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

The BEST baby and toddler consignment sale in DFW starts tomorrow at 8am at the Plano Centre in Plano, TX. This will be my third time to attend.  I love being able to buy next-to-new for cheap cheap prices.  Babies use toys for such a short period of time, why pay retail when you don't have to?

Alyssa is now walking while pushing things, so I'll be getting her another push toy to keep at Grandma's.  She also needs a swing to hang from a tree and maybe a play fort that she can climb around in.

Get there early!  The 75% off thing is brand new.  They usually only have 50% off day.  I can't wait! Maybe I'll see you there!

I got back last night from another trip to Austin.  I really feel for the buyers who have to buy a home from out of town.  It's a brain-fry!  There is so much to do and so little time.  Here's a picture of our lot.  Look at all the trees... many will be chopped down, but the back trees will remain as a buffer. 

We were supposed to have our design meeting on Monday morning from 8:30-11:30.  We were there until 4:30 and then went back on Tuesday morning.  We thought Tuesday morning would be "fast and easy", but we were there until after 1pm.  They're supposed to charge if you take more than 4 hours, but they were very accommodating with the extra time.

We had to drive some neighborhoods to find brick colors that we liked, as the samples they keep are so tiny, it's ridiculous, but since I always tell my buyers to drive around and write down addresses in a builders' known community, that's what we did. 

First, I went to the brick website to start narrowing down.  I also asked the design person for addresses of darker red and brown bricks.  We got that list, and didn't like a single one she sent us to.  So, we continued through the neighborhood and wrote down not just two or three addresses to check on, but 12 addresses.  Out of 12 addresses, there had to be something available... umm, no... Every single address had a brick color that was discontinued, and we're looking in "new" communities.  How is this right?  We did the same thing on Tuesday, but we finally found a brick that we think might work.  It's such a new brick color, there were only three houses the brick rep could send us to look at it, one in Round Rock, one in Cedar Park, and one in Leander... you would think they would be closer in proximity than they were, but nope.  AND, the design person had no clue how to get to the Cedar Park or Leander ones and the streets were so new, they weren't on Mapquest or Google Maps, so it was fun trying to find them.  We gave up on the Leander one, and decided it was an ok brick just from seeing the other two homes, though it looked completely different on both houses.  We're taking a risk.

Anyway, we're one step closer to getting things completed on our selections.  We did decide to add the Balcony.  We're the first ones to add a Balcony to this floorplan, and this is also a brand new floorplan for Austin, as you remember we drove to Houston just to see the plan... Well, they're making several changes to it from what we saw in Houston, so once again, I'm a guinea pig!  I always seem to do things the hard way and people get to test things out on me.  Hopefully, everything will turn out just fine, even with all the changes made.

Relocating is NOT fun, and I feel for all the people who have to relocate to new and different places, and feel even more for those who have to do it every couple of years!

Here is a picture of the view from the neighbor's house.  Being right next door, our view should be about the same, though we're a little higher, so the view should be better. Oh, and here's a cactus in the backyard that will probably stay.  I've never had a cactus before.  I've seem them grow to be ridiculous sizes... how much maintenance will be needed to keep this cactus trimmed down?  And will Oscar and Alyssa make us get rid of it all together if they are temped to touch it?  We'll see.  More Relocation stories to come...

Do you think about what you're trying to sell when you take pictures of the house you have listed?  I always think, "Does this picture convey what a buyer is interested in?"

What is this agent or seller trying to sell?  Are you selling this treadmill?  Does it work?  How old it is?  Did you try to sell it on Craigslist and it didn't sell so you thought you would include it in the sale of the home? 

Oh, I know, you're trying to sell that lamp.  It looks like it should be in an antique shop.  How old is that thing?  Does it have a switch to allow three light levels?

Maybe you're trying to sell the beam holding the ceiling up.  That's a mighty strong beam, and it looks to be freshly painted.  But it's hard to tell because the picture is AWFUL!  It's not clear, it's not in focus, it's not showing anything that a buyer would be interested in.

Here are some other examples:

Does the mirror come with the wallpaper?

I'm not sure my daughter would like this bedspread if it's coming with the house.  It looks a bit scary... I assume the agent isn't trying to sell room size as it looks to be the size of a closet.

Let's see, on this one, I bet the agent is trying to sell the house with the dog.  No?  The dog looks friendly enough.  It's even greeting someone at the front door.  I think that's the front door.  Maybe it's the back door and the dog is trying to get out to go to the bathroom.  I hope that agent had his pooper-scooper with him.

These are just some examples I found while going through the MLS yesterday. I take pride in the pictures I provide for my sellers as I know the first impression is the biggest impression.  Do any of these pictures make someone want to jump in their car and go see the house the first day on the market before any other buyers?  I should have noted the number of days on market for each of these listings,  but I didn't.

Sellers, did you approve these pictures for your listing?  I really hope not.  Please ask your agent to take new pictures.

Please, if you have pictures like these for your listings, please please remove them!  I rather see 10 pictures of the exterior from different angles than picture of the interior that make the house look horrible.

Visions: The Women's Expo is this weekend, starting tonight at 5pm.  Tonight is Girls' Night Out, so only Ladies are allowed. The rest of the weekend, anyone is welcomed.

This is the 19th year of the Expo. Last year had over 10,000 people in attendence.  There are many things including new products, cosmetics, fashion, shopping, food, etc...

There is even a Firefighter Bachelor auction for a date!  There are 10 Firefighters to choose from, so take your pick!

Go here for further information for this NBC sponsored event.  Come meet many of the NBC 5 personalities.

**Graphic courtesy of the Expo's website.

There is currently a man in Frisco, TX fighting with his HOA because he drives a 2007 Ford F-150.  The fight is because the Ford is not a "fancier" vehicle nor is it "plush with amenities" according to one of the HOA board members.

Because it's not a Cadillac Escalade or a Lincoln Mark LT, he cannot park his truck in his private driveway.  One of his neighbors got an attorney and fought when they criticized his Chevy Avalanche, so the Avalanche is now part of the included list.

Granted, many HOAs have by-laws stating that you cannot park vehicles on the street for an extended period of time, so the streets are kept clean and uncluttered. However, saying you can't park your vehicle in your own driveway is going a little too far.  It's not like it's an older clunker, but it's a fairly new 2007 model and it's not up on blocks.

The man with the Ford is going to park in his garage for now, but with only a 2 car garage, and the fact that he owns 3 cars, as his teenage son also has a truck, it looks like the family car gets the driveway.

One of the comments made about this article was "... I recommend the Ford company sue the heck out of them!"  That would be interesting. 

HOAs are allowed to set their own rules, but what is going to far?  Many HOAs in the past have tried to say you couldn't have a satellite dish on your house, but was found that they couldn't dictate what kind of TV service you wanted.  I wonder if this will turn out the same...

Any thoughts?  I know many will say that you should read the by-laws of a community before you purchase the house, however, in my market, HOAs do not release documents until they receive money in hand for the resale certificate, and then they usually deliver the information the day of closing, if not just a couple of days earlier.  At that point, it's basically too late for a buyer who loves that house to back out, especially if there is a domino effect of that buyer having a house to sell with a buyer waiting to close.

Here's the entire story.

For the past few weeks, many people have blogged and blogged about the Housing Recovery Act President Bush signed in July which would put an end to the Down Payment Assistance Programs.  Almost everything I read is about how we should save these programs.  Do people understand why it's a good thing they're going away??

I'm so happy these programs will be gone as of October 1, 2008.  There are many foreclosures across the country.  Foreclosures are happening for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that people don't have money to pay their mortgages.  They are broke, and money doesn't grow on trees!  They're probably not paying their other bills either.

When you give someone money to buy a house because they have no money for their own down payment, once they move in, they're still going to have NO money!  If they have no money, how are they going to help maintain the house?  It's not like an apartment where you can call maintenance if there is a leak or the AC goes out.  If something goes wrong, the home owner needs to be able to pay real money to get things fixed.

The cycle of foreclosures and run down houses will continue if the programs continue.  With the programs going away, hopefully, we'll get better buyers who are responsible, and when they're ready to sell and move up into another house, the first house will be in decent condition.

How many foreclosures do you walk in where you wonder how someone lived there?  The carpet is covered in pet stains, the ceilings are falling down due to water leaks in the roof, which means the roof is bad, and the foundation is cracked from one end of the house to the other because they couldn't afford to water their yard and help maintain their slab (not an issue in all markets, but we have expansive, clay soils in North Texas).

If we continue to allow people to buy houses who don't deserve to own a house, we'll never get out of the foreclosure cycle.  Home ownership is a privilege, not a right.  Too many people were allowed to buy homes who thought it was a right to own the American Dream at everyone else's expense.   This means that they didn't care what happened to the house or to the lender who lent them the money when they stopped paying, or never started in the first place.  There are many foreclosures that happen within the first few months of closing because they never made the first payment at all.

If buyers really want to own a house to make their home, they need to show lenders they can make the payments and make them on time.  One of the ways to show this is the show on time payments with all other bills and credit lines, and to have money in the bank so you're not living paycheck to paycheck in case you get laid off.

Once we can stop people from buying houses who have no money, others will follow by example if they also want a part of the American Dream.

**stepping off soap box and sliding it back under the couch**

Dang!  My poor girl... she had her 9 month appt today, and it actually went really well until the very end. 

First, she has had fluid in her ears since she was about 2 months old.  We had surgery scheduled for this coming Friday to get tubes in her ears.  We wanted to wait until after this appt to have her ears checked again in case we needed to cancel that surgery.  The awesome news is that her ears have cleared up, so we get to cancel her surgery...

The bad news is that she's anemic.  Yes, my 9 month old daughter has to take iron drops to supplement.  Can you believe it?  She drinks an iron baby formula and is still not getting enough iron, and she also loves her green veggies, so I'm very confused.  She has to take iron drops for 6 weeks and then gets tested again. If she's ok, she has to continue the iron drops for another 6 weeks to make sure she's maintaining the level...

On another note, she's 26 1/2 inches tall which is the 25th percentile.  My hungry girl is now 18 pounds!!  She LOVES her food, especially pasta and peas, and she's leaped out of the 12th percentile from her last appt, to the 40th percentile.  She's getting big!

Anyway, overall, she's healthy and happy.  No surgery, which is a relief, but we're taking iron drops.  Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes well.

Oh, and she has 7 teeth and loves to gnaw on carrots, but wasn't sure if she prefered the dog's toy or the real thing...

I feel so honored because of who contacted me... I'm sure many people watch the TV show The Real Estate Pros that is based in Charleston, NC and based on the investment stories of Trademark Properties.  You know, with Richard and Ginger?  Yes, they contacted ME to pass me a referral for a couple of properties.

I really hate to say that I had to turn down the referrals and passed them on to someone else in the rain because they were in an area I do not work, but just to be contacted by them was an honor.  I expressed my appreciation for them thinking of me and asked them to think of me for future referrals.

In return, they were very appreciative that I was able to refer them to another agent in the area they needed one, instead of them trying to weed through all the other agents to figure out who worked this neighborhood.

Hopefully I didn't hurt my chances for future business by being honest with them and turning down their initial referral.  I'm an hour away from this particular area, and I just thought finding an agent closer to the area would be more advantageous to their client.

Would you have taken the referral just to take it, or would you have done the gracious thing and referred it to someone else?

** Picture courtesy of TLC, and they're the ones who cut the head off the picture, not me...

Boy have I been busy... busy turning off my business!  Since the move to Austin is definite, I can't keep building new business in Dallas, or I'll be throwing money down the toilet.  I like to keep as much money in my pockets as I can as I have plenty of other expenses to spend it on.

This week, I stopped all my lead generation programs.  Those were the hardest calls and emails to send.  Oh no, I'm still going to be in Dallas for at least the next 6 months!  Am I going to be able to continue my current 4 month streak as #1 agent in my office?  I better!!

The good thing about online lead generation is that when you get leads, most aren't immediate buyers or sellers.  Most take time to cultivate with the information you send them before they're ready to actually take a step closer to wanting to buy or sell.  This could take months and even years.

Hopefully, my lead generation has been good enough the past 4 years to have some buyers and sellers ready to pop at any time, and it'll be raining money until the day I pack the truck!

Also, since I own my website, that will continue to run and will continue to be available even when I get to Austin.  The only thing that will change on my website is the Broker name, and the MLS codes from the North Texas MLS to the Austin MLS.  Seamless, and that's how I like it.

Do you have lead generation that can sustain you over time if you had to completely shut off all your systems today? 

This is unbelievable.  For years, DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) has been trying to up its ridership.  They even had to increase their prices because not enough people were riding.  Now that gas prices have increased (though they've come back down quite a bit), people have started to park their cars in order to ride the DART rail.

And guess what... Now, DART wants to start charging for people to park in their parking lots because they're too full and they want to weed people out!  Isn't that ridiculous!!??  They finally get people riding the train though they haven't been able to get people to ride it in years, and now they want to penalize people for riding it, and in essence, stop people from riding it who don't want to pay to park.

But get this, the cities where the DART goes through has already been paying for the DART in their taxes all these years, so they're trying to come up with a solution to possibly not charge people who live within the cities who already pay for it, and make the people coming in from other cities pay to park.

I don't ride the DART, but if I did, I would be one waving my hand to speak.  There is no way I'm going to pay to park when I've been paying taxes all these years to help create the system.  There is no way I would pay $3 a day to ride the train then another amount like $2 a day to park.  That's $5 a day, and that costs more than the gas you would save to drive downtown to work.

It makes no sense, and when people run the numbers to see if riding is actually saving them money, all those parking lots will be empty once again!

Here's a link to more information.

Today is a very special day.  It is the day of August 8, 2008.  It is narrowed down to 08/08/08.  8 is known to be a very lucky number.  It just so happens that it is not a coincidence that the Olympics are starting today in Beijing as this is a very strong Chinese belief.

This got me to thinking about numbers and their meaning.  I pay attention to numbers to an extent, but I don't have all the numbers memorized.

For example, my current home address is 3013.  Oh no, it ends in the unlucky 13, what am I to do?  Well, if you add the numbers up, you get the number 7.  And 7, for me, is a very good number, very lucky number as I was born in July.

In Chinese numerology, the number 6 is unlucky, 4 is death, and 14 is certain death. Wanna know the house address of the new house I just contracted to purchase on Sunday??  It's a bad one!

4604.  Death, unlucky, and death again.  Then, if you add up all the numbers, you get 14, certain death.  However, our lot number is 107, and that equals 8 so I wonder if the 8 negates all the bad stuff??  Plus, it ends in my lucky number 7.  I sure hope so.

YIKES!!

I wonder if a buyer ever needed a reason to back out of a contract, they could use numerology as a reason.  What's even more ironic is that I currently have a contract on a build job with some buyers whose address will be 4644 and they are very superstitious with the numbers.  They were very unhappy with the address.  And their lot number was 103 which equals a 4.  Thus far, we're 6 weeks into the building process, and bad thing after bad thing keeps going wrong, and I'm wondering what the rest of the 4 1/2 months are going to be like.

I wish builders would give the house addresses instead of lot numbers when buyers are trying to pick out a lot.

Do you have superstitions?  Have you had clients not buy a house just because of the house number?

I'm not even going to beat around the bush with this one, as the usual me would tease you a little bit before giving an answer.  The short answer is, YES, we are moving to Austin.  We put a contract on a new home this past Sunday, and the builder approved it on Monday.

We decided on Falconhead West.  We will be on the North side of the community with views of, whatever it is that's out there, and backing to a bunch of trees.  Personally, I'm not a "view" type of person, so I have no idea what it is we'll be looking at, maybe Lake Travis?  I need to start my research so I can be ready to hit the pavement when we get there... probably February or March time-frame.

The house is going to be nice, I hope. They have never built this floorplan before as they stole it from Houston, and we made that LONG drive to Houston last week to see the floorplan in person instead of trying to make sure the paper version would work.

It's about 3800 sqft with 5 bedrooms, study, and GameRoom with a 4 CAR GARAGE. Yes, I said 4, that's not a typo!!  There is also a covered porch and a HUGE covered back patio that is almost the length of the house.

We are exclosing the Porte-Cochere to create the 4 car garage, as that's just wasted driveway space.  We also chose the Media room option, but we're keeping it as a bedroom.  It adds about 6 feet to the room, and that will be a nice space for my workout room.  We chose the 5th Bedroom on the far right, and the GameRoom will go in the middle above the Family Room so it won't be "open" to downstairs.

I'm excited to get started on picking out the selections, but that'll be another trip to Austin to schedule that appointment... now, Mike just needs to figure out which job he's taking...

I realized I haven't really posted about Alyssa in a few weeks, so I put together some scrapblogs to tell the story of what she's been doing.

Here is Memorial Weekend as we're enjoying the beautiful waters of my mom's community pool.  She loves that "Steiner Ball" except her tooth poked a hole in it last week, so anyone in Austin, wanna send me a new one? 

She very much enjoyed her watermelon, though not so much anymore. She has decided she doesn't care for her sunglasses.

More watermelon and more Steiner Ball before she chewed through it.

My little Kosher Ham loves the camera!  Doesn't she look "guilty" in almost picture?  That sling went back to the store after just one day because Alyssa took it as an invatation to just fling backwards, and that doesn't work....  She also figured out how to carry things in her mouth in order to get from point A to B.

If you have a lot of pictures and not sure what to do with them, you should open a free www.scrapblog.com account and make little collages like this.  It's so easy and they print out like real photos that you can frame.

When Satellite Radio first came out, I thought it was a scam to make people pay to listen to music that they can listen to for free on regular FM Radio...

A couple of years ago, I gave in and bought a Sirius Satelite Radio for my car as I hate commercials.  Satelite is great!  Barely any commercials, depending on the stations you're listening to, and if you don't like a song, you just move along to the next station as there's probably a 99% chance there is a song and not a commercial.

For the past two days, I've been listening to regular Radio again, as my husband has not returned my adapter from our latest trip to Austin.  And for the past couple of days, I've been huffing and puffing at the radio for all their darn commercials.

It must be hard to come up with the order for the day: Commercial, Song, Commercial, Commercial, Song, Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Song, Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Song, Commercial, Song, repeat...

I must admit, in my next life, I will buy Satellite Radio immediately and not wait so long to give into paying for music.  Do you pay for Satellite, or do you stick with regular FM Radio?

How old is your brain?  Take this simple and easy test to see if your brain is older or younger than you...

Ok, so the instructions aren't in English, but all you do is click the START button and numbers will pop up.  You have to remember where they are and then click in order on the circles. 

I am... *clearing throat*... I am 32 years old, however, my brain is a nice, young 23 years old!  However, that was after taking it a second time.  My first results were still young at 28, so I'll accept either results as positive.

How old is your brain?