In the post Hurricane Katrina world FEMA, who took such a pounding for it’s response to the New Orleans disaster, is being extra cautious when the subject of levees comes up. That subject is certainly up when it comes to Foster City. On the 18th of this month FEMA released the preliminary drafts of their Flood Insurance Rate Maps and Foster City is being reclassified into a special flood hazard zone…and thus flood insurance will be required for all homes here.

Interestingly, the levee that’s the most problematic from the standpoint of FEMA is in San Mateo and thus there’s some amount of negotiating going on to get the levees repaired to a degree that will satisfy FEMA and prevent a final ratification of the Flood Map scheduled for 2010. Currently, San Mateo’s estimate for completion of construction of their problem levee will be after the FEMA deadline. I’ve heard from several insurance agents that buying flood insurance before the final date will save significant dollars per year on that type of policy. It’s a good idea to check with your agent and ask questions about adding flood insurance…don’t wait too long to do it. If you live in a condo or townhouse it’s doubly important because you don’t want your association dues to go up more that is absolutely necessary. Here’s a link to a press release from the City of Foster City about this topic:

FEMALevees&FloodInsurance

OK, stumping you folks is apparently impossible…but I’m still going to keep trying! The foto from Friday is the sculpture in Leo Ryan Park called “Stiltwalkers” and was actually nailed really early by Mr. Foster City himself, Steve Toler…but since he’s the Director of Administrative Services for Foster City he’s graciously recusing himself from winning the prize. It’s scary but I think Steve knows every pebble in every square foot of public space in town! Coming almost as fast with the correct answer…and winning the $30.00 gift certificate to Mr. Fongs is Jessica Morales of Foster City. Way to go Jessica!! I also want to thank Bill, Claudette, Erika, Linda, Ken, Jerry, Rowena and Doug, who also got it right! Come back this Friday, I’m getting the foto ready…and I’m hoping for a shutout!

Before I got into the Real Estate business I had all kinds of false perceptions about what this industry really was and how it worked and in many areas I was very surprised to discover that reality was a whole lot different than my thinking was. Take the dual agency thing I posted about earlier this week. I really thought that most all transactions were done that way, that you got a listing and sold it yourself…and got all that money! I was surprised to find out that wasn’t the case. I had plenty of other misconceptions as well but there’s one that I still hear frequently and involves the “status” or the “prestige” of a given Real Estate office and it can be both from the public as well as from other Realtors. Over the years I’ve heard these types of comments:

“Oh, when we sold our house in Michigan ten years ago we used a Re/Max agent and so naturally we called another one now” (I didn’t discourage that line of thinking, by the way)

“Alain Pinel is really the “high end” “up scale” Real Estate brokerage in this area”

“In our neighborhood we only will deal with Fox & Carskadon & Cornish & Carey” (Too bad they both got swallowed by Coldwell Banker)

” The name Zip Realty is perfect because it accurately reflects the knowledge level of it’s agents”

Now before I get deluged by angry Zip agents let me say that 1. I really did hear that one once. 2. It’s pretty funny and 3. MOST IMPORTANTLY I don’t believe it to be true. I’ve had a couple of transactions with Zip agents and they’ve been fine. I work at historically the most productive office in San Mateo county, yet when I go to Palo Alto to present an offer some of the agents there tend to act like I’m Jethro Bodine just in from the sticks. They have this interesting sort of “Re/Max…ewww” visceral reaction to my presence. It’s really pretty amusing, and if you think I’m picking on Palo Alto I had an office mate once in San Carlos who joked that his Passport didn’t allow him to travel to San Bruno to show or sell homes.

Here’s my point, I don’t think any one particular office is the best. I think there are great agent’s at Coldwell Banker, Cashin, Alain Pinel, Intero, Re/Max…and on down the line. I know great agents who work out of small 2 person offices and terrible agents that work out of great big ones. I’ve thrown around those numbers about the large percentage of agents that sold 2 or less houses last year, but here’s an equally amazing statistic…only 7% of the agents in the San Mateo county board sold 12 or more properties in 2007. Of that group you’ll find agent’s from several different offices. This business is incredibly agent focused. A smart seller will choose from a selection of the best because it will pay off for them. Honestly, one of the most shocking things to me in Real Estate is the fact that every once in awhile somebody get’s my office’s phone number from the Yellow pages, calls and tells the receptionist that they want to sell their home. She has a list in front of her of the agents that have signed up for a shift as the designated agent to receive calls at that time. Usually the floor call agents are the newest. I’m not trying to be mean to new agents, and I sure remember how hard it was to get started myself, but I can’t imagine wanting to sell a million dollar property and making the choice of who to use based exclusively on the brand name on the sign above the office door or in a Yellow Pages ad.  

I actually refer several clients each year to agents out of state who’ll help them in the market’s they’re moving to and when I do that I go to the database of a national organization that I’m a part of made up of like minded Realtors…not the Re/Max database.  Typically I’ll search agents there, call several of them and get a feel for them before I’ll pass the referral to my clients. What office they work for doesn’t matter to me at all…it’s the quality of the individual that counts most. In every instance I’ve gotten terrific feedback from my clients…who have in fact made a friend in their new town.

It’s Friday and we’re back to the great outdoors! This little gem actually has a name, which I want identified, as well as it’s location in Foster City. Any comments about Minkey family legs will certainly demonstrate a distinct lack of awareness of our overall bulk, so no, it’s not a miscue photo taken at any recent family get togethers. This weeks winner will receive a $30.00 gift certificate at Mr. Fongs Seafood restaurant in the Edgewater Place Shopping Center. All rules of the road are available to view either above or on the left margin. I will not publish winning answers until Monday morning but I will post all semi obnoxious barbs, witty retorts, gentle ribbing and all wrong answers. I’m yet to even come close to stumping you…maybe this is the week!! Have fun and good luck!

I don’t think it’s possible to write this post without including at least some rudimentary language about how the State of California views agency.

      1. Seller’s Agent  A seller’s agent under a listing agreement with the Seller acts as the agent for the seller only. This agent has “A Fiduciary duty of utmost care, integrity,honestly and loyalty in dealings with the Seller.” To the buyer, among other things, the seller’s agent has duties of honesty,fair dealing, good faith and disclosure.

      2. Buyer’s Agent  A Buyer’s agent agree’s to act as an agent for the Buyer only. Even though the commission is paid by the seller the Buyer’s agent acts only for the Buyer and has ”a fiduciary duty of utmost care, integrity, honesty and loyalty in dealings with the Buyer”. The duties to the Buyer are also the same as stated above for the seller’s agent.

      3. Dual Agency   A real estate agent can legally be the agent for both the buyer and seller as long as they have the knowledge and consent of both. A Dual agent has “a fiduciary duty of utmost care, integrity,honesty and loyalty in dealings with both Buyer and Seller”. All other duties mentioned above apply to the dual agent as well.

There’s plenty more boilerplate about this on a common disclosure we all use, if you really would like to read it all please let me know and I’ll send it to you. Dual agency also technically occurs when one agent from a given firm brings an offer on a home listed by another agent from that same firm, but I’ll save that discussion for another time. Over the years I’ve seen lots of buyers walking into Open Houses I’ve held on my listings with the intention of working with me as their agent on the sale of my listing. Some buyers believe that they’ll be in a better negotiating position, and thus get a better deal, if they search on their own and try to get their offer presented by the listing agent. Since I work with both Buyers and Sellers I have, on occasion in the past, acted as a dual agent. My experience with it is that, going forward, I’ll only do it again if I absolutely have to. Most people think that agent’s salivate over the idea of handling both ends because it means double the commission. Of the times I’ve done it the following things have happened: a) I threw in plenty of commission to make the deal work. b) I did make more than I normally would have though and c) I constantly had the feeling that neither the Buyer or the Seller completely trusted me. This last one is the biggest problem…I don’t like that feeling at all! As an agent you’re on a tightrope trying to balance the needs of everybody in a situation where there’s natural friction and sometimes it’s like negotiating a Middle East peace treaty. Early on in the multiple offer frenzy game I did it twice representing buyers on my listings…and I promise you I’ll never do that again. Not only do Buyer and Seller not have the trust they should have, but the other agents were cranky with me too. The fact was that everything was on the up and up! No matter how cautious an agent is about fairness somebody’s suspicious. The only time that I’ve seen this work smoothly was when there was no other competition and the buyer and seller actually knew one another beforehand, but that’s certainly going to be rare at best.

In this current real estate market where so many agents are struggling to make a living (remember, 53% of the San Mateo Board of Realtors sold 2 or less properties last year) a buyer who seeks a dual agency relationship because they think they’re going to get a better deal is most likely mistaken. Experience is the best teacher and it’s taught me that a buyer should always have their own, separate, advocate. Way too many things can come up, both before and during an escrow between a buyer and seller and you’ll need someone who clearly is interested in your highest and best as their top priority…not additional commissions for them.

Wow! What a great job this week…19 people nailed Durian at 99 Ranch Market. The photo above is from Singapore’s public transportation system where the stinky Durian is actually banned. I really do think of Ranch 99 as a landmark, it’s always busy when I’m there, nobody has a better seafood selection and it’s certainly like nothing I ever saw growing up in Colorado! When out of town visitors come we take them to all the usual tourist spots, Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Sausalito, Coit Tower…and Ranch 99. No Durians over at Safeway! Congratualtions to Craig McLaughlin of Foster City who arrived first with the correct answer. Craig, let me know where to send your Gift Certificate to Sweet Basil Thai Food. Thanks also go out to all the other people, 18 of them, who got it right!!! A small suggestion…you may want to subscribe via the RSS feed in the above right corner. You’ll be sent an update as soon as a post appears when we play again this coming Friday. Thanks again, my goal is to stump you…and I’ve got a long way to go!!

In the last two weeks 9 new listings have hit the market, bringing us to a total of 18 Single Family Homes for sale in Foster City…a 2008 high. In the chart above you’ll see all of the listings, both active and pending as denoted by the letter in the second column marked “Status”. 18 active is a high so far for 2008…plus 10 Pending Sales. By comparison San Mateo has 155 active listings, Belmont has 48, San Carlos has 59, Redwood City has 211. I’m fighting a strong temptation to start a pool of some kind to guess which of these active listings will sell in the next week to 10 days…I’m certain some of them will and we could be right back to 11 or 12 listings active again soon. By the way, DOM stands for Days on Market. The market is so much like a river flowing, with it’s own currents, that it’ll be really interesting to measure where the market is right now by the sales from this group of active listings. Next week I’ll post these numbers for Condos/Townhouses.

 UPDATE  Jan Majeski of Alain Pinel’s new listing at 763 Matsonia is really stunning! It’s on a pie shaped, 16,200 sq ft lot at the end of the cul-de-sac and it’s wide water exposure is something to behold. It’s truly panoramic and the remodel is very nicely done too. It’s priced at $1,645,000…if you have time, and it’s still around this coming weekend and open, it’s worth a look.

No, I’m not insane. A tad obscure maybe, but not insane. In today’s contest you’ll need to tell me two things…1) What is this? and, 2) Where is this? The where part is most certainly a Foster City landmark. As always, place your answers in the comments below, this weeks winner receives a $30.00 gift certificate to Sweet Basil Thai on Beach Park. I suspect that this week there could be plenty of opportunity for smart alecky comments and, of course, I will publish all of those plus most other frivolous banter and all wrong answers. All of the rules are published both above and on the left margins. The winner and all other right answers will be published on Monday morning. Good luck!

Selling a property successfully in 2008 is really a process of putting together pieces of a puzzle and ultimately creating a beautiful picture. These important pieces can include things like staging, painting, new landscape, choosing the right agent, remodeling, installing granite counter tops, eliminating clutter, printing attractive flyers, virtual tours, advertising, open houses and choosing the right time to list…to name a few. None of these things, however, are anywhere near as important as pricing the property correctly. This really can’t be overstated, no matter how much work you’ve done to the property if it’s not priced right it’s not going to sell.

Maybe the best way to illustrate this is to make it as absurd as possible, but before I do that it’s important to say that every single home, whether it be condo, townhouse of single family, has a flaw. Most have more than one. These flaws might be something structural or something cosmetic. It could also be location. There’s no such thing as a perfect property. Ok, so let’s take the house in the picture above. It’s a 5 bedroom, 2.5 bath Foster City house on narrow water that I sold in 2002. Let’s say we list it next week for $599,000…there will be NO flaws big enough to prevent multiple offers. It wouldn’t matter if the foundation was shot, it’s at the confluence of a T-intersection, farm animals are raised in it and there’s gaping holes in the roof…this house is getting multiple offers. Now there’s no guarantee that the house will sell for it’s real value but lot’s of buyers won’t care what’s wrong with it. People will jump at the chance of getting a waterfront house for a bargain!

Now let’s look at it the other way…we’ll list it for $3,000,000. It won’t matter how much upgrading we’ve done or how great the quality of that upgrading, it’s simply not going to sell for that much money. You would hear people say “I’m not spending that kind of money for narrow water in Foster City”. Right? Pricing a property right really is sort of an art. Condos & Townhouses are actually a bit easier because there’s going to be very similar comparable sales to look at but single family houses can be trickier. The goal should be to find a beginning price for which a prospective buyer willingly overlooks the properties flaws. When that occurs in the minds of buyers it frequently results in multiple offers for the seller. I say a beginning price because it’s very hard to recreate a listing’s initial momentum once 30 days or more has gone by. Recently, there was a great example of this in Foster City with Jessica Yau of Prudential’s listing at 800 Marlin. Great 5 bedroom house and it showed wonderfully…it also was on a fairly busy street. Jessica and the sellers priced the home perfectly at $1,198,888 and guess what? It got 8 offers after 5 whole days on the market! The busy street became irrelevant. It also happened last week with Denice Nagel’s townhouse listing on Aquarius in Shell Cove priced at $718,000…6 offers. Often, the biggest reason a house is slow to sell is that prospective buyers don’t see a value in the necessary relationship between what a property offers and where it’s priced.   

Congratulations to Dana Ferri of Foster City! This weeks winner of a gift certificate to Chevy’s. Of course the object in question is the Foster City Sports Wall of Fame in Sea Cloud Park. Thanks also to CM, Steve, Sean, John and Erika who also took a shot at it! Steve & Erika were both ineligible…but what the heck! Steve’s actually going to be eligible again this coming week…but I’m betting I can stump him!! We’ll see. Stop back this Friday, we’ll do it all over again! Thanks!