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Elizabeth Weintraub
No Turkey Pot Pie For You
My idea of a happy ending to 2013 is to sell every single one of my listings in Sacramento by Christmas and, because of that goal, I forgot to make reservations for Thanksgiving. These sneaky holidays, always slipping into the calendar when I’m focused elsewhere.
We seem to always do something different for Thanksgiving. No year is the same. Last year we flew to the Midwest to celebrate Thanksgiving, so there wasn’t much to think about apart from turning off my computer and getting on the plane, or vice versa. The year before my sister and niece came to visit us from Minneapolis. Somewhere in between we had Thanksgiving at the Hyatt downtown, which is sort of like dining at the airport. And some years, until our friends moved to Boston, we’d join them at The Firehouse in Old Sacramento.
One of the thoughts that popped up in my mind this year was my husband could make a turkey pot pie, the old fashioned way. Something different, yeah? Except, not buy an entire turkey, just the thighs and drumsticks because my first preference is dark meat. Which is why I don’t like going out for Thanksgiving dinner because most restaurants serve processed turkey breast. Yuck. Sadly, the thought of a turkey pot pie did not excite the person I had expected to produce it.
Only because I didn’t create a Power Point presentation. If I had put together a slide show, starting with the cats bowing down on the floor in an obedient manner: you the man, you the man; followed by Thomas Dolby strolling through the kitchen playing a baby keyboard; then a slide showcasing a huge sunshine smile on my husband’s face as he’s rolling out dough, receiving a shoulder massage from his adoring lingerie-clad wife as he’s shelling peas; perhaps another sharing playful bites of turkey in a toothy tug-of-war like the dog we don’t have might do — he might have been induced to make a turkey pot pie.
But, as it is, no turkey pot pie. And I watched Thomas Dolby play 1980s music at the Crest, too. You’d think there would be a tradeoff.
Photo: Thomas Dolby at the Crest Theatre by Elizabeth Weintraub
Buying That Perfect Home in Elk Grove
Matching first-time home buyers for a home in Elk Grove with an experienced real estate agent is a brilliant way to pair the innocence of younger buyers with the wisdom of the grouchy. Because an experienced agent will just lay it on the line. Buy the damn house before somebody else snatches it from you, we’ll tell buyers. Why would we be so direct whereas another type of Elk Grove real estate agent might suggest buyers go home and sleep on this monumental decision?
Several reasons. First, been there and done that — painfully watched buyers lose the home of their dreams. It’s not true that every suburban house, for example, looks alike. Homes in Elk Grove differ from each other, sometimes dramatically, including location. Which is the second reason. When a house is special, generally agents can spot it way before the buyer will realize it.
I’ve talked with agents who know that their buyer is making a mistake when writing an offer to buy a home. The buyer either takes too long to reach the conclusion that an offer should be presented, or the buyer often doesn’t offer enough to beat out competition. Buyers don’t seem to get it that if they are out looking at homes, other buyers are, too. If they like a home in Elk Grove, other buyers will like it, too. These agents silently hope the buyer will learn the lesson early on and not get mad at the agent when the offer is too low and unacceptable.
Sometimes, listing agents will suggest a seller set a date for reviewing offers, but that strategy can backfire. It can also cause buyers who otherwise might have paid more not to make an offer. In today’s Elk Grove real estate market, it is better for sellers to deal with the offers as they arrive. If the home in Elk Grove is very desirable, priced right and comes on the market at the opportune time with a huge splash, that home will attract multiple offers without advertising for it.
If you see such a home, don’t go home to sleep on it. Ask your agent to call the listing agent and find out how many offers the seller has received. Write the very best offer that you can, and don’t hope, for goodness sake, that you can offer list price and buy the home. It doesn’t matter if the offer to purchase is cash, either.
Let’s just put it this way. You would be amazed at how many buyers in the $500K and up market are paying cash right now. They are not screwing around with non-conforming loans or whining about fluctuating interest rates. They are offering to pay all of the seller’s closing costs and paying over list price, when the home in Elk Grove warrants it. (That “when” is the important factor. Most homes sell for less. Look to your agent for guidance.)
If you know that you can put your lips together and blow to whistle, you are savvy enough to buy that home of your dreams. Just do it.
The Jelly Belly Factory Tour in Fairfield
It is possible for a Sacramento real estate agent to have too much fun? From champagne and lobster at Rue Lepic, to Van Morrison in Nob Hill, to the Grace Cathedral, to the Jelly Belly factory, to Thomas Dolby at the Crest, I’m pretty much exhausted. That’s not counting Thursday night at the Club Fugazi to catch Beach Blanket Babylon. Which means I am happy it’s Sunday, and I have a day to catch my breath before jumping with both feet into Monday.
Usually, I go nowhere. I do nothing really exciting. I am not one of these let’s go out and party guys. Way too old for that. My idea of a good time is to list a home for the maximum a seller can realistically expect to receive and to exceed my seller’s expectations. My passion is real estate. After that, I’d just as soon curl up on the sofa with a purring cat and watch Boardwalk Empire, as my husband occasionally massages my feet.
As a result of the past couple of days, though, I managed to receive an offer for a home in Elk Grove from a very motivated buyer, complete most of my holiday shopping in Haight Ashbury and shove an entire bag of Jelly Bellies down my throat. OK, we picked up some fudge, too.
If you’ve never done the Jelly Belly Factory Tour on your way back to Sacramento from the City, you owe it to stop in Fairfield. An agent at another real estate brokerage called and asked me what I was doing. “I’m putting on my Jelly Belly hat,” I responded, which was indeed my activity when I answered my phone. Oh, says he, you must be in Fairfield. This is a favorite activity for families with kids, but you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy the tour.
Being a Saturday, we didn’t get to see a lot of production in the factory, but you could smell the bubble gum scent wafting in the parking lot, which was being processed in a small part of the factory. Not really my favorite. President Reagan’s favorite, they remind you, was licorice. Seems sort of boring, especially since you can get licorice in other forms. I lean more toward cherry or cinnamon flavors. An added bonus was the fact we received samples of Jelly Bellies along the tour and a free bag at the end. The tour itself involved gazing mostly at production lines and conveyor belts that were not moving or staring at a video screen showing a variety of brightly polished Jelly Bellies rolling along.
An astonishing part of the tour was the number of robots in production. Real, actual robots. They wouldn’t let us take photos, and I wasn’t about to risk my free bag of Jelly Bellies to violate that policy, or I would show you. We watched robots picking up crates of Jelly Bellies from one conveyor belt and setting them on another conveyor belt. I wondered how many jobs were replaced by those robots. It was like something out of The Jetsons. And don’t you hate it when the only futuristic thing we can ever compare anything to is the Jetsons? A goofy cartoon from the 1960s?
I believe you would like the Jelly Belly Factory Tour. But go during the week, when there is more to see and probably fewer crowds. You’ll find the Jelly Belly Factory at 1 Jelly Belly Lane in Fairfield, just off Interstate 80. Reduced hours on the weekends from now until the end of 2013, due to the holidays.
Van Morrison Belts it Out at Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium
Even though I had never met the musician, when I was a 15-year-old girl who felt she lived at the center of the universe, I was pretty much certain that Van Morrison was singing Brown-Eyed Girl for me. I used to hear it on the jukebox at a hippie hangout in Denver, back when I crashed wherever I could find a spot on the floor indoors somewhere. Of course, that all changed when Bob Dylan teamed up with Johnny Cash to perform Girl From the North Country — after I had been busted and forced to move back to Minneapolis, which then made Van Morrison a thing of the past.
Kids. So young, so innocent, believing we knew it all, and there was little left to learn. It’s not until we get older do we realize how little we do know. Mark Twain made an observation about that when he discovered how much his dad learned between his ages of 14 and 21.
There is a big market in marketing to baby boomers these days, especially music. Because we baby boomers have the bucks to blow $500 on a concert, and we’ll do it if we don’t have to stand. During a concert in Minneapolis some four decades past I rushed the front row seats, just like every other kid who came to see Jefferson Airplane. Didn’t matter which seat you were originally assigned to, when you’re a female with feminine ways, you could pretty much go wherever you wanted.
And I wanted to stand on the front row seats. It wasn’t enough to stand on the floor. My entire group was yelling, hooting, hollering, carrying on, jumping up and down like a bunch of kids, which we were. Grace Slick appeared, grabbed the mike, looked down at the row of squealing rockers before her and asked us how much we paid to get into the concert. How much, she yelled? I squeaked out the words: eight dollars. “Well, they ripped you off,” she shrieked.
But today, if you want seats near the front at any major concert, it’s highway robbery, and we’ll pay it. Some people want to return to their youth, if just for a few hours. A Van Morrison concert is not a return to anybody’s youth, although, there are boomers who will go to see him just because he was from back in the day.
He didn’t play Brown-Eyed Girl last night at the San Francisco Masonic Auditorium, but he did perform Into the Mystic. Although nothing from Astral Weeks. That album, an all-time favorite, was produced in 1968 and recorded over 2 days in New York. Another little known fact you might not know, Van Morrison wrote the song Gloria, G-L-O-R-I-A, THAT Gloria.
He mixes rock music with jazz, a lot of saxophone, and he’s become more progressive over the years, like any artist would do being dedicated to the craft. He’s performing again tonight in Nob Hill, so if you’re really dying to go and you haven’t thought about scoring tickets, you could probably pick up tickets from the scalpers hanging out on California Street.
Van Morrison, Nob Hill and a New Elk Grove Listing
The last time I stayed on Nob Hill in San Francisco was a few years ago, before my friend Rose Mary and her husband retired to Boston. Rose Mary worked in my real estate office alongside me as a Sacramento real estate agent, and her husband has an MBA in taxation, which made him an excellent guy to do taxes. We had suggested they join us for a quick trip to San Francisco for dinner, followed by a concert at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Well, by quick trip, I mean it’s about 90 minutes by car in good traffic.
Rose Mary and her husband drove. My husband and I road the Capitol Corridor train from Sacramento and caught a ride back home with them. I scoured the Internet for a good hotel rate. Our friends used Hotwire. They hoped to score a 3-star hotel at a 1-star rate, which is sensible. I, on the other hand, being less sensible, hoped to score a fabulous suite at a discounted price. We landed one of the Telegraph Suites on the 19th floor of The Fairmont Hotel at about 50% off. The room offered panoramic views of the city, from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate. To our delight, we had a personal telescope allowing closeup views of Alcatraz.
I don’t recall the band we went to see. I only remember the torture for Rose Mary and her husband. It wasn’t Laurie Anderson, this time, that was another time, and yet they still accompanied us to this concert. Maybe it was The Twilight Singers, with Greg Dulli? In any case, we could not get seating together, which meant my husband and I had assigned seating in the balcony but Rose Mary and her husband had standing room only on the first floor.
The evening didn’t end well. Rose Mary threw up in the bushes outside of the Great American Music Hall, for no apparent reason. But I bet she felt like a kid again.
Our second time staying on Nob Hill in San Francisco, we could not obtain such a great rate at the Fairmont Hotel, so we settled for a suite at the Huntington Hotel, overlooking Huntington Park. The suite is spacious but the bathroom is very tiny. Management thought to provide coffee service from 5 AM to 7 AM in the lobby for travelers from New York, but there is no self-service coffee machines in the rooms.
We came to San Francisco’s Nob Hill this time to see Van Morrison.
But first, let me tell you about my new Elk Grove listing that came on the market early this morning. This is a regular sale in Elk Grove, more than 3700 square feet, with 6 bedrooms and 4 baths. Two bedrooms, one of which is the master suite, are located on the first floor. The other four are on the second floor, along with a giant great room boasting hardwood floors, which was used as a media room. The second floor also has a built-in office space in the hall.
It’s located in the desirable Britschgi Ranch off of Bond Road. This was the last home built in the subdivision, in 2008. It shows like a model. It features clerestory windows, soaring ceilings, and a large open floor plan. You will find many upgrades. Even the rounded windows are covered in custom plantation shutters. Perfect new Elk Grove listing.
Best of all, it is affordable. 9244 Crowell Drive, Elk Grove, CA 95624 is exclusively offered by Lyon Real Estate at $499,000. Call Elizabeth Weintraub, your Elk Grove agent, at 916.233.6759. Even though I am in Nob Hill, I still work on my listing in Elk Grove, like I do all of my listings.
