Monday, December 31, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Beyond the Cookies and the Milk
Here are some other conventions for Santa from around the world. Never too late to try some of these exquisite pairings - scrumptious treats with something a little more sophisticated than milk.
Across the pond in England, Santa Claus, dubbed “Father Christmas” in 17th-century Britain, is decked out in a long red or green robe when he arrives at families’ homes with an empty stomach. Traditionally, Brits leave out mince pie and a carrot for Father Christmas to munch on, but in recent years he’s been polishing off a plate of shortbread cookies—a favorite English teatime snack—in exchange for filling kids’ stockings and pillowcases, which are tacked to fireplaces or to their foot of beds, with edible delights.
Suggested Pairing: Champagne is the perfect bubbly for the buttery shortbread cookies, says Elizabeth Schneider, CSW, owner of the wine education company Wine for Normal People. “The aging process in the traditional method of Champagne making ensures a biscuity, bready flavor that will go perfectly with shortbread.”
Just make sure to select a sparkler that’s either demi-sec (sweet) or doux (very sweet). “The rule with dessert is that the wine should always be sweeter than the food,” says Schneider.
In Germany, meanwhile, children welcome Sankt Nikolaus with footwear on their doorsteps. While stinky sneakers don’t sound so Santa-friendly, it apparently does the trick: St. Nick fills the shoes of those on the nice list with oranges, candies and coins. And those who have been naughty slip into shoes filled with twigs. The festivities are celebrated in early December to mark the good Saint’s passing on December 6, 343 AD.
Suggested Pairing: A German Riesling is the perfect companion to the fruity treats stuffed in footwear. Pick a bottling that has hints of honey, with acid that stands up to strong flavors. “The acidic quality of a Riesling makes acidic foods like fruits feel smoother in your mouth,” Schneider says.
In Denmark, children leave out a bowl of rice pudding for Nisse, a mythical Scandinavian figure who has been known to cause mischief if his snack is missing. The tradition dates back to the 1840s, when Danish folklore says Nisse, who has a weakness for sweets, protected the homes of farmer’s who left out a bowl of porridge for him on Christmas night.
Suggested Pairing: Pair the rice pudding with a Gewürztraminer from Alsace. Schneider says the wine’s cardamom and lychee flavors round out the oily mouthfeel of the dish. The creamy pudding’s “cinnamon and nutmeg flavors…create an experience reminiscent of a cup of warm, spiced tea on a cold day.”
While making his Australian house stops, Santa expected to munch on many a mince pie. Originally an English tradition, kids were encouraged to leave the dish out on the night before Christmas. If Santa eats the pie, it symbolizes good luck in the coming year.
Suggested Pairing: There’s nothing better to pair with a mince pie than an Australian Grenache. “The spiciness and full, soft texture in these wines complements the fruit, dough and icing of the pie without stealing the show,” says Schneider. “Bold fruit flavors like raspberry and red cherry,” when paired with a Grenache, create “a sangria-like flavor” in the pie.
In case Santa is not crazy about Grenache, he can also sip on a Muscat from Rutherglen, Victoria. Since they’re soft, sweet and fruity, Schneider says, these wines are ideal counterparts to mincemeat. Muscats “have a caramel flavor that’s dotted with aromas of orange, raisin, and honey.”
It’s the American way to place a plate full of chocolate chip or sugar cookies on your kitchen counter for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve—and don’t forget the glass of milk. It’s a tradition dating back to the Great Depression.
Suggested Pairing: While milk does a body good, this Christmas the chocolate chip cookies call for another classic mate: ruby or vintage Port. “You can’t beat chocolate and Port,” says Schneider. Port’s espresso, blackberry and chocolate flavors perfectly complement the cookies’ bittersweet morsels. A tawny Port, aged 10 or 20 years, complements sugar cookies, imbuing them with nut and fig flavors that add richness and depth.
Excerpt from Wine Enthusiast Magazine: Gina Roberts-Grey 2012
Juicing
If wines and ports are not your cup of juice, here and some great healthy juicing tips to spruce up holiday joy. “Holiday Juice Challenge”: Juice once a day, every day from Thanksgiving to the New Year. You pick the juice, and what time of day to drink it. Do so and step into 2013 stronger and healthier.
Here are four favorite recipes that apply particularly well:
Apple-Ginger Juice
2 apples
½ a lemon
½-inch piece of ginger root
½ cup of cranberries
Red Joy Juice
12 plum tomatoes
1 apple
1 cup of cranberries
1 beet
Triathlete Juice
1 beet
2 cups of kale
1 head of romaine
½ a lemon
½ inch piece of ginger root
Carrot-Garlic
2 cups of baby cut carrots
1-2 cloves of garlic (not too much, this one packs quite a punch!)
Happy Holidays!
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Real Estate Websites and Limit Hold Em Poker Musings
It can take us a full three hours to comp a house. Sometimes more and I am a professional with 10 years experience. Make no mistake about it; it takes a lot of time. This isn't a bad thing, because
A) maybe we get the listing,
B) if we do it for a friend as a favor they never forget it and they invite us over for dinner and we like that, and
C) it keeps us pencil sharp. If my real estate pencil isn't sharp, I'm toast.
For instance, the poker style no limit version of Wilson software, however, is absolutely worthless. It just was. A real poker player would know within two seconds. Because no limit isn't mathematical. It's a touch of math, but it's mostly experience and feel.
These real estate websites? I'm going to let you in on a little secret. All they are is Wilson Software -- the worthless, no limit version. They have one piece of data...which is OK, that's a form of empowerment for the client and I'm not mad at that. But we think they are confusing people more than they are helping, because comping a house isn't limit Hold 'Em. It's high stakes, no limit Hold 'Em all the way. Limit Hold 'Em is like driving an automatic car. It's a piece of cake. No limit Hold 'Em? It's as complex as flying an airplane. They are two different sports.
These websites have aggregated the most basic set of data a realtor uses, i.e. square footage, lot size, etc., and they have that bird's eye view. That's it. If that's all I used to comp a house, you should knock my commission down. Your local real estate agents her aren’t on top from above. We are in the streets. And we’re sick of talking about Zillow at dinner parties. Or at least this realtor is. My feet have to touch the pavement to comp your house. I can't do it from a map on top. That bird's eye view that tells people what the public records recorded is just one piece of data. I'm not going to tell you everything I do to comp a house, because I don't want to bore you. But for one thing, I'm in the houses on Tuesdays. So every time I walk into a house, whatever that house is telling me goes into my gut, and I'll use it later down the road. If the house isn't right for a client, I still go in there and pay attention and just "feel the house" a bit with my insides so I can file it in my gut for later.
Then we watch that house on the MLS at night with my headphones on, while the rest of the world is watching Million Dollar Listing (ugh) or American Idol. We watch that house go into escrow, fall out of escrow if that's going to happen, go back in escrow, and then eventually sell. We watch the whole thing.
It's like watching a baseball game. It relaxes us. The rhythm of this is kind of like the rhythm of a poker table. I can tell by how long it took to go into escrow, and how quickly it goes from looking for backup to pending, and how quickly it sells, everything I need to know about the market. I can tell the whole story of the transaction. It's like watching a movie. If it's moving hot, that tells one thing. If it's cooling, that tells us another. If you're selling your house, your realtor uses this information when they counsel you about making a price adjustment.
These websites... can't do... any of this! Zillow is bird's eye view. I'm in the house. Then I eat lunch right there and I take the temperature of the neighborhood. Are there any new cool stores and restaurants? What's going on over there? How is the traffic? Is the traffic getting better or worse? We drive around. We talk to people. We feel it. This is what your good, hard working, local real estate agents do. We are Angelenos and we control our own schedule for the most part, but we are always "tuned in" to what's going on. Those websites can't touch us. Many, many agents don't do this. Most agents probably don't do it. But the good ones do.
Selling houses in L.A.? That's high stakes, no limit all the way. It's flying an airplane. It has so much texture to it, it's fascinating. You're at the table, and you're sitting there with your headphones on, and you're just feeling the table tighten up and loosen up. It's all feel. There's nothing we like more. It's no different than watching the real estate market at night with your headphones on. Let's say you have a pair of sevens or something, and there's a flush draw on the board, and the other player is betting into you and putting you up against the wall. What do you do? You take the most base, obvious data (the piece that Zillow can do), and then you use all your tools that you've built up from years in the game. You use your experience and your instincts that you have earned over time at the tables. And you make the call.
For us, houses are cards and cards are houses. It's all the same thing.
Right now? There's no inventory. The table is tight. The interest rates are very low, more people with chips want to get into the game but there's none available. There initials are on the board. It will loosen up, but be patient. Hang tight and be ready to pounce. If you find a house you like, it's a seller's market right now. Bet large or someone's going to come over the top on you.
Excerpt by the Huffington Post: John Bronson
Monday, December 10, 2012
The 5 Most Expensive Ways Buyers & Sellers Sabotage Themselves
Themselves
It’s easy to see the experience of buying or selling a home as an adversarial one: you vs. the people on the other side of the bargaining table, with one chess move by your opponent potentially costing you thousands of dollars.
The first step of any cure is diagnosis. Here are some clues to detecting the costliest cases of real estate self-sabotage so you can stop them in their tracks, get out of your own way and get back to the business of buying or selling your home:
1. Hesitating. I’m a big proponent of buying or selling - making any real estate move, really - on whatever time frame makes sense for your life, your family and your finances, rather than trying to time the market. That said, once you’ve done the math, saved your pennies, prepped your property and otherwise decided to move forward on your home buying or selling plan of action, hesitation can cost you.
• Buyers who hesitate to make an offer can lose out on a home entirely - or can wait so long another offer comes in, forcing them to offer more to beat the other folks out. • Sellers who hesitate to take an offer can lose out on a buyer, when a new listing comes on the market that catches their eye or better meets their needs.
• Mortgage borrowers who wait too long to lock their interest rates can end up paying more when rates creep up instead of down. Accordingly, you can eliminate hesitation-related self-sabotage by: • working through the life and financial decisions that are intertwined with your real estate matters completely and on paper before you start the process, so you can revisit them if and when you’re tempted to hesitate
• getting as educated as possible in advance about your local market dynamics and neighborhood home values, as well as the home buying or selling process in general, and • diving head first into the discomfort and uncertainty that everyone experiences when they make these major decisions, sitting down with your agent and other pros involved to get every question you have answered in a timely manner so you can move forward, rather than putting decisions off and “sleeping on it” night after night.
2. Not taking expert advice. Have you ever taken an indecisive friend out to dinner, watched them hem and haw over the menu, ask the server what their favorite dish is and then order something totally different than the server’s choice? That same phenomenon takes place every day in real estate. Many smart buyers and sellers invest much time and energy into agent-finding, asking around for referrals, checking agents out online, interviewing them and even calling around to check references, only to completely disregard their advice! If you have a reputable, competent agent, you might be surprised at how often they can save you money with simple nuggets of experience-laden advice specific to a given scenario, like:
• act fast • list it • lower offer less/more • counteroffer for more • be aggressive • take the bank’s terms • don’t buy that house • get one more inspection/bid • don’t remove contingencies yet/remove contingencies now • ask for X, Y or Z repair, price reduction, credit, free rent-back, furniture, or longer time to close.
And if you have a truly hard time trusting your agent’s advice for whatever reason, consider that you might simply not yet have found the right agent for you.
3. Overpricing or lowballing. It might run contrary to conventional wisdom, the idea that asking for more money or offering less can be acts of self-sabotage, but ignoring the damage that these acts can do to your real estate plans is unwise. In real estate, pricing is just more nuanced than that. It’s not the case that you can simply pick your price, ignoring the financial complexities involved and the psychologies of the folks on the other side, and expect for good things to magically happen.
Those nuances include these truths: setting a list-price that is significantly above what other, similar homes have recently sold for will not only not get you that price, it poses the potential to turn buyers off, keep them from coming to see your home, make your place sit on the market longer than it needs to and ultimately, it can result in low or no offers.
At the extreme, overpricing can force you to cut the price, sometimes dramatically, to activate buyers who have learned to disregard the obviously overpriced listing in their online house hunt search results. Don’t let your emotions be the ruler of your pricing or offer decisions. Motivation is one factor to consider, but the data on recent, comparable sales should be given much more weight, to keep the threat of price-related self-sabotage in check.
4. Cutting corners. Getting a home ready for sale is a marathon endeavor, not a sprint - especially if you’ve been living there for a number of years. Same goes for working on your credit, savings and financial plans in advance of making your first buy: smart buyers-to-be start years in advance. So, it’s tempting to get near the end of your preparation action plan, lose patience and start cutting corners on staging, property preparation, even vetting your own financials and family wants and needs.
Don’t submit to temptation - well, don’t submit without the input of your agent and loan officer.
Depending on your situation, there are some corners that might be okay to cut - the ones that will have very little impact on the eventual outcome of your real estate endeavors. But give the pros you ‘hired’ the opportunity to give you their input before you unilaterally skip steps on your original action plan. If you tell your agent you need to cut your property preparation budget down by a bit, they can help you decide where the corners you cut will have the least impact on your home’s overall presentation to buyers. If your loan officer says that paying a particular credit account down by $4,000 instead of $5,000 won’t really do too much to your qualification status, you might be fine kickstarting your house hunt a few months before you had planned to.
Unfortunately, it’s all too common to see homes where the sellers have poured cash into great, fundamental repairs and neglected some essential, inexpensive cosmetic items - or buyers who have fallen just a tad short on cash or credit and end up scrambling to boost one or both under pressure. Bring your professional team into the conversation before you cut any corners, and ask them to help you understand and minimize any consequences of cutting costs.
5. Failing to read documents all the way through. Hundreds of your signatures will be requested and required during the process of buying or selling a home. But perhaps the single-most expensive way real estate consumers stab themselves in the back is by failing to read and understand nthe documents they are given - from contracts to disclosures to inspection reports and even closing/loan documents - all the way through.
Many a condo owner has been surprised to learn that they are being assessed a hefty special bill for common area repairs, when that “surprise” was predictable from a few of the hundred pages of HOA disclosures they received before closing escrow. Seller disclosures can be cryptic and boring, but also often contain red flags to guide buyers and their inspectors to the real areas of concern. (Their guiding power is nil if you don’t read them, though.)
The same goes for sellers - your agent should read and help you understand offer(s), buyer’s inspection reports and requests for repairs or credits, estimated closing statements and everything else, but ultimately you are responsible for reading and understanding all of these influential, binding documents before you sign them.
So read them. And don’t be afraid to ask questions or insist on clarifications and corrections, if indicated. If you were quoted a certain interest rate or monthly payment, make sure that matches up to what you see in your closing docs - or that you understand and accept the reasons why it doesn’t, before you sign. This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at the major lender-borrower disputes and buyer-seller legal dramas that have arisen over the years because of errors in loan or closing documents that could have been detected and resolved simply, easily and inexpensively before closing. Don’t be one of them.
ALL: How have you sabotaged yourself - or seen others do the same - in the process of buying or selling a home?
Copyright © 2012 Trulia, Inc. All rights reserved. Tara-Nicholle Nelson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)