Email ElizabethWhat Do You Know About a Kendama?
The warnings in the box should have been a clue. First, it was English translated from Japanese, which can be humorous at times. Second, the warnings made it sound like the manufacturer has been sued a lot or maybe it’s just the way risk management is handled on all toys today. There were the usual cautions such as:
- don’t lick it or put it into your mouth
- don’t hit somebody with it
- don’t try to strangle somebody with it
- put on shoes and use in a safe place that doesn’t “hit the person and the thing.”
Because the Kendama may cause unexpected injury or threats to life! Yes, I received a Kendama. Not one, but two Kendamas. They arrived in the mail, and I found the package addressed to me on my front steps. But there was no note or clue as to who sent it.
My birthday is coming up a week from Friday, so I figured it must be an early birthday present. Since I have almost no friends, the list of who could have sent it is pretty darn short. I began emailing people, asking: What do you know about a Kendama?
In the meanwhile, I rejoiced in my good fortune. My husband and I unwrapped the Kendamas. In the bottom of the box was an assortment of candy, which I promptly ate. The purpose of the Kendama toy, in case you don’t know, is to swing the ball (the Ken) attached by a string to the dama and to try to land the ball in the cup. You can also try to flip it and land the ball in the second cup, or the hardest thing of all is to get it to land on the peg, putting the hole of the Ken on top of the peg on the dama. Uh, oh, I’m blushing.
While all of this fun was going on, I received an email from my Transaction Coordinator. She had used Pay Pal to buy a birthday present for her son and because the last time she used Pay Pal, she had shipped a gift to me, she did not change the ship-to address. In other words, I had received her son’s birthday present by mistake. She asked if I would drop the package at the office, and she would try to smooth things over with her son. His birthday was yesterday. Poor kid.
Only by now, one of our cats, I suspect it was Jackson, had climbed up on my desk and chewed through the string on one of the Kendamas. Good thing we had extra string in the box. Handed the string to my husband and asked him to fix it. We’re looking at both of the balls. The green glowy ball has a chip. The purple ball has a series of dents. Our eyes met: a kid would know.
Yes, I did end up buying an identical set of Kendamas and shipping them to my Transaction Coordinator. She protested, saying it was her fault, but it was really my fault. You see, a normal person would have realized when she opened the box that a children’s toy was not a gift to her, and that there was some kind of mistake. But not this person, because I am not what you would call a normal person. Apparently.
My Idea For an Episode of Portlandia
Every day I look for the silver linings in life; because no matter how stressful my day has been, there is always something good happening that I could focus my attention on instead. It’s my secret recipe for staying happy in the middle of strife and turmoil. You can’t be a real estate agent in Sacramento and not be on intimate terms with strife and turmoil in today’s real estate market.
The trick is to fill your brain with fun and interesting data, while leaving the essential facts such as the square footage and sales price of my Land Park listing at 1620 Sutterville Road still at the top of my brain. There is only so much room up there in the attic. At my age, it’s come to a point that if something goes in, something else has to come out. But I have left a space for smart entertainment. One such television show that I love to watch as I unwind from my day is Portlandia, and the new season of Portlandia has finally arrived.
It’s one of the few shows on TV that actually makes me laugh out loud. The writing and cast are brilliant. No wonder they attract such top name talent, too. It’s a little over the top, but only by a smidgeon. Not enough to be completely unbelievable. Besides, most funny things are based in truth somewhere along the line.
It carries over into my dreams, apparently. Because this morning I woke up in a bit of a haze from a dream in which I was writing a segment for Portlandia. It involved flat-screen TVs and how to watch DVDs, versus streaming video, versus TV, versus cable channels and recording 2 shows at once. Stuff your 5-year-old can do but you, being over the age of 30, cannot. And, then, the show ends with the two stars, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen, sitting in a Home Depot on top of paint cans, sharing a bag of popcorn and watching a football game without sound on a big screen TV for sale.
Hey, Carrie, send the residual check to my home in Land Park. In the meanwhile, I won’t give up my day job of being a Sacramento real estate agent.
Photo of Portland, by Elizabeth Weintraub
Donate to the Pet Oxygen Mask Program
Find a need and fill it. That’s the simple premise behind most success stories. A company that is already successful has found another way to fill a need, and it’s pretty ingenious. What’s cool about this particular company that I’m about to share with you is its product can actually save the life of your pet, give you a tax deduction, and the company provides its product free to fire departments around the country, while still getting publicity for its own in-house product. It doesn’t get any better than that.
The product I’d like to introduce to you is an oxygen mask for pets. Not the drop-down kind from the overhead compartment when you’re flying because, let’s face it, you probably do not have a pet in your lap at that point. The pet oxygen mask is for pets who need oxygen because of a fire. For those who can’t make it out quickly enough from a burning house. Fires can happen anywhere and at anytime. I don’t even want to talk about what happens to trapped pets because it’s too horrific to picture.
This pet oxygen mask is small enough to fit a pet’s tiny little face or snout. They can’t wear masks made for people, you know. The company, Invisible Fence, is donating pet oxygen masks to fire departments to use with pets who need oxygen during an emergency. They even have a video that shows you how they do it.
Of course, there are only 2 cats featured in that video that I could see. One cat is held by a fireman who is dressed in full gear, head to toe, fully protected against the cat. The other cat is wrapped up in a towel. Whereas the dogs are happy as can be to put their snouts into an oxygen mask, the cats are probably, oh, let’s just say more reluctant, I’m betting. In fact, I have an idea for the cats. It might be easier to put a collar around their neck, one of those cone collars or inflatable collars, so they can’t get their feet up around their head to kick off the oxygen mask. My cat, Pia, is so happy to model an inflatable collar for you.
Maybe the idea is the cat is too weak to protest, but cats have amazing strength that pops up out of nowhere when they need it. It’s like a kryptonite power. Those of you who live with cats know exactly what I’m talking about. The exercise this power when it comes time to take a pill or get a toenail trim. They can almost turn themselves inside out, and you’re sitting there watching this remarkable feat and wondering how, how do they do that? It is it magic?
Yes, it is magic.
They say that cats will survive almost anything instinctively, and they know how to take care of themselves. They are the perfect hobos of domestic households. When my house fell into the ocean in Ventura some 30 years ago, my cat survived. I found him sitting at the top of the stairs of what remained of the house looking very nonplussed and wondering where his food bowl ended up.
Still, I’m happy to see a company that has found a way to fulfill a need and provide fire departments with free pet oxygen masks. To make a donation, you can go to Project Breathe, Pet Oxygen Mask Program by Invisible Fence Brand.
Flippers Rule in Some Sacramento Markets
June is shaping up to be a pretty good month for my real estate closings. I’ll probably have more sales close in June than any other month this year. I just closed a regular home sale in Curtis Park. This was a beautiful brick home in the St. Francis Oaks subdivision. Everybody who saw the home said pretty much the same thing about it: it was gorgeous but it wasn’t updated enough for their tastes. So, it sold to a flipper. I am seeing many homes in Sacramento sell to flippers nowadays, which is a stark contrast to 5 years ago.
It’s a challenge to negotiate between the two parties, to give a flipper enough room for a profit and to give a seller enough money to make the seller happy. But that’s a challenge I tackle day-in and day-out. My seller’s happiness and satisfying my seller’s goals is paramount to me.
It’s rare to sell a home in Sacramento over $300K without updates to a first-time home buyer. Like I’ve said many times, it’s the Sacramento flippers who originally focused on foreclosures who are to blame for the changed attitude of today’s buyers. There are tons and tons of rehabbed homes that have been resold. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with it because flippers have taken older, abandoned homes in disrepair and turned them into turnkey homes for first-time home buyers. That’s a good thing.
Sacramento flippers are actually good for neighborhoods. They revitalize downtrodden areas. Goodbye boarded-up homes, hello sparkling new stucco and shiny gutters. But they also shape buyer’s expectations, often unrealistically.
It’s no longer enough to buy a home with good bones and potential. Buyers don’t want those homes. Not when they are tempted by all the rehabbed inventory on the market. So the only surefire way to move homes without updates, which are now called fixers, is to sell them at a discount to compensate. The problem that arises for sellers who want to fix up their own homes is a seller cannot compete with a flipper. Because the average seller can’t buy materials at wholesale, nor do most ordinary sellers have access to low-cost rehab crews.
If a seller improves a home for resale, the seller is quite likely to lose money on the sale. A seller doesn’t generally enjoy the profit margins that flippers possess. So, that means the homes that need updates are more often than not sold to flippers.
Last year my database held very few flippers. Not so today.
Should Sacramento Home Sellers Give Early Possession to Buyers?
My cat, Pica, has a one-track mind when it comes to communicating what he wants. His focus is crystal clear, because he asks for only one thing. It’s never food nor treats nor pets nor playtime that he begs for, perhaps because those requests are often ignored, especially when I am working, which is most of the day for at least 5 days a week. The one thing that he truly wants above all else in life is to go outside, and that’s the one thing he cannot do. Fortunately, he is not traumatized by his inability to access the forbidden and, after I acknowledge his efforts, he will realize defeat and go roll happily in a sunny spot.
The funny part is if he does slink outside, soon as he is outside he wants to come back inside. After he gets what he thinks he wants, he doesn’t want it anymore. I don’t want him stolen or lost or runover by a car or beat up by skunks, so he stays in the house. We once let him out on our back steps, where we could supervise, but he stooped to give a ride to those hitchhiking fleas with their little flea thumbs stuck out — which quickly spread throughout the house and to our other 2 cats. That’s when the law was laid down — no outside. Ever. Period. End of Story.
There are some things in life that are just not a good idea to do. Like sticking a fork in an electrical outlet to see what happens or giving a home buyer early possession.
An agent called last week to ask if her buyers could have early possession of a home, prior to closing. This particular home is a Bank of America FHA short sale, which means it will take a long time to get approval, even after receipt of the Approval to Participate. The tenants moved out, the home is empty, and the buyers would like to move in and rent back from the seller.
Apart from the fact there can be no agreements between the parties that are not disclosed to the bank, and apart from the fact the seller cannot make a profit in a short sale, early buyer possession is a bad idea. I’ve been in this business almost 40 years, and there is rarely a benefit to early possession for the seller. There is liability, tons of it, and there is also the possibility the buyer might decide after moving in that the home, for whatever reason, that the home is not to the buyer’s liking.
When I represent the seller, the time we want a buyer to realize that maybe the purchase was not right is after the transaction has closed, and the buyer’s feet are up on the coffee table in front of the television in the living room of the home that now belongs 100%, hook, line and sinker, to the buyer.
If you’re interested in finding out how much your home is worth today, call your Sacramento real estate agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916.233.6759.
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