OK, it’s a little obscure. Maybe? The last time I thought I had an obscure pic we had 30 answers, what do I know! If you’re the first to indentify where this kooky bird is you’ll win  (once again!) 2 tickets to the May 8 showing of “Gypsy” at the Hillbarn Theater. 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 The winner along with all other correct answers will not be published until Monday morning. Any and all silly jokes, snappy barbs or quips and all wrong answers will be published immediately if not sooner. Have a great weekend!

In February Foster City had 28 active listings and 25 pending sales when I did this report. The inventory has only gone up slightly, to 34 active listings and there are 30 pending sales (pendings are light color). That really is a pretty good ratio! It’s also interesting that 17 of those 30 properties sold in April. The market is healthy! Yet, it’s really interesting how other properties have just been sitting for a long time. In many cases, it’s the over priced property that’s been sitting for a long time…and there’s plenty of those. If it’s clean, remodeled and priced right it’s gone quickly. Here’s some examples:

225 Bonita listed by Sue Dickey of Alain Pinel for $695,000. I was going to talk about nice new listings…but all the best ones sell right away! Take this one for example. It’s an absolutely stunning 3 bedroom unit at Marina Green. It came up on Sunday and sold yesterday. Why not, it was priced well and it was drop dead gorgeous.

1035 Rudder listed by the illustrious Richard Williamson of Re/Max Today for $720,000. Ditto the last entry, another gorgeous 3 bedroom unit at Bayfront Court. Incredible place…this one took 6 days to sell.

55 Commons listed by Cheryl V with Achievers Real Estate for $599,000. Sold in 9 days at CityHomes. 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, again…gorgeous. Priced well and it’s gone right away.

The amazing thing is, there’s so many overpriced, mediocre units out there right now that I think will probably be sitting forever. When the new, nice units like these come up buyers will snap them up.

It’s just a tad different right now versus what it was a few months ago. There’s a ton more inventory in Foster City that wasn’t here then. In February, there was 15 single family homes on the market here with 13 pending sales. Today there are 28 single family on the market and, oddly enough, 13 pendings (in red above). In the last 2 weeks we’ve seen 8 new houses come on the market. I think it’s a certainty that an increase in inventory will mean less activity per house with the home selling for less than it could have just a few months ago…but we’ll see. I have no doubt that we’re also just beginning to see the increased inventory too. Here’s a sampling of some of the newer listings:

1381 Tarpon listed by Rumana Jabeen of Coldwell Banker for $815,000. This one is certain to go quickly! It’s a 1640 sq ft 3 bedroom, 2 bath house that needs some updating. It’s a really good price folks…

951 DeLeon listed by Sue Dickey of Alain Pinel for $1,079,000. This is a really gorgeous unit at Bayporte. A 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath model with 2760 sq ft. Tons of remodeling…it’s nice!

420 Bodega listed by Bob Lahl of Re/Max Today for $1,049,000. The Kay St. Tropez…just a few years ago this model was selling for over $1,300,000 in Foster City. It’s actually a great floor plan and it has 4 bedrooms and 3 baths in 2360 sq ft. It’s a good deal…

Great job you guys! Not sure how many of you knew right off hand the Ethel Merman question or how many looked it up, but the first to nail it was Sheetal Shetty who answered in stages…but still got there first identifying the Merman character as Rose Hovick! Sheetal wins the two tickets to see Gypsy at the Hillbarn Theater! Also chiming in correctly was Suresh, Nancy, Harish, Shrikant, Alex O, Ranjana, Yee, Roger, Lilian, Michael and Jen. Thanks guys…you were all great! Come back again this Friday and we’ll do it again!

Earth Day 2010 from Foster City TV on Vimeo.

In case you’re looking for something fun and interesting to do tomorrow there’s a pretty cool sounding Earth Day fair happening in front of City Hall at Hillsdale and FC Blvd. It takes place between 11 and 4 and there’s vendors, food and activities for the kids. Check out this video and head on over!

Nice, huh? This week you’ll need to watch the video above to get the details and we’re looking at having to answer two (2) questions to win the prize of 2 tickets to the Hillbarn Theater’s upcoming production of “Gypsy”. 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 Gypsy related stories, anecdotes, jokes and all wrong answers will be published immediately. have fun and have a great weekend!

After 20 years I think I’ve probably seen it all when it comes to folks coming into open houses of mine. In the first few open houses there’s plenty of neighbors, there’s also agents with clients, folks that I think of as “professional” buyers ( those buyers who basically know what they’re doing) and there’s also those folks that just think it’s sort of fun to explore a house they see when they happen to be driving by. They have no intention of buying anything, they just like looking at open houses. I’m that type myself…I drive Lesley crazy when we go on vacation someplace because I can’t resist the urge to check out a few open houses if I see directional signs. Sometimes I just want to see how the agents in them act around me.

Well there’s this other class of open house visitor. I think of them as the wet blanket. These folks appear to go in with the specific purpose of being critical. They’re usually kind of a pain to tell you the truth. Typically they have no concept of the relationship between the listed price and it’s real value. Maybe they’re all from out of state and they think all of our prices are insane. 

On the first of April I pulled a little April fools prank here by telling that story about a Pompano house that was listed for $112,000. If that situation really did exist and I was holding the place open I’ll bet you there would be one person (out of the 500 who would come to that open house!) who would walk around the house and announce to me something like “There’s marks on the paint here!” or “How old is the furnace?” A few years ago I had this great listing that was kind of aggressively priced (we got 14 offers) yet there was this one older lady who complained to me about a cracked kitchen floor tile and told me in very broken English “Price too high! You come down!” I couldn’t resist..and I replied to her “Price too low! You come up!”

One of the funny parts of these complaints is the fact that the issues being raised are almost always easy and relatively inexpensive fixes. Missing closet doors, stains on carpet, marks on the hardwood floors…etc. If you’re buying a house at a discount versus the comps in the area, and sometimes even if you’re not, who cares about this little stuff!

The more property I show, the more I see these incredible photos! I just can’t resist passing them along:

No, it’s not an REO or short sale. Nice, huh?

Sort of makes you want to dive right in, doesn’t it?

Hey! Is that Elton John?

Not sure about the house, but how much for the Volvo?

OK, is the house leaning? I know that if I was a buyer and I saw this wall I’d be SUPER excited!

I think it’s the hot sauce there that does it for me!

Everything looks great…outside!

This is a recurring theme…what exactly is for sale here?

Ummm, let’s see. According to Wikipedia marketing is “an integrated process through which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return”. It seems that with alot of these photos currently being used the above concept doesn’t apply so much, huh?

Pretty good reception on Friday…although it took awhile to get the answer. Congratulations to Jeff Pounder who was first to nail the Hillbarn Theater as the correct answer. Good job Jeff!! Jeff narrowly beat Suju George who answered only minutes later on facebook. One of these days a facebooker will win this thing. Also answering correcly were Shrikant, Sheetal, Toshiko, Maria, Yee, Kirstin, Bill Hastings, Steve Toler, Jason Kwan, Wendy, Gana, Lawrence Chu and Sree. Great job folks!

Hillbarn is special this week because they have promised to provide 2 tickets for their upcoming production of Gypsy as the prize for the 101st edition of the foto contest! This coming Friday will be a little bit different and somebody’s going to get to go to the show! See you then.