Real Estate Dos and Don'ts

Or, "How to sell your hut in two months or less and negotiate a thoroughly mediocre real estate deal":

• Do . . . price your hut dirt cheap to move.

• Do . . . photoshop the bejeebus out of the photos that are posted online.
  
  
• Do . . . appeal to at least three out of five of your potential buyers' senses by decorating your hut tastefully, keeping it neat as a pin, flooding it with light, strategically placing fresh flowers, and brewing a pot of coffee or baking some Otis Spunkmeier cookies before every showing. Also, bust out the Febrize and spray the sh1t out of everything in sight.
  
  
• Don't . . . chuck wayward toys into your vegetable crisper when frantically picking up the house for a last minute showing. People could totally look in there.
  
  
• Don't . . . decline any showings. If, for example, a potential buyer wants to come back for a second look the day after their first showing, don't turn them away because it's your kid's nap time! You and everyone else involved will get a taunting email from the centralized showing service saying, "Second showing DECLINED BY SELLER." And you will have a lot of 'splaining to do to your real estate lady.
  
  
• Do . . . ask for your long-awaited offer in writing before moving forward with negotiations. Especially if you happen to be on vacation in Canuckland with a crappy cell phone connection. It's possible you could mistake the amount of money the buyer wants us you to pay in closing costs for the amount of their down payment! Ha ha ha ha! Having inaccurate information in this regard could adversely affect the ensuing negotiations.
  
  
• Do . . . bury a statue of Saint Joseph in your yard.

Was it a coinkydink or divine intervention that sold my hut? You be the judge.

(I must add that I think our real estate agent redeemed herself in the end. I almost choked on my Eggbeaters omelet when I noticed that she had our hut listed as a "showcase property" on the local real estate site. When I told our potential buyers to take a hike because it was the J-dog's nap time, she immediately got on the horn with their broker to make amends. And when it came down to the wire in our negotiations, she took a hit with her commission and got the other agent to reduce hers, as well, in order to push the deal through.)

Ah, but real estate bidness is not my only excuse for abandoning the old blog and chain during the past few weeks - I also went on vacation, had a stomach bug, and lost precious hours of my life towards the scrubbing of one hundred thousand laminated flashcards, wooden beads, and brass bells for end-of-year Montessori school clean up.

Also, since we didn't get the house we bid on earlier this month, we are now in the exciting and also frightening position of trying to find a new house to move into before we need to vacate this one. And it's kind of slim pickings.

Let me ask you this: would you buy a house that is overpriced, super Hi-Kwality on the inside, but kind of looks like it should be in a Florida retirement community instead of the sludgy midwest?

And how tacky is it to have a ginormous wet bar in your family room or a wall mounted TV above the jacuzzi in the master bath?

Just wondering.

I Done Gave 'Em the Genius Gene

The little J-dog had his two year wellness checkup at the peds office this morning.

All is well, and no attempts were made to punch out windows or escape this time.

Progress.

Upon entering the exam room, Dr. W immediately noted the J-dog's verbal aptitude as he, perched safely in my lap, sounded out all of the letters on her wall posters.

Naturally, I took this as a prompt to launch into my cache of J-dog genius stories.

"He totally spelled, "stop" the other day, Dr. W, except backwards! We were in the car and the J-dog saw a Stop sign and he was like, "P-O-T-S! Pots! Can you freakin' believe it????"

Dr. W was duly impressed. "That reminds me of an eight month old I saw once whose mother insisted that she was actually pronouncing real words," she said. "And sure enough, when I set my desk clock down in front of the baby, she said, clear as the nose on my face, 'tick-tock.' It was truly astounding."

What Dr. W didn't recall, my friends, is that the mom WAS ME, and the baby was none other than my very own little V-meister.

My kids are clearly jeanuses genyuhsiz geniuses, and the V-meister is a pediatric legend in her own time.

Rimarama Recommends: Melatonin

First of all, no deal on the house.

I'm more angry than depressed over it, actually. They strung us along way past the time that our offer expired and their agent kept stalling and not returning our agent's phone calls before finally giving us some bull$hit explanation and ultimately saying "no."

I have added their agent to my official Enemies List, which also includes all of the engineers from my old tech writing job, our wedding DJ, and Carmine the landscaper, who I once chased down with the Ramamobile to get him to cough up the eighty bucks he owed me.

Whatever. I don't even want their stupid house anymore.

My guess is that it will still be festering on the market two or three months from now, when the sellers find their dream home, and then, if I'm still available, I'll offer them five bucks for it. But I will attach that five spot to an invisible string and jerk it away at the last possible minute, just like my mom did to me on April Fool's Day back in '82.

Oh yes, my revenge will be sweet. (Dear Saint Joseph, don't pay no nevermind, I'm just talkin.')

Anyway, onward, ho!

Today's subject is melatonin.

You might be wondering how a person as high strung as I tend to be is getting even a wink of sleep, what with all the real estate and other, non blog approved craziness going on right now. And I'll tell you: I drink a fifth of Jack Daniels with my Amb1en tablet every single night while watching Poker TV.

I kid! Don't ever do that.

Actually, I have a new friend, and his name is Melatonin. I first met Melatonin about ten years ago. Our relationship ended badly when I failed to read the dosing information on his jacket.

The result of this foray into the nefarious underworld of non-FDA regulated herbal remedies was that I stayed up all night peeing day-glo yellow every ten minutes, became convinced that my kidneys were failing, and had a full blown panic attack which necessitated calling my at-the-time med student boyfriend, the P-Dawg, at three in the morning screaming, OMG, P-DAWG, I'M DYING, SHOULD I CALL 9-1-1 ???

But don't let this scare you away from the Melatonin.

For the past few nights, I've cranked up the old noise machine an extra decibel or two, curled up with my 500 hundred page hardback, The Secret History of the World, and taken a sub-lingual melatonin tablet that tastes just like an Altoid mint. And, even though my thoughts race faster than a hamster on a wheel, I've fallen peacefully asleep, dreamed super vivid, wacky dreams, and woken up feeling fresh as a daisy every morning.

And so I heartily recommend melatonin as the homeopathic remedy of the day.

P.S. Just an FYI: It's possible there may be some shark cartilage in those tablets. In case you were interested in trying it, you know, I thought I should tell you.

A Little Bit of Voodoo Never Hurt Anyone

Last week, my heart settled on a house that I had looked at way back in the beginning of our search. At that time, I hadn't realized what a gem this place was because I was blissfully unaware of just what, exactly, my $40* dollars could buy in the area where we are searching.

I was under the delusional impression that I could order up a gourmet dinner at a French bistro, complete with appetizer, dessert, and an award winning bottle of perfectly aged wine, but it turns out that my forty bucks* can stretch only so far as a comfortably satisfying meal with a half carafe at the Cheesecake Factory.

(Nothing wrong with the Cheesecake Factory, mind, you, but when you think you have reservations at French Laundry, it takes awhile to step off of your cloud.)

After the P-Dawg and I had looked at every house in the neighborhoods to which we had narrowed our search, I came back to the house on W street, and when I walked through the front, door, I heard harps playing and angels singing.

I took note of the gleaming hardwood floors in the dining and living rooms (you can't find floors like these at the Cheesecake Factory), at the French doors leading to the living room, and at the bay window in the kitchen that leads out to the low maintenance Timbertech deck with retractable awning.

I assessed the home's pristine condition and mentally replaced the decor with something a little more current.

I mentally mapped the distance from the house to the community park and swimming pool, noting that it could easily be accessed by bike using side streets alone by a slightly older J-dog and V-meister.

I observed the sidewalks and bounty of older, shade giving trees that were hard to come by in the other neighborhoods where we had looked, and I realized that I had, in fact, hit pay dirt with the house on W street.

The only drawbacks were that the house was slightly smaller than what we had hoped to find, and the owners were asking $50* for what was clearly a $35* home.

That, and the fact that we hadn't sold our hut yet.

But we decided to put in a bid at about seven percent below the list price and asked for a 90 day close.

The seller, who is in no hurry to move, gave us a counter-offer that was only about 25 cents* off of their asking price.

(Insert knife through heart here.)

Disappointed, we came back with our final offer, which was a substantial increase from our initial one, but nowhere close to what the seller had asked for. (Blah, blah, blah, boring, boring, boring.)

We left our "firm" offer open through the end of this weekend, hoping that they would mull it over, find a place they love, realize that they have been presented with a mighty fine deal, and accept.

(Yeah, I almost just fell asleep, too, typing out that last paragraph.)

While all of this was happening, my mother was doing a fair amount of silent and secretive hand-wringing. Feeling that as a parent, it is her duty to intervene in the major life decisions of her approaching middle-age children, she could bite her tongue no longer and called me up at dinnertime with her two twenty five cents.

Do you know what a phone call of the, "I know you hate it when I give you advice, but I need to tell you how I really feel are you sure you aren't making a mistake can't you find a nice $20 house somewhere around here you don't need to try to keep up with the Jones' what happens if P-Dawg suddenly kicks the bucket I can't help but feel a sense of foreboding and doom over this choice you have made" variety does to the psyche of a devoted daughter whose emotional state is already akin to that of a frayed rubber band that has been stretched to it's maximum length?

Yeah.

Also, not to give Catholics a worse rep than we already have, but I sent the P-Dawg outside yesterday with a Saint Joseph statuette and a shovel.

My MIL and the Internet told me that burying a Saint Joseph (patron Saint of families and, er, carpentry) statue upside down in your yard, like, totally helps sell your house. She also told me to throw a rosary over my shoulder into a bush to prevent rain on my wedding day (I didn't do this), but what can I say, I am getting desperate, Internets.

(Disclaimer: Catholics don't pray to or worship statues, but they do ask saints, whom they believe to be in really good standing with God, to intercede on their behalf in prayer. Kind of like if you really needed to use the car on Saturday night but you haven't exactly done all of your chores that week and your grades for the semester are a bit low, so you ask your goody two shoes sister who has done no wrong, ever, to ask your dad about borrowing the car for you.)

Now, I'm not sure if this means that your sister has to come along with you on your hot date, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

Incidentally, I know that the whole burying of the statue is just freaky-deeky superstition and, if anything, it's the prayer that does the trick, but, well, it can't hurt, right? Right? And I'm not praying specifically that we sell our house or get the one that we bid on, but rather that things turn out best for the well-being of our family. (Dear Saint Joseph, tell God I totally want that house and please to let somebody buy my hut soon Amen.)

(And this is neither here nor there, but I've had about 95% success with the old, "Tony, Tony, come around, what is lost must be found" prayer for lost items.)

So, anyone have any experience with Saint Joe and real estate?

P.S. No one is getting off the island today. That was a total gimmick mwa haha.

*Actual monetary values have been changed.

Still Here

What has Rimarama been up to?

• Engaging in (and likely losing) real estate bidding wars
• Hyperventilating
• Praying
• Valiantly trying but not succeeding in selling her hut
• Globe trotting (Detroit and back)
  
• Questioning her commitment to keeping the old blog afloat
• Getting disillusioned
  
• Deciding she's more of a "once a week" poster, and, truth be told, a lurker at heart.

But, a real post is coming soon, in which at least one additional person will be getting off the island. YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THE FIRST TEN SENTENCES OF THIS POST!

And now I'm off to ride the germ train at Chuck-E-Cheez. The V-meister has been invited to her first birthday party at the creepy maus haus and I have no choice but to go along. I tried to get out of it by asking if I could just drop her off, but as it turns out, all the utha muthas are staying and the last thing I want is to appear elitist.

Which is why I'm bringing my tax stubs and also copies of student loans. And I'm going to eat a Chucky burger with some Kurly Fryz. And play skee ball.

WHEEEEEEEEEE!