4 Buyers Real Estate

4 Buyers Real Estate Blog

Buyer’s Agent, heal thyself!

May 14th, 2012

by Rona Fischman

“Don’t do what I did,” says a chorus of buyer’s agents who made buying mistakes in the past.

Buyer’s Agents, heal thyselves! A lot of buyer’s agents made huge mistakes when they bought their own houses, before they found out about buyer agency and entered the profession. They worked with agents who had not interest in helping them negotiate the best price and terms, they worked with agents who didn’t know how to negotiate the best price and terms, they worked with agents who didn’t care whether they got the best price and terms. Read the stories.

One of the things that I admire about NAEBA (National Association of Exclusive Buyers Agents)  is that they are the kind of people who, when they see something that is wrong, they find a solution.

Keep your hot water heater from flooding your basement.

May 7th, 2012

Apres le water heater, le deluge

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

Conventional water heaters have always bothered me. Why would anyone install an appliance that is guaranteed to fill your basement with water the moment its warranty expires?

The age of the conventional water heater may be ending. I’m happy to see many more Indirect Hot Water Heaters and more Demand (tankless or instantaneous) water heaters installed in existing houses, but I also see many new conventional water heaters installed, too.

Most hot water systems are installed on an emergency basis, after the old one has failed, and homeowners and and plumbers don’t put much thought into doing anything except replacing what’s currently there. It’s also a pricey repair, and not many people are thinking about investing in the future, when the new system will fail 7-10 years hence.

Over the years, I’ve considered prophylactic non-emergency hot water heater replacement, but somehow never got around to that before the tank failed. It’s a good idea if you can do it. Plumbers charge much less when installing hot water heaters on a pre-need basis.

I’ve tried monitoring for rusty hot water, a sign that a hot-water heater is nearing the end of its life and entering its incontinent phase, but to no avail. As much as I try to outsmart these devices, every few years I”m greeted by a basement full of warm water and an urge to call a plumber.

You can buy a simple moisture alarm that costs about $15 that will make noise when the floor around the tank gets wet, but what good is that if you’re not home?

If you must have a conventional water heater, there are now better solutions to the wet basement problem. Most cost substantially less than the cost of cleaning up a flood. I have yet to see one of these installed in a house. I think most homeowners and plumbers unaware of it, but I’m hoping that will change soon.

One solution is so simple, I’m surprised it’s not standard on all hot water heaters. A moisture sensor coupled with a water intake shutoff valve.

The moisture meter goes on the floor, near the hot water tank, and the valve goes on the cold water line that feeds the hot water heater. When the moisture meter first detects water on the floor, the valve will shut off the water intake and sound the alarm. The most water you can lose from the tank is the contents of the tank., and you can contain most of that with a

One of of these floodproofing systems is The Floodmaster FM-094 Hot Water Heater Feed Water Alarm/Shut-Off – this sells for about $200.

Another one is the Onsite Pro Water Heater Floodstop

http://www.getfloodstop.com/Water_Heater_FloodStop_p/fs34npt.htm


This one appears easier to install and sells for around $125.

As for me, when I had my new heating system installed, I had it plumbed for an indirect hot water heater. The next conventional hot water heater that breaks in my house will be the last one.

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Shopping for lenders

April 24th, 2012

Rona reports:

I just spoke to Loren Shapiro at Asset Mortgage.  He’s an all-around good guy and trusty lender. He called his credit rep to fact-check on a question that frequently comes up:

Suppose I want to shop around for a lender. Does my credit get damaged by having multiple lenders making credit inquiries (checking my credit score)?

The answer is that you can shop around for a lender for a big purchase, like a house or a car, without having a significant impact on your credit score. Credit bureaus deduct a few points for the first inquiry, but do not penalize you for subsequent, similar inquiries that you make within the same 30 days. (After 30 days, a few more points get deducted.)

Inquiries for revolving credit, like credit cards, carry a higher deduction of your score. Each inquiry matters.

My advice is to shop around once, then choose the lender you think will be reliable. Go back to that lender when you find your house or condo.

 

Don’t fence me out

April 18th, 2012

Friends, Broker, Homesellers: lend me your house.

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

Usually the buyers I work for have a bit of time. If we can’t see a house one day, we’ll see it the next, though frequently we just move on and never see the houses that were unavailable on the first day.

Recently I had some relocating buyers. They had a very short timeline, just a few days to see houses in four different towns. They were realistic, and realized that they didn’t have the time to get a wonderful deal, but wanted to make the best choice they could in about a week, even though it meant paying a bit more than the house was worth.

Most of the towns they were looking in are ones where the current real estate market is very heated – good houses are getting snatched up in a few days, and there’s not a lot of inventory to look at. But there were a few houses in this, just seven that were still available, according to the MLS, so I set out to show them a few of those.

To my surprise, most of the remaining homes weren’t easy to see. On two, the seller had set restrictions on what hours the house could be shown, one having only two 2-hour windows per week to show the house. Three required the listing broker to accompany our showing, even if the house was vacant. On another, the listing broker just wasn’t around, she was on vacation and not returning calls.

Why were these houses the leftovers in an otherwise hot town? Some were a bit overpriced, some were ugly or small, but others looked as if they were nice houses, but we’ll never know, since we couldn’t see them.

Please, Mr. & Mrs. Seller, don’t lock ready, willing and able buyers out. Make your home available to us. If it’s a nice home at a fair price, I’d be happy to help my buyers buy it, if only you’ll let us in.

Buyers are liars?

April 11th, 2012

By Rona Fischman

One of the best training tools for me, as a buyer’s agent, has been to take classes designed by seller-centered real estate companies to teach agents how to “handle” house buyers. I got most of my early education in a real estate world that expected all agents to be working for the seller. That’s where I first heard “buyers are liars.”

A little history: Until the mid-00s, there was a relationship called “seller’s sub-agency.” A seller’s agent drove buyers around, opened the door and sold the house for the company that was on the sign outside. If the seller’s agent worked for the company on the sign, it was seller’s agency; if the agent worked for another company, it was sub-agency. The sub-agent never met the seller, but had the obligation to work for the best price and terms for that seller. The real estate agents knew the buyers, asked lots of questions about what they wanted, but the negotiation was stacked against the buyer.

When I first started in real estate, residential buyer’s agency was just beginning. I did a handful of transactions as a seller’s subagent, then went to buyer agency only. Although the days of treating buyers like a customer are over, legally, some of the bad attitude that the buyer is just not buying to annoy the agent, lingers. Thus, the old saw “buyers are liars.”
Buyers are not liars. Buyers often do not know what they want until they see it. There is a trial and error period when they are working to get the right balance between size, location and condition. Here’s a case in point.

I started with some new buyers last week. We went house hunting for the first time this past weekend. At our consultation and planning meeting, the new client said something along the lines of, “this is my forever house, so I don’t want to be on a busy street.” Dave Twombly and I created lists of houses to see. We avoided houses on busy streets, which was easy since there are a lot of choices for these buyers. The buyers chose some of those, plus a house at a traffic light on a busy street. Buyers are liars? No! Buyers need time to learn the marketplace.
The house looked really good to them and it was (barely) in their price range. The reason such a nice house was in their range was because the location was a problem for most people. At first showing, they were excited about it. The room dimensions were good, the condition was good, the size was a little small inside and perfect outside.
I went back with them on Sunday. The crowded open house made them realize how small the house was. Their perception changed. They realized that this compromise on location wasn’t worth it. It was a good choice after all. They learned something about their need for interior space.

On the way back to the car, my buyer commented that the traffic was “so much worse” on Sunday than Saturday (when Dave showed the house.) I smiled broadly and said, “I don’t believe you.”

These clients eventually chose a house on a quiet street that, in many ways, was a lot like the one they saw that Sunday. Congratulations to D and L! They close this month.

Bidding wars, for beginners

March 27th, 2012

By Rona Fischman

The national seller’s market doesn’t mean a thing to buyers who have been picking through leftovers for the past four months. To the buyers who I saw swarming open houses, I say “Just Say ‘No’ to Bidding Wars.” 
Or if you are saying ‘yes,’ to a bidding war, know what you are doing.

I am fairly cynical and often wonder how many bidding wars have phantom offers or are just dud bidding wars. (One agent was bragging that 85 parties came through last week. It was aimed to scare my buyer into an offer. What I hear is that 85 parties rejected the place at that price last week.)

So, how do we respond to a hurry-up?

Since there is no way to know if the offers on the table are viable, or if the offers expected are going to show up, as a buyer, you need to make some decisions. I look at these things to determine what advice I will give to the buyer who wants a “hurry-up special”:

  1. Sale time on similar properties early last spring.
  2. The price of this property compared to similar properties sold last spring and since then.
  3. My perception of the number of buyers who saw it and what they were thinking. (If it is open at an open house, I watch the expression of the other buyers.)

Asking prices can be way over or somewhat under what the house is worth, based on a Comparative Market Study. But first, consider that asking price is an awful measure of whether a buyer is getting a good deal. I contend that asking price is a fiction created by the seller or the seller’s agent or both that reflects the wishful thinking of the seller or the seller’s agent, or both.

For a seller or listing agent to identify a price that is compelling for a buyer is both science and art. It is not so easy to find a price that will make a number of buyers jump. The masters and mistresses of the bidding war do just that. The ones who do it well are very good at Comparative Market Analysis (CMA.) It’s done by looking at the properties that are most like the one for sale, the “target.” The like-kind properties’ prices are then adjusted so one can compare apples with apples, by deducting value from the target for things that are worse and adding value to the target for things that are better.

Once they establish a market price, they list the house at or just below the market value, where they expect a number of buyers will respond. The risks: if the price is too high, no war; if the demand is lower than expected, it is hard to bring the price up again (although some do it.)

For our clients, we do the CMA on the buyer’s side to help them establish the point where they could be overpaying for the house. By knowing the walk-away point, a buyer can go into a bidding war without losing his/her/their head. The most important thing for a buyer to do is to keep a perspective. If the property is unique (special architecture or special location) there is more reason to go into a bidding war. If the property is typical for the area, consider sitting out the madness.

 

My new weapon in the war on energy waste

March 22nd, 2012

Follow the green dot til it turns blue, there’s your leak

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

Black & Decker Thermal Leak Detector



In the old days, meaning before six months ago, I would walk around my house one windy day each autumn with a lit match in one hand and a caulk gun in the other.

I’d try to triangulate the entry points of drafts, then vanquish them with the caulk gun. All this effort served to make my home more comfortable and probably saved me a load of money. Of course, I’d also wind up with singed fingertips, and burn marks on the rug.

This year, I’m fighting drafts two-fisted. I sling the caulk gun in one hand, and my Black & Decker Thermal Leak Detector TLD100 in the other. It helps me find the draft, and I’m far less dangerous to my fingers and the carpeting.

It’s really just an infrared thermometer but someone had the bright idea to add projecting colored LEDs that will change colors as you move the beam over hot and cold spots.

Thermal Leak Detector RGB beams

You aim it at any surface and it reads the temperature and the light shines green. As you move the beam across your walls, the light will change colors – to red for hot-spots, to blue for cold-spots. You can set the sensitivity of the device for changes of 1, 2 or 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

It’s such a simple idea, and it works.

With my new toy, I found a few leaks around some windows, and a portion of a wall that missed getting insulated 25 years ago.

Check out Black & Decker’s video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpifuiVpv2w

The best parts, in addition to the energy savings, it’s very reasonably priced at about $35. It’s also useful for testing the efficiency of your insulation. It’s also a great conversation starter at parties.

To inspect or not to inspect: that is the question (although it really shouldn’t be)

March 15th, 2012

by Dave Twombly, 4 Buyers Real Estate

There are a lot of steps to take when purchasing a home.  Whether it’s a condo in Cambridge or a 2800 square foot ranch in Bedford there are a number of things that have to happen.  Of course, being educated followers of 4 Buyers you know most of these things, but not everybody does.

Before you start your search you have to get pre-approved for a mortgage from a (hopefully reputable) lender.  Then there’s the search.  You may see 6 properties, you may see 60 but once you find the future home of your dreams, things happen quickly.  You make your offer, it gets accepted and then you just get your mortgage and move in right?   (This is where you chime in with “Of course not Dave! You get a home inspection.”)  Those of you who said that get a gold star (and don’t have to continue reading).  Those who didn’t, read carefully.

The home inspection is the single most important step before you buy a property.  Your friendly neighborhood Buyer’s Agent should be able to point out major flaws (the roof is old, there’s water damage here, there is asbestos that needs to be taken care of etc).  A really good Buyer’s Agent can tell you that the floor is sagging and there is deflection in a doorway which is a sign of a foundation sinking etc).   But a home inspector is the licensed expert who can point out things large and small (and often the sum of the small things is more than you want to spend). They can also educate you about how your future home works.

Recently, however, I was out with clients who found a lovely home they wanted to purchase.  They made an offer, it got accepted and we moved onto the inspection.  The inspector started to point out some issues and compile a list (they will give you a full written report of their findings, usually within a day of the inspection). He found two major issues, one knob and tube wiring which is an immediate red flag (more likely, immediate fire work display) and then noticed the foundation, in one corner, had sunk an inch.   When conveying this to the listing agent (and being amazed that there was still knob and tube wiring in the house, which is incredibly antiquated and dangerous) he informed us that the current owners didn’t have the house inspected prior to purchasing.  Now, I might be biased but this blew my mind.  My clients walked away from the house as the issues were too many and too serious (sinking foundations are a deal breaker)

A few houses later, my clients found another (and better) house to purchase. They made an offer, it was accepted and we moved to the inspection.  This house was very solidly built and had no major issues, however we learned from the owner that he also didn’t have a home inspection when he bought the property.    Once again, mind blowing.

Perhaps the sinking foundation will last the years you own the house, or the knob and tube won’t start a fire burning down your dream home.  Me?  That’s not a gamble I’m willing to take.  Seems to me that spending the $500-$600 on a home inspection to protect the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars you are about to invest, is a no brainer.

Hopefully it is for you too.

 

 

Maryland law proposed to redefine agency

March 12th, 2012

by Rona Fischman

Have you seen this form?  Did you notice that it is more complicated than it needs to be? Have you ever asked yourself why? The legislature in Maryland  is taking a look at their agency disclosure law right now.

I could explain agency pretty easily. In Massachusetts, the form reads:

The form reads:

(Check one) ____The real estate agent listed below, the real estate firm or business listed above and all other affiliated agents have the same relationship with the consumer named herein (seller or buyer agency, not

designated agency).

____Only the real estate agent listed below represents the consumer named in this form (designated

seller or buyer agency). In this situation any firm or business listed above and other agents

affiliated with the firm or business do not represent you and may represent another party in your real

estate transaction.

The form means:

(check one)

No one in the office will be representing the person you may be negotiating against.

An agent in this office is allowed to represent the person you may be negotiating against. (This is called designated buyer or designated seller agency. See the definition on the back.)

The flap in Maryland is because the current disclosure does not include “exclusive buyer agency” or “exclusive seller agency” or “single agency” (where the firm can represent buyers and sellers, but will recuse itself if both parties are in the same transaction.)

John Sullivan, Vice President of Buyer’s Edge Co.  writes:

If passed, these changes to the Real Estate Brokers Act … would provide the consumer with all of their agency choices when selling or buying their home…It would be the first of the 50 State agency disclosure statements in the country to provide the consumer with all their agency options including exclusive buyer, exclusive seller and most importantly single agency.”

In Massachusetts, not only is the disclosure overly complicated, but it also does not get seen by consumers in a timely manner. The form reads:

All real estate licensees must present this form to you at the first personal meeting with you to discuss a specific property. The licensee can represent you as the seller (Seller’s Agent) or represent you as the buyer (Buyer’s Agent) and also can assist you as a facilitator.

Did you see it at the first personal meeting?

You know that I think agency matters.

It certainly matters to consumers whether the agent they are talking to has the responsibility to disclose information to the other side of the negotiation or whether that agent has the responsibility to keep that information confidential.

It certainly matters to consumers whether the agent they are talking to has the responsibility to work for the best price and terms for them, or for the person they are negotiating against.

The disclosure Massachusetts disclosure reads:

… The agent owes the buyer undivided loyalty, reasonable care, disclosure, obedience to lawful instruction, confidentiality and accountability, provided, however, that the agent must disclose known material defects in the real estate. The agent must put the buyer’s interests first and negotiate for the best price and terms for their client …

 It certainly matters to consumers whether the agent provides required disclosures in a timely manner. A disregard for consumer protection laws is not a good sign for someone who is about to give you advice about a high-stakes financial decision.

John Sullivan takes the problem of agency one step further. He sees lack of representation and buyers  taking advice from people who represented sellers as part of the machine that lead to the real estate crisis. He says:

“chronic misunderstandings about agent fiduciary responsibility have contributed to the foreclosure crisis both in Maryland and across the nation” — namely that buyers weren’t given good advice by agents about what they could actually afford, and thus did not have their best interests protected.”

Since I care about this, my eyes are on Maryland.

A clean bulb is a bright bulb

March 7th, 2012

Brighter days ahead for you and me

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

It’s almost Springtime. Today, I noticed some of my daffodils and crocuses are starting to push their way up through the soil and towards the bright sun. The days are brighter, too, I was calculating as I was driving home this sunny afternoon that the sun is as high in the sky as it is in late September. Even brighter days will certainly be here soon, tra-la.

Did you know you could make your bulbs 20% brighter just by cleaning the dirt off of them? No, not your daffodils, your light bulbs.

Whether you use incandescent, compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, you get about 20% more visible light from a bulb that’s clean, and I know you haven’t cleaned your bulbs in a long, long time.

The visible light grows dimmer gradually and you don’t notice that the world is slowly becoming darker.

LED and CF bulbs last longer than incandescents, so they’re probably the dirtiest by now since it’s been so long since you had to replace one.

And clean the lampshades, too, while you’re at it, that will give you more visible light, too.

Turn off your lamps, let the bulb cool, then clean with a rag and some glass cleaner. Now, enjoy that free extra light on me.

The revolution will not be televised…because you melted your TV.

March 1st, 2012

by Dave Twombly, 4 Buyers Real Estate

You might be shocked to learn this, but in my line of work I see a lot of houses. Some of them are empty, but most are still being lived in.  I’ve been noticing a trend of late that I find pretty disturbing.

Living in New England means dealing with the winter (or, at least it used to mean that).  Many homes come with fireplaces, something architect Frank Lloyd Wright thought was the centerpiece of which a home revolved around.  The hearth.  To many folks, fireplaces are an extremely desirable feature in a home.  What’s more romantic than that family gathered around the hearth on a snowy day?

As television became more popular families moves away from the hearth to being around the television. (I guess they both emit light, warmth if you are close enough etc).  There seems to be a new trend in trying to combine the two.

As technology has progressed we now have the high definition flat screen TV. It takes up less space and can even be mounted on a wall.  Somewhere along the line, somebody had the idea (see where I’m going with this?) :  Family gathers around the TV, we have a fireplace that used to be the gathering spot but we don’t use it anymore due to the TV, what if we could combine the two?   Time and again, I’m seeing the TV mounted above the fireplace.  To me, unlike chocolate and peanut butter, these are NOT two great tastes that taste great together.

I don’t know about you but when I was a boy (no, you couldn’t buy a TV for a nickel) and started playing with electronic toys one of the first lessons I learned was “heat + electronics = bad news”.   Think about it, your pricey laptop computer has a built in cooling fan.  The server room at your company is air conditioned.  You probably have a special “cooling pad” to put your Mac on.  If you’ve nodded your head to any of these things, why on earth would you but your brand new, luscious, high definition plasma TV above the fireplace?  Do you microwave your cellphone to it feels nice and warm next to your ear?

Yes, I understand maximizing the use of space. Hell, I can even appreciate that the TV looks lovely mounted perfectly above the fire place. But, that doesn’t stop me from shuddering and thinking, “what the %$^&*$^#%!!! are these people thinking.”

So do yourself and your TV a favor buy a stand for your TV. I’ll even help you put it together.

 

 

 

 

 

Where are the awnings of yesteryear?

February 28th, 2012

Shade: nature’s own (almost free) energy saver

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate



“Awnings can directly affect energy use by simply blocking the sun. heat gain through windows is one of the main reasons why buildings need air conditioners… In some climates you can save 20 to 25% of your cooling energy just by using awnings.” –John Carmody, Director, Center for Sustainable Building Research, University of Minnesota

When I was a boy in the 1960s, I can remember how swiftly each Springtime would transform most of the houses on my street: the snows would recede, the trees and bushes would fill in, and awnings would appear in front of many windows.

Each Spring we’d go through the awning ordeal: go up to the attic, get the heavy canvas awnings and their metal frames down. We’d take them out in the yard and wash them, pass them out the window and secure them to their posts, run the ropes through the grommets. We’d check to see that the vents were clear, so the awnings wouldn’t overheat.

In exchange for all that one-time work, you’d get a much cooler, shadier house all summer, without using air conditioning. If we had air conditioning, we would have saved a fortune on it.

Ironically, during the 1980′s when there were high tax credits for high-tech energy saving methods, people started to ignore the awnings. People started replacing their old windows and being concerned about solar-heat gain and heat loss through the windows, but they forgot how much more effectively your windows can lower your heating and cooling bill in tandem with low-tech awnings.

According to the Center for Sustainable Building Research at the University of Minnesota an awning can reduce solar gain (that’s heat added to the inside of your house by the sun) by 77% on west-facing windows, and up to 65% on south-facing windows. In the winter, when you want the solar heat, you just take those awnings off or roll them up.

The savings from awnings occur during peak usage hours, so you can get by with a smaller air conditioner than you would need otherwise. From a societal standpoint, utilities could get by with fewer and smaller generating plants if everyone would use awnings.

According to the report by the Center for Sustainable Building Research, the further north you go, the more energy can be saved by awnings. For a home in the Boston area, according to the Center’s tests, it took 855 kWh to cool their test houses without awnings. With awnings it took only 651 kWh to cool a house with approximately equal window orientation. For houses with mostly south and west facing windows the savings was more dramatic: it took 965 kWh to cool the house without awnings, 677 kWh to cool the house with awnings. That’s a 30% savings. You can reduce peak demand in a house with a mostly westward window orientation by as much as 40%.

You can read a summary of the report at:

http://www.csbr.umn.edu/download/PAMA_FinalSummaryV2_1.pdf

or the entire report at:

http://www.csbr.umn.edu/download/PAMA_FinalReport_V2.pdf

When you’re thinking about new windows, or just trying to improve the energy performance of your old windows, consider getting attractive awnings for your home. They’ll improve the energy efficiency of your home far more than just new windows alone.

It’s coming around again

February 27th, 2012

by Rona Fischman

I got a call from A last week. She said that there was a new listing she wanted to check out at open house. The address sounded familiar to me — not in a good way. I warmed up the agent MLS database and my suspicion was confirmed; this house had been on the market a couple of times already. I couldn’t remember it, even after looking at the pictures. (Now, that is a bad sign. I usually remember something about a house beyond the address.) A and her husband saw it and didn’t care for the place. However, the open house was swarmed and the house went under agreement by Monday.

2/17/2012  Listed for $699,900

2/22/2012  Listing Alert Flag set to: Yes – Accepting Additional Offers

2/22/2012  Status Changed to: Under Agreement

Days on the market = 5

Someone new to the market would think this is a great house, a hot house. If it sold immediately, it must be wonderful. That’s because they don’t know about the other attempts to sell it. It looked like this:

This house went unwanted since 2008. It was actually on the market for 152 days.

3/4/2008  Listed for $879,000

9/8/2009  Listed for $799,000

11/18/2010  Listed for $799,000

The problem with this house, by and large, was the price. I have no way of knowing whether the agent recommended the price of $879,000 in 2008 or if the seller insisted on “testing the market.” It doesn’t much matter. Nothing sells for that much over its real value.

It was a good house for $699,900, as demonstrated by its quick sale last week. But, when I saw it at $799,000 last year, my clients instantly rejected it. It does not compare to housing that is worth $799,000 and therefore looked like a hopeless dud. It got filed in my brain that way. The lesson for sellers is that overpricing doesn’t work.

This brings me to a question I get asked all the time: “Should I, as a buyer, look at property that is over my price range?” The answer, of course, is “it depends.”

I have found that going into a property that is WAAY over your price range is not going to hurt you. It is fantasy. So, if you go past a $2M open house, go on in and see how the other half live.

Avoid properties that are around 10-15% over your price range. These will make your choices look just a little shabby. A $699,000 house trying to be a $799,000 house looks like junk. If you are spending $699,000 and you go look at $799,000 houses, the places you can afford will look like junk. This will “ruin your palate” for houses you may actually buy.

I have a way to let my client find overpriced properties that should be in their range. It takes sellers a while to accept that they have overpriced. So, I create a set of searches to find overpriced properties that have had some time to demonstrate their unsalablity at that price to their owners.

Suppose the price limit is a firm $690,000. I will set a search with $690,000 as the limit. Then, I will set an additional search with $720,000 as the limit with 14, 30, or 45+ days on the market, depending on the town and the season. If sales are slow there, I may even set another search with 45, 60 or 90+ days with a limit of $750,000.

I also keep an eye on things that I have seen, and know to be overpriced and I have a buyer for it (if the price gets down to reality level.) The house my clients saw at open house last week was not good enough for that, but some are.

The best of both worlds

February 14th, 2012

By Rona Fischman

Today, I spoke to a fellow who was thinking of hiring us for his search in Lexington. I offered him a reference of a couple who recently bought there. He asked me if I knew the address. “Of course,” I said. Then I told him, “26 Hayes Lane, Lexington.”

After I got off the phone, I grew curious what I’d find if I Googled that address. What I found was rather depressing. The quality of information on line, frankly… well, it stinks. Along with the expected pages from agents, the big real estate sites of Trulia and Zillow were way up in the rankings.

Truila says: “This is a Single-Family Home located at 26 Hayes Lane, Lexington MA. 26 Hayes Ln has 3 beds, 3 baths, and approximately 2,324 square feet. The property was built in 1984. The average list price for similar homes for sale is $1,526,835 and the average sales price for similar recently sold homes is $907,167. 26 Hayes Ln is in the 02420 ZIP code in Lexington, MA. The average list price for ZIP code 02420 is $1,007,873.”

Zillow  Zestimates the value at $644,700.

So, which is it? Is this a million-dollar-plus property or is it worth $644,700 (which is modest in Lexington.)

If  buyers use these services as real estate advice, what would they think? There is so much that does not come through on electronic valuation systems which is critical to understanding what a house should sell for. On a street like Hayes Lane, the computers just can’t keep up.

I’m not a computer. This house on Hayes Lane was one of the rare ones where I had “house envy.” (I tend to stay objective and I am rarely aware of emotion when I am showing a house.) However, when I stepped out of the front door of this house and saw woods all around, I had to smile. This house is very close to Lexington Center. It is a great house – the best of both worlds.

Yet down the street are some small and unattractive houses. The street itself is a private way, and it’s in only moderate shape. It’s not such a nice neighborhood in one direction, and a pretty nice one in the other. That’s why Zillow and Trulia couldn’t figure it out.

I could figure it out.

At the time my clients made their offer, the price had just gone down to $819.000. But, it hadn’t gone down quite enough. The house was still overpriced, even though offers were coming in. My client’s offer was well below asking price, but prevailed. Partly, I can toot my horn for doing a good market study and giving a good negotiation presentation. But, sometimes houses find the right owners. This house needed a lover of woods and gardens who also wanted to be close to Lexington Center.  It was the best of both worlds. My client got the right house at the right price.

This makes me happy.

I been in the right house, but it must’ve been the wrong town.

February 10th, 2012

by Dave Twombly, 4 Buyers Real Estate

As we’ve discussed in the past, my dear readers, finding the right home is a complex, confusing and emotional thing.  What do you really want in a house?  Where do you want that house to be?  Do you like the things you think you like?  Can you find everything that you want?

Sometimes it’s easy. You know that it’s gotta be a condo in Cambridge and nothing else will do.  But what if you don’t know where you want it to be?  Most folks, when searching, have an idea of where they want to settle down.  They choose 2-3 towns that might work for them, do their research on schools, commutes, neighborhoods etc.

Recently I was out with clients who are searching over a wide swath of the Greater Boston Area.  We’ve been from Melrose to Waltham and every town in between.  Towns get added and towns get dropped as we learn more about them.  The perfect combination of house and town is out there for them but we haven’t found it yet.

A few weeks back we strode into a gem of a house. Everything was perfect. The layout was great, the size of the rooms was perfect, the kitchen was new and the plot was fantastic. Everything was gleaming in fact, I swore I heard that little gleaming noise “schiiing” that you get when something sparkles. There was nothing not to love about the house. All you had to do was unzip your suitcase and move in.

Have I gone to the housewarming party yet, you might ask?  No. Because, as we had been in the right house, it musta been the wrong town.  Upon more primary research (walking, driving, seeing what’s nearby) it seems the town wasn’t for them.  While it was a learning experience for us all, removing one town from the search will help us focus on what they really want.

So, here is the question for you.  Property or location?  Which is more important to you?  Can a house be perfect if it’s not exactly where you want it to be?  You want to love the four walls (okay, there is probably a floor and ceiling as well) that will be living in, but you have to live outside those walls as well.  (Of course, if all of my clients were hermits this might not be a problem).

Before you start your search spend some time in the towns you are considering.  Walk from the center, have a meal, stroll around on a weekend.  You might find that regardless of how nice a structure might be, the right house will never be there.

 

 

Let’s talk toilets

February 7th, 2012

will your next toilet keep you flushed with satisfaction?

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate



I’ve been potty-talking lately as I’ve asked all the plumbers, contractors, home inspectors I meet about toilets. I talked to many neighbors about this topic, too, and found that more interest swirled around this subject than I would have imagined.

I was interested because we were replacing our tenants’ bathroom and our bathroom and were trying to get a handle on the bewildering array of toilet styles, valves, capacities and ratings.

I did find that most people are pleased with their newer toilets even if they were badly disappointed with their first generation low-flow toilets. If you have to flush your high-efficiency toilet twice each time, it’s no longer a high-efficiency toilet.

The good news is: Green toilets HAVE gotten a lot better.

The choices became clearer when I found that there was an almost unanimous consensus that the best toilets are made by a Japanese maker, Toto toilet.

Toto has the patent on an ingenious flush valve that flushes the water cyclonically, giving you both a good flush and keeping the walls of the bowl cleaner longer, even with toilets so water-efficient they only use 1.28 gallons per flush (gpf). Other toilet makers will soon be licensing their patent, but for now the best flush award belongs totally to Toto. Watch it flush once and you’ll be bowled over by the difference.

You will not find them at Home Depot or Lowe’s. You will find them at local and regional plumbing supply stores. We shopped at the showroom at Republic Plumbing Supply in Framingham has the whole line.

Toto doesn’t make much in the way of dual-flush toilets, but they do have a few good 1.28gpf toilets and the water use on that commode should be about the same as a 1.6gpf toilet with a dual-flush valve.

For our tenants’ unit, we got a Kohler Scout model from Home Depot. It’s not bad, and they claim it can flush a whole bucket of golf balls at one time. I’m hoping no one in my house will ever think of testing that claim, but I have since learned there is more to flushing than just the ability to flush bulky things.

The flush ratings of toilets aren’t as wonderfully useful as they sound, unless you regularly flush golf balls down the toilet. They are based solely on the amount of bulk a toilet can flush.

There are other things to consider, such as how clean the inside walls of the bowl will stay without additional cleaning.

When we put in a new bathroom last summer, we didn’t replace the 12 year-old toilet in our bathroom because we couldn’t find exactly the toilet of our dreams: a dual-flush with cyclonic flushing, etc., so we reused the old toilet, retrofitted for dual-flush, and it’s still a fine flusher.

As soon as toilet technology catches up with my desires and there’s a 1.28gpf, dual-flush, cyclonic toilet, I’ll be the first in line at the store to buy that commodious commode.

How big is your boiler?

January 17th, 2012

When it comes to efficiency, size does matter.

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

The heating systems in most homes I see are much too big for the job they have to do.

If you have a boiler that’s too large, it will cost you more throughout its shortened life.

You’ll throw more up-front money at your heating system AND it will have a shorter life because it will short-cycle more than it should. Short-cycling is when a boiler starts, uses all its extra capacity to catch up with heat demand and then stops. The too-big boiler is wasting its life starting and stopping rather than running efficiently. Running a smaller boiler for longer periods is actually more efficient.

Old boilers were oversized, and so many new boilers are oversized.    Installers use rules-of-thumb to size boilers,and they tend to overestimate. They are afraid of undersizing a boiler and getting that “my house is too cold” phone call next winter.

Of course, most won’t do the actual heat-loss calculations to ensure that you get the right size, it’s easier just to overestimate. The homeowner will probably never notice.
 
Hot-air furnaces tend to be even more oversized and that will make them inefficient and also noisier than the right-sized furnace.
 
The correct way to size any heating plant is to use the Manual J Load calculation.   Getting an installer to do this generally requires at least an act of Congress, but it’s just an arithmetical calculation that closely approximates your homes heating loss on one of the coldest days of your winter, based on your floor space, ceiling height, number of windows, number of outside walls in a room, insulation and your climate, etc.

The calculations are actually simpler than they sound, and you can get help from your computer – try a web based calculator at http://www.mrhvac.com/free-hvac-stuff/free-heat-gain-and-loss-calculator/ or a program you can buy for $49 at HVAC-Calc Software.


Whether you do it or the installer does it, you shouldn’t get a new boiler without having someone do a load calculation.
 
Don’t forget that some day you may be using your heating plant to heat your domestic hot water, too, so be sure to figure that in.
 
My house came with a 135,000 BTU/hour boiler – that was first sized 80 years ago when the house was built, when there was no insulation in the walls, no thermal windows, very little insulation in the attic, and oil cost very little.
 
When I went to replace it, various plumbers wanted to put in boilers from 125,000 BTUH – 170,000BTUH which seemed too big, considering that the 135,000 BTUH boiler had been doing the job for so long, even before most of our energy improvements.
 
I eventually got a 105,000BTUH boiler – that’s probably a bit more capacity then we need now, but I plan to add an indirect water heater to that system soon, and have the boiler heat our domestic hot water, too.

 
Size does matter, and I’m always surprised at how little homeowners and installers thought about right-sizing their heating plant.  





 

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity

January 10th, 2012

Want to save energy? Just add water.

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

An often-forgotten energy saver is plain old water, added to your home’s air.

Humid air will feel warmer on your skin than dryer air, partly because it slows the evaporation of sweat from your skin As they love to remind you repeatedly in Phoenix, “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

In the past, our house maintained a pretty comfortable relative humidity of about 30%, in the winter. We had two teenage boys who would take long showers and we’d run the dishwasher every other day and had lots of plants that would add water to the air and keep our humidity at a reasonable level during the heating season..

This year, we renovated our bathroom and added a vent fan. Plus, the boy who was the longest showerer left for the Air Force, so we’re using the dishwasher less, too.

When we had a taste of winter last week and started using a lot of heat it got very dry around here. Though the thermostat was set exactly where it was last year, I felt chillier, my skin was drier and itchier and my throat felt scratchy.

I wasn’t surprised when I measured the relative humidity and found it at an extremely low 11%..

Adding humidity to your home’s air shouldn’t be a complicated affair. There are good reasons why you shouldn’t go out and get a whole house humidifier or add a humidifier to your home’s heating system. More is not always better, and you don’t want the relative humidity to be too high, save over 45%, since that will promote mold and dust-mite growth and create condensation on windows and other cold surfaces.

I got a simple vaporizer out of the closet, the one we used to aid breathing when we were sick and filled it with water, set it up on the first floor of the house and switched it on. Within a few hours the relative humidity has risen into the low 30s, and the entire house, including the upstairs, was much more humid and comfortable without resorting to raising the thermostat.

A vaporizer doesn’t cost much, as little as $15, and does a nice job of adding some germ- and mold-free water to your air. You’ve got to clean it every few days, but the effort is worth it – you’ll get a net savings on energy. Your savings on moisturizer and throat lozenges are just an added bonus.


Crooked House Blues

January 5th, 2012

By Dave Twombly

(And we’re back from our Holiday Hiatus.  I hope you all had a delicious time, regardless of what your flavor of holiday is.)

Do a quick Google (or search engine of your choosing) search on “Crooked House”  and you’ll find “whimsical playhouses for children” , a book by Agatha Christie,  a TV show and a restaurant (among many other things). Sort of has a romantic ring to it, doesn’t it? But could you live in a crooked house?

Recently, I was out showing a house to some clients. Not only are they like me, living in a Cambridge condo, expecting their first child (well, my expectations have come to fruition as you know) but they have similar tastes in style and architecture.  It’s fun to go view houses with them. They are searching for their first home in which to raise a young family. The house was in a neighborhood they recently discovered and seemed perfect for them. They were pretty excited to check it out.

This house had many of the details that they (we) like.  Tall ceilings, nice wood floors, built-ins and details you’d expect from a house built around the turn of the century (that would be the LAST century).  We made our way through the house, liking what we saw, until we got to the master suite.  A big open space that was converted into it’s present form. It had some nice details, good light but a fatal flaw to my clients:  A leaning tower of chimney that would make that little thing in Pisa jealous.

Aesthetically, it was actually pleasing.  Exposed brick over hardwood floors, some nice trim.  It reminded me of some apartments I’ve lived in. I’ve always liked the combination of brick and wood.  Quirks are often what make a house.  One woman’s house oddity could be another’s selling point.  With a love of older house styles comes the inevitable quirk here and there.  In an older area of the country, like Boston, we are used to such things.

However this lean was so drastic it threw the whole room off.   Almost vertigo inducing, my clients worried they would wake up every morning a little off kilter. The rest of the house had features to like and a setting they enjoyed.  Alas this seemed to be the deal breaker.

So, that leads to a question?  What is your quirk tolerance?  Could you live in a crooked house?

 

 

Year in review, 2011

December 28th, 2011

Rona Fischman looks back on 2011

2010 was the best year, ever, in my career. I had worked through the growing pains of establishing my own business (I started in April 2008.) In January 2010, 4 Buyers Real Estate was me and Dianne. By March, I hired Matthew and Sandy. In September, Ron came on board. For those of you who don’t know this, Ron Rothenberg was the person who brought me into real estate in 1991. He was my mentor and the biggest influence on my career. I was honored that he wanted to work for me.

2011 started out on a high. We were bigger and better than ever. Dave joined us right around Groundhog’s Day making 4 Buyers Real Estate a six-agent firm. Despite the weather, we dashed through the snow and held our first big Groundhog’s Day celebration at Flatbread.  A good time was had by those who dug out and came.

Things went downhill for the company as Sandy took family leave. She expects to return to the firm in September 2012. Matthew left real estate. So by spring we were four.

The summer left me and Dave as the only agents standing. Dianne fractured her knee and Ron simultaneously took sick leave. The upside is that Dave became my right-hand man and turned into a great agent. Also this summer, I got our FaceBook Page  going, we started to benefit from being an Angie’s List Super Service Award winner,  and got most of the kinks out of our website, blog, and FaceBook communications. I continue to blog at Boston.com and I completed my book proposal. The book is based on my experiences as a buyer’s agent and my study of neuroscience and decision-making. (So far, I’ve had one rejection. If you know any agents I can send it to, please let me know!)

Despite the departures and the absences, we celebrate a wonderful diversity of households established this year. We worked with new construction, short sales, starter homes, trade-ups and trade-downs. Our clients were young and old, single people, couples, couples who were expecting, and couples with children. We continue to be blessed by having smart, interesting, and nice people knock on our door. If that continues into 2012, I will be grateful.

Happy New Year!

I’m fixing a hole where the cold comes in

December 6th, 2011

to keep my heat from wandering

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

Though I’m being pleasantly lulled by the warm weather, convinced that Spring is just around the corner, I concede that winter will soon be here. With winter comes high heating bills, which I’m thoroughly opposed to. Winter is bad enough without having to pay for the privilege of feeling too chilly.

Most winters I would seal up the windows, weatherstrip the doors, turn down the clock thermostat, don many layers of clothing and pray for warm weather, yet the heating bills were still annoyingly large.

But this winter is different. This winter I’m making it personal.

Last Spring, I replaced my 82 year-old boiler and 25 year-old oil burner with a new energy-efficient gas boiler. That made a big difference, but I could still feel the dials on the gas meter whooshing every time the heat came on.

So, I also insulated all the heating and hot water pipes in my basement. I never realized I had so many pipes. Several hundreds of dollars worth of insulation later, the hot water enters the radiators at almost the same temperature as it leaves the boiler, where it used to lose 8-10 degrees transiting those many pipes going across the cold basement.

Now, I can hear the dials on the gas meter grinding just a bit slower. As a bonus, the heat and hot water comes up much faster, too.

The biggest fuel-wasters in any old house are the leaks. When I moved in, everything leaked and a winter’s day in the living room was like a chilly, breezy Spring day outside. After 25 years, I’ve made some progress in the battle against leaks – blown-in wall insulation, a few new windows and the extremely generous use of caulk to plug those darn leaks has rewarded me with an indoor environment that’s more like . . . an indoor environment.

In the good old days, 2010 and earlier, I would go to war on some breezy day in Autumn with a caulking gun in one hand, and a match or cigarette lighter in the other. I’d watch the flame flicker to find out where a leak was and then I would plug it. I’d walk around the house doing this until the flame no longer flickered or I got too bored.

That method was crude, but it worked, and I hardly ever set anything on fire. But this is the 21st century, and progress marches on.

I’ve got a new high-technology tool in my anti-draft armamentarium – An electronic thermal leak detector that uses an infrared thermometer and colored lights to show me exactly where my heat is exiting the building. . . . .

More about that gadget in my next installment.

Just to scare the bejeezus out of you.

December 1st, 2011

By Dave Twombly

As you you know my dear readers, my posts typically feature my (often flat) attempts at wit sprinkled with some lighthearted comments.  As a new father, living in Cambridge, I like to share my experiences with you, both from my life and professional experiences. I want you to be entertained as well as educated.

Today, that changes (well, you will still be educated).  I’m taking a different tack.  Gone is the lighthearted post with middling attempts at humor. Today, I’m going to scare the hell out of  you.  Well, those of you who are thinking about becoming parents.

Please take a look at the link below (with thanks to my colleague Ron).

15 Ways Your Home Can Make You Infertile

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20450885,00.html

Hopefully, Lighthearted Dave will be back for the next entry.

 

Baby I’m Amazed… That We Are Still Considering House Hunting

November 17th, 2011

By Dave Twombly


There are many things that come along with having a baby. In addition to the every day amazement that new parents experience (and the sleepless nights, diapers, worrying, joy, humility, etc.) comes, as I mentioned in my previous post, stuff. Lots of stuff. Unfortunately, the stuff has to go somewhere.  Regardless of whether you live in a condo in Cambridge or a mansion in Medford, you’ll notice the place is getting smaller as you accumulate all of that “necessary” stuff. So, it’s time to buy a bigger house.

It was easier in the old (pre-baby) days. Everything was easier. If you wanted to line up a bunch of houses to go check out on a Saturday, you just picked the houses, hopped in the car and went to go find your dream home.  There’s an open house in Cambridge at 11:30 am and another at 2 pm in Arlington Heights?  No problem. We’ll hang out, take our time and grab lunch in between. We’ll make a day of it. Right?

Well my new-parent friends, those days are gone. Finding the house you want just got a wee bit harder.  If you are like me, (and I promise you, it gets easier) it takes at least 45 minutes just to get out of the house. You have to collect all of the items you’ll need to go on this journey to the next town over. Now you have to think about things like “can we make a 2 pm Open House when nap time is usually at 2:30”?  Do we take the baby out of the car seat to go into the house? Do we divide and conquer? What about actually viewing the house?  That car seat gets heavy going up and down those stairs but you’ve gotta see that furnished basement with the Man Cave of your dreams and the master suite in the converted attic with the whirlpool tub.

Now, I know first hand that Grandma isn’t going to be available to watch the baby every weekend a good house comes along that you want to see.  (Wouldn’t it be better if life worked that way?)  So how do you navigate this?  Be exacting and have a good agent.

As you know, the time you have to accomplish things (and that’s anything: laundry, grocery shopping, taking the garbage out) when you have a baby is precious and fleeting. So you have to use it wisely.  When scoping out potential houses to see, remember: Baby don’t like ‘maybe’.  Instead of the four Open Houses, with two houses that you aren’t so sure about but “could” work, stick to the two that look like good matches.  Use a discerning eye. If there is something is on your list of negatives that you see, don’t waste time going in. Head on to the next one.

A good agent should know what your likes, and more importantly dislikes are, and can preview a house for you. You find a perfect listing and your agent previews it realizing that you are going to bump your head going down the stairs for the next 30 years…off the list!  Your agent reports back that the idyllic looking nursery is actually above the garage and knows it will be noisy and cold?  Off the list! The house looks great but your agent points out all of the lead paint with which you are going to have to deal?  (An extremely expensive and time consuming project)  Off the list!

Be precise and make your agent work for you!  You can have a baby AND still find the  right house for you.  It just might be a little harder.

But hey, maybe you have one of those babies who sleeps all the time and will stay knocked out during your entire housing search, rendering this post meaningless!  (Yes, that was me muttering under my breath about how lucky you are).

Decline of in-house sales

November 8th, 2011

by Rona Fischman

As you know, my company only works with buyers because it reduces the conflict of interest that occurs when one agent in an office lists a house that another agent in the office has a buyer who wants to buy it.  It is hard to get the highest price for the seller and the lowest for the buyer at the same time. It must be hard to keep peace in the office.

Inman News is doing a series on dual agency (where the company represents both sides of a transaction — buyer and seller.) The practice is going down. (see chart)  It is going down not because it is bad for consumers, but because it is creating complaints from former clients.

Buyer agency, when it was new, only allowed an agent to call herself a buyer’s agent if she did not work in the same firm as the listing agent for the house the buyer chose. The company could not fully represent both sides. Those were the days when, as a buyer’s agent, I was treated like a leper. Being my dogged self, I made most of them get over it.

The skinny on heating-pipe insulation

November 8th, 2011

Incredible shrinking insulation

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

I’ve been in thousands of basements over the years and I can tell you that a home with well-insulated heating pipes are rare. This winter with oil prices at record highs, it pays more than ever to insulate your heating pipes.

In most homes, the uninsulated heating pipes are just heating the unfinished basement and quietly draining their owners’ wallets.

Last Spring, I replaced my 82-year old boiler, which left me with lots of bare pipes in the basement. So, now I have the chance to make my basement the exception and insulate my pipes.

My favorite insulation is foam tubing – it comes in 3-6 foot lengths and you can just slip it over the pipes, then seal it. You can even buy it pre-glued, to make the sealing process easier. Unfortunately, foam doesn’t stand up well to high temperatures, so it can’t be used for the pipes closest to a boiler and shouldn’t be used at all with the feed pipes of a steam boiler. Those pipes need fiberglass sleeves which is less flammable and won’t shrink at high temperatures.

I went down to my local big-box hardware store and bought some pipe insulation, but when I got home it seemed a bit undernourished. When I compared them to the old insulation from 25 years ago, I found it was half the thickness of the old insulation, and had much less than half the insulating power.

This gaunt insulation may be good for return pipes and cold water pipes, but for the pipes that are the hottest you need better insulation.

I went back to the store to buy some thicker insulation and there wasn’t any on the shelf – and there wasn’t any available on their website. I checked the other big hardware retailer and found the same emaciated pipe covers.

So, I set out to find something better.

I went to my local plumbing supply warehouse and they had fiberglass insulation with a 3/4” wall. Twice the thickness of the store-bought insulation. It cost 50% more, but that seemed like a fair deal, since it supplied more than twice the insulating power.

When I tried to buy thicker foam insulation there, I was disappointed – the thickest they had was 1/2”, not much heftier than what I had bought at the store.

I was able to find better insulation – for smaller pipes, you can get Tundra Plus insulation at www.acehardwareoutlet.com and at some Ace Hardware stores. These foam tubes have walls that are up to 1” thick, though the thickest ones are hard to find.

For the widest selection of sizes, try Grainger at www.grainger.com – they have a vast selection of pipe insulation in many sizes and foam and fiberglass insulation with wall thicknesses of up to an inch. You can order exactly what you need from their website and have it shipped, or pick up within a few days at one of their 400+ branches in the United States.

Winter’s coming for sure. I’ll have more on how to lower your energy bills shortly.

Frugal homeowner tip: City Paint in Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville will give you a $10 gift certificate for any of their stores when you join their mailing list.

A Deluxe Apartment in the Sky

November 3rd, 2011

By Dave Twombly

 

As my loyal readers (all 3 of you) know and those new to the blog do not, we recently moved to a new unit.  We moved way across town, as we like to call it, to suburban North Cambridge (the trials and tribulations of the move are chronicled in earlier posts). Not only did we move across town but we moved on up, just like the Jeffersons.

For the previous 4 years we lived on the first floor of a 2 family building. I loved the access. Moving in was a dream, we had a back porch and yard. I enjoyed the ability to run out to the car if I left something there, easily take out the garbage and recycling and greet guests, or hang out on the front porch, especially on Halloween. It was with trepidation (yeah, Ol’ Dave “I don’t like change” Twombly reared his ugly head) that we decided on this 3rd floor unit.

Now if you are like me, a newish father, all you thought of was “I gotta carry that kid up and down 3 flights of steps.” The thing about babies is they keep growing. As they grow they get heavier and heavier.  And as you new parents know, babies require lots of stuff.  You don’t just pick up the baby and head out the door. You take the diaper bag, the changing pad, a snack, a stroller. Then you get to the car and “oh crap, I forgot her water” (or in my case, it’s my wife telling me I forgot her water).  Now my quick jaunt into the house for (insert forgotten item here) was going to be huffing and puffing up 3 flights of stairs.  And this doesn’t even consider the normal house things like garbage, groceries etc.

But here’s the thing. It’s been great. We love it. The pros of living in the penthouse far outweigh the cons.  Firstly, you don’t have anybody above you.  There is no chance of a neighbor with a collection of clunky shoes that he/she never takes off.  No kids running around all the time (ironic that I say that eh?) or aerobics after work.  There isn’t much street noise and nobody can see into your place from the street. (Walk around in that towel after your shower, it’s okay!)

Neighbors aside, our unit is bathed in light all the time. There is always a sunny spot to enjoy.  Our back porch is private and very serene and it also has a lovely view over the tops of all the houses behind us. In the warm weather we can leave the windows open and enjoy the breeze when we go to sleep (we do live in a city after all and part of the bedtime routine on the first floor was to close and lock all of the windows at night, especially after the kid showed up). And in the cold weather, our downstairs neighbors will be kind enough to share their heat with us.

You also develop strategies for the new challenge. We have a ‘hands full’ policy.  If you are going out and not carrying a baby or baby related item, take some recycling, a bag of garbage, or something else that is to be jettisoned, with you. This way we don’t wind up at 11 pm on a rainy garbage night with 10 bags that need to go out.

So, when you are searching for that new home don’t rule out the top floor condo because you are weary of hiking up and down the stairs. Don’t let that lazy devil on your shoulder whisper into your ear.  I was a afraid, very afraid, but I’m all turned around on the subject now.  We’ve moved on up, to the North side and we really love our piece of the pie.

Sitting on the front porch

October 27th, 2011

Dianne

 

Sitting on the front porch

 

Do you like to sit on your front porch, watching people walk by? Having a chance to chat with your neighbors? Or do you prefer a  private deck in the back of the house. I am a front-porch kind of person, and the front porch of my antique house needed a lot of attention before it was ready to be my favorite seat in the house.

Back to my renovations (link to http://4buyersre.com/dianne-takes-o…on-the-outside): My house looked so much better after we removed the stucco from the exterior of the house.  It had shape, it had architectural details. Then, we realized how bad the front porch looked. The original columns and supports had been removed at a previous time, probably when the stucco was put on the house. The columns had been replaced with plywood boxes used as columns.

We  had the original blueprints of the house, which were passed down from one owner to the next.  The blueprints showed us exactly how the front porch looked when the house was built. The original support columns were round, tapered floor to ceiling.  There had been another railing on the 2nd floor.

Going to  a company that sold “architectural parts” taken from older homes that were collected before or after the building was torn down torn down. They had everything from woodwork, to windows, to stained glass, to hundreds of radiators, doors, and doorknobs; including a giant mahogany bar that had been taken out of a downtown Boston restaurant in its entirety, The place I just described is no longer there, there is a place very similar, in the South End. http://www.restorationresources.com Or http://www.hewnandhammered.com. Even though you can now buy copies of historic millwork at Home Depot or Lowes, going to a place like this is amazing, and the idea of reusing architectural materials in a new way makes me feel good. The little cracks and defects make it look like it belongs to an old house. not something that was added later, so looks too slick. Also, older wood is better. New wood is often green, and rots very quickly. We were unable to find columns that were exactly the right length for our porch but we bought shorter columns and our contractor put them on bases, in a style also appropriate to the house.

 

A few years later I continued the restoration by reproducing the railing at the top of the porch, and removing the brick stairs, and wrought iron railings  that were part of an earlier renovation, and replacing them with wooden stairs. Again, back to the blueprints. From a part of a drawing that was 1”high, the contractor enlarged the drawing and had posts milled to match the original. These posts were used on the top rail, and at the base of the stairs. Due to some of the renovations that had been done to the house in the 20’s the exact rail could not be replicated, but it was as close as we could get it.  After we sold the house the new owners removed this top railing. I always wondered why.

Dual-flush toilets for big water savings

October 25th, 2011

Why two flushing choices are better than one

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

Israel may be the land flowing with milk & honey, but it’s not the land flowing with fresh water. The country faces chronic water shortages, and you can see innovative methods of conserving water everywhere.

On a recent trip there I noticed that almost all the toilets in the country were dual-flush toilets, toilets where you can manually choose the water volume for each flush. You can choose a smaller flush for liquids and paper, or a full flush for solids. There’s usually a round flush button divided into two parts – the larger part for the larger flush, though I’ve seen conventional toilet handles that you lift up for the smaller flush, press down for the larger.

This type of toilet has been around for the last 30 years, but I’ve only rarely seen any in the US. They’re now used universally in Australia and in other water-short countries.

I started to look for dual-flush toilets here and found only a very small selection. Most were expensive and didn’t have many of the more popular toilet features. You can find a good selection from the Australian company, Caroma and a smaller selection from my favorite toilet manufacturer, Toto Toilets.

I also found several dual-flush adapters that allowed you to simply add dual-flush to a conventional toilet.

I installed the Hydroright Dual-Flush adapter on both of my toilets. The conversion kit costs about $20 and is available at most hardware stores.


It’s an ingenious device that replaces the standard flush valve – you just remove the old flapper and handle and install the device over the existing overflow tube (that’s much easier than it sounds – really like replacing a flush valve). You then replace the handle with a new button.

No tools were necessary. The first toilet took me about ½ hour to convert, the second one only five minutes. Their phone support was excellent. They answered my one with a single, short phone call.

It will work with both newer water-saving toilets as well as the old water-wasters.

The full flush with the dual-flush adapter was exactly the same strength as without it.

The first half of the year we were using it, we used about 20% less water than the year before, so this device has already paid for itself several times over. We’ve had them in service for almost a year now, and haven’t had the slightest problem with them.

If you’re really conscientious about using it you can save over 35% of the water you use for flushing. The hard part has really been to get the teenagers in the house to cooperate and hit the right button for the right flush.

Referral Madness

October 21st, 2011

By Dave Twombly

It’s right there in our name, 4 Buyers.  You know who we are for.  We are Buyer’s Agents, representing our clients in the search for their next home. While we do work with many first time homebuyers, believe it or not, oftentimes our clients who are looking to buy a home are also looking to sell a home. As, more often than not we put them in the home they are selling, they turn to us for help. The only catch is that we don’t sell properties. However, we know the folks that do.

Buying a home means that somebody is selling a home.  That means there is an agent representing the seller (in most cases, unless the owner is selling the property themselves). In the process of representing our clients, we get to know the folks on the other side fairly intimately.  We see the good, the bad and the ugly.

We also see the sellers’ agents in the other aspect of their work, marketing and presenting the property. Through the thousands of open houses and showings we’ve been to we’ve seen many things.  We look with a critical eye (some of us with a hyper critical eye). There are agents who are on the ball, ready for your questions or to point out something you might not see. They have taken the time to learn about their client’s property, their client, and things that might interest people looking for a property like that one.  (Kinda sounds like what they should be doing, right?)

Then there is the flip side. Nothing makes me shudder more than walking into a property and seeing the agent texting away on their phone or ignoring me as I walk in. They don’t know if I’m a potential buyer or just scouting a property for a client.  They should be ready for me, treat me as if I am the one who’s going to buy that property.

The only thing that’s worse is the agent that says “Oh, I don’t know, I’m just here covering the open house for another agent” when asked a question.  (You’d be surprised how much you hear that). I always think how I’d react if I was trying to sell my home, paying this person a substantial sum of money to help me through the process and this was how they were representing my property.  My reaction would be something that’s probably not fit to print in this blog.

Why am I going on about this?  Because I love you, dear reader, of course.  But also because if you are selling your home in addition to looking for the next (or has a friend who is), we can help you. We can’t represent you in the sale of your home, but we can help you find the right person to represent you in the sale of your home. This is not a job for just anyone.  You need the right person who’s going to do the work and represent you and your property.  We’ve done the weeding for you and we are happy to share the fruits of our labor.

Social justice, real estate and Fox News

October 17th, 2011

by Rona Fischman

Housing is part of the picture in any discussion about what is wrong with the American economy. Earlier this year, the Boston.com Real Estate Now blog virtual book discussion was on The Big Short, by Michael Lewis. For those of you who missed it, here are the links:

How mortgage finance changed commoditizing mortgage products

How rating systems affected mortgage bond markets

Michael Lewis video about what went wrong on Wall Street

The rhetoric coming out of the Occupy Wall Street protests (and their offshoots in cities throughout the country) is turning toward issues of housing. Although the message of the protests remains intentionally broad, the connection between the lack of affordable housing and the economic injustice in America is loud and clear.

In New York City on Friday, there was a march by housing advocates. David Jones in The Real Deal described the march and quoted one of the leaders, Michael McKee. Mr. McKee has been a tenant advocate working for Tenants Political Action Committee in New York City. The Committee works to elect pro-tenant politicians. Mr. McKee says:

“I do not agree that this is a ragtag movement without a message,” McKee said. “They have identified the problem in this country, they have identified who has the power in this country, it’s not the government, it’s the oligarch’s that own the government.”

In San Francisco, a crowd marched in support of Homeless Action Day. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the march and an occupation of an empty hotel. Although there were no direct demands, the message from the crowd is that they no longer accept that profits are more important than people.

The problem is that we “… just accept the fact that profits are more important than people’s comforts and people’s lives.”

There is a Fox News poll regarding the Wall Street Occupation going on right now. Even at that conservative site, the poll indicates that 68 percent (at the time of this writing) of respondents chose:

“Yes. These folks are right about corporate greed and what’s happening to the little guy.”

Fox continues to cover the protests as it passes its one month mark.

Do you see housing as an economic justice issue? Are you mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore? Do you support the Wall Street Occupation? Do you think housing is part of the anger out there? Is housing being talked about enough?

Mr. Twombly’s Neighborhood

October 6th, 2011

By Dave Twombly

 

What is the first criterion you consider when you are just getting started in your home search? Most likely, it’s the location or the neighborhood.  You want to live in a place where you feel comfortable and that has the characteristics you desire. These considerations are specific to you and your family, of course.  There might be many different neighborhoods that fit what you want, but how can you tell?

As you know, we are a young family that just moved.  Typically I grow attached to the neighborhood I’m in (I guess I’ve been lucky in that regard) and am resistant to leaving it.  When we started our search for our next home, I wanted to stay in our Mid Cambridge neighborhood. I thought our location had everything we wanted. We could walk to everything we needed. There were two supermarkets, each within a 10-15 minute walk.  We could walk to more restaurants then you could shake a stick at.

Pharmacies, convenience stores and public transportation were all also just 10-15 minutes away. Heck, we even had a fire station close by, our daughter’s pediatrician was right around the corner and the hospital was at the end of our block. (Funny, you don’t think or care about these things when you are single or pre-child.  Then you are reassured by them when you finally have the kid). When we were discussing our move, I wondered how could I possibly live without all of these things?  I was sure that we needed to stay in our present neighborhood and I didn’t see any other way.

Yet, a funny thing happens when you start actually looking at new properties. Regardless of whether your search is for an apartment, a condo or a single family you realize that location costs money!  You make a list of everything that you want in your location (in my case, what we already had) and plug them into your search.  You realize that if you find every last thing you want, it’s going to cost you! What we found for the money four years ago no longer existed, even in today’s terrible economy. We couldn’t afford what we presently had, where we had it.  So our search expanded to neighborhoods with which I wasn’t overly familiar.

How do you know if a neighborhood is right for you, particularly when you are not familiar with it?  When looking to buy a place, most likely it’s not feasible to test a neighborhood for a year and then decide (I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to buy a place as a test case then sell a year or so later).  Sure you can go knocking door to door in hopes of interviewing your future neighbors (but that also doesn’t sound like a lot of fun or too practical).

We found a property that worked for us (and that we could afford) but I wasn’t sure of the neighborhood.  I didn’t see the conveniences that we had loved so much in our old place.  (And staying in our old place wasn’t an option.) So, we spent time in the neighborhood and visited it often.

We hung out in the neighborhood at different times of the day. We drove in and around it extensively. We researched police blogs regarding crime and the sex offender list (yes, a little macabre but necessary when you have a child).  We got out and walked all around and took note of what we saw. In addition to simply looking at the condition of the properties around us, we looked at who was in the neighborhood. We noticed lots of baby carriages and toys in the parks (we also noticed lots of parks).  We noticed the spacing around each property. I looked at the height of the buildings, finding larger lots with mostly two story houses, which meant lots of sunlight in our neighborhood on the whole as well as in our property. We took the train out to the nearest T stop to note the commute (something that was important to us).

All of this might seem like a no brainer, something that perhaps you would automatically do. But looking for a new property is an emotional thing and it’s easy to overlook important details: did you notice those train tracks half a block away? Can you park on both sides of the street? Do most houses in the ‘hood have driveways, meaning that on-street parking will be easy for you? This process can be time consuming, but in our case it paid off.  The new neighborhood, while lacking things I originally thought were essential, is awesome. My wife’s commute is a breeze (although we are farther out on the train line, our closer proximity to the train station makes it a wash), the area is quiet and we’ve found shops we use that aren’t far away (bonus– the store closest to us sells beer!). A neighborhood I didn’t initially consider has quickly become a neighborhood I love.

A River Runs Through It

September 29th, 2011

By Dave Twombly

 

In Stephen King’s classic film (and one of my favorites) The Shawshank Redemption the denouement occurs when the main character, Andy Dufresne, escapes prison and a tyrant warden. He’d tunneled through the wall of his cell and then escaped by breaking open the sewer pipe.  If you have seen the film, you’ll recall that he crawled through, as the narrator says, “500 hundred yards of smelling foulness that I can’t even imagine. Or maybe I don’t want to.”   Unfortunately for me, unlike the narrator, I can imagine it.  I had a pond of that foulness in my basement.

For me, one of the joys of living in Cambridge is its history.  If the ultra-modern, new construction type places aren’t your cup of tea, then living in Cambridge or most places in the Boston area affords you the opportunity to live in classic old buildings.  One hundred year old buildings are a dime a dozen around here.  They are quaint, stylish and often well constructed (they’ve been standing for a hundred years).  One drawback, however, is they often have old plumbing (and wiring, but we’ll get to that another day).

Whether you live in a multiunit condo building (Cambridge is full of triple deckers) or a single family, you have a large (about 6 inch diameter) pipe that connects your house to the main city sewer that runs down your street.  All waste and wastewater from your house, from the toilets, sinks and showers to the appliances, run through this main pipe.  (Think about your overall water usage, there’s a lot going through there).  When your hundred year old house was constructed, cast iron was the material of choice (nowadays the pipes are PVC).   The pipes were cut into relatively short sections and joined to make the required length. The joined pieces were sealed with cement.  Over 100+ years, cement deteriorates allowing thirsty, hungry little tree roots to snake their way into the pipe.  If you think about what’s going through those pipes you’ll realize that there is a ton of fertilizer. Perfect for a hungry tree.

At our place, when they removed the pipe and replaced it (which called for an excavator, heavy equipment and a police officer on detail–lots of fun to watch from your 3rd floor unit with your one year old), there was essentially a Brillo Pad of tree roots in the pipe.  This 6 inch pipe had 5 inches of roots filling it up.  The only thing that could get through the mess by this point was shower water (once again, think of everything that goes through that drain, especially in a condo building with multiple units).

Why am I telling you this?  Simply because I love each an every one of you.  Also because I don’t want you to go through what we did.  We had a stench that reminded me of a PortaPotty on Day 3 of Woodstock (okay, so I wasn’t there, you get the metaphor) that crept up three floors from the basement to our unit.  We had to remove everything from the basement (not a pleasant undertaking given the circumstances) so the plumbers could fix the pipes in the building and the cleaners could decontaminate and clean the floors, walls and stairs.  For the second time in two weeks I had to haul boxes up three flights of stairs (I thought we were done with that!).

So, whether you are just getting started in home ownership or you’ve lived in your condo for years, if you don’t know if your sewer pipes have been replaced since 1920, get your condo association to have a plumber come check out the health of your pipes by snaking a camera through them.  (It will cost you a few hundred bucks).  If you have an old, cast iron pipe to the street, get your association to start putting away your pennies now (this is a big job, in the $15,000 – $20,000 range).   With an old pipe, replacing it will be inevitable. Cleaning out the pipe by cutting back the roots growing inside every few years is only putting lipstick on a pig.  By taking these proactive measures you can prevent having a river of filth and disgustingness, and everything that’s associated with it, from running through your basement.

Playing catchup on home improvement

September 21st, 2011

fooling the eye, myself and my neighbors

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

The first few cool days of Autumn send me into a panic. I made so many grand plans for home improvement projects over the summer, and now summer is running out, and I’ve only done . . .  well, not too many of them.

I have to prioritize my list, and get to as many of the projects as I can before the weather makes them impossible to do.

Always at the top of the revised list is fixing up and painting the front doorway. If your doorway is well-maintained, you may be able to fool others into thinking that the rest of the house is also in great condition.

We have an old doorway and some of the wood surrounding it is rotting, so it’s been a challenge to keep paint on it. When I stripped the door a few years ago I found that over the years it had been Kelley Green, black, Hamilton Blue, orange and red. My wife tells me that red is the color of a welcoming door in Scandinavia, so our door has been red for the last few years, so we can welcome as many Scandinavians as possible.

First, I touched up the door. Two big construction projects involving moving large porcelain fixtures into the house and many smaller careless collisions have covered the door with chipped paint. Take out the paintbrush and the old can of door paint and in a few minutes your door looks good as new. Wow. That looks great. Vast expanses of unbroken red door catch my eye as I come up the stairs. If I focus only on the door, the house looks beautiful.

It’s a very satisfying job for very little effort. While I was at it, I did the back door, too, so we can welcome Scandinavians there.

Next, I tackled the front door threshold. This has always been a problem. In the winter the six residents of my house walk over it with boots covered with water and salt, and by the summer it’s in rough shape. This fall, I’m trying for a more permanent solution. I stripped the entire threshold, dried it out, primed it with two coats of primer and painted it black with my favorite paint, Benjamin Moore Aura Exterior. This paint is very expensive, but worth it.

I got a semi-gloss paint so I could do other woodwork, too, so I added Skid Tex which is a pumice that makes the dried paint grainy and prevents slips and falls. I’m very hopeful that this combination will hold up for more than one winter. I’ll let you know how it did next Spring.

When you come to my house, please keep your eyes focused straight ahead at the door, and pay not attention to all the other disrepair behind the curtain.

Next job on my panic list: Repoint the front stairs? Or perhaps replace a few more windows before it gets too cold?  Paint the downstairs porch?

I’ll let you know as soon as I know.

Rona chatted live for Boston.com

September 19th, 2011

Twice a year or so, the Boston Globe asks me to chat live with readers. Today, I did my Fall Chat. Timely topics included:

What to do if you are buying in a low inventory area.

What to do if you are selling in a poor demand area.

What does the real estate market look like in the near future?

What are the typical expenses to buy a house, including mortgage and extraneous costs?

How do I find out if a lot is buildable?

If you want to know more about any of these topics, you questions are welcome at 4buyersre@gmail.com

 

 

What If You Don’t Have Fences?

September 15th, 2011

by Dave Twombly

 
 

In his poem “Mending Wall” Robert Frost’s neighbor says “good fences make good neighbors”. But what if you don’t have a fence separating “what’s yours” from “what’s theirs”? What if you live in a space where things are “ours” and you have to share your perfect little piece of the pie? Clearly, Frost’s neighbor didn’t live in age of condos.

When out searching for your condo, particularly if you are looking for a young family, it’s important to remember that the space, while yours, is not all your own. Sure, you already know about condo fees (Homeowner’s Association fees, or HOAs in the listings) that cover maintenance, common areas and create a fund for big projects like new roofs and siding. But do you know who is sharing that space with you?

In a January 2011 issue of The Boston Globe Magazine there was an article about condo nightmares entitled “Home Sweet Hell: Falling into the Condo Trap”. The article highlighted stories of condo owners in small associations (mostly 2 unit associations) where one owner controlled 50% or more of the association, rendering the other owner powerless in any and all decision making.

Folks who seemed perfectly neighborly upon moving in became terrors with whom these new owners had to share space. And the owners with the smaller percentage simply had to grin and bear it. (And continue to do so through their attempts to sell their places to others who were wisely less interested in the smaller percentage of decision-making)

I have friends who recently put an offer on a condo in a 3 unit association. It seemed to have 3 separate owners, leaving ultimate control to no one person in particular. Upon further inspection however, my friends learned that two of the three units were owned by a husband and wife team with different last names. The pulled their offer and dodged a potential bullet.

What can you do? How can you protect yourself? Do your homework! Look to see who actually owns what. Find out with whom you share walls in your dream condo. Is your next door neighbor a drummer in a Death Metal band whose only free time to practice is between midnight and 3am? Does your future neighbor disagree with your views on composting, recycling and using green materials? Get your hands on condo docs and have your attorney examine them closely. Will the association allow your pet potbelly pig?

Further, you should talk to as many folks in the building association as possible. Look to see how the association actually functions (hoping that it does function). Talk to neighbors in nearby properties — they are not as intimately involved and may well have informative and helpful opinions. Ask yourself: have you thoroughly examined all of the common spaces? Don’t just fall in love with your unit and forego the rest (“hmmm…should those oily rags and blasting caps be stored right next to the furnace?”).

Sure, I know that all of this seems rudimentary and like common sense. But as we always say around the Ol’ 4 Buyers office, “buying a home is an emotional process”. When you stumble into the space of your dreams, shared or not, it’s easy to overlook the important yet less romantic issues that can impact your life, potentially for the next 30 years. It’s important to be unemotional and Do Your Homework or have someone with no emotional tie to the space think of these things for you.

In praise of aluminum siding

September 13th, 2011

who knew you could paint it?

by Ron Rothenberg, 4 Buyers Real Estate

When I bought my home it was covered in 30 year-old aluminum siding. The home inspector warned me that soon the powdery paint would rub off and the gray aluminum would show through, along with the prints of every oily finger that ever touched it and that I might soon wish to replace the siding.

That was 25 years ago.

Today, the siding is still going strong, protecting my home from the elements, requiring absolutely no maintenance except an occasional wash with soap and water.

For 50 years, it didn’t even have to be painted.

Lately, parts of it are looking even better, because I painted it.

Before you think about painting your siding, get a lead test kit and test the paint. It’s very unlikely that it contains lead, but if it does then this is a job for a pro.

To get started, wash the siding really well. Some painters recommended TSP and a power washer, but the power washer just forced a lot of water behind the siding, and did a mediocre job of cleaning. I did fine washing it twice with water, dish detergent, a mildly abrasive sponge and lots of elbow grease.

Make sure that you get all the powdery paint off – if you run your finger roughly over the surface your finger should stay clean and not turn the color of your siding.

When dry, I primed the surface with Benjamin Moore All-Purpose Latex Primer. I chose it because it is a latex primer that contains very little ammonia. Ammonia is an ingredient in most latex paints that will react with oxidized aluminum and cause tiny gas bubbles that can ruin your paint job. Many of the newer eco/green paints have even less ammonia. AFM Safecoat advertises an ammonia-free primer.

After priming, let wait for 3-4 days for the primer to bond fully with the siding, particularly if there are bare spots.

For the finish coats, I used Benjamin Moore Moorglo SoftGloss paint, though you can use any good exterior paint. Today, I’d probably use their Aura exterior paint.

The paint did dry with a lovely soft gloss making the siding look brand new, but it did leave small visible brush strokes, which added a bit of texture to an otherwise sterile siding, which I liked. If you don’t like brush strokes, try adding Flood’s Floetrol additive, which slows the drying of the paint and allows it time to level itself.

All of the areas I painted four years ago still look like new if you wash them down with soap and water. There are no bubbles, no peeling, no wearing, just smooth expanses of beautiful white aluminum.

The newly-painted parts of my home’s exterior now look great.

I know that in 10 years or so I will have to repaint the siding, just as if it were wood.

I don’t like heights and I don’t like ladders. I started painting the house at the bottom and worked my way up, so if you pass by a house with a marvelous-looking bottom half and an older-looking top half, it’s probably mine. I suggest that you paint one side of your house at a time.

If there’s any kind soul out there who would like to paint the top half of my house, I’d gladly paint the bottom half of yours.
 

-rsr-

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On the World Trade Center

September 12th, 2011

I remember when the buildings of the World Trade Center in New York City went up. There used to be a fruit market on that site. It was sort of like Haymarket.  We used to stop there on a weekend to get fruit. I remember huge oranges and a friendly guy with an accent who used to tease me that his apples were bigger than my head. Then it was gone. Then there was the Trade Center.

My brother worked on the electrical crew for at the World Trade Center in New York City for 14 years. His office was on basement level 6.  The basements in that building went real deep.

He was there in February, 1993,  when the first terrorist attack occurred there. Is there anyone who still doesn’t know that September 11th was the second attack on that building?

To celebrate the year 2000 — there was a big peace display in the courtyard.  Ironic, yes?

As a member of I.B.E.W. Local 3 my brother was at the Labor Day Parade on the weekend before the airplanes were used to destroy the buildings. My nieces were with him on September 8, 2011; they had no idea that would be their last time at those buildings.

My family always had some history with the World Trade Center. We loved the fruit market there, then my brother tended the building for years.

I spoke to my brother this weekend after he attended this year’s Labor Day Parade. He wandered the area around “ground zero” and reflected on how much of his adult professional life was attached to the World Trade Center. He, truly, lost a piece of himself when those towers fell.

I am currently writing a book on real estate. One of my themes involves learning to ignore sales jargon about “home.” A house is a building; it is the life that is lead there that makes it a home. On closing day, the house is a house even if it was someone else’s home the week before. The house-ness goes away with the previous owner.

Conversations like the one I had with my brother this weekend reminds me that he had a long professional life in a building that millions of Americans now feel attached to. What is the quality of that attachment for people who never stepped foot in the World Trade Center?  It is hard for me to really understand it, because I have a history there. I was not equally moved to remember the bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.  Why is that? There was no big, national ten-year moment of silence on April 19, 2005 to remember that an office building — including a daycare center – was bombed in as a political statement in Oklahoma in 1995.

Back to my book topic. Am I just wrong to think that I can encourage people to be more detached and rational when buying a house?

Huzzah for a Responsible Landlord

September 8th, 2011

by Dave Twombly

As promised in my last post, this is being written from my new Cambridge apartment.  Sitting at the kitchen table (yes, I have a table in the kitchen now!) on the top floor of a wonderfully maintained building, I want to repeat that phrase, ‘wonderfully maintained’.  It still makes me giddy.  Neither of these words could be used about my previous apartment. One could barely use the word ‘maintained’ in conjunction with the apartment. That is, of course, aside from the sweat my wife and I put into the place.

From the first time I saw the new property I could tell there was something different.  My old apartment was on a street of million dollar houses (which isn’t rare in Cambridge)  yet was an eyesore on the block. It featured a porch badly in need of painting, siding that was discolored and stained and a small front garden that hadn’t been loved or cared for in over a year.  The new place almost sparkled.  A lovely color with a nicely painted foundation.  Nice plantings around the building, a fenced in yard (that didn’t feature a gate falling off its hinges) that was nicely trimmed.  The apartment itself was in  great shape (I’ll spare you the details of our old place).

Our first meeting with the landlord was great.  While she was reserved at first, feeling us out, we talked about our family, who we were and what we were  looking for. Yes, we met personally with our landlord. This, to us, was extremely important. When living in a shared space whether it’s a condo or rental (more on this in future postings) I feel it’s important to KNOW who shares that space with you. In a rental it’s important to KNOW the person whose property you are living in.  As per my previous post, she actually welcomed a young family with a small child.

As we got closer to and then signed the lease, we found the landlord more than willing to hire, and pay for, a painter to repaint the new place.  In our last place we painted the space ourselves and were reimbursed for the paint. As new parents with a 1 year old daughter crawling all over the place, painting the new apartment ourselves was not an option. Further, upon starting to move in we found the landlord here, replacing the washing machine.  Finally once we got into the space we emailed her a list of fixes that needed to happen. She promptly arranged to have everything repaired (within a matter of days).  Yes, this all sounds fairly standard and run of the mill.  And it should be.  But that’s not always the case. For 4 years we lived in a space where the fixes were ours, not done professionally, or just not addressed at all.  This is a much better way.

The moral of this post?  It’s important to know what you are getting into.  It’s easy to overlook or ignore problems when you are right out of college or living with roommates in a place that is not your own.  Once you are part of a young family and have a space that is your home (be it condo, rental, teepee in the yard or a van down by the river), the tolerance for the broken and unfixed lessens.  Having responsible landlords, condo associations or property managers are of the utmost import.  Do your homework, meet those responsible face to face and ask your future neighbors.  The little effort now will make your life that much better later.

We are giddy to be in the new space.

I believe in real estate karma

September 6th, 2011

I believe in real estate karma. Do you? I have seen it over and over. Here is the happy ending to a hard house-hunt:

The home was a small Colonial on a quiet street. It was being sold by an elderly woman, with the help of her children. My buyers found out that they were one degree of separation from their neighbors on both sides. They attended the neighborhood block party ten days before closing. They heard about how nice the seller’s family was and how they miss the seller. This was a happy home where a happy family grew up. After 47 years, it was time for the seller to move on. My buyers found home!

The closing was what my colleague Hilda used to call a “love fest.” The buyers liked and admired the seller; the seller seemed fond of the buyers. The seller got tearful, so did the seller’s son. So did the buyers. They were happy tears. Papers were signed and the torch was past.

One of my readers wrote me privately when the blog was talking about bidding wars. I told him that when my clients who lose a house or two in competition, they always seem to end up with a better one, later. I believe that things work out for the best in these situations. He was cynical.

Are you a believer, or are you cynical?

Did you lose a property in competition and regret it forever, or did it turn out to be the right thing to happen? Did your closing become a “love fest?” Owners, what is your advice for buyers who find themselves outbid? Should they despair, or do you agree that a better house or deal will appear, if they persevere?

Some days I love my job…

Mold is worse than water!

August 29th, 2011


Fish and visitors stink after three days — attributed to Ben Franklin. So will your house, if you let mold start to grow. Don’t let Irene leave her smell behind.

We are not expected to see rain for the rest of the week, so you have a good opportunity to get your house dry before mold gets a chance to grow.

The EPA says:

When water leaks or spills occur indoors – ACT QUICKLY. If wet or damp materials or areas are dried 24-48 hours after a leak or spill happens, in most cases mold will not grow.

Mopping-up standing water is just the first step. You need to get all the wood, plaster or wall-board in your house completely dry. You need to throw away or completely dry any porous material that got wet (this includes paper, fabric, cardboard… anything that is not metal, plastic or glass.) If the surface of non-porous material is dry, you can leave it.

Do not just “air dry” areas that got wet in the hurricane. Open the windows. Run fans. Run dehumidifiers when the windows are closed. Don’t stop until it is dry all the way through, not just on the surface.

If you are still bailing out from major flooding, I am sorry for your misfortune. When you get the water out, don’t neglect this final step. The sooner the better. A fully dry house is your best defense against mold.

If you are still without power at home, open the windows and take wet items (like curtains and suitcases) outside to dry. Begin the drying-out as best you can.

Good luck everyone. Don’t let the mold win!

Look before you leap into a new mortgage

August 23rd, 2011

With interest rates dropping to around four percent, I am getting a flurry of questions about refinancing. Interest rates are expected to stay low for more than a year. So, my general advice is to look before you leap.

Refinancing is not as good a deal as you may think. In January, 2009 at BREN, I outlined how refinancing can set back your long-term financial goals. If you refinance, but do not shorten your loan term (go from a 30-year to a 30-year), you are adding more payments to the end of your loan.

Quick math:
You borrowed $300,000 at five percent two years ago. Your monthly principal and interest is $1610 a month. You have paid $38,640 toward principal and interest over the past two years and $14,388 went toward principal, the other $24,252 went to interest.

The $285,612 you now owe would cost you $1533 a month without any change to your interest rate. You have added 24 more payments to the end of the loan. That’s $36,792 to save $77 a month. ($77 times 360 payments is $27,720.) That is obviously not worth it. You also have to add in closing costs, which can be thousands of dollars.

If you can get your rate down to four percent, the monthly payment goes down to $1364. You reduce your payments by $246 a month, and add $32,736 to your thirty-year payments. ($246 times 360 is $88,560.) That’s worth it.

There are more good reasons to refinance, even if you can’t afford to go to a shorter loan:

Cash flow: Paying less on mortgage every month gives you more money in your pocket for other spending. There is a value to money in your pocket. It may be needed for basic needs; it may be helpful in times of unemployment or underemployment. You can invest it. You can save it for a rainy day. Inflation will make your money worth less later.

You are likely to sell before you get to the end of the mortgage: For younger buyers who expect a trade-up or relocate in the future, this is especially true.
Most people do not stay in one home for 30 years. I generally advocate buying for the long term. I have a higher than typical number of clients who get to the end of their mortgage. Most of the people who have owned longer have enough equity to refinance now with little difficulty. They are also the ones that lose the most if they increase their loan term too much.

The other thing to be concerned about is your equity position. The reason: in order to refinance, they will have to buy PMI (mortgage insurance to cover loan), if they no longer have 20 percent equity. Owners who bought near peak or borrowed against equity along the road, may have dropped below that 20 percent mark.

Because of 80 percent loan limits to avoid PMI, a refinanced loan could cost more on a monthly basis. Owners don’t have to be under water to be too undercapitalized to refinance. They need to have a 20 percent equity share in the house to avoid PMI cost.

If you are thinking about refinancing, my advice is to get an idea of your equity. Call or write your agent. We will be able to give you a rough guess about what your house will appraise for.

The Joys of Searching for a Rental

August 19th, 2011

By Dave Twombly

Dave Twombly is moving! Here’s the story:

Maybe you are like us. A young(ish) family, new to parenthood, realizing that it’s time to move. Your once great apartment, convenient to everything, is now too small, not aging well, or not what you deem safe for your newest roommate. Or worse, perhaps your neighbors, or landlords (or both in one) are not good at being either of those things. You decide it’s time to move.

There is something exciting about starting a search to find new place to live. It’s fun to get into new spaces, see different layouts, explore new neighborhoods and try to picture yourself living here or there. We started our search for a new apartment with the typical excitement. We didn’t have a lease, which gave us freedom to move at any time, I had knowledge of the market and spaces (as this is my profession) and an eagerness to see what was out there. Being a Cantabridgian, I decided to take a grassroots approach. I posted signs in the neighborhoods I wanted to live in (you laugh, but this has worked for me before). I called an old landlord (now friend) to have her put the word out in her neighborhood. I posted on Craigslist singing our praises about how good we are as tenants. I soon learned there was an X Factor I hadn’t dealt with in previous apartment searches. I call her my daughter.

A law that was designed to protect my daughter against harmful lead paint had the opposite effect. When contacting rental agents (who dominate Craigslist and warrant a blog entry all on their own) and explaining who we were and what we were looking for, I had a callback rate of about 2%. Nobody dared talk to the guy with the kid under 6. The lead law requires that landlords de-lead their apartments (an extremely expensive undertaking) for families with children under 6. Landlords, in all but a few rare instances not allowed to discriminate against families with children and rental agents are never allowed to discriminate on their behalf. (I even got into an email ‘debate’ on this topic with a rental agent telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, with a smattering of condescension. The MA Commission Against Discrimination agreed with me and I told the agent so. The debate ended when he called me up screaming and referred to me as something not fit for print. Realtor on Realtor crime. Which is against the NAR code of ethics). The easy work around for rental agents is simply to ignore families with children. That’s what happened to us.

My joy and eagerness quickly dissipated as I realized the pool of places we could live and shrunk drastically. Further, the pool of places that we could live and that I would actually consider moving my family into, was now miniscule. As the final straw, my currently landlord told us that she wanted us to sign a lease (after 3 years of not having one) and raise our rent. We were not willing to pay more for a place in need of major repair. Now, the clock was ticking and real pressure was on. We went from ‘wanting’ to move, to ‘having’ to move. Fortunately we made a connection via friends who had recently bought a place (using one of your favorite bloggers as their Buyer’s Agent.) We were able to find a family friendly apartment in a quiet neighborhood that’s in much better shape than our current apartment. Most importantly, we were able to work directly with the landlord and didn’t have to deal with (or pay) a rental agent.

These are just some of the issues that come along with the rental game. It ain’t always fun.
The next blog entry will be written from my new home. Provided I can find my computer in one of the many, many boxes.

Dianne takes on ugliness on the outside

August 16th, 2011

by Dianne Schaefer

After taking on the dark green wallpaper, we turned our attention to ugliness on the outside of the house.

Renovating the exterior is a much larger task. The house was three stories, four in the back because the land sloped down. The house was covered with stucco, which had been repaired in places with big blobs that looked like the “Jolly Green Giant” had thrown mud at it.

We had learned from neighbors that there were the original clapboards under the stucco. We pulled off some stucco on the non-visible side of the house, and yes, it was true.

We hired a contractor to remove the stucco. This was purely manual labor, two men with crowbars, and 3 dumpster loads. Stucco is put on a house (like vinyl siding) over the original siding. There were three layers, one tarpaper, with thin layer of smoother cement, a layer of metal lath, and then the final layer of rough stucco. The stucco was so thick that it stuck out beyond the window casings. All the architectural details of the house were hidden. Each day a new section of the house emerged, like the ugly duckling was becoming a swan. It was an amazing transformation. People driving by could not believe it.

In the end we only had to replace about ten percent of the clapboards were water damaged and had to be re-placed. When you look at an old house covered with siding, and the siding looks like it does not belong, imagine what might be underneath.

Market. Summer 2011

August 11th, 2011

This summer, the main-stream media was giving a loud and clear message that this is a great time to buy.
Steve Harney listed the many sources that make arguments for why it is a great time to buy. Readers who want to know these reasons should follow these links:


The Wall Street Journal

CBS Money Watch

Forbes Magazine

National Public Radio

Price are down, some. Interest rates are great for those qualified to borrow. But don’t expect to see me in a short skirt with pompoms anytime soon. This is a better time than the mid-zeros. But it hasn’t turned me into a cheerleader. Since the July cheerleading, the National economic picture has gotten more confusing. Until we see the fallout from the focus on deficit instead of the focus on jobs creation, it will not be clear whether we will see growth ahead or another recession.

From where I sit, CBS Moneywatch is wrong that “this this may be a once in a generation buyer’s market.” Around here, I am not even seeing a buyer’s market. National trends do not translate to the area right around Boston. I am not seeing a buyer’s market at all. CNN Money describes a picture of the Boston area market that more describes what I have been seeing.

The Boston metro area was one of the first to be caught up in the housing boom and prices and sales volume peaked there earlier…with little space to expand, Boston tends to have higher prices than average and they have declined but not collapsed in the bust.
Since the end of the bull housing market, Greater Boston home prices have lost about 17% of their peak, a modest comedown compared with the national median of a 32% drop…

…listings have dropped this spring compared with last March. Demand is also healthy; the median time that a home has been on the market is about 130 days, according to Move.com. Sellers…raising the median asking price for area listings 3% in March, month-over-month.

The Boston area market is better than some: it has resiliency, it has a high-paying job base, many people come here for college and think well of the area — that keeps demand high. But there is not one perfect time to buy.

If the articles at the top convince you to consider buying now, my bottom line remains the same: there are good choices for qualified buyers in most markets, the so-called “good” and the so-called “bad.” The best moment to buy is when buying creates an asset that is has utility for your family for the long term. Your stock and bond investments go up and down, too, but you don’t live in them.

Meet Dianne (and her old house)

August 8th, 2011

Hi, I am Dianne Schaefer. Part of the experience I bring to 4 Buyers Real Estate is from the years when I owned an antique house near Boston. If you have questions about old houses, I may have the answer. You can send me questions, anytime at Dianne@4BuyersRE.com .

A number of years ago we purchased a big Victorian house. We were charmed by the beautiful woodwork, and learned that a lumber merchant had built the house. Every room was a different wood. This led us us to overlook some of the more serious issues, but we were young, and naïve.

We began with a seemingly simple task of removing the dark green wallpaper that covered the entire downstairs, a job that did not require special expertise, just a steamer and lot of family to help. Of course as with anything in an old house it was not as simple as it looked. The walls were all made of horsehair plaster. Horsehair plaster was used in houses of this period (1890’s) as hors hair was plentiful. The horsehairs held the plaster together when it was pressed onto wooden lath behind it. The lath is narrow strips of wood about ½ inch apart, the plaster was pressed through this, and that is what held it. Age makes the plaster starts to break off and pull away from the lath, making big bumps in the plaster that are difficult to repair. We decided to keep the old walls, bumps and all, after all, it was almost 100 years old.

Removing the wallpaper, repairing the walls, and painting the walls – not to mention washing the windows made an amazing transformation, using only sweat equity and the cost of paint.

The lesson for buyers: Do not overlook houses with unattractive wall paper, it could be a hidden gem.

Reading Stats

August 4th, 2011

My father worked for the New York Post in distribution (Did you ever wonder how newspapers got to those little kiosks in New York City? That was my Dad!) He’d read all the daily papers and compare the stories on the train coming home. He called it “comparing the lies.” We’d discuss them over dinner.
Early in my tenure at Boston.com Real Estate Now (BREN), I saw a perfect example of bad writing leading readers in the wrong direction. It was this AP article on housing, titled Pending home sales index falls 3.5%

I feel grateful for being taught how to read a newspaper. My father taught me:

When faced with statistics, read the entire article before looking at the numbers. Figure out what is relevant to you. Then, look at the figures and try to understand their logic. In this article, I do not even need to understand the economic information because I can read what is relevant to me, — and to you, the buying public – a little more than halfway down the page:

“Pending home sales rose in the West and Northeast, the association said, but fell in the South and Midwest.” Anyone who read just the headline or the first half of the article got the entirely wrong idea of what is happening in the Northeast (and West.)
Economic “news” is poorly written for those who do not read the whole article. The headline says down, the local news is that it is up. That’s not the only problem. Sales volume (how many houses changed hands) and sales price are often mixed up in real estate reporting. Readers need to discern whether volume or price is being discussed.

In this case, the stats are about sales volume (number of pending sales) not price. When sales volume goes up or down, it indicates a problem with either the amount of supply or the amount of demand. Whether volume goes up or down is not a predictor of price unless you understand why sales volume is changing. If it is changing because of low demand, prices may soon be going down. If it is changing because of low supply, prices may soon be going up.
Get it? If not, ask questions. If you get it, you can ask other questions!

Meet Dave

August 1st, 2011

Hello friends and fans! Today, meet Dave Twombly. He’s the newest member of the 4 Buyer’s team:

“Who am I? Why am I here?” That’s what Independent candidate Admiral James Stockdale asked during the Vice Presidential debate in 1992. While that line seemingly ended his political career, it seems like a good place for me to start.

I’m a life-long lover of houses. One of my earliest memories is looking through the Luxury Homes and Estates section of the New York Times Magazine on Sundays while everybody was reading the paper. The son of an architectural historian, I was toted to Frank Lloyd Wright buildings before I could talk (my picture even shows up in a biography of Wright), taken to Europe to see great works of public spaces, and would take Sunday drives looking at the big houses in my hometown. In college, I’ve made a pilgrimage to way Western Pennsylvania to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, Fallingwater. It’s safe to say I’ve always had a love of buildings, spaces and property. It’s this love that has brought me to a second stint in the world of real estate. Having once dabbled in the world of rentals I’m back to work on the other (better?) side of the industry, helping people to navigate the complex waters of buying the right home.

While the rental world suited me at the time (I was young, single, footloose and fancy free) the world of the buyer’s agent makes more sense now. As a married man and new father, I understand the difficulty of outgrowing spaces, issues with renting and wanting to secure a piece of the dream in which your family can put down roots. I’ve been through the process myself searching, but not finding, the space for us. I understand how difficult, emotional, and sometimes draining this process can be. I plan on using my 15 years of sales and customer service experience to make this process easier on you.
We answered the “Why am I here?” now for the “Who am I?” (Unlike Stockdale, I don’t need to turn my hearing aid on!)I was born and raised in a small suburb of NYC (some folks call it New Jersey) but early on decided I wanted to live in Cambridge, MA (cross one goal off my list). I love the mixture of suburban streets (like where I grew up) and urban convenience. I can’t believe that I’ve been in the Boston area for close to 20 years now.

I’ve worked in customer service/sales jobs my entire life, building longstanding relationships with the folks I’ve worked with. I have former clients from 10+ years ago who are still friends. This is something that I’m starting to experience in this real estate world too. Cooking is my main source of entertainment. Well it used to be. Most days now, I can be found chasing a nearly 1 year old girl around the apartment, trying to make sense of who she is and what she’s about (I think I just heard some parents out there sigh “good luck with that!”) All while trying to teach her to love the same things her mom and I do (the blues, the Red Sox, sleeping, reading and not taking life too seriously).

I feel that all of this has led me to the world of buyer agency and 4Buyers Real Estate. Let the games begin.

4 Buyers is for buyers

July 20th, 2011

About the new 4 Buyers Real Estate blog

This is a blog for our friends and fans. Unlike the Boston.com Real Estate Now, where Rona has been writing since 2007, this is not a spectator site. We are hoping to create an informative environment for buyers and owners to learn about the market and share advice. Over the years, we have been blessed with a steady stream of smart, interesting buyers. We are hoping they will join the discussion as we look at the good, the bad and the ugly of local real estate.

This blog will have the voices of all my staff, not just me.

Welcome. You can set us up on RSS feed [link to website page] or join our FaceBook Fan page. [link to fan page]