Yes I'm touting Alameda again

The phone calls over the past week in Alameda got off to fast start but has slowed over the last couple of days. Maybe it’s the calm before the storm?

Nancy and I both have a number of buyers we are watching the market for, while preparing a new listing for the market in the coming weeks. What we did enjoy were the conversations with a couple of owners contemplating sales. You just never know in this business when your next business opportunity will arise.

We wrote or I should say Nancy wrote an offer for her clients on a home in the East End that is an REO. Of course the frustration of dealing with an REO started almost immediately. It began with the initial showing, she was given the combination to the lockbox to show the home, but there was no key. To our favor the front door was unlocked. That’s not the best way to keep your listing available for showings by the way. Later that night after meeting with our clients we get an email from the listing agent that she had gone over to the home to secure it and was wondering why the key was not in the lockbox. Gee, I wonder when she last checked on the home. We told her it wasn’t there to begin with. We emailed the offer to the agent on Tuesday morning at her request; there were no other competing offers. Twenty-four hours later we get a call from the listing agent that the five day response time requested by the bank was now going to be seven because the bank wants the agent to hold an open house before reviewing any offers. I’ll drive by Sunday to see, just because I haven’t seen many out of the area agents holding REO’s open on the weekends. I believe they see it as easy money with not much if any outlay of time involved. Why these banks can’t stick with a plan is anyone’s guess. They all say via the media that they want to get these homes off their books as quickly as possible but they tend to build their own stumbling blocks too doing so all too frequently.

Oh well onto better things to happen this week. We celebrated mother’s day three times this past week. Last Saturday was spent with my in-laws and Nancy’s family; Sunday was for Nancy and I as I held an open house at 146 Basinside Way until 4 pm. Then Tuesday’s Mother’s Day celebration at the Colombo Club in Oakland was a fun and filling affair with my mom and my family and some old family friends, the menu included salad, rolls, rigatoni with a creamy tomato and ground veal sauce followed by Italian pot roast that was fall off the fork good with roast potatoes and veggies. To top off the dinner they served Tiramisu from Dianda’s bakery in San Francisco.

This morning (Thursday) I met with my B2B business networking group and gave my take on the real estate market in town and exchange referrals. I spoke about the REO I mentioned above and about the recent upswing in market activity.

So here is a brief glance at the market activity in town over the past week. If you didn’t notice in last weeks blog post you can click on of the headings (new, pending, etc ;) above the graphs and a link will open to show you the MLS detail of those homes.

There are twenty new and not so new homes, the not so new are again homes renewed on the MLS for one reason or another. They include a five unit building, a gardener’s delight-a nursery, two condominiums, three townhomes and fourteen single family homes in all. The way to recognize the “new or not so new” is in the small gray box on the left just below the map labeled Cumulative days on the MLS. If the number next to that is over 7 then you know it’s a retread as we call it.

NEW

PRICE CHANGE

PENDING

SOLD

For a look at all 131 available homes in Alameda click this sentence. You will notice inventory is up a little from last weeks 121.

Lastly on a good note, if you follow me on Facebook you probably saw a few posts weeks ago criticizing my ISP Comcast for not coming to my home office to check on an intermittent connection problem. To recap, the technician called instead and refused at my request to come to my door, blaming the issue I was having on my wireless router according to his equipment. Two days later I had the router replaced by Alameda Business Machines, no resolve to the problem, another two days later, and another tech comes to our door and discovers the cable modem as being the problem, it was replaced then and there. Of course I had already spent $236 on a new Linksys wireless N router.

Now the happy ending, one Twitter comment to the Comcast folks in Philadelphia on Twitter and an email to We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com and seven days later I’m reimbursed half the cost of the wireless router and my monthly charge for internet service is reduced by half for the next six months to make up for the difference and then some. This social networking really does work!  Have a great weekend, and if you are close by Saturday or Sunday stop and say hi at the home we will be holding open on the lagoon at 146 Basinside Way.

Ciao for now, Chuck