If You Want It Sold . . . September 7, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, Changing Market, Long Island, New York, Real Estate, Real Estate Market, Selling Your Home.add a comment
There was a time when all you had to do to get a home sold was list it. Nothing fancy, though some very classy marketing 
pieces were used by those of us who saw a value in it. It set our listings apart from the crowd, but if truth be told, the market for home sales on Long Island was white hot. Those were the years when you didn’t have to have great expertise to get the job done. The frenetic activity by a buying public did it for us.
Then came the change. As we watched the long touted “bubble burst” those in the industry for six years or less had no frame of reference for how to deal with a new environment. Prices were coming down like lead balloons and with inventory increasing at alarming rates, none of the tried and true was working. Buyers were sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how things leveled out, ignoring ads in local newspapers. Equally ignored were the full color ads in local real estate magazines. Even web sites, formerly drawing the eyes of huge numbers of potential purchasers, were sitting dormant.
In today’s real estate marketplace, at least here on Long Island, the single most important tool we have is pricing your home right from the start. We need to assess where similar homes have been selling within the last two to three months and price yours aggressively. The temptation to get you just a little bit more can wind up costing you tens of thousands of dollars as time and buyers pass you by.
A Prince Is Born September 6, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, family, feelings, General, Uncategorized.add a comment
There was nothing special about yesterday. It was another gray and threatening day on Long Island, just after the anticlimactic Labor Day weekend. Mothers scrambled to get last minute school supplies, causing long lines in superstores and clogging exits of parking lots. I needed a few report covers, nothing important enough to fight the crowds, so I decided to come back some other time. 
Good thing. I got the first call shortly after ten, telling me my son and daughter-in-law were in the hospital and she was in labor. Since I’ve been sick with an upper respiratory infection I dutifully stayed away, though my heart was clearly there. I did my pacing at home and at my office till I finally got a text message letting me know they’d had a healthy baby and I should expect a call from my grandson (the big brother) to let me know the details. What??? No sex, no weight, nothing!! Because they decided early on that they didn’t want to know the sex of the baby we waited with baited breath for the moment when we could at last focus our thoughts on a him or a her. It was cruel to leave me hanging. Admittedly my son has a warped sense of humor, much like his mother and several other members of the family. But not now. I’d waited nine long months trying not to think pink or blue. It was my moment, they already knew. I wanted to go shopping. After several text messages of my own he got the message and at long last I found out. We had another boy, Dylan Hunter. I’ll risk sounding prejudiced as I say he’s as beautiful as his name. As is befitting royalty, he had a considerable welcoming committee to witness his first interaction with our world and I could swear I heard a twenty one gun salute at precisely the moment he arrived. Seemingly unimpressed, he glanced around and decided to take a nap. He’s a very lucky young man to have a very special and loving “big brother” who will no doubt teach him everything he needs to know.
Ernesto Leaves His Calling Card September 4, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, family, feelings, General, Long Island, New York, Uncategorized.add a comment
As I sat at this keyboard on Saturday watching the wind whip through the trees, announcing Ernesto’s arrival I thought little of it. It was nothing more than a typical summer storm, or so I thought. Functioning on a limited level, I was at what I hoped was the tail end of a stubborn upper respiratory infection. As the day wore on the relentlesss rain and swirling winds were beginning to get me down. We’d had a wonderful summer on Long Island this year, with beachgoers enjoying eight weeks of uninterrupted sun. But the whole last week, as if heaven held it back as long as it could and was finally giving up, the rains fell. Nothing devastating, sometimes not even heavy rain, but the dismal gray days and moisture filled air that make you want to seek shelter and curl up with a good book.
What a shock when I finally ventured out on Sunday to pick up a newspaper and a few things at the supermarket, to see all the downed trees. Stately oaks with massive trunks leveled and occasionally split down the middle, near misses as local residents ran to get out of the way of falling trees, downed power lines — this was no minor event. We generally consider ourselves lucky in the northeast when it comes to hurricanes. The last really devastating one I remember on Long Island was Gloria. It hit in 1985 and left thousands of people without power for a week or more. You could barely drive down any street without detouring around massive downed trees and huge chunks of concrete.
Every now and then we get a reminder of our place in the universe and just how vulernable we are to the things over which we have little or no control. At least now we have the technology to be warned about some upcoming natural disasters.
If Only It Were That Simple September 2, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, family, General, Long Island, New York, Real Estate, Selling Your Home.add a comment
There was a time in the not too distant past that you made a decision to put your home on the market and your 
listing agent took a picture, loaded the information into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and scheduled an Open House for local brokers. The theory behind it was to get as many professionals past your front door as possible so they would call their buyers and start the parade of prospects walking through the home.
Usually, within the same week an Open House would be scheduled and advertised in the newspaper. Then if you were very lucky you’d get anywhere from 8 to 20 groups of people stopping by to look at your home. Many of them would be nosy neighbors or people looking for something to do on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. If you and your agent really hit the jackpot, the perfect buyer, looking for a home just like yours would linger and decide to make an offer. It happened occasionally, but it was a toss of the dice.
If this strategy didn’t work, an ad would be placed in the paper over and over again till someone from somewhere bought your home. Well that was then and this is now. I’m going to tell you something you may not want to hear. Newspaper advertising no longer works. The full color Real Estate books don’t work. In fact, most of the tried and true methods of the past simply don’t sell houses on Long Island in 2006.
With ever increasing inventory and a constant battle to make your home stand out from the rest, your representative has to be innovative. They have to find new ways to reach the consumer. One of the most effective being an outstanding presentation of your home on the web. Over 80% of buyers now begin their search on the Internet, so we have meet them in their marketplace. It’s often all about imagery. We create tours to entice your potential buyers to choose your home. This is one of the many options for showcasing your home.
When you hire someone to share their expertise with you and to get your home sold, have enough faith in that person to let him/her direct the marketing of your property. Remember our goal as real estate professionals is to get your home sold for the most money the current market will bear in the shortest period of time, with the least amount of stress to you. Don’t second guess the methodology, especially is a declining market. The results can be costly.
As The Seasons Change September 2, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, family, General.add a comment
There’s a certain sadness that comes with the end of summer and the frivolity associated with it. Someone certainly put 
the brakes on it this year on Long Island, with rain drenching parched parcels of land for the past week and an unwelcome visit from “Ernesto,” no longer the threat he once was, but raising his voice in protest and making his presence known through whipping winds and swaying trees.
In a few short days the children will eagerly head back to school awaiting life’s next adventure and parents, heaving a sigh of relief will set their sights at a return to normalcy, whatever that might be. For me, fall is a time to regroup. It’s a time to fine tune the systems that keep my world in check and to plan the direction of my life, at least in the short term.
This September is special. We’ll be adding a new and already well loved little person into the multigenerational fabric of our family. We anxiously await the moment in time when our little angel hears the cosmic signal to give up the warmth and security of his/her nesting place to venture into our world and our outstretched arms. We’re waiting.
The Devil’s In The Details September 1, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, feelings, Long Island, New York, Real Estate, Selling Your Home.add a comment
The phone rang and I picked up to an agitated voice at the other end. We had, a few days before, 
finalized a deal on this seller’s home with terms that worked well for my client. I was elated. She’d suffered a difficult start to her year and needed the tranquility this sale would bring her. The buyers were perfect. They had nothing to sell, had very high credit scores and were going for 80% financing, with a preapproval in place by the lending institution.
Secure in the knowledge that we had nothing to worry about, I started to focus a little more on some of the other matters calling for my attention. Now here it was just days later and I could hear the terror in her voice. She was frantic. Her attorney, away from the office, sent her the contract and she read something that set her heart racing and had her questioning the sale altogether. I went to her home to look at it with her and to try to make sense of it.
What I realized as I gazed at the document, paragraph after paragraph, was that in layman’s terms it did look frightening. It didn’t break out the cash from the mortgage amount in calculating the balance due after the down payment. It was all there if you read it as professionals would, but to her untrained eye it was missing details intrinsic to the transaction. Try as I might, explaining it and going over the math, I couldn’t convince her it was right in it’s essence. It was important in this case (as in most) that her attorney be there to explain the contract he was asking her to sign.
The lesson in it for me is to remember that the language of real estate is unique and it is incumbent on us as professionals to explain it in as much detail as necessary to those in our care. It is the responsibility of the buyer or seller to ask any questions they have in order to be completely comfortable with the process in which they’re involved. I will never again end a conversation without asking, “do you understand what’s happening, or do you need more information from me?”
So You’re Selling Your Home August 31, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, Long Island, New York, Real Estate, Selling Your Home.add a comment
So you’ve made the decision to sell your home. You understand, or you think you do, that prices are not as high as they were last year or the year before, but you’re confident. You know it will sell. You choose an agent to represent you and she/he comes over with the paperwork for you to sign and takes some photos. Depending on the confidence level of your Realtor(R), the stark reality of this market may or may not have been explained to you. This is the simple truth. Price it right and it will sell.
You have to recognize that buyers have more options than they have in years. They’re definitely in the driver’s seat at this moment in time and you’re going to have to do something to attract them. There are two places you can be in a declining market, ahead of the curve – giving you the benefit of more exposure or behind it, causing you to constantly play catch-up with an inventory gaining speed as it rushes down the hill. Trust me, the latter will cause you pain. It means you’ll more than likely have to drop your price more than once until your home is perceived as good value by the buyers.
There is a perception out there that we, as real estate professionals, make the market. Let me state unequivocally, we do not. Buyers, comparing your home to others currently available make a value judgment. If they determine your property offers as much or more than competing houses, they’ll make an offer. If not, you may frustratingly sit waiting for the phone to ring and wondering what is going wrong. If you find yourself in this scenario, have a frank discussion with your broker about what it will take to make your property competetive. Time, in a declining market is not on your side
Everyone Loves Long Island August 30, 2006
Posted by Geri in Blogroll, Long Island.1 comment so far
My business has me in contact with people from all over the world and the one surprising constant is those who have visited or lived here for any period of time love Long Island. I’ve heard things like, “it’s the one place I remember with great warmth,” or “I miss living there. What a great place!” Though my feelings are the same, it’s harder to define. For all of you who raise your families here, you know the benefits of the schools, libraries and Long Island’s natural resources. 
I both live and work here and will share my experiences about both.
All About Long Island 