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Elizabeth Weintraub
Buying Homes on Christmas
Gulf Bay at Islamorada Resort Casa Morada
One would think that the real estate business, especially in Sacramento, would be pretty slow over the day before Christmas and on Christmas itself but I still had showings on my listings. I guess I could see this if parents were in town visiting and had but one chance to look at homes with their kids; however, if the main objective was to shop and not buy, like for shoes at Macy’s, that could be done online.
Let me depart for a moment and say how unhappy I am with the quality of merchandise at Macy’s in the downtown Sacramento mall. Its inventory has been downgraded. Gone are many brand names and with it the expensive price tags, which I suppose is a result of supply and demand: Macy’s supplies and then buyers purchase those items online. I propose that shoppers would buy directly from Macy’s if a shopper could ever locate a clerk. You’re lucky to find one clerk per cash register, and that’s if you can find the cash register, which is probably buried under returned items dumped on the counter.
You might think I am just a grumpy old person who goes around complaining about everything and nothing makes her happy, but you would be confusing me with a tourist who had spent time in Miami. Who can be grumpy with the above view from her deck in Islamorada? OK, maybe a person who didn’t get any coffee.
I stumbled into the breakfast room, which is right around the corner from our deck that overlooks this lovely view. Pretty convenient. Scooted past bent-over-guy who was trying to read the headlines of the New York Times without actually touching the newspaper because there could be lizards tucked away inside, I guess; I have been warned to be careful what I pick up around here and I imagine he’s heard the same thing.
Fumbled on the counter for a coffee cup. Picked up the coffee pot and dumped it upside down, shaking out every last precious drop into the paper coffee cup. Grabbed another pot and repeated episode. If my husband’s eyes were not open, this would not have been a problem, but we needed 2 cups of coffee and not just one. I called room service. I don’t think they can identify you at this small resort upon answering the phone, but I was still polite, even though the opportunity afforded me the chance to snarl. I did not snarl, just for the record.
I simply said there was no coffee in the breakfast room. Anticipating that I would be asked if I checked all of the coffee pots, I added that all of the coffee vessels were empty. My husband heard that conversation as a person who did not yet have her morning coffee.
This was not a day for me to receive an email from a buyer’s agent demanding that I educate my sellers on sales prices. My sellers are so educated they should be sporting real estate graduation caps. But it’s the day after Christmas, and I didn’t get into it. Serves no purpose. Besides, when you think about it, I am not the agent who was forced to drag buyers from house to house on the day before Christmas.
Photo: Gulf Bay in Islamorada, Florida, from private resort deck, by Elizabeth Weintraub
Merry Christmas from Marco Island
Sunset Marco Island
Marilyn Monroe said that if you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything — but take that piece of insight with a grain of salt because look at what happened to her. Still, my gut often aches from laughing, listening to my husband. He can do accents. I can’t do accents. He could write for Saturday Night Live.
We were sitting at a Florida Gulf beach-side restaurant finishing a lunch of creamy potato soup, which arrived at our table accompanied by a chunk of bread. Out of nowhere, a large grackle leaped to the back of a chair and claimed its piece of real estate. The bird was not leaving. He paced back and forth on top of the chair, head bobbing, eyeing me and my plate. My husband launched into a skit, sounding just like a gigolo from Argentina:
I see you have some BRE-ADDD, he whispered breathlessly into my ear. The bird continued its frenzy pace. We have a common goal, you and I . . . Do you come here often? I have not seen you here before . . . How about you and I and your BRE-ADDD get outta here?
Outta here, to a massage. Fortunately, the hotel where we are staying offers a series of different types of massages at its spa. Usually we opt for a couple’s massage, a Swedish, but this menu of spa choices featured a Signature massage. My husband questioned the Signature Balinese massage: a Chinese / Hindu / European combination. Maybe they roll hot bamboo sticks over your back? I suggested. No, says he, they use Sharpies. Madam, do you have a preference in color?
We compared notes afterward because we were in separate rooms during the massage treatment. Yup, 3 bangs on the foot, just like a Chinese gong. Yup, prayer at the end, that was the Hindu part. We could have saved a few hundred and just requested Swedish.
Our dinner last night was not from our hotel because the cuisine is just so-so. Instead, we opted for Italian a few doors down Collier Boulevard where they hire waitstaff on student VISAs from the Philippines and serve wines from Oregon. While in Portland, we grew particularly fond of wines from the Willamette Valley. That is a very hard word to say — Willamette. Because you would think it is pronounced like it looks, a man’s name with ET at the end, but it is named after a river that is pronounced Wil-LAM-it. Just remember laminate floors and you’ll be fine.
Because our waitress could not pronounce the name of the wine, she placed the menu back in front of us and questioned our selection a second time. I like Elk, they’re such beautiful creatures, and a Cove is a great place to escape a storm, plus 2010 was a pretty good year, I explained as to why we chose the Elk Cove 2010 Pinot Noir from Willamette. My husband is right. My sense of humor is lost on some people.
That is why although I thought of it, I did not request an accompaniment of 10 blueberries with my greek yogurt this morning and will instead leave the bowl of assorted berries they brought to rot on my room service cart. I do not want to be known across the web as that anal person at the Marriott who ordered 10 blueberries with her breakfast room service.
Merry Christmas everybody. Today we leave Marco Island and head for Islamorada. Sister still stuck in freezing cold in Minnesota, check. Housesitters still hated by our cats, check. Husband’s family still not celebrating yet dining on duck in Chinatown, check.
Photo: Sunset over Marco Island, Florida, by Elizabeth Weintraub
The Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary at Naples, Florida
Blair Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary
What I really like about this time of year is while I am wandering off to look for Wood Storks at the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, buyer’s agents in Sacramento are hard at work showing my listings. I’ve already slipped one transaction into escrow and have received 2 offers on another — I’m kissing my cellphone right now and leaving little smudgy lip marks.
White Ibis Eating a Swamp Bug
People ask me why I like to focus on sellers, and this is why. If I do my job correctly, and I do, it comes back ten-fold. Instead of fumbling with lockboxes and doors that stick, I am flipping the auto switch on my Nikon to manual and adjusting the focus on that White Ibis, also known as the Chokoloskee Chicken. Their long bills allow them to dig into the mucky floor of the swamp to find bugs. In fact, this White Ibis is enjoying a tasty snack in the photo to the right. Yum. Swamp bugs. Have you had breakfast yet?
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Many other types of wildlife live in the Corkscrew Swamp — which is actually named after a river because of the way the river winds and is today called by another name. Some of the bald cypress trees are more than 500 years old. Plus, there are wild orchids. The famous ghost orchid lives in this swamp, about 60 feet up in trees; although they are not blooming this time of year. How do you like my Red-Bellied Woodpecker, though? Well, he’s not actually mine, or he would have a name. I would call him Henry.
Now, you may think that you will never flock to birds and become a birder when you grow older, and I have news for you. This doesn’t happen to a person when she gets old, necessarily, because my husband’s and my love for birding happened a long time ago, once we realized that all of those birds flying through our backyard when we lived in Minneapolis were not brown but instead were all kinds of different colors because, guess what, they were different birds!
Florida Soft Shell Turtle
I also happened upon a turtle in the swamp. Usually, when you approach a turtle, they quickly vanish into the water. If they are sleeping on a log, like a group of turtles we tried to photograph once in Ecuador, they splash into the water by falling over backwards or any which way just to disappear. This turtle has a nose like a pig. Its name is the Florida Soft Shell Turtle. But you know me, I would call her Sharon.
Not that I know any Sharons, mind you.
How to Kill an Alligator in Everglades City
Mangrove Tunnel in Everglades National Park
It is now possible for me to feel confident about the fact that I can actually be a useful companion if you and I were stranded in the middle of the Everglades with one bullet left in our rifle and suddenly attacked by an alligator. OK, not that I could accurately aim the rifle and fire it without knocking myself backwards into the water, thereby rendering my helpless body a tasty lunch for the alligator, but I could tell you where to aim.
Royal Tern in Everglades National Park
Ah, but you might think, ho, ho, ho, you do not need to know where to hit the alligator because any place along the back would suffice, but that is not enough to kill an alligator; it’s just enough to piss him off. I call the creature a male instead of a female because the female has the good sense to be elsewhere when all of this attacking of humans is going on. Although, you would probably not be attacked if you were standing up, minding your own business and not messing with the alligator’s tail or otherwise infuriating the guy.
Osprey in Everglades National Park
I realize that you might think it’s OK to slice its belly or repeatedly stab the alligator in the belly with your belt buckle but you are missing one crucial element. You would need to get the alligator on its back for that to happen, and good luck doing that. Just for coming up with that idea, I am not going to spoil the story by telling precisely where to kill the alligator. I want to ensure that if we are ever stranded in the Everglades together, that I will not be abandoned. I have my worth in the Everglades now. I will protect that worth. It’s got a tangible value.
We toured more of Everglades National Park on Sunday in Everglades City, and we mostly putted around in a 6-passenger boat in the Mangroves. This visitor center is part of the Ten Thousand Islands, of which Marco Island is the largest. Our tour guide sounded just like the guy who stars in The Bridge and plays the former husband of Courteney Cox on Cougar Town. If I didn’t look at him, and I wasn’t because I was so busy shooting photos of birds, I could swear it was that guy, Brian Van Holt.
It’s the Florida accent.
Great Egret in Everglades National Park
The Brazilian Peppers are not native to the Everglades and have encroached. They are squeezing out the Mangroves, which need sunlight to grow tall and time to build a strong root system. If the Mangroves are crowded, they will fall over into the water and die. You will see a lot of dead Mangroves, which is very sad. The photo above is of the Mangrove tunnel. We saw red, black and white Mangroves. The white trees are brown.
Inside the Mangrove tunnel we spotted alligators, great egrets, snowy egrets and blue herons. Those manatee are hard to spot because their noses pop up out of the water like a floating coconut and when they disappear beneath the surface, those relatives of the elephants can hold their breath for 20 minutes.
Bank of America and HAFA Short Sale Credit Report
Stepping foot on a public beach with seagulls for the very first time is daunting if all you worry about is whether a bird will poop on your head, but that’s the very thought that ran through my mind when I first walked along the ocean in California. Same thing at our resort on the Florida Gulf at Marco Island — although there are a lot more birds and fewer people. Fewer people in a resort around Christmas time means we are not forced to make a reservation for dinner, which was a huge drawback at Four Seasons and the Fairmont in Hawaii.
When a person is on vacation, a person wants to relax and not be subject to stupid rules and regulations with unnecessary restraints on time. A person expects the resort to anticipate her every desire, like this Sacramento short sale agent tries to do for her own clients. A person wants the leisure to make decisions if and when decisions are necessary. Clocks? Who needs clocks? Cellphones? OK, I do carry my cell. My house sitters could call with an emergency and one of our cats could be choking. Or I might need to identify a bird we just spotted using my handy dandy Audubon bird app. Or I might need to know if there is a Pinata party planned for tonight on Plants vs. Zombies. Important details.
I called a client on our first night at Marco Island to let her know that her short sale in Roseville had closed. She is fighting with Bank of America because the negotiators at the bank don’t seem to realize that the guidelines for HAFA short sale credit reporting have changed. My seller is so polite and nice. When the negotiator told her she needed to put her on hold while she discussed the situation with her supervisor, my client acquiesced. See, I suspect the negotiator used this time to go down the hall and buy a Diet Coke.
I would have demanded to speak with the supervisor myself. Tell ya what, I would have snarled, I’ll hold and you go get the supervisor. We sent a copy of the guidelines to the negotiator. We copied the guideline verbiage and cited section number. We sent the C.A.R. memo about credit reporting for a HAFA short sale.
Because I am not a lawyer, I can’t really fight with the bank at this point. This is a fight my client will need to undertake herself to make sure the reporting is done correctly. In a HAFA short sale for which there was no foreclosure proceeding started, the guidelines say the short sale must be reported to the credit bureau as Paid in Full. Not paid in full for less than agreed. Other Bank of America borrowers have had to fight this fight after closing, but they have won, and I have full confidence that my former seller will win as well.
Photo: Marco Island, Florida, by Elizabeth Weintraub
