Very cool idea! Great experiment!
Funky Foto Contest Week 78
October 16, 2009 By 16 Comments
Never mind that shadow! Yikes! This week’s foto begs the question, what Foster City townhouse project is this? This weeks winner will receive a $30.00 gift card from Plaza Gourmet Deli at Edgewater Place. All the rules of the road are available to view on the left hand margin as well as on the bar above. The winner along with all other correct answers will be published on Monday morning. Any and all silly jokes, semi obnoxious banter and all wrong answers will be published ASAP. Have a great weekend!
The Best RE Blogs in San Francisco
October 15, 2009 By 2 Comments
This post is coming sort of late (since this all happened in June) but, oh well, I waited awhile. The story is that Foster City Blog was named one of the best blogs in San Francisco by the website Relocation.com. Interestingly, only one of the “best blogs in SF” are actually in SF but hey…I’m not complaining! Here’s a link to that post:
The SF blog of choice is TheFrontSteps by Alex Clark. After that we leap over to Marin for Ginger Wilcox outstanding blog MarinRealEstateGuide.
The rest were all down the Peninsula, including Ray Stoklosa’s LivingWellInSanMateo
and two of my personal favorites, Chuck Gillooley’s WhiteOaksBlog and Vicki Moore’s fantastic SanMateoRealEstateBlog.
I have to take my hat off to Chuck at White Oaks Blog in particular now for breaking the big news the other day that an In & Out Burger is going to be built in San Carlos. I was thrilled!! (Right off 101 on Holly and Industrial)
Anyway, I’m not sure if being touted on a website is important to anybody or has much meaning in the overall scheme of things, but it’s kind of nice. Thanks for the props Relocation.com!!
An Elite Club
October 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Well, we’re now really going to discover whether the real estate market in Foster City is back…or not. We’re going to discover that because the upper end market has been adding listings to the overall Foster City single family inventory and quite a clip lately. Currently there’s 10 listings priced at $1,198,800 or better here in town, half of them have been listed in the last month and 4 of those in the last week. These are large houses by and large and their prices are steep, in some cases. Check them out:
700 Santa Cruz listed by Sue Dickey of Alain Pinel for $1,599,000. This 3810 sq ft 5 bedroom house wide waterfront is on a 7800 sq ft lot. Nothing at this price has sold in 2009 and the last one even close was last December for $1,535,000. We’ll see…
261 Surfbird listed by Bill Chow of Re/Max Today for $1,475,000. 3200 square feet, wide water, super nice house.
335 Thatcher listed by Vince Sherba of Cashin Company for $1,399,000. 2730 sq ft, 4 bedroom house at Alden Crossing. Nice place too and Alden Crossing has been historically popular.
There’s also a brand new listing on a brand new house at 1017 Gull listed for $1,399,000 but there’s no pics for it yet so I can’t show it to you. $1.4mil on Gull…it better be amazing!
Here’s the thing, there’s only been 6 houses listed at or over $1,300,000 actually sell in Foster City this year. One of them was my listing at 839 Lurline pictured above so I know how challenging it is to sell a house in this range. I wish all of these sellers/agents the best of luck. Now we’ll really see how much recovery we’ve had in this market!
Funky Foto Contest Winner Week 77
October 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Friday’s shot, taken from across the water using the zoom, is indeed the Sand Harbor Condo project on Beach Park. Congratulations to Asif Suria who won the $30.00 gift card to Lucky’s Foods. Way to go Asif! Also arriving with the correct answer was Suresh, Kirk, Deepa, Cora, Shrikant, Lilian, and Erika. Great job folks! Thanks for playing…see you again this Friday!
Funky Foto Contest Week 77
October 9, 2009 By 15 Comments
I really kind of like this shot! It was early in the morning and we were mostly covered in fog, but this little window of sunlight came through at just the right moment…and viola! Anyway, this weeks question is…what Foster City condo project is this? The winner will receive that illusive $30.00 gift card to Lucky’s Foods at Edgewater Place. The winner along with all other correct answers will be published on Monday morning. Any and all semi humorous to humorous jokes, quips and all wrong answers will be published immediately. Good luck, have fun and have a great weekend!
The Library on Hiatus
October 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Foster City’s library is now officially on hiatus while it undergoes a big renovation. It’s going to be closed until the first week in January while it experiences a $900,000 interior remodel. The improvements include new carpets, fresh coats of paint, self-checkout stations and quieter reading and study areas. There also will be a new children’s area, a room for teenagers and a technology bar…whatever that is. Maybe we can order a beer while using the computors? I suspectg not.
The costs are being split between the city, the San Mateo County Library system and the Friends of the Foster City Library. The county is paying the largest share.
If you have a book checked out right now you don’t have to return it until the library reopens on Januray 4. Let’s hope everyone remembers that they have a library book after all that time.
Here’s a little video that the library put together about this event:
Intervention
October 6, 2009 By 1 Comment
Have you ever watched the HGTV show “Real Estate Intervention”? Here’s an episode above…I find this show to be really interesting and true to life. The show uses an agent, by the name of Mike Aubrey, who “intervenes” with sellers that are seemingly in denial about either the value of their home or what it’s going to take to get that home sold.
The clip above is a classic scenario. The sellers here need to move a family member in with them…and hope to sell their existing place and buy a bigger one. They have an offer on another house contingent upon the sale of their own…and their house is overpriced. HGTV has a nifty advantage that the rest of us don’t. They call up the new owners of recently sold homes and take the subject sellers over to these homes so that everyone can see the comparison/contrasts. As you can guess, the sold comp is bigger, nicer, better than the seller’s place…and sold for significantly less than the seller’s place is listed for. These small facts leave the seller unmoved. The psychology of it all is fascinating…and very true to life!
Rule number 1 for sellers…you have to be objective!! Great show!!
Funky Foto Contest Winner Week 76
October 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Jeez…I made it too hard this week! For only the second time in 76 weeks we didn’t have a winner. Sorry guys! Well, there’s a Lucky’s gift card dieing to be used…and we’ll see it again in a few weeks, that’s for sure. That little compass is located on the “Winston Square” sign on Catamaran. Oh well, come back again this Friday when we’ll do it all over again. Thanks for playing!
Jim Minkey on 
badmonkey on 
Anurag on 
