Be honest, doesn’t the new year sort of feel a little (alot!) like this? Every year the alot two weeks of the year remind me a whole bunch that the new year is coming and that boulder is at the bottom of the hill again. I always feel like the Myth of Sisyphus really isn’t a myth after all…it’s the reality of our lives. So, here we are in January and it’s beginning all over again.
I’m expecting 2010 to be a whole lot better year than 2009 was. It sure is starting off for me differently than last January. I’ve received a fairly large number of calls from folks either wanting to buy or sell homes and that sure differs from last year when everything was sound asleep. There really is no doubt in my mind that a corner has been turned. I’ve probably said this before, but my office is the most productive one in San Mateo county and has been so for about 20 years. In 2006 it did over 1000 transactions. In the first four months of 2009 it did 42 transactions…and was still the top office in San Mateo county. Now, if that doesn’t speak to how slow the market was a year ago, nothing will. December’s numbers haven’t come in yet but my office did 50 transactions in November 2009 alone.
I would suspect that applies to alot of other businesses as well. The outlook seems to be quite a bit rosier now than it was a year ago. The boulder still needs to be pushed back up the hill now…it’s just that it may not be quite as intimidating as it was last January. All the best to you in 2010! May your respective boulders be lighter!!
Is this house just really a house? I suppose it all depends on the kind of “house” you grew up in. We have all heard discussions about what makes a house a home, and again, this can be very subjective. What happens when a home is sold and it is your first Holiday Season thinking about someone else making memories in that home? I am thinking about a very special home this Christmas season. It is the home where I spent every Christmas day for most of my years, and fortunately, my children were able to share in many of these memories.
900 Flying Fish street, my grandma and grandpa’s house. The home was sold this past summer and I was so anxious awaiting the close of escrow. Of course we all know that memories don’t get sold with the house…as memories are all in your mind and in your heart, but that’s much easier said…
Truth be told, I haven’t been able to drive near Flying Fish since the home sold. I actually drove down the street for the first time the other night (happy to say it was in the opposite direction) to look at the eventual winner on his lights contest. Even this was difficult. It is very hard to think about my grandma and grandpa’s house and not envision a large Santa sign on the door which read “The Minkey family wish you a Merry Christmas”, or the lights my grandpa hung so meticulously. Or the best…the 10 or so different types of cookies grandma made which totaled hundreds and hundreds of dozens. The smell walking up the driveway was amazing, but the love and laughter coming from inside was even better. Everyone was always welcome in this home, always.
I wonder all the time what kind of family will live there. Will they feel the love and joy that we experienced in that house? Will they play games until the wee hours of the night? Will there be children who will run back and forth from the path to Gull Park over and over again? Many kids form Foster City ate snacks and lunch that my grandmother lovingly made after play in that park. Of course, those were days when kids could stay in the park all day with no adults and go freely back and forth, but that’s a story for another day…
Houses get sold, people move on, but memories that are built in a home can move with you wherever you go. My children’s memories are now being built in the home my husband and I have made, and also in their grandma and grandpa Minkey’s home. Even though I will always have a difficult time driving by grandma and grandpa’s house I plan to keep the memories alive for my children with the hope that it will move with them to their home someday.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a joyous New Year from our home to yours!
First of all, I just wanted to invite all of you who happen to be addicted to facebook (like me) to become a fan of this blog. Next time you’re on fb go to search and type in FosterCityBlog.com and jump on in.
The reason for that addition to the blog family is a technology conference I attended in San Francisco last week that spoke at great length about the power of social media. That video below is filled with amazing facts and there’s no question that anybody in business today who doesn’t pay attention to it is making a serious mistake. I spoke to a friend of mine today who has a blog related to her business as an esthetician, and on which she was marketing an ancillary business selling jewelery. An attorney for the jewelery company told her to remove a link to it because she didn’t pay a fee to them for using their site and name. Are they completely out of their freaking minds?
Well, in addition to all the fun social media stuff we learned there was a discussion of new websites that can be helpful for small business people. Whether or not these will be actually helpful is debatable but I thought these were sort of fun sounding:
RunPee.com You may not believe this but this site lists movies that are currently in theaters and tells you the best time to run pee during those films. It also tells you what you’ve missed while your were gone. I’m not kidding! Click that link!
Slydial.com This ingenius site is a voice messaging service that connects you directly with someones mobile voicemail…need to call your mother in law, but don’t really want to talk to her? This is your site!
There’s a bunch of others that have great business applications too, but they aren’t as fun as those two. Anyway, check out the socialnomics video…it’s very powerful!
Even in this really kooky year, I’m very thankful today. Among other things I’m sure thankful for all of you have read this blog, have made it successful and have broght me business as a result. I truly hope that you all have a great day today! Happy Thanksgiving!
Sorry folks, I realize that lots of you are here for the 80th week of the Funky Foto Contest but I’m putting it off until next week. Instead I decided to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart…that of the disease called Epidermolysis Bullosa…or EB. The reason being that this week is International EB Awareness Week and I really want to draw attention to that fact. You see the thing is my daughter Christina has this condition…albeit the mildest form, yet I can assure you that our awareness is certainly up. I wrote a post last year on this date telling her story a bit and oh, by the way…that’s the little kooks picture down below. EB is a condition in which the proteins we all have that allows us to absorb friction somehow went missing in the genetic makeup of these kids. As a result, they blister…sometimes alot. As I said earlier, some kids have it more severely than others. Christina, in the mildest form, will most likely need a wheelchair for anything that would entail lots of walking throughout her life. Places like large school campuses, or the airport, or the mall…or Disneyland would really be impossible for her to navigate on foot because the friction that we all take for granted would render her incapable of walking in those places.
Please, please don’t get me wrong! We’re incredibly blessed! Christina is an amazing kid! She’s triumphant. It would be impossible to describe the multitude of lessons I’ve learned because of her patience and courage…and what an attitude! Pistol is the best word to describe her.
Here’s the thing…there’s a ton of kids that have more severe forms of EB. The photo above is of one of those kids. Honestly, when I went in search of a photo for this post, and found this precious child above, I typed in “photos of Epidermolysis Bullosa” into Google. The photo above is one of the milder ones…by far. (see for yourself) The kids with Recessive Dystrophic and Junctional EB are absolutely devastating to behold. I really believe there is no condtion or disease in life that’s worse than this…and I’m honestly not even coming close to exaggeration. Thus…this annual awareness post. Please click on the following links and please consider donating to the ongoing research, lots of which is going on just down the road at Stanford, to rid the world of this condition and bring hope to many many families worldwide. Thanks for reading this and thanks for your help! Here’s the links:
So, we get a nice offer on my listing at 9 Lilly Lane in San Carlos, and one night last week I get a call from the buyer’s agent who’s up at the property meeting his clients and a contractor. He has a couple of simple questions, which I easily answered…and then comes the big question. Seems that when he and the contractor opened the door on this vacant and staged home they were greated by a large surprise on the tile floor in the foyer. The agent explained to me that it was, in fact, poo poo. Excrement. Feces. On the floor in my vacant listing.
I was a little surprised. It’s not everyday in this business that someone calls to tell me that there’s a large pile of poop on the floor of one of my vacant listings. In fact, it’s happened….NEVER! Needless to say I wasn’t quite sure exactly what to say…but I did manage to blurt out, “Did you clean it up?” Always practical…that’s me! The answer was “Yes”, he did clean it up…before his buyers arrived (Thank God!)
It’s now official…2009 is the weirdest year in my 20 year career in Real Estate. The buyers agent posed a question…is anybody angry with the sellers that maybe we should know about? “Not to my knowledge”, I said. In fact, they changed the locks just prior to putting the home on the market. Fortunately, the lock box allows me to have a record of everyone who’s been in and out of the property using that device. Turns out that another agent was in…and brought his dog along! Unbeknownst to him, Fido went slightly astray whilst he was there and left the little (big) present on the tile floor. Ooops! The agent apologized.
Honestly….I was REALLY happy to find out it was a dog! If it wasn’t a dog…what then?!? I realize it’s been a tough year, but JEEZ!
When I was a kid the 4th of July was a big deal. There always seemed to be a party to go to and certainly a big fireworks event awaited at the end of the day. Particularly into my teen years the 4th also included listening to music…hopefully (but not always!) live music. In retrospect, it seems like my friends and I went to great lengths to listen to rock music as loud as we could and finding a live band was like a quest for the holy grail. I remember one year we saw a band called Firefall at an outdoor rodeo arena in Greeley, CO on the 4th. I also remember that we sat cross legged (because none of us were smart enough to have brought a blanket!) on the venue’s dirt surface and I think I spent half of the concert clearing cow pies away from the area around us. It was charming! I don’t really remember this, but I’m sure we ate hot dogs or something that was vended there. Sounds appetizing, huh? Listening to loud rock music was COOL!
Well, Saturday (the 4th!) brought a paradigm shift. My cousin Jennifer Selvitella, insurance agent and occasional contributor to this blog, had a party at her house in Pitcairn. She had a live band in her back yard called Uncle Fungus that did Doors and Stones covers…and did it pretty darn well too! That’s Jen herself in that picture up there (the blonde behind the bush) singing back up. If you were in the area Saturday afternoon you may have heard them. Actually, if you were at Sea Cloud Park you probably heard them! Come to think of it, you probably heard them in Fremont! They were a little LOUD. None of the old farts there (me included) cared a bit. Plus, you should have seen the food! There was a caterer serving fresh fajitas plus they had crab salad, a great green salad with whole pecans, and Jen’s famous corn and black bean creation. Not to mention about 20 kinds of homemade desserts. It was a tad different from my Firefall experience with the cow pies!
Well, guess what? There were about 20 to 30 kids at this party under age 15. Guess where they were. Locked in the garage watching the Disney Channel! When I opened the door to check on my kids everyone there covered their ears (sort of like my parents did in 1976) and demanded the door be shut immediately. They didn’t like that loud racket, dontcha know! It was much cooler to watch a rerun of “Haunted Mansion” than to listen to Uncle Fungus break down Jumpin Jack Flash. This younger generation are a bunch of boring stiffs…if you ask me!
Some of you know that my wife Lesley is a flight attendant with United Airlines. In her honor I give you the above. Pretty amusing…and I’m trying to get her to do this too!
Colin 
Shrikant 
SteveTinFC 
carol 
debbi Seligman 
Joseph 
Anita Reimann 
guru 
. It would be impossible to describe the multitude of lessons I’ve learned because of her patience and courage…and what an attitude! Pistol is the best word to describe her.
