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Elizabeth Weintraub
Back From French Polynesia
While you are reading this blog, I will be going through the agony of US Customs at LAX, having landed back in the country from French Polynesia. I know there are people who say just pack those black pearls, Tahitian rum and Cuban cigars in your luggage and keep your trap shut, but I am not one of those people who listen to that stuff. I don’t believe in smuggling stuff when you can report it, pay the tiny little tax and be done with it. Not everything that is Duty Free means you don’t pay tax anyway. And, if a US Custom official finds unreported taxable crap in your luggage, they can take it away from you. Why anybody would try to sneak stuff through US Customs is beyond me.
Why break the law? Why cause more problems for yourself? Life is filled with enough problems all by their lonesome little problem-selves, we don’t need to create more of them for ourselves. It’s like sellers who try to find creative ways around the rules of a short sale. They don’t realize that when they try to do that, they are taking a chance that the lender will find out. If the lender finds out, the lender can take away their release of liability. Just rip that rug out from under their short sale noses. There is no reason to tamper with your release of personal liability. None.
SB 458 paved the way for banks to go after sellers who commit mortgage fraud in a short sale. If there is no mortgage fraud and everything is clean and above board, sellers get a clean break. No deficiency judgment and no liability. They get off scott-free and can walk away into the sunset or hop on Air Tahiti if they so please. But there could be consequences if a seller breaks the law.
But consequences are not the only reason not to break the law. Heck, we have the death penalty in California and it doesn’t stop murderers from killing other people. Consequences don’t mean much to some people. Unfortunately, neither does just doing the right thing. For example, nothing seems to stop the antics of a person like Lindsay Lohan. Oh, wait, I think I spot her in line, three people down from me. Oh, crap.
In case you’re wondering, you don’t pay tax on $800 of merchandise, per person. Two people equals $1,600 of tax-free items. Pearls are taxable even though they are hand-made, regardless of what you may read online elsewhere.
Lunch in Vaitape
The thing about wearing a flimsy poncho in the rain while walking down the street in Vaitape is not that people look at you funny and laugh, which they do; it’s that the poncho sticks to your skin and makes you sweat. Profusely. Even though you may be a woman and you don’t sweat. Women perspire. Men sweat. But my husband is not sweating because he is soaking wet and is not wearing a poncho. He might even feel a bit morally superior but his passport is soaking wet and mine is not.
However, if I cared what people thought about me, I would not run around scaring them half to death by letting my hair do whatever it feels likes doing. In the rain, it feels like frizzing out. I’m sort of a cross between Bride of Frankenstein and Lyle Lovett. But do I care? No, I do not. I also do not care because I put up with enough abuse in my other life as a Sacramento short sale agent.
What I care about today is the enormous mosquito bite that appeared out of nowhere just slightly above where Ecuador would be if Peru was my naval. I did not put insect repellent on my stomach. And this is what I get for that oversight. A huge honkin’ mosquito bite that is causing me to want to rip the flesh off of my belly by grabbing the closest sharp object and scraping it off me.
We are having a wonderful time, regardless. Looking for lunch in Vaitape. Rain dripping down my nose as I tighten the strings around my little hoodie. We stop to admire a banana plant. Some 10-year-old boy with hair swinging down his back rode by on a bicycle and yelled “banana” at us, just in case we were too stupid to figure out that we were looking at a banana tree. We did not know where we were headed exactly, but figured sooner or later we would come upon the restaurant we were looking for, which would be Le St. James on the bay in Vaitape. How hard could it be to find a restaurant in a city with fewer than 5,000 people? Not very hard.
I include a photo I shot here for you. The prices are incredibly cheap for a $75 lunch as compared to dinners at St. Regis. All prices are quoted in Franc-er-roos. You can spend 20,000 Franc-er-roos quite easily for lunch. Maybe 30,000 Franc-er-roos for dinner. We split a dish of curried shrimp on angel hair pasta, downed 2 Coke Lights and I ordered the beef prepared four ways. Tartare, grilled rare, carpaccio and something called half-cooked that was actually half-cooked. The Le St. James Restaurant seems like a pretty decent place for dinner, too. It’s just that it takes a golf cart ride, then passenger ferryboat, then shuttle bus, then walking 8 or 10 blocks by taking your life in your hands though the center of Vaitape to get there.
But how often do you get to Bora Bora? And when you do, stop for lunch in Vaitape.
Know Your Area Before Home Buying
Overwater bungalow at St. Regis Resort at Bora Bora.
The water is very still this morning, unlike the turbulent waves and constant ripples of the past week. I can see the sun barely begin to poke through the clouds. Even the air is hushed. There is some kind of creature rustling the palm fronds over my head. I prefer to think that it is a bird and not a rat. I have not seen a rat. Plus, a rat up on the roof would probably have to be a water rat since my structure was built over the water, and I don’t know if there is any such thing as a water rat in Bora Bora. But there are birds.
I spent several hours yesterday tracking down the types of birds we have seen. Two in particular. I researched them online until I was satisfied that I had located the correct birds. You might wonder why a person would spend an inordinate amount of time on her vacation to do this, and I guess there are two reasons. I like to be aware of my environment, and I am inquisitive. If you are aware of your environment, it heightens your enjoyment of said environment. You feel more connected to it, part of it.
It’s no different than how you might feel about your neighborhood or your home. If you are unfamiliar with a place you might want to move to, then hire an expert who can advise and assist, such as a Sacramento real estate agent to help you before home buying. If your agent doesn’t have the immediate answer, she has the resources at hand to get it for you.
Buying Sacramento real estate is not only an emotional decision for most people, it’s also somewhat logical and based on each person’s individual lifestyle. How will you know if your lifestyle is a good fit for an area if you don’t ask questions of your real estate agent? You don’t really need to know if an area will fit you, you need to know if you will fit in to a neighborhood. Doing homework before home buying pays off. I had a lengthy conversation before I left for my vacation with a fellow from Hawaii. I could sense instinctively that he would most likely be happier living in Curtis Park than in Land Park, and I didn’t draw that conclusion from anything tangible.
I present to you on this page a couple of Chestnut-breasted Mannikins (Longchura Castaneothorox) above. They were brought to Bora Bora from Australia and are not endemic. To the right are Red-Vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus Cafer). One of the bird sites lists the bulbul as one of the top 100 most invasive species as it has established itself in the wild not only in South Pacific islands but all the way to Dubai.
That bird on the roof just flew off and landed on another roof down the way. It is definitely a Chestnut-Breasted Mannikin. Whew.
Should You Change Agents?
A seller, obviously frustrated with her Sacramento real estate agent, emailed yesterday to ask if I would be interested in representing her. She didn’t say why she was dissatisfied with her agent, but I intend to probe. Because sometimes there is nothing wrong with her agent at all. Sometimes, when the results do not meet a client’s perhaps unrealistic expectations, a client becomes disillusioned and wants to change real estate agents. It’s not that I don’t want new clients, but I do try to encourage people to stick it out with their present agent, to give that agent at least one more chance, and to talk through any perceived difficulties.
Besides, an upgrade might be the same thing they’ve already got. You never know. People who don’t understand the market in Sacramento and how real estate agents work, the rules we are governed by nor the things that are out of our control might believe we are capable of parting the Red Sea when we are not.
When we checked into our room at the resort in Bora Bora, it came with an upgrade, space permitting. Well, there was no space available at Christmas-time so we did not receive the upgrade. But after New Year’s, when many guests have gone home, we checked again and an upgrade was available. It meant packing our bags, which the butler offered to do, and moving across the way, so we took it.
The new house is identical to our old house. Except it’s not as new. Older flat panel TVs. Prints instead of oil paints. Weathered woodwork. Same layout, though. What’s different is the view. I suspect the resort built the front row of overwater bungalows much earlier than the second row. The second row overlooks the lagoon and the beach. The front row looks at Mt. Otemanu and toward The Four Seasons. Except when it’s foggy and rainy, you can’t see Mt. Otemanu at all; it vanishes.
There are times a new agent could be just what you need. Not all agents are the same, and some are very much different from other Sacramento real estate agents — maybe better suited to your personality. But agents have a lot more in common with each other than you might think. Sometimes, it might make more sense to stick with the guy who brought you to the dance.
Photo: Mt. Otemanu at dusk from St. Regis Resort at Bora Bora, by Elizabeth Weintraub
Types of Bank of America Short Sales
This Sacramento short sale agent closed a bunch more Bank of America short sales at year end. I seem to close more Bank of America short sales than any other kind of short sale in Sacramento, although I doubt there is a bank out there that I haven’t dealt with. It’s just that Bank of America seems to dominate. So, that means I am very familiar with Bank of America. Here are some of the variations of Bank of America short sales a short sale agent can do:
- Bank of America HAFA short sales
- The Bank of America Cooperative Short Sales
- The Bank of America Streamlined Cooperative (which are different than regular Cooperative)
- A Bank of America Fannie Mae short sale
- A Bank of America Freddie Mac short sale
- A Bank of America FHA short sale
- A Bank of America VA short sale
- A Bank of America Fannie Mae HAFA short sale
- A Bank of America Freddie Mac HAFA short sale
- A Bank of America Fannie Mae Cooperative Short Sale
- You will not be able to do a Bank of America Freddie Mac Cooperative Short Sale because Freddie Mac does not participate in the Cooperative Short Sale Series . . .
And this is just to name a few combinations.
But a few days ago, a negotiator threatened to return funds. That happens sometimes. Not that funds are actually returned, just that the bank threatens to return the wire, which means it won’t accept the final payoff and the short sale is not really closed even though the documents have recorded.
Why? Why would a bank do that? In this case, the closer suddenly noticed that a second borrower did not sign the deed to the new buyer. This was not an escrow mistake. This was done on purpose. The reason the borrower did not sign the deed is because the second borrower was no longer “on title,” meaning the borrower had conveyed her interest via a deed to the first borrower. The closer claimed legal things such as the recorded deed and the title insurance policy vesting did not matter and that the second borrower absolutely should have signed the deed out and be noted on the HUD. RESPA be damned, was the attitude.
See, this is yet another reason why banks do not belong in the real estate business. Not to mention, how did a file get all the way through the short sale process at Bank of America if this was an issue? It’s because it’s not really an issue.
Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub, tropical fish in lagoon at Bora Bora
