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Do You Want to Live Near the Russians?
By that title, I am not talking about the 49th state admitted to the Union, no, no, no. I’m speaking directly about Sacramento. I’m a Sacramento real estate agent, and I could say that I know where the Russians live, but that would only send the CIA after me, and having the FBI hot on my trail is bad enough. I don’t need one more government agency chasing Elizabeth Weintraub all over Sacramento. No, Sirree. Oh, wait, I didn’t mean to say the FBI, it’s just a California district attorney’s office who wants more information on the bad guys that I sometimes write about.
But the other thing is I do know where the Russians live, but I can’t tell you. If I tell you, I could be accused of breaking the Fair Housing Law. The Russians are a protected class. Put that into your Eisenhower pipe and smoke it. I’m not going to say anything bad about the Russians, either. Some of my favorite people hail from Russia. I’m trying to think of some Russians other than my housekeeper and a REALTOR from Daytona Beach, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
I got to thinking about this because a) many people demand that real estate agents perform acts that would get a real estate agent investigated if the authorities knew or watched the agent do it, and b) people don’t know much about real estate agents, and that which they do know for certain, absolutely certain, is often absurd. Like John Oliver said at the Crest Theatre last night, and I paraphrase, about 50% of Americans are positively devastated and at odds with each other 100% of the time. This is just regular people. This is not real estate agents he’s talking about.
When we got on the elevator after Oliver’s performance to rise to the fourth floor and find our car, I looked around at the people on the elevator. Usually, I don’t like standing in close knit quarters with a bunch of strangers. But these people at least had something in common with me; I mean, they had been to see John Oliver, which means if the elevator suddenly got stuck between the floors, I probably would not mind having to participate in a sudden crisis with this particular group of strangers. It would be better than, say, being in a bus load of Republicans that flew off a cliff while on vacation in Utah.
Call it the LOST syndrome. You know, there you are on a plane flying to some exotic place like, oh, maybe French Polynesia, and the plane suddenly nose dives. Next thing you know, you’re waking up a beach splattered in palm fronds with a bunch of people you wanted to kick while standing in line to board. Do you like these people? Would you rely on these people to strangle a pig with their bare hands so you could eat something other than coconuts? That’s something to think about the next time you are standing in a crowd of people whom you do not know. Why, a meteor could hit the earth and spare this circle of people and you.
Do me a favor and think about that the next time you ask this Sacramento real estate agent where the Russians live. You want a real estate agent who has more than 30 years of experience and is a top producer representing you? Sure you do. Then, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
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.
Happy New Year From Bora Bora
Our beach view welcomes a Happy New Year from Bora Bora.
This is the day to begin learning where the lucky 1 and 3 keys are located on the keyboard and how to write 2013 on my checks. That still leaves the other two components of the date to mess up, though: the day and the month. I often get all 3 wrong. I have no concept of time. Probably because I have no children, no little benchmarks to tell me how old I am getting and how much time has already elapsed. Not to mention, being a Sacramento real estate agent means every day is fun, exciting, challenging and new. So why make a New Year’s resolution?
Why not resolve every day to do your best? To make the changes daily in your life that bring you the most rewards and happiness because if you’re not happy, what is the point of wallowing in unhappiness? What purpose does misery serve? Who needs adversity? If you’re not happy where you live, then make plans to move. Call a real estate agent.
How would you like to be Michael Schoonewagen, the general manager of the St. Regis at Bora Bora? We enjoyed cocktails with Mr. Schoonewagen last night, alongside 100 other guests at the St. Regis as we kicked off New Year’s Eve celebrations. Mr. Schoonewagen says he gets to move to a different country every few years. We approached him after his introductions and speech to hand him a card. On the card, we commended our butler, Kostantin, and our room service fellow, Sebastian, both of whom has provided exemplary service during our visit.
My husband started to say that he felt it was important to share a different kind of voice, apart from those who complain, but I’m not sure it came across the way it was intended because Mr. Schoonewagen responded as though my husband was saying the St. Regis must receive a lot of complaints. Mr. Schoonewagen began to defend that allegation. See, this is the problem when one person speaks two languages against a person who cannot. But what was interesting was the happiness ratio. Mr. Schoonewagen said 97% of the guests at the St. Regis are very happy. All of the time.
Even though, as he pointed out, there is no cinema, no theatre, no entertainment on the level to which we are accustomed in the states. I grabbed Mr. Schoonewagen’s arm and asked him to please shush up and stop filling my husband’s head with those thoughts. But it was too late. My husband had already figured it out. He’s a smart guy. It’s no secret that there is no city life here in French Polynesia on Bora Bora. So, it just means one needs to have two homes, that’s all. If you have to live in a city. As Mr. Schoonewagen pointed out, Bora Bora is only 5 hours by air from Hawaii. This time next year, you could be saying Happy New Year from Bora Bora
The Blue Lagoon and Bird Island at Rangiroa
My sister in Minnesota sent an email yesterday to say that she was expecting to receive a ton of snow shortly and temperatures were slated to break a 90-year record low. Then, this morning, she said the newscaster misread her prompter. Apparently, the record low temperatures were only going to be beat those from the ’90s, not from 90 years ago. Of course, to that weather girl it probably seems like 90 years ago because she was most likely learning how to read and write in the 1990s.
It’s all in your perspective, I guess. When I was in school, a hundred years ago seemed like an eternity and today it’s like yesterday. Well, today it is almost is like yesterday. The older we get, the more time is put into perspective. Just like the more experiences we have, the greater our perspective because we have more information to draw upon.
I was thinking about a person’s perception of paradise. Tropical paradise, in particular. There are some people in this world who don’t give a hoot about a tropical paradise, people like my husband. People like this typically can take or leave paradise. Some of them actually hate it. My mother intensely despised the tropics and was very attached to freezers. The kind of freezer that I was supposed to strike with a table knife after placing inside steaming ice-cube trays filled with hot water to melt the accumulated ice. But I love a good tropical paradise. I prefer to think of myself as a more normal and balanced person.
In fact, I would like it if I was given a long assignment to search out the best tropical paradises in the world and to write about them. But no, I am simply a Sacramento real estate agent; an agent who sells a lot of short sales and hence can afford to go on vacation in French Polynesia this winter and leave her cats in the hands of housesitters.
Yesterday, we took a super long boat ride across the inside waters of the atoll, Rangiroa, from the town of Avatoru to a place called the Blue Lagoon, or Lagon Bleu. It’s a lagoon within a lagoon. How cool is that? We also visited Bird Island at Rangiroa.
It made me wonder how many shades of blue are there in the world? That’s what you think when you first step foot on the island and lay eyes on the most beautiful blue waters in the world. Azure. Soft blue pastel. Turquoise. Jade. Hypnotic and brilliant blues and greens. This is after dragging your bony and sunburned knees through the water to get past the reef and onto land itself. There is no sandy beach on which to land. The water is almost waist deep, and you’ve got to wear some type of foot covering for protection. Lemon sharks are circling you as well, but they didn’t seem hungry yesterday.
The guys from the boat loaded a huge cooler onto top of a surfboard anchored in the bay and dragged it to shore. It was filled with chicken, fish, salad fixings and stuff to drink. The crew set up a barbecue stand while the rest of us mostly swam around in the lagoon. A few brave souls ventured across the long reef to Bird Island. My husband and I were two of those. The water was littered with what looked from a distance to be gigantic dog turds, but they were actually black sea slugs. We were not about to step on them. We were also careful not to step on the coral and clams and other sea life, so it took us about 30 minutes to cross from the Blue Lagoon island to Bird Island. Like with most things, it’s not always about the destination, and it’s more about the journey. I just wished my journey would speed itself up a bit because I could feel the heat of the sun baking my back. Why did I not think to put sunscreen there?
I walked around the entire island, shuffling though shore waters when navigation on land became too difficult. My husband got lost halfway around. At one point I thought about going back to look for him but then I realized if he was hurt or having some kind of emergency, I could not possibly drag him back to the island by myself, so I should get help instead. He saw it as I left him there to die on a tropical paradise island.
What is wrong with that, I ask. There are worse places in the world to die than the Blue Lagoon or Bird Island at Rangiroa.
Tiputa Pass in Rangiroa
Dolphins jumping in Tiputa Pass at Rangiroa
You think the holidays are a quiet time in real estate, but even if a Sacramento real estate agent is on vacation in French Polynesia, stuff can happen in monumental fashion. For example, I’ve been gone for only 5 days and during that period of time I’ve had:
- an Elk Grove home fall out of escrow and go back into escrow
- to rescue a pending cancellation due to changing buyer’s names on the deed at the 11th hour
- receipt of four short sale approval letters on four separate short sales to process
- a stove removal by a short sale seller that should not have been removed, times two.
- a demand for an elevation certificate spring out of nowhere
- to refer a seller to a short sale lawyer because I believe the lender lost the prom note
- and numerous inquiries about buying and selling homes in the Sacramento region
Yet, nothing insurmountable and that I can’t handle from French Polynesia. That’s because I have two invaluable things: 1) The internet. 2) The Elizabeth Weintraub Team. And quite frankly, I am completely confident my team members could handle any emergency that pops up — I think they like to humor me by keeping me involved.
I am replaceable.
What is not really replaceable is the rate at which we over-fish our oceans. The ice that is melting at our poles is not replaceable. The level at which our seas are rising is pretty alarming. The gradual warming of our temperatures around the world is disturbing. Bees and butterflies are in peril. When you put these things into perspective, my challenges seem somewhat miniscule.
We walked from our hotel about a mile down the road to Tiputa Pass in Rangiroa yesterday afternoon. I was hoping we would see tigersharks but we spotted instead dolphins jumping. This is one of the spots in the Rangiroa atoll that has broken and lets water flow from the Pacific into the lagoon and back out to sea again. A large freighter came through in the morning to dock inside the lagoon and left through Tiputa Pass in the afternoon. Below are a few more photos:
dolphins jumping at Tiputa Pass, Rangiroa, Adam Weintraub
