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Elizabeth Weintraub
Use Neutral Colors When Home Selling in Sacramento
A reader from The Balance homebuying website wrote yesterday. She was clear that she had written to me previously and seemed a bit perplexed that I had not yet answered her inquiry, which I had not received. She had a “very important question.” She and her husband had been engaged in “repeated discussions” regarding the color of the walls for their mother’s home. They were preparing the home for sale and could not agree on which colors constitute neutral colors when home selling. She did not understand the word “neutral.”
At first blush, one might wonder how a person could be confused. But the more I thought about it, it’s not so unusual for some individuals, especially those from other cultures, to be perplexed about color. Many Americans live in a white-bread world. No color at all. But other cultures are awash in color and relish color. Color is treated as a daily substance. It’s water for the thirsty, spiritual for the soul and serenity for sleep. Color brings the world alive.
However, when you are selling a home, neutral is the recommended choice of color, especially for walls and flooring. It evokes no emotion and does not detract from the home’s features. It presents a clean slate, a home you can move into immediately and decorate to preference. It’s a light beige, a sheer coffee-cream, sandy fair-skinned brown, boring pale tan, much like the photo above, or even a soft gray, which is trendy. Above all, it is not white.
Case in point, when my husband and I bought our home in Land Park 17 years ago, the whole house screamed for color accents. It was white. The previous owners did not use neutral colors when home selling. In the photo above, it’s not how I would stage a home for sale, but it does show the recommended color for walls. Since we are not selling, our master suite now has bamboo flooring, dual-pane windows with neutral blinds, and the walls are painted my favorite cat-puke-green color, with a slightly lighter shade on the ceiling. Not everybody’s cup of tea, but it works for us.
However, if we expect to maximize profit potential on resale, eventually we will need to embrace neutral colors when home selling.
Whose Sacramento Listing Is It?
Whose Sacramento listing is it? Well, it can be hard at times to tell if a person is joking around or not when you receive an email. I am not a big fan of smiley faces, but against my better judgment, I can be guilty of slipping them into emails. That’s because not everybody appreciates my wry sense of humor. And sometimes I’m so busy that I literally don’t have time to make sure my parenthesis is facing the right way. It’s easy to type a frowny face by mistake. I’m so happy that you sent me a photo of your new baby. Frowny face. Oops.
We can all make mistakes, honest mistakes. We’re only human. But what about the people who deliberately set out to deceive and then claim they made a mistake? Or worse, don’t rectify it? And those people are real estate agents? When you have to wonder whose Sacramento listing is it, well, I wonder if I should report them. On the one hand, I pretty much leave other agents alone and don’t turn them in, even when I spot blatant, unethical behavior. I’m not the ethics police. I also don’t have time for it. I subscribe to the theory that what comes around, goes around. Or maybe that phrase is the other way around? Whatever, somebody else, something, will get them.
Whether to report a violation is one thing, but another aspect is whether one should one talk about it in public. If it’s information the public should probably know, I say, yes, even if it tends to taint the profession. Other agents may disagree and say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
So, I’m just gonna tell you what happened. Without naming the website, I tried to manually post a new listing but the site told me the home was already claimed. Not surprising; it was listed before. I clicked on the details and noticed the home was listed for sale by an agent other than the previous listing agent. But it had the old listing number attached to it.
I called the seller to find out if she had any knowledge of this agent. Nope. The seller called the agent. Immediately, the agent dove into bait-and-switch mode. The seller made it clear that it was her home she was calling about and she was not a buyer. The agent mumbled something about this being a very confusing situation and promised to remove it.
A few days went by, and the listing was still published under that agent’s name. Hmmm. I wondered how many other Sacramento listings were swiped and misrepresented. Usually, people who would do unethical things do other unethical things. That agent had a couple of pages worth of listings. I ran the first 5 addresses in MLS. Not one belonged to that agent. What a good idea, the agent might have thought. I know how to get buyers to call me. I’ll just swipe a bunch of listings, who cares if they’re even for sale or not, and post them on a website as my own. Brilliant. No, it’s stupid. It’s unethical. And against the law.
I finally notified the staff at that website, and several people responded. It’s difficult to regulate, they say. Well, how about you make the poster check a box that says, “If this listing doesn’t belong to me, I authorize you to charge my credit card $1,000.” They liked that idea. I heard giggles. The website does not need visitors wondering whose Sacramento listing is it. And the website removed the listing.
Why should the public care? Because the Internet is unregulated. It’s difficult to trust some of what you read. You should not rely on information found on questionable or unknown websites. If you’re searching in Google for “how to make dog biscuits,” you might NOT want to follow the recipe published by survivalists-who-eat-dogs dot com. If you’re looking for a Sacramento real estate agent, ask a friend for a referral. If you find the agent online, check out that agent. It’s very easy for an agent to produce a print-out from MLS containing that agent’s production records. You might want to ask for it. And use a smiley emoticon in your request.
Happy New Year’s! Or, where I am, we say: hauʻoli makahiki hou.
The Southernmost Winery in America Will Amaze You
Who knew the southernmost winery in America is located on Hawai’i Island, a/k/a Big Island? I didn’t even realize they could even make wine in Hawaii. But when you stop to consider what makes good wine, things such as elevation and coolness and rich soil, coupled with ocean air, it’s not so surprising.
This was part of our Fissure 8 Tours all-day adventure, which ended at the Volcano Winery in Volcano. The artist Keeth, who painted my coveted orchid, used to live in Volcano before he moved back to the Mainland. There are lots of artists and creative types in Volcano.
This was our host for the wine tasting, talking to the photographer who used to work for National Geographic. Volcano Winery works with a lot of tour companies, I guess, but in particular with Kapokohine Tours. You can tell by the type of food they serve. It is the same as the lunch we had while riding ATVs on Big Island.
BBQ chicken and spareribs, corn (with parsley for some reason), cole slaw. At lunch we had sparkling wine or beer, pop and water. But for dinner at the southernmost winery in America, we could choose our wine.
One of my favorites was the Volcano Blush, such a great summer wine, but it works all year round. I also really enjoyed the guava and grape selection. Pinot Noir was OK but I can get Pinot all day long out of Napa. A delightful dessert wine, although, it is so good you could probably drink it anytime, is the Macadamia Nut Honey wine, and at only $20 a bottle, it’s a bargain!
I bought a case of wine, of course. Because my favorite is the Volcano Red. It is bursting with juicy fruits, rounds out the tongue. Grown right here on Big Island at the southernmost winery in America! The Volcano Red is also Volcano Winery’s best selling wine, so no secret there. Try it, you’ll want a case yourself.
That is Loli in the photo drinking wine behind the kapu sign. She insisted I shoot this photo of her, so you can see why I like this woman.
By the time we finished the wine tasting, followed by dinner, we had a short tour before the sun dropped into the sea. The Volcano Winery looks like most other wineries. Roses in bloom. It is the wine that is different and very Hawaiian.
The Steam Vents at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park
When we entered the steam vents thermal area at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, my friend Loli said it reminded her of Yellowstone National Park. I can see that, but I also feel it is more in line with Lassen National Park. In particular, Bumpass Hell, minus the boiling mud pots.
At the steam vents we encountered many fumaroles, which emit hot gases with a sulfur odor. Not as bad as rotten eggs, though, which is more the norm. When I mentioned it didn’t stink as much as I would expect, the guide said Pele’s breath is sweeter. I wish he would have explained the scientific reason. Science is real, despite what our present administration might spout.
When water seeps into the hot volcanic rock, it produces steam. Not much vegetation can survive in such extremely warm temperatures in the ground. This is why you will see a lot of tall grasses and a few plants, but no huge trees at the steam vents.
This is the flower of the lehua ohi’a tree. These are prized for garlands and leis, but Rapid O’hia Death is claiming so many trees that Hawaii asks we not pick the flowers. Scientists recently discovered the source of the fungus that’s been killing the ohi’a trees, and it is carried by a certain beetle.
The lehua o’hia tree is simply amazing. It grows on lava, often as the first vegetation, and it can turn lava rock into soil. The soil allows other types of vegetation to grow. When the air turns bad due to vog, the o’hia tree can hold its breath until the vog clears, up to a week. The lehua o’hia tree is truly a tree of survival and the birther of life.
Everybody repeats the same Hawaiian story about how the o’hia tree came to be. Legend has it that O’hia was a very attractive man, and Pele, the goddess of fire and volcanoes, took one look and became infatuated with O’hia. She tried her best to lure him away, but O’hia was in love with Lehua. So Pele turned O’hia into a tree and Lehua into the flower. Today the tree is known as the Lehua O’hia. Lehua means the flower AND the tree.
Here is the first view after rounding the bend at the steam vents in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. There is a walkway, raised decking, that circles through the thermal area, like many visitors paths at national parks. It’s about a 3/4 mile hike to traverse.
One of the stories guides like to tell about the steam vents is that they are not caused by ground water creeping into volcanic rock but instead is Pele’s breath. They will do a trick such as light a piece of paper on fire and hold it over the steam vent. Suddenly, the steam emissions dramatically increase. See? They will exclaim, it is the goddess of fire responding in excitement.
It is science. I can’t tell you the exact physics of why this happens, but I do know it is scientific in origin.
Like the flowers I found at Fissure 8 tours in Leilani Estates, this is the same wild orchid. I see it referred to in other places as a purple orchid. Amazing, how something so beautifully shaped and fragile appearing can survive in the harshest of environments.
There is so much to see and do in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park that even a week is not enough time to spend here.
Photos of Kilauea at the End of 2018
This is what Kilauea looks like at the end of 2018. When I was last here in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, it surprised me to discover that it was 8 years ago. I recall my husband and I driving down Chain of Craters Road to the end where the lava crossed the road, and I spotted a rainbow. There were petroglyphs along the way, and we never really worried about an eruption. Although it was spittin’ and fumin’ then.
The continuous eruptions in May of 2018 widened the crater and emptied the lava lake. Kilauea at the end of 2018 looks very different than it has over the years. At approximately 600,000 years old, Kilauea is a relatively young volcano, although much of it still lies under the sea. Its last eruption prior to 2018 was in 1983.
When we looked for a house in Hawaii, I decided to stay clear of Kilauea. Just did not seem like a good idea to buy property where it’s likely to be covered in lava. Not only that, but lava insurance is very expensive for that side of the island. It is also wet, rainy, and subject to coqui.
I’d like to share some of the photos I just shot at Kilauea. This way you can see Kilauea at the end of 2018 and compare it to how it used to look. I also thank my stars we are on the Kona side. Although, the Kapoho area and the Red Road is hands down the most beautiful scenery in all of Hawai’i.
