Absolutely Foster City Blog

Yes, it is in Foster City and, No, it’s not a new version of Junipero Serra pointing to the right trail. (Bad joke, sorry). For today’s contest I need to know what exactly this is as well as specifically where it is in town. This week’s winner will receive a $30.00 gift certificate to My Big Fat Greek Restaurant in the Edgewater Place shopping center. This place has only been around for a couple of months and when I went in there I sort of fell in love with these people. Really nice folks, really cute restaurant that has waterfront seating and good food! They’re so new that they didn’t know that they were supposed to have gift certificates for customers…they had to make one up, which I picked up last night. It’s fun to support them…I remember what it was like starting a new business! Anyway, the rules of the road are on the left hand margin as well as above. Enter your answer in the comments below. I’ll post all the correct answers and the winner on Monday. In the meantime, feel free to make some snide remarks, engage in some silly banter and just take a wild shot in the dark about this picture. Most likely all of that will get published right away. Have fun and good luck!

Don’t you just hate Spam? I’m not talking about that old lunch meat, I’m talking about those e-mails we’re constantly getting. Most of us have spam or Bulk mail filters but we still have to go in there from time to time because, inevitably, there’s an important e-mail that makes it in there that we need to see..or else. I don’t know why (honest!) but all of the e-mails my wife sends me go straight to bulk so I’m regularly perusing that file…so that I can insure harmony at home! Usually I empty the folder right away, but I’ve waited this week because I’ve been noticing an enormous number of real estate related solicitations and I just wanted to see how many I actually get. In the last 7 days I’ve received 391 bulk e-mails…half of them have been related to technology for real estate. Here’s several of their subject lines:

“Your real estate training video this week” ”6 ways to profit from marketing on-line” “All the short sales you can handle” “100% financing is back!” “Real Estate web templates for agents” ” We have buyer referrals in your market” “Build targeted prospect lists” “10 tips to sell a house fast” “leverage e-mails to sell more listings” “Why are some agents struggling while others are thriving?” “ A better real estate website” “Send listing presentation please” “Cry or start some strategic changes” “Compel prospects to call you!” “Expired listing training” “Seller has no equity? How to get paid”“#1 Google page ranking in 10 minutes” “Realtors quietly make six figures using new strategy”.

Of course, this doesn’t include the phone calls I get either…lot’s of them! It seems like there are more real estate related websites than ever before for the general public as well. There’s Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, Homegain, Zip, Yahoo, MLSListings to name a few. We’re all inundated with technology, seemingly, all the time. Well, I actually bit on one. It’s the product of a local start up called Corefact who’s product allows you to instantly determine the current value of your home. It’s sort of the same concept as Zillow but the algorithm used by Corefact is tied into the MLS instead of the public record database. The MLS is far more accurate than the public record and the results offered reflect that. The site’s called www.fostercityhousevalues.com and it also includes an MLS search capability that’s pretty handy too, and you’re not required to register to use it. Registration is necessary if you want to check the value of your home,however. Honestly, Corefact’s listing alert function is problematic and needs work…if you want to be sent listings or comparables via e-mail my other site, designed by Intelitouch, is much better…it’s www.jimminkey.com, then click on Private Home Search. I guess any good Realtor is always striving to provide better service for his/her clients so alot of this kind of stuff is enticing. If you’re of the mind to, check it out and let me know if you think there’s any value in it? 

 By the way, we tried to move the Blog to a new host on Tuesday but, for some strange reason, it wouldn’t allow me to write any new posts…so we’re going to work out the bugs and try again next week. Sorry about being down yesterday, Lydia really worked hard all day trying to fix things…she’s amazing!

Last week the City of Foster City had a groundbreaking ceremony for it’s impressive new teen center at 670 Shell. It’s appropriately called “The Vibe”. The teen center has been around for awhile but it’s been in those temporary buildings south of the rec center, but this new concept is really quite remarkable. The building will be 9566 square feet of fun and will include a skate park in addition to TV’s, computers, video games, art rooms, homework rooms,a kitchen and outdoor basketball courts. All this plus a good sized stage for bands plus a dance floor…all for about $6 million dollars. The current Vibe has been a popular destination for kids for quite some time and it’s not uncommon to see a couple of hundred kids over there on weekends…just imagine what it’ll be when it’s done! The concept of a teen center is really kind of foriegn to me. When I was a teen we certainly didn’t have anything even close to this…we just got somebody older than us to buy us beer and we hung out in the park., of course we were morons too!  I somehow suspect that “The Vibe” is a whole lot better environment than the one I had! Here’s a link to an Examiner story about the new Vibe:

TheVibeLink

You guys are incredible! Yes, it’s Kids Connection on East Hillsdale…but I took the shot from the Highway 92 side! The ineligible Dana got it fairly quickly but congratulations go out to Rowena Batac of Foster City who wins the $30.00 gift certificate to Portofino Grill. Way to go Rowena!! Also answering correctly was Nicole, Steve, Bill, Michael, Craig and Jerry. You guys really have this town wired! Check back next week, we’ll be doing it all again…and thanks for playing!

Writing that post the other day about Love Letters made me think about the bigger picture of buying a home, that is presenting your offer. The truth is that the toy pictured above is quite possibly the most common way that Real Estate agents present their client’s offers. The offer is faxed to the listing agent who then presents it to the seller. I don’t know about you, but very few things drive me as crazy as fax machines. They always seem to jam on the 10th page of an 11 page fax, I’ll get an error message or a paper jam or something. Sometimes the fax machine sends 3 or 4 pages through at once and I then have to try and figure out which pages were received and which were not. It seems like I’ve spent half of my life next to a fax machine. It’s actually much easier, and less stressful to hand deliver the originals….even if it means going to Detroit! It would be a really, really rare scenario for me to fax a client’s offer to a listing agent, but when I’m the listing agent I see it alot.

Over the years I’ve seen this scenario more than once: 2 hours after my clients and I have reviewed offers on their home I get a call from Joe Jones of XYZ Realty. “Hi Jim, I just wanted to touch base with you about the offer I faxed you earlier today”

ME: “….ummm, I didn’t get an offer from you earlier today. What time did you send it?

Joe ” Oh, no, about 2:00PM?, remember I talked to you about it yesterday?”

ME “Sure, I remember the call…but I got 5 offers today and you didn’t call to confirm. Did you?”

Joe “…ummm, well actually no. But I know it got sent!”

ME ” Sorry Joe, I didn’t receive it…and we just ratified anyway.”

Bottom line….faxed offers are highly problematic! Certainly there are plenty of situations where sellers are not present to review offers, but in those cases a presentation should be made to the listing agent…in person. I honestly think it’s the single most important task I can do for a client. In a presentation I get to convey the heart of my buyers to a seller, or sellers. Typically, here’s how it goes: I contact the other agent and let him/her know that I’ve got an offer on their property and set up an appointment to present it to both the listing agent and the seller. When we meet I’ll chat a little with the sellers about who they are and about where they’re going…we’ll also talk a bit about their house and the things they’ve done to it. I’ll describe my clients to them and present the buyer’s love letter, and give them time to read it, before I go over anything else. After that I’ll give the contract to the listing agent along with the signed disclosures and I’ll give a one page summary that I’ll have prepared to the sellers highlighting again who the clients are and the key features of the offer in bullet points, price, initial deposit, pre-approval letter, close of escrow date, percentage of down payment, total contingency days, any unique terms..ie, whether or not there is a rent back provision…etc. These bullet points speak directly to the key areas that sellers are most concerned with and we can thus eliminate a long winded description of contract boilerplate that ultimately could bore everybody to tears anyway. Often, the terms are more important to the sellers than the price is. It’s actually relatively short, sweet and painless…and most importantly it’s far more effective than faxing! If you’re a buyer in this market and you’re coming in under the asking price doesn’t it make sense to have an advocate…in person?

Week 8 in the never ending quest to stump you guys! This week I’m looking for what and where in Foster City this is. If you’re new here you can check out the rules of the road either on the bar above or on the left hand margin. This weeks winner will receive a $30.00 gift certificate to Portofino Grill in the EdgewaterPlace Shopping Center. Just submit your answer in the comments below, I’ll publish all correct answers on Monday morning. All semi obnoxious comments, amusing banter and any silly and irreverent barbs along with all incorrect answers will be published right away. Thanks for playing…and good luck!

During the really super hot last few years in our Real Estate market the concept of buyer’s writing love letters to sellers and submitting them along with their offer gained quite a bit of traction on the Peninsula. Buyer’s and their agents were looking for any advantage they could get to persuade the seller to pick them, and often these letters could get pretty corny. As a listing agent looking at offers I’ve seen love letters that come with pictures of buyers and their kids sitting around a Christmas tree…all in red hats. I’ve seen many wedding and/or vacation shots, shots of disabled kids and lots of happy couples in love. My favorite was an 8 by 10 photo of a family, dogs and all, sitting on the front stoop of my listing…as if to say “we’ve already moved in, don’t we look perfect here?”. You laugh, but I can’t tell you how often these letters and photos have made some kind of an impact with sellers. In one instance for me, representing a buyer, we lost out to a couple who not only wrote a nice letter but baked the elderly seller a cake that they personally delivered and let her hold their new baby. The seller chose them even though our offer was $20,000 higher! In yet another instance for me I had a client selling his house through a relocation company in Irvine. We had 5 offers and the third place offer had, without a doubt, the most corny love letter I ever read. In it the buyer wrote about how the house was the best she had ever seen (it was a 950 square foot 2 bedroom, 1 bath fixer), and how she and her husband could not wait to raise a family there. She also included the tid bits that she had been a cheerleader at UCLA and had cheered her team on to many victories and that her husband was a former tight end who had caught the winning touchdown against Oregon State in the critical game in 1995. There was no agent in my office who didn’t see this letter…it was amazing! Well, when I called the relo person in Irvine to tell her of the offers, I just had to read it to her too. After reading it there was dead silence on the phone (I figured she would be chuckling!)…and she said “I was a cheerleader at UCLA” “How can we make sure they get this house?” Even though they had the 3rd place offer, she had us counter offer the UCLA alums! You never know! Why is this relavant to this market? I still think a love letter is an important tool. Sellers want to sell their home to somebody that they can connect with. They want to believe that somebody nice will get their home…and their neighbors do too. Making a personal connection can go a really long way toward reaching your goal. It may even be more important now if your offer is coming in under the asking price. No seller wants to feel taken advantage of and a sincere letter expressing who you are and why you like the home can soften the blow of a reduced expectation on price. It’s not always going to work, of course, but it can’t hurt. Every offer I’ve written this year has had a love letter as part of it.

Lot’s of good attempts on Friday…and lot’s of correct answers too! Of course it’s the kids play equipment and slide at Boothbay Park. This weeks winner has lots of personal experience with this particular slide too! It’s 2.5 year old Kali Shih of Foster City! Kali, with a little help from her Daddy Shane, wins the $30.00 gift certificate to Fuku-ya Japanese restaurant on Beach Park. Way to go Kali!! Thanks as well to Rowena, Bill, Dana, Jerry, Erika, Joe, Jennifer and Susan who also nailed this pic. Hope to see you all again on Friday!

Way, way back on March 27 I wrote a post here on the blog about what I thought was a significant lack of inventory among Single Family Homes. At that time there was only 11 houses on the market here. Things have changed a tad…today there’s 26, 13 of them coming on the market in the last 10 days. How can that be explained? I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating…the real estate market is very much like a river flowing. It has it’s own little currents, it ebbs and flows and it’s constantly moving and changing. Even in a really hot market, like 2004 was, there were currents like this. Could be just fluke luck that all these sellers came on at the same time, could be that many of these sellers want to move in the summer and figuring on a slower marketing time they listed a little bit earlier in anticipation of a June or July closing. With each listing there’s a unique situation but certainly if you’re a buyer in this market it’s good news. There’s more choice and the additional competition should be good for negotiation. I also think we’re seeing something that I’ve noticed every year at this time…that is the lull that seems to take place around the April 15 tax deadline. I’ve consistantly felt that the market seems to slow a little in April, it’s like people get preoccupied with their taxes and put off buying for awhile. Having said that, there have still been 8 houses sell in Foster City since April 10. Of the current new crop of inventory some stand out to me as worthy of watching. If these homes sell in the next week or two I’m going to continue to feel pretty good about the overall health of the Foster City market:

1382 Halibut listed by Lorelei Keim of Coldwell Banker for $1,358,888. This is really one gorgeous home, shows impeccably and remodeled to perfection. It’s the house in the photo above. There’s an advertised offer date of Monday 5/5 so I think it’s a pretty safe bet we won’t be seeing this house on the market too much longer. If you’re not busy today or tomorrow it’ll be open…it’s worth a look! How to market you’re home 101.

633 Crane listed by Rumana Jabeen of Coldwell Banker for $920,000. Very well priced 4 bedroom house, shows great…it’s staged well. It’s really positioned perfectly to offset it’s natural flaws (flight pattern, freeway noise) and I’m betting it’ll sell sooner rather than later. It’s actually a good buy!

127 Flying Mist Isle listed by Nancy Rancatore of Coldwell Banker for $1,335,000. Really nicely done home on great wide water. The house has it all…it’s going to be interesting to see how the market responds to the price as it’s a 3 bedroom house. I’m thinking somebody’s going to really fall in love with all of it’s positives…we’ll see.

816 Marlin listed by Jessica Yau of Prudential for $988,888. Another great remodel and wonderfully prepared home. This 3 bedroom house really has it all and, again, it’ll be interesting to see the response to the Marlin location in relationship to the price.

These are all great listings and if all of them sell in the next 2 weeks it’s going to tell me alot about this current market. I have an equal desire to also post 4 or 5 listings that I feel will be on the market for a long time too…but my goal is not to really make enemies here on the blog so I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Something new for me!

OK, it’s not really, really hard figuring out what this thing is for most of you, but who knows? I thought Durian was going to be hard and it was too easy. I think this’ll be too easy…but what do I know? Of course to make it a tad more challenging I also want to know where it is as well…specifically. This week’s winner will receive a $30.00 gift certificate to Fukuya Japanese Restaurant on Beach Park. All rules of the road are posted both above and on the left margin. Just click on comments below to make your answer. The winner and all other right answers will be posted on Monday. As usual, any and all silly and or semi obnoxious banter will be allowed, and published immediately, along with any amusing snide remarks and all wrong answers. Good luck!