” Selig and Mr. “No Blood For You” Fehr all suffered the indignity and scorn of those who watched the congressional hearings in 2005.

I didn’t buy the second book (times are harder for me economically) but I have to say I wasn’t surprised by any of his allegations about Roger “It was A Bat? Really?” Clemens.  But I will be digressing too badly if I start talking about this Republican-lauded “role model for youth” (Clemens) who apparently was dating America’s youth!  So back to the topic of this blog and today’s subject:  Jose Canseco, earner of millions on the diamond, and author of two books, has lost his home in a foreclosure action.  In case you missed it:

Jose Canseco, the former AL MVP who made millions during his baseball career, has had his home foreclosed.

Canseco told the syndicated TV show "Inside Edition" that he walked away from his $2.5 million, 7,300-square foot home in suburban Encino because it didn't make sense to continue making payments.

"I do have a judgment on my home and it to me is very strange because it didn't make financial sense for me to keep paying a mortgage on a home that was basically owned by someone else," he said in an interview that aired Thursday.

"You know my life, this financial thing, is a very complicated issue. Obviously, when you make all that money, people think, `OK, let's assume it is $35 million.' People have to understand that $35 million, you're paying the government 41 percent. That leaves you with about $17 or $18 million, not even. Then you're taking care of your whole family."

He added that a couple of divorces cost him $7 million or $8 million.

Canseco said his top earnings year was $6 million and that his financial situation obviously is different than most people who are losing their homes.

"What about other families that we're hearing on TV, that they're saying, `We have nowhere else to go,'" he said. "I mean, that is amazing. I've got books (he's put out two expose-type books on drug use in baseball), we're now trying to produce the movie to both.

"Like I said, my situation was a little more different than most. I decided to just let it (the house) go, but in most cases and most families, they have nowhere else to go."

Calls by The Associated Press to Canseco and to his attorney, Greg Emerson, were not immediately returned.

I have no real point.  I just wanted to scoff at Roger Clemens while tying baseball and real estate in together!

P.S.  Happy Birthday, Willie Mays!

Hockey season unofficially ended yesterday just before 5 PM.  I tossed my lucky scarf in the dirty laundry pile and switched channels in time to watch David Wright give Johann Santana a 2-0 lead to protect (you probably know how that went).  I couldn’t console my son, who logged onto the Ranger message boards to shout to the ends of cyberspace about the lack of an offsides call before the Penguin’s OT goal.  And to compare notes about an NHL conspiracy that may or may not truly exist, but certainly seems to be in place to propel Mr. Crosby to the Stanley Cup finals (after all, he is in those “clutch” commercials).

Hockey employs a special place in my heart, a heart broken maybe 40 times and warmed only once.  I love the chess game played with skates and sticks on a smooth frozen surface, and I love the sound of a crash into the boards as much as the next fan.  I grew up listening to Marv Albert calling the Ranger games on the radio, absorbed almost everything The Big Whistle had to say on TV, and shook my head in disbelief at how lucky I was when I was able to go to a few games per year and sit in the Blue Seats with the best and rowdiest fans in the world.  There are tons and tons of memories, but each day I stop and look at the signed puck in my office bearing the barely legible words “Stephane Matteau” and my outlook immediately improves.

But today that puck won’t score its goal.  Today I mourn the season that held so much promise, and ended with nary an overtime effort to grab the game and return the series to Broadway, where my son and I’d be among the fans cheering on our Blueshirts.  Today I try to find the words that capture the depth of my sadness and emptiness.  Today I lose another bit of the cardiac real estate I devote to the NY Rangers.  Thanks for an entertaining season, guys, but when it came time to score, we all came up way too short.

Today I sigh, and drag my sorry self through what may be a very, very long highway between personal points known as Grief and as Resignation.  Whatever day or week I arrive at the Resignation destination, I will start to accept that this is just another sporting event that was destined to disappoint me, and move on.  But know that it is a toll road that I embark on today, and the toll is a bitter price to pay when those you support and cheer leave you stranded by the side of the road.

My headline is of course referring to the Rangers’ incredible win last night, but it could as easily have been uttered by the Wall Street analysts who are sounding upbeat about the economy, citing, per today’s NY Times, “a broad, sustained recovery” in the second half of this year. 

I want to believe them, of course, though what is good for Wall Street is often not good for the working class of this country.  And I want to believe them because the 20% increase in my grocery bill over these past few weeks, the huge hit at the gas pumps, and the lack of real estate activity among my clients is making me believe this recession is pervasive.  Things are so bad that there are commercials during ball games admonishing men who are having economic troubles to at least deal with their performance anxiety and seek treatment for ED. Economic growth has decided to take a long siesta, despite the daydreams of the analysts.  Another illustration:

Americans unload prized belongings to make ends meet

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, AP Business Writer

The for-sale listings on the online hub Craigslist come with plaintive notices, like the one from the teenager in Georgia who said her mother lost her job and pleaded, "Please buy anything you can to help out."

Or the seller in Milwaukee who wrote in one post of needing to pay bills — and put a diamond engagement ring up for bids to do it.

Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.

To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms.

"This is not about downsizing. It's about needing gas money," said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts.

At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70 percent since last July. In March, the number of listings more than doubled to almost 15 million from the year-ago period.

Craigslist CEO Jeff Buckmaster acknowledged the increasing popularity of selling all sort of items on the Web, but said the rate of growth is "moving above the usual trend line." He said he was amazed at the desperate tone in some ads.

In Daleville, Ala., Ellona Bateman-Lee has turned to eBay and flea markets to empty her three-bedroom mobile home of DVDs, VCRs, stereos and televisions.

She said she needs the cash to help pay for soaring food and utility bills and mounting health care expenses since her husband, Bob, suffered an electric shock on the job as a dump truck driver in 2006 and is now disabled.

Among her most painful sales: her grandmother's teakettle. She sold it for $6 on eBay.

"My grandmother raised me, so it hurt," she said. "We've had bouts here and there, but we always got by. This time it's different."

Economists say it is difficult to compare the selling trend with other tough times because the Internet, only in wide use since the mid-1990s, has made it much easier to unload goods than, say, at pawn shops.

But clearly, cash-strapped people are selling their belongings at bargain prices, with a flood of listings for secondhand cars, clothing and furniture hitting the market in recent months, particularly since January.

Earlier this decade, people tapped their inflated home equity and credit cards to fuel a buying binge. Now, slumping home values and a credit crisis have sapped sources of cash.

Meanwhile, soaring gas and food prices haven't kept pace with meager wage growth. Gas prices have already hit $4 per gallon in some places, and that could become more widespread this summer. The weakening job market is another big worry.

Christine Hadley, a 53-year-old registered nurse from Reading, Pa., says she used to be "a clotheshorse," splurging on pricey Dooney & Bourke handbags. But her live-in boyfriend left last year, and she has had trouble finding a job.

Piles of unpaid bills forced her to sell more than 80 items, including the handbags, which went for more than $1,000 on a site called AuctionPal.com. Now, except for some artwork and threadbare furniture, her house is looking sparse.

"I need the money for essentials — to pay my bills and to eat," Hadley said.

At AuctionPal.com, which helps novices sell things online, for-sale listings rose 66 percent from February to March, much faster than the 25 percent to 30 percent average monthly pace since the company was formed in September, CEO Maureen Ellenberger said. She said she was surprised to see that most of her clients desperately needed to sell items to raise cash.

For LiveDeal.com, a classifieds and business directory site, for-sale listings for January through March rose 10 percent from the previous year.

"We can definitely detect economic stress on the part of the consumer," said John Raven, the site's chief operating officer.

On Craigslist, Buckmaster said, three of the four fastest-growing for-sale categories are tied to gas — recreational vehicles like campers and trailers, cars and trucks, and boats.

Raven noted more and more listings for furniture, particularly in areas around Miami and Las Vegas and other regions hardest hit by the housing crisis.

Baughman, who runs eBizAuctions, said that over the past four months she's been working with mostly desperate sellers instead of mainly casual ones. Most are middle-class customers who can't pay their bills and now want to be paid up front for the items instead of waiting until they are sold, she said.

The trend may be hurting secondhand stores too. Donations to the Salvation Army were down 20 percent in the January-to-March period. George Hood, the charity's national community relations and development secretary, said that was probably partly because people were selling their belongings instead.

And secondhand buyers want better deals now as well, driving prices down. Secondhand merchandise online is going for 25 to 35 percent below what it commanded a year ago, estimated Brian Riley, senior analyst at research firm The TowerGroup.

"It won't hit the saturation point until the (economy) hits the bottom and right now, we don't know when that is," he said.

In Alabama, Bateman-Lee said that she only received $30 for her TV and $45 for her DVD player at a local flea market. She doesn't have too much left to sell, but she's going back to "sort through more things."

Her $30 water bill is due this week.

****

It’s not great out there, but have a wonderful weekend, anyway.  Let’s go Rangers!  Keep the miracle going.  And the Mets could use a little bit of a wake-up call.  First-place does not equal first rate, guys.

Some interesting thoughts from Randy Shultz, an Editor at The Palm Beach Post (Florida)on the realities of realty:

Psychology fueled the boom because people thought that prices never could come down. Psychology is prolonging the bust because people worry that prices won't stop coming down. You'll buy a car knowing that it will decrease in value, but you won't buy a home that you expect will do the same.

I feel sorry for Realtors, even those who wrongly believe that news organizations are hurting the market by reporting the news, which these days is mostly bad unless you're selling $81 million Palm Beach mansions. This paper covered the boom in detail, and the boom still ended.

I am not sure it is all psychological, but I am sure he makes valid points.

Are you tired of reading about how irate I become when someone thinks the housing crisis/recession is only going to affect (less smart) others and not her or him?  If so, stop reading now, as I had another one of those “don’t you think you’re making too much out of this?” inquiries from someone who tells me “I manage my money well and don’t get in over my head, so why am I supposed to help out others who acted foolishly?”

I’ve tried before to explain about the loss to retailers in the area.  I’ve made the point that everyone in the neighborhood loses equity in their homes when there are one or more foreclosures nearby.  Those points don’t seem to work any better than the one about the increase in social services caused by a rapidly growing class of formerly middle class homeowners that can’t pay their bills, feed their families, keep their kids in school, afford heat and hot water, or care for their pets.  Many citizens (and government officials) are still turning a deaf ear to this plight, as Ms. I Am Superior did with me the other day.

So I am trying again to let you know that we are on the teetering on the edge of a housing/recession issue that will affect you or someone you know:  crime rises in a recession.  As does alcoholism and drug use.  Besides the ransack-your-house or mug-you-on-the-street types of crime, those that need money to support their habits or lifestyles will turn more and more towards identity theft and financial fraud in all its permutations.

Think I am over-reacting or just plain trying to scare you into caring?  Try this stat on for size:  for every 1% increase in the foreclosure rate, the crime rate rises 2.3%.

Other people’s financial woes became my concerns when I heard they were hungry and homeless and couldn’t support neighborhood merchants anymore.  Maybe the less emotionally vulnerable out there will realize this is a national problem before their personal space is invaded or their finances or safety are compromised.

As the Pittsburgh Pirates are in to play the Mets this week, and I have suffered through two excruciating games with the Penguins already, I figured I’d see what is happening in their area, real-estate wise.

No surprise, really:  The Pittsburgh Business Times reports that “the number of foreclosures in the Pittsburgh region set a near record in the first quarter with 1,187 homeowners returning their keys to the bank.

The number of foreclosures was 6.9 percent more than the first quarter of 2007, 9.6 percent more than 2006, and 69.2 percent more than 2001.

The total number of foreclosures in the five-county region for the quarter was just two shy of the overall record, set in the third quarter of 2007.”

I had a potential client in my office the other day.  He had found a condo to purchase that looked like “a deal”, and he came in to discuss with me whether he could afford it (smart man).

A son of immigrants, he wanted to buy a house to capture his share of the American dream of home ownership.  But even if gas and food stop rising, and he has no unanticipated expenses, or illnesses, or expenditures, he would have to work 60+ hours a week to just scrape by paying the mortgage, taxes, and common charges for the condo (that on top of taking a substantial sum out of his 401k for the down payment and possibly postponing retirement).  Though it meant a delay of the realization of his dreams, and of course a loss of business for me, I helped convince him that this deal was not right for him.  I advised him to take the $1,000/month he was currently making on his second job and use half to pay off his debts while investing the other half into savings.

Now our talk of the “American dream” has me thinking.  Did many people who should not have bought into the dream end up buying homes they couldn’t afford?  Though studies do point to a feeling of contentment and stability from home ownership, why doesn’t a steady paycheck and some savings make renters feel content and stable?  They definitely should.  Perhaps it was our immigrant forebears yearning to claim a stake in their adopted homeland, or perhaps it was the government agenda of trying to make people believe they were well-off in any income bracket if they could afford a home.  Whatever and wherever the push to own came from, I think it is time we as a nation consider that there’s a lot to be said for true individual economic security rather than mere ownership of four walls and a roof.

I came to the practice of law in a back-hand way.  I was giving up on a plan to make my living as a sportscaster or sportswriter, based on a perceived need to stay close to home and not get a job in Podunk for a few years, and so I contemplated getting involved in politics (in the back room, not as a candidate).  Everyone I dealt with in politics seemed to be an attorney, and therefore I went to law school.

Once there, I became imbued with a call towards public service, but those emotions were displaced with cynicism and disillusionment as time went by.  Oh,  I suspect I’ll never stop fighting for the underdog and for equality and against those who wish to limit others personal freedoms, but I can no longer kid myself that the system doesn’t favor the rich nor can I any longer believe that the US Supreme Court would refrain from politics and conflicts of interest.  I toil in the law many days only because I truly like my clients and enjoy having the ability to pay my bills.

But yesterday, clients of mine reminded me of why I really stay in this field.  After they bought their first home, they handed me a “thank-you gift from [their] favorite winery” and a note.  The note was actually the better gift:  Thank you for all your advice, guidance, patience, and efforts.  We greatly appreciate you helping our dream come true.

This is why I do what I do.

*****

Have a wonderful weekend!  Kalo Pashka. For all who inquired, my son is doing very well now—thanks.  Let’s go Rangers!  Let’s go Mets! And please, please, let Sunday night come awfully fast—I detest Passover food.

Not amusingly, people slow down on the road to gawk at a car crash, and boaters will often stand and watch someone on the water struggle with waves or wind trying to dock a boat.  Why?  I think partially it is a “there but for the grace” of fate reaction.  And that, I guess, is why viewers tune in to the real-estate shows on HGTV, TLC and Bravo just like they do for game shows where people may lose more money in a few minutes than many earn in a year, and reality shows where people are judged on looks or weight and get “voted off”.

According to Gary Strauss in USA Today, “real estate programming specialist HGTV's viewership rose 11% year-to-year in the first three months of 2008. Nine of its top-10-rated shows among the target 25- to 54-year-olds are real estate-based.”  At least two more HGTV realty shows are planned.  Bravo is planning on bringing back two realty shows, despite the housing slump.  Why? "Looking at big, beautiful houses is real estate porn," says Andy Cohen, Bravo's production chief. "We're wary of the real estate market. But we have the most affluent audience on cable, and we program for them."

Strauss queried:  Will a prolonged housing slump affect real estate TV? Some cable execs doubt it, given that homes are the biggest purchases for most consumers… "People are looking at homes in different ways," says TLC's Pinvidic. "A couple of years ago, selling a house was considered the quickest way to get rich. Now it's, 'How much could I sell it for?' It's more a question mark rather than an exclamation point. We want to be reflective of our audience and continue to adjust. But this is a genre we'll always be in."

In other words, many viewers who wouldn’t watch a TV show where women proclaimed true love for a millionaire bachelor after just one date, or tune in to see bored California housewives sleep around with others behind their spouses’ backs will surely watch shows where in the space of 30 minutes a house goes from trash to cash for its owners.  Or better yet, give them an episode where the house doesn’t sell and the cash-strapped owners and the exceedingly touchy agents all snipe at each other!  Boy, that's must-see TV!

I have a very affluent client who contacts me once every few years to look over a rental agreement for a house on Long Island’s East End he is going to rent (he will re-new for a year or two and then wants to try someplace else).  Since I hadn’t heard from him in a few years, I sent him the following e-mail:

Hi, I hope all is well.  I was just curious about your summer rental for this summer:  are you renewing your lease for the property from 2005, as I know you did in 2006 & 2007, or are you looking somewhere new?  This is a tough time for almost every real estate market, but some of my sources say a lot of the prime rentals out east have been grabbed already.

He replied:

Funny you should e-mail me.  [His wife] asked me just the other day if I called you for advice on buying a summer home instead of renting!  I told her you probably didn’t know anything about buying in the Dominican Republic.  Am I right?

My response:

You are correct.  I know nothing about the DR except which Mets were born there!  But that is a dramatic change from renting out East.  What kind of value do you get for your money, and what are the summers like?

He answered:

Except for hurricanes, "they" say the weather is always in the 70s-80s.  And we got a 2,500+ square foot FURNISHED place on the water for under $600,000.00, rather than spending $200,000.00 to rent a house for the summer.  The real estate agent was funny.  He kept telling us we could easily become citizens of the country if we wanted “big tax savings”.  You have to come visit us!

Today’s Earth Day, and if you haven’t adopted a plant-based diet, replaced all the light bulbs in your house, or bought an electric car yet, you can do something cheaply and quickly that dramatically reduces your carbon footprint.  Provided, of course, that your condo, homeowner’s association, zoning board, or neighbors don’t object.

The simple act of line drying clothes causes household emissions to plunge in a big way.  Try as they might, appliance manufacturers have not yet perfected an energy efficient dryer that would reduce average energy consumption (most dryers use the same amount of energy--6% of total household consumption--as do continuously running refrigerators).  But my grandmother and those in the generations preceding her had already perfected a cheap, no-emission, solar-powered drying system:  the clothesline.

Thanks to the narrow-mindedness of many associations and city planners, my grandmother or yours might be cited and fined for violating a rule or a law if she took out some clothespins and let the wet laundry flap in the wind.  Knowing her disdain for authority (other than her own) my Grandmother Sophie would have engaged in a flagrant act of civil disobedience and festooned the clothes tree and every other surface she could find with socks and underwear!

Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote “A Line in the Yard: The Battle Over the Right to Dry Outside” in the NY Times last week, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/world/americas/17clothesline.html?ref=americas , and it reminded me of all the HOA and condo rules I have read for over the years that prohibited both “loud and offensive noises” and “outside laundry displays” as offensive to neighbors and detrimental to home values.  Truth be told, I never batted an eye over the restrictions and neither did clients when I informed them of same.  But that was before our collective environmental consciousness was raised.

Rosenthal wrote about the attempts to overturn a ban on outdoor drying in part of Canada:  Ontario is among a number of places that is considering striking down the clothesline bans that have been common in North America and parts of Europe, arguing that they are environmentally irresponsible. Laws seeking to overturn clothesline bans are now pending in Connecticut, Vermont and Colorado.

“If we can’t change simple stuff like this, we’ll never handle the big things we need to do for the planet,” said Aurora’s mayor, Phyllis Morris, who earlier this year petitioned Ontario’s government to declare clothesline bans an illegal “barrier to conservation” under provincial law. “People say, ‘Oh, Phyllis, you want to turn women back into the laundry lady,’ and I say wrong: This is about rights. It’s about the environment.”

Rosenthal also wrote, In New Hampshire, an attempt to overturn clothesline bans was defeated this month by a coalition of businessmen and representatives of community associations, who said they felt such measures unduly restricted homeowners’ contracts.

I can see both sides.  When my parents moved from a Brooklyn apartment to a split-level home on Long Island back in the day, they wanted to turn a new page and shut out any recollection of the tenements their grandparents called home.  And when like-minded people formed HOAs or sat on planning boards, they thought it low class and an eyesore to look at flapping boxers or briefs.  But these landscape architects were unaware of carbon footprints or the ozone layer, and thought the American dream included a clothes dryer in every laundry room.  And they certainly weren’t spending upwards of $3.75 a gallon for gas and paying utility bills of $600+ monthly.

So today, celebrate Earth Day by buying a bag of clothespins and a clothesline.  And if your neighbors or the HOA objects, notify the media and the environmental groups that are working hard to make this world a habitable place for future generations, and see if your act of civil disobedience can help change a mindset and a law.

From about 2002 until early last year, I had multiple clients who would add on home equity line of credit loans (HELOC) when they took out their first mortgages “just in case” they needed the money.

Many mortgage reps pushed these loans as being an instant “nest egg” type of emergency fund source for buyers, and despite my protests, more than a few clients fell for the sales pitch though they had no present or anticipated future need for the money.  What they chose to ignore was that the HELOC may have cost them money at closing, usually had yearly fees to carry it along and keep the line of credit open even if unused, may have an adverse effect on their credit rating, was affected by market fluctuations in credit and home values, was revocable or subject to modification at any time (and for any reason) by the lender, and most important, was in no way the same as a real emergency nest egg that grows in value until you need it and then does not have to be repaid with interest!

As I have written before, many HELOC borrowers are being notified by the mortgage holders that because of the state of the real estate/credit market, and/or a presumed reduction in their homes’ value, the availability of funds in their HELOCS is reduced or suspended.  Thus, those who have seen their perceived paper wealth decline as home prices drop in their area are being joined by those who haven’t saved a dime, figuring they had a resource when the roof needs replacing or the boiler quits.  Add in shakier job prospects or a reduction in hours/benefits, and these homeowners, previously (and perhaps delusionally) secure in thinking they had a fall-back position in place, are now just as nervous as the rest of us.