Austin TX Real Estate - Hill Country Austin Lakeway Homes for Sale: October 2008

I voted today, have you voted yet?  My husband and I had a little time to spare this morning, so we decided to go ahead and head up to the Collin County Community College and vote.

It was a little awkward since we don't really talk politics in our house.  We're two very strong-headed people and we're both NEVER wrong.  It's been brought up a couple of times, but no real opinions were given about the people, though we did talk about the issues since it's the issues that matter the most.

Needless to say, for a split second, I thought we were going to vote for different people, but we didn't.

I had never stepped foot in Quad C (that's what we call it around here since it's a long name).  It was fairly clean.  The voting space was very small and not private at all.  Kids (are they kids or what age are these college people these days?) were sitting around waiting for their next class, and it was loud.

The voting booths weren't even booths.  They were computer screens with a 6 inch screen on either side so the person next to you couldn't "cheat".  I went to the empty one at the far back while my husband chose the very first booth at the front.

I chose to vote early because I don't see how the rest of the week or weekend could change my mind.  I don't think there's anything else that any of the candidates can say that they haven't already said.

It's almost like when I was dating Mike and said, "What else do you need to know about me that you don't already know?"  He didn't  have an answer, so I told him that either I was leaving or we were getting married.  Why drag things out when they don't need to  be?  We celebrated our third anniversary last week.

Anyway, get out and vote.  If you don't know by now, you're not going to know. What are you waiting for?  Personally, I was waiting for each party to say "Early April Fool's!  Here are our real candidates!!" but it never happened! Oh well, maybe in 4 years we'll get some better choices.

**Graphic courtesy of the VOTEXAS website.

Do you ever not do something because you're afraid of embarrassing yourself, even in front of people you don't know?

I usually go swimming two to three times a week at the Oak Point Center in Plano, TX.  They have a very nice indoor pool. Membership for Plano residents is ONLY $65 a year!!  I fall into that category living in Richardson because my neighborhood feeds into Plano schools.  Outside residents are only about $125 a year or something like that, so it still beats the heck out of a gym membership.

Anyway, I digress... When I first started going there a couple of years ago, I tried doing the butterfly stroke, but I hadn't done it in years, so I felt embarrassed.  Instead of practicing it to get it better so I wouldn't be embarrassed, I just never tried it again... until Monday.

Monday morning, for some reason, I felt like I could give it another shot.  I was swimming as usual, and about 20 minutes into my swim, I kicked off the wall and just started doing the butterfly.  I did 3 strokes of it, and casually went into the breast stroke, hoping no one noticed what I had done, as I'm sure it looked bad.  I mean, look at this picture!  Mouth is wide open every time you come up for a breath, and arms are waling out to the side and tons of water just splashing around.  It's definitely not a dainty swimming stroke.

I continued down, and did my next lap freestyle again.  When I got to the other end, I kicked off the wall, and for some reason, I went into the butterfly again.  This time, I made it just past the halfway point before I went into the breast stroke.  Man, I had to look silly.

Again, I'm down the pool, kickoff the wall and go into the butterfly stroke.  This time, even though I felt I looked really silly, I didn't stop.  I made it all the way to the end, feeling more confident with each stroke.  When I got to the wall and came up for air, this huge tidal wave came up over me, and I made sure I didn't make eye contact with anyone, and quickly went into another lap as if "I meant for that to happen."   

I kept swimming and thinking about that butterfly stroke.  I realized that by that third lap, it felt like I was doing it properly and people probably weren't looking at me anyway as they were swimming their own laps. We all know how little the lifeguards actually watch the water as they daydream about other things.

The moral of the story, don't hesitate to learn something new, or relearn something, just because you're embarrassed about what you might look like to other people.  My muscles felt great the next day, and I could tell my body got a workout it wasn't used to, and that's a good thing.  I'll be working on the butterfly much more often in the future!

Do you ever feel like you're going no where fast, or going somewhere but very very slow?  A couple of days ago, I set my GPS to track my day.  I was astonished by how long it took me to get anywhere.

This was my day: I took Alyssa to daycare.  I went to the rec center to go swimming.  I went home.  I went to lunch.  I went home.  I went to daycare to pick up Alyssa.  I went to my office.  I went home.  I went out to dinner to celebrate my anniversary.  I went  home.

This sounds like a lot of driving, and to an extent it was.  However, it was "only" 36 miles total for the entire day!  That's hardly anything considering I sometimes have to drive one place that is 36 miles.  To get to these 36 miles, I was in the car for a total of 1 hour and 31 minutes.  I was stopped at stop signs or traffic lights for 15 minutes and 47 seconds.  That leaves about 1 hour and 15 minutes of actual driving time.

How in the world does it take over an hour and a half to go such a short distance?  I was even driving on the highway and the tollway for part of it.  My max speed was 73 miles per hour.  My average moving speed was only about 24 mph.

This is just an example of how you can use how ever many short cuts you want while driving around town, but your averages are going to equal out in the end.  This happened to be a very slow day.  My car tracked it as an average of 25 mph, but not far off at all.  I wonder if my car stops tracking speed when I'm stopped.

I'm always trying to get places as fast as I can, but this day just shows you that no matter how fast you go, you're still going to get there slow. 

Happy Anniversary to my Husband, Mike.  Today marks three years of marrital bliss, October 22, 2005.

We didn't have a fancy wedding.  We had family come in town and had a JP come over to the house.  We then threw a big reception/party that evening.

We met on a blind date on December 9, 2002.  He chose a Monday because he "didn't want to ruin the weekend" in case the date went bad.  He was over 20 minutes late picking me up.  I found out later that he wasn't planning on showing up at all.

Needless to say, I was not a happy camper when he showed up.  I was very annoyed, which made for a bad first impression.

These are the flowers he brought home this afternoon.  Aren't they pretty?  A little mix of everything including a rose for each year we've been married and an extra for that next year, kinda like a pinch to grow an inch on the birthday candles.

The traditional gift for the third anniversary is leather.  A few weeks ago, no I didn't leave it to the last minute this year, I bought him a very nice brown leather belt since he was in need a new one.  I also bought him some socks so I wasn't just giving him a belt. 

As he was getting dressed this morning, I thought to myself, "Oh yeah, go get his belt!"  I ran upstairs, nothing... I ran to my car, nothing... where was it? 

Do you ever hide something from someone else, but end up hiding it from yourself?  I have torn my house apart looking for this bag with a belt and socks.  I asked Mike if he happened to find something that he wasn't supposed to have found.  He said no.

I ran out this afternoon to get a cheapy belt and new socks just to wrap up, so I could continue to look for the nice belt.  When he got home and brought the flowers, I gave him his present.  He was very excited about the socks and thought that was it.  I told him there was more.  I explained what happened and he just laughed.

So, either I am going to kill myself looking for this belt and socks, or I'm going to go return this cheapy one and get him another nice one... maybe he just wants more socks since he was excited about those...

I hate when I hide things from myself!

Happy Anniversary, Mike!

I received my October 2008 copy of Tierra Grande this afternoon.  I love reading it because it's specific to Texas real estate instead of trying to interpret national information.

There were several new studies presented at the American Real Estate Society meeting in April 2008.  One of the studies was about agent compensation verse their performance.

"The larger the brokerage firm, the more likely the agent is to be on full commission."  I'm not sure if this is interpreted to mean "full commission" as no income coming from any other entities like property management or another job, or if "full commission" means 100% with no splits to the Broker. I interpret it as no splits to the Broker.

Which ever they're talking about, the study goes on to further state that, "...male agents are more likely to take full commissions than are female agents. The authors cite studies indicating that men are overconfident about their financial abilities and more likely to take risks when investing as well as when making career choices."

Hmmm, what do you think about that one?  I thought guys were supposed to be the more analytical ones who think things through and won't do anything without knowing what the outcome would be.  With that, it seems more like women would take more risks with investing and making career choices being a little less sure of themselves and not doing as much research.  But what do I know, I'm not a typical woman!

And here's the most interesting stuff I found in these studies.  "...the more hours full-time agents worked, the less likely they were to be on full commission. Full commission agents make more money but work fewer hours, suggesting that they work more efficiently."

I think I completely agree with this!  When I wasn't on a full commission, and was splitting ungodly amounts of money with my broker, I had to work my arse off just to make a decent salary.  When I switched to Re/Max, after making a not-so-smart-move to a team, I started working smarter and not harder and doubled my income.  The next year, I doubled again. 

I still work very hard, but I don't work pay check to pay check.  I have a steady amount of closings each month.  I close an average of 25-28 transactions a year, and don't worry about where my next transaction will come from (until my move to Austin in a couple of months).  But even with my upcoming move, I know I'll be just as successful, if not more so, and will apply these studies so I don't find myself working longer hours and being less productive.

Have you read the article yet? What do you think about the studies? 

Do you know the history of the Reese's® Peanut Butter Cup?  It sounds strange, and maybe it's not true, but I found the story (a story) here.  Here's the summary...

Reese Witherspoon was walking down some stairs eating a chocolate bar, and some guy named HB Reese was eating peanut butter straight from the jar.  The chocolate slipped out of Reese Witherspoon's hands and landed in the peanut butter jar.

Then those famous words were muttered, "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" along with "You got your peanut butter on my chocolate!"

HB Reese tried and tried to market this delicious coincidence, but kept failing.  He sold his idea to Hershey for $8, yes only $8.

Hershey went on to make what we know today as the Reese's® Peanut Butter Cups.

So, back to my question.  How do you eat a Reese's® Peanut Butter Cup?

I like to keep them in the freezer.  I take them out of the freezer a couple of minutes before I'm going to eat them.  I then eat all the chocolate around the peanut butter first, followed by the top and then the bottom.  I then eat the peanut butter and let it crumble in my mouth.  YUMMY!!

I bought Halloween candy a couple of days ago and opened the Reese's® Peanut Butter Cups today.  I probably won't be giving those out as I love them.  I'll give out the icky skittles I bought.  I like to hand out things I don't like so I'm not tempted to eat the leftovers.  Is that selfish?  Nah, most people love Skittles!  It's not like I'm giving out that old Grandma, nasty candy with the pink and blue wrappers.

Great condo for first time home owner or an investor wanting some easy rent. 2 bedrooms & 1 bath on second floor corner unit in the back with a semi-private balcony, great for BBQ'ing.

Tile floors, Linen Closet, Walk-in Closets. Newer Washer & Dryer and the Fridge to remain. Priced thou$and$ below market value for the buyer to complete minor updates.

The Complex is not FHA or VA approved.

Trip to Bahamas, Mexico or Dominican included, ask for details! 

All this for ONLY $45,000 in Carrollton, TX.

What a Fabulous Updated & Meticulously maintained 4 bedroom home with 3 large living areas in a highly desired area of Richardson, College Park East!

Updates include Granite Counters, Fixtures, Faucets, Hardware, Hardwoods, Tile, Paint, Sprinklers, Garage Door & opener, Plantation Shutters, 2" blinds, & much more.

Features include Vaulted Ceilings, Brick Fireplace, Finished Sunroom, Skylights, Covered Patio, Mature Trees... Foundation work with warranty. Trip to Bahamas or Mexico included, ask for details.

You can view the Visual Tour here.

I'm so upset, I just had my last Frosty at Wendy's tonight.  I have loved Wendy's Frosties for years.  I was even annoyed when they recently came out with the vanilla Frosty because everyone knows Frosties are CHOCOLATE!

Anyway, I was on my way home this evening and Alyssa had fallen asleep in the car, so I knew I didn't need to rush home. I pulled off the tollway to stop by Wendy's to get a Frosty as I felt I deserved one.  I had not had one in a couple of months.

I went through the drive thru.  I ordered my small Frosty.  I got to the second window and held out my $1.07 and the girl looks at me and says, "It's $1.29." 

I said, "No it's not.  It's $0.99 and with tax it's $1.07."  She looks at me like I'm crazy and says again, "No, it's $1.29." 

I looked at her and said, "A small Frosty is not worth $1.29 and it's never been $1.29."  Again, she looked at me like I was crazy, like she had no idea Frosties had been $0.99 for years and years! 

I got through my real estate classes over 8 years ago by stopping by Wendy's every single night and ordering the Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, Biggie Fries, and Biggie Frosty all for ONLY $3.23.  Over the years, the $0.99 fries went down to the large, and then the medium, and currently a small.  The Frosty did the same thing.  However, the Junior Bacon Cheeseburger is still $0.99.  Now, they're trying to take the $0.99 away from their trademark Frosty.

Wendy's, listen up, it's not worth more than $0.99!!!  You just lost a VERY loyal customer!  No longer will I go and order some fries to dip into my Frosty as I love the sugar-salty mix along with the hot-cold mix of the two that most people would never think to mix together.

I'm very sorry to say that until I see a Frosty at $0.99 again, I will NEVER have another Frosty.

Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, TX applied for a permit to serve alcohol at their theme parks.  At first, I thought "What's the big deal?"  I mean, they serve alcohol at other "Family Friendly" venues like baseball games, basketball games, and football games.

Six Flags is just another Family Friendly event, right?

Well, there's this 12 year old girl, Christi Campbell, who got about 300 signatures to oppose selling alcohol at the park, and she made a point that made me rethink my thoughts.

She pointed out that if you have a bunch of adults drinking and then going on rides, there is a higher probability of them getting sick, especially if they're drunk, and they're going to just throw up all over the rides, and that makes it no fun for others, especially the kids.

Even though the park officials say that the beer will be served in only a special part of the park and in specially marked cups, that doesn't mean you're not going to have people taking advantage and drinking to extreme and then getting sick all over the place.

At least at baseball, basketball, and football games, there are no rides to get you dizzy and help you get sick when you drink too much, like there are at Six Flags.

There is a two day heering about this, with today being the second day. It's not too late.  You can go to the Innsuites Hotel at 2000 Beach St in Fort Worth.  The judge will have 60 days to make a decision.

What do you think?  Alcohol or no alcohol?

Here's the full story.

**Graphic courtesy of the Six Flags website.

Here's another example of why it doesn't usually pay to use a discount broker just to save their fee.  I have some clients whom I sold a house to a few years ago.  For the past couple of years, they've been wanting to sell and buy something with a pool.  We finally accomplished that last month.

When it came time to list their home, I treated them like any other seller.  I went over and presented the new comps since I would run them every few months since they couldn't decide to sell or not.  I also showed them all my updated marketing information including the free trip I offer to the buyers and their agents upon a successful close.

Since they were repeat clients and I already sold them their new home, I offered them a small discount as my way of saying "Thank you".

I had staged the home and we had made the final appointment for me to come and take pictures and get it listed in the MLS.  I called the day before to confirm our appointment.

Me: Are we good to go for tomorrow afternoon?
Seller: Ummm, yeah, about that... we have decided to list with someone else.
Me: **LONG SILENCE**  Ok, Can I ask why?
Seller: You weren't giving enough of a discount and my friend said she would just list it in the MLS and I wouldn't have to worry about that.  We need every penny for the updates in the new house.
Me: Ok, great.  Best of luck with that.  Let me know if you need anything.  In the meantime, don't forget to bring your licenses with you to closing on Monday.

We closed on the new house that next week and we were cordial at closing, though I was pretty insulted as to what they did.  They mentioned that they had several showings and were to expect an offer.  Good for them.

I checked the MLS last night... This house should have sold for $145k easy!  They probably could even have gotten $147-149k which is what I told them they could get.  The house was updated as I helped them with opinions over the years.  It was a nice house and I knew it would sell fast and for top dollar in the present condition.  They were bickering over $1400 as they wanted me to reduce my fee an extra 1% from the discount I offered...

When I looked in the MLS last night and saw a sales price of $139,000, I dropped my jaw!  They left a minimum of $6000 on the table though they were bickering over $1400??

Did going with a discount agent achieve their goals?  I would say NO!  The only goal they achieved was not paying the agent the extra $1400, but in the meantime, they missed out on putting the extra $4600 or even more, back into their pockets for the new house.

Sellers, when interviewing agents, please look at your bottom line.  You know, the money that goes IN your pocket, instead of worrying where the fees are going.  It might have been a principle for them not to pay me my fee, though I had already offered them a discount, but they chopped off their foot to spite the leg. Makes no sense.  Look at the numbers, Sellers!

Have you created your SearchMe.com stack yet?  It was pretty easy with just typing in my name and going through a lot of websites.  The hard part was that Donna Harris is a very common name and I'm all over the place. I tried using some words like Re/Max and Realtor and the names of a couple of publications I've been in, but it was not that easy finding those articles.

Here's my stack:

It's still in Beta, so I'm sure there are changes to come.  I heard about this program a few months ago, but have been very busy with trying to get things semi-organized for my move.  Now that things slowed down a little, I've got time to play with more things, except I have 3 new listings for this week, and then I'll be busy again... Twitter will be my next thing to conquer!

If clicking the arrow in the bottom left corner isn't working, click here.

What a relaxing Sunday.  We took Alyssa out on the boat for the very first time to Lake Ray Hubbard in Rowlett, TX.  She had a lot of fun!  She loved the wind blowing through her hair.  She was making vroom vroom noises as the engine excelerated.  She tried so hard to reach over the edge of the boat to touch the water.

We went out in the hopes of possibly wakeboarding, but that didn't happen.  I bought this life jacket for her when she was 4 months old.  It probably won't actually fit until next summer, but it worked fairly well.

These were taken with my cell phone, but quality didn't turn out too bad.  We did get some video on the new HD Camcorder, but haven't downloaded it yet.

Next time, we know that if we want to actually do something, like wakeboard, we need to have a third person.

Are you ready?  Dallas is crowded, and I'm so glad we got back from Austin on Thursday instead of waiting until Friday to come back.  Who wants to be in that traffic?

Texas v OU weekend is here!

Here's an interesting stat, last year, OU broke a two game losing streak in the Rivalry beating Texas.  Also, it seems history shows the winning team is always the one who comes in ranked higher.  We'll have to see if this holds true as OU is ranked #1 with Texas currently ranked #5.

Both teams are undefeated, but someone has to lose this game.  Who do you think it will be?

Here are more stats from the Star Telegram:

"10- Occasions, including this season, that the Texas-OU game has featured a matchup of top-five teams
46- Games in series history decided by seven or fewer points
1- Game in the last decade (last year's) decided by seven or fewer points
103- Games in series, counting this year's matchup
33- Points of Texas' widest margin of victory, most recently in 2005 (45-12)
52- Points of Oklahoma's widest margin of victory, 65-13 in 2003"

All this fun will take place at the Cottonbowl in Fairpark during the State Fair of Texas.  The State Fair of Texas is going on until October 19, but if you're going to the game, you can go early to beat some traffic and stay late to beat even more traffic, and kill two birds with one stone.  Have a funnel cake for me!

Alyssa is rested and ready to cheer!  This is her first Texas OU weekend!

I swear, there is a conspiracy with Dell.  I bought a computer back in April 2005.  I actually spent the over $300 fee in order to have an in-house warranty where they'll come to me to fix any issues I have.  Did I ever need the warranty?  Of course not... not until my warranty expired!  My warranty expired a couple of months ago, and my computer (hard drive) crashed this weekend.

When was the last time I backed anything up, you say??  Hmmm, that would be about a year ago.  Things were going so well and I had made the comment a few times to my husband about how well this computer was working and I hadn't had any problems with it like I had the others...

It must be because I actually paid for a long warranty.  However, I really and truly believe they put some kind of code into the hard drives that make them crash after the warranty period.  I know this is possible.  I know it's probably not ethical or legal, but I know it's possible to write some type of crash code.

I went to bed Saturday evening and my computer was acting funny, but I was tied, so I went to bed.  Sunday morning, black screen.  Not unusaly as my computer goes to sleep after non-use... touch the mouse pad, nothing.  Press the enter button, nothing.  Move the mouse around, nothing... I noticed the green lights were on which means it's "thinking".

I couldn't get the screen on, so I did a reboot, just turning it off.  I turned it back on to a grinding noise and a screen that tells me to control alt delete, so I do, and it rewards me with more grinding noises...

Did you know that if your Dell computer crashes, but it's the hard drive that is ruined, you cannot recreate your computer until after you contact Dell and they send you a reinstall disk?  See, if something else on the computer goes wrong, the reinstall is already on the hard drive.  However, if you need a completely new hard drive, no reinstall disk with the computer.  So, I get a call from Dell making sure I was the original owner.  They are mailing the reinstall disk, but that will take up to 3 business days...

I'm without a computer for most of the week!  The only good thing is that I'll be out of town for most of the week, and won't "need" the computer that much, so I'll just be borrowing my husband's desktop while he's on his laptop until then...

If I once had your email address, I now don't, so you might want to go ahead and send me an email so I can get your email address into Outlook once I get set back up...

Makes you wanna scream!  Lesson learned is that no matter how silly you feel backing up every night or once a week, DO IT!!  We will be setting me up to where I can just copy my important things to our Shared drive and my husband will do the backing up for me, which is the way it should have been done in the first place when I kept asking for easier and more efficient ways to back things up... but I won't blame him... wanna know how many pictures of Alyssa weren't backed up??  *ARG*

This Year's TEXAS' National Night Out is being held tomorrow, October 7, 2008.  Yes, the rest of the country already held their National Night Out, however, Texas is always different.  Because of the HOT HOT weather in Texas, they finally allowed us to postpone our National Night Out to a cooler month so more people would attend.

Richardson, TX won again last year for population 30-100k.  Let's see if we'll win this year.  My neighborhood, The Woods of SpringCreek, have many activities planned again, but different than last year.

We'll have a couple of bounce houses along with a DJ instead of a live band.  There will also be a holla-hoop contest for the kids along with a clown for face painting and balloons.

As always, the firestation will make their appearance with the fire truck along with McGruff and some police officers.  The HOA will supply the hot dogs and bottled water, but we're asking the rest of the neighborhood to bring potluck dishes in disposable containers to share.

Make it a fun night!  Keep in mind, we need a 40% or more turn out in order to keep out Crime Watch signs in the neighborhood! Also, don't forget your canned food.

This is a belated shout out to my mom who turned 55 this weekend, October 4.  My computer crashed over the weekend, so this is my first opportunity to blog about it.

My mom hasn't had the easiest life.  She was held back through out her career since she didn't have a college degree, only an associates at a 2 year college.  She raised my brother and me on less than $32k a year.  I didn't know this until I got to college and had to turn in her tax returns so I could qualify for financial.

After I saw the "tiny" amount, I went back to her and told her I now understood why I heard the word "NO" a lot whenever I wanted or needed something.  However, I learned how to sale and coupon shop from my mom.  I will never buy anything at regular price, no matter how cute it is. 

Currently, she is "retired" so she could be a grandmother, however, with our move to Austin in a few months, she's definitely not happy, and is threatening to go back to work.  I feel for her as she moved back to the Dallas area two and a half years ago in anticipation of being a grandmother, and now we're moving... I told her and my step father that they could move to Austin too since he can home office, but the Austin airport is limited as he travels a lot...

We'll see what the future brings, but right now, she's happy spending as much time as she can with Alyssa.  Happy 55th Birthday, Mom.