This article from the San Fransisco Chronicle is very interesting, this issue was given very little attention by the local media and almost no air time... what a shame.

 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hawaii/detail?entry_id=60069

In this day and age we need to get the word out even more and support all attempts to help reduce our carbon footprint...it is especially noteworthy that this is a corporation sponsoring this. How about some positive feedback from the community?

To give credit where credit is due, KITV and Star Bulletin did mention tonight's "Hour without Power"...but it was more of a byline really and almost no comment was made as to why this is so incredibly important for this state. Hawaii is in a primo position to spearhead this movement!

See you all tonight! 8:30-9:30 I will be sitting in the dark, fighting my children for the remote control :))

Take this to heart! As a proponent of higher CE hours for all agents as well as different and increased CE for Brokers, I feel that Melanie has hit the nail on the head! I choose my required classes by their potential for that "Aha!" moment! Lets all get transformed!

"To improve or not to improve"? That is the question...

The majority of my sales here on the Big Island of Hawaii, are land sales...I love selling land, the potential inherent in land is very attractive to me and I meet so many wonderful people. The sellers almost always have the same questions for me;

1. How much?
2. How fast?
3. What can I do to improve either one of the above?

First question can be answered by a review of the market data, second question can also be answered by a review of the market data. But the third question usually involves a discussion of "Improvements". Making improvements to a home for sale can be fairly quick and affordable and is almost always cost affective, but for land, well...that's a different conversation...

Improvements to land for the purpose of increasing the final sales price can be problematical... a 150' wide lot may have 3-4 separate driveway options and these options can be a intensely personal choice. Some people like a long, wide, stately driveway. Others prefer a more narrow, winding, private entrance. Or the cost of bringing in the utilities may make that lovely LOOOOONG driveway you installed cost prohibitive for the buyers. Where would you position the house site? With the average approximately 3 acre lot being either 100'-150' W by 1,300'-871' L, there can be a staggering amount of choices on home site, driveway, garage or shop, locations, etc...  If you have the choices made in advance you remove the buyers ability to dream about where they would put what. Which to my mind is part of the fun...

So why not just clear the lot completely? Buyer still can make all the choices about where to put what, but isn't locked into what the Seller chose? If anything, this choice is even worse than the first... clear cutting the Hawaiian forest should be considered a criminal offense. Primarily because of what it does to the aina; destruction of critical animal habitat, removal of the oxygen producing "green shield", soil erosion (we can receive 160"-220" of rain a year!), the resulting "piles" of debris can be huge and are happy homes to hordes of disease carrying rats (if you burn the piles the ground is scorched & sterile and can remain that way for many years.

You also have to face the fact that recently bulldozed ground is a desirable target for many opportunistic invasive plant species. Quite often these plants species are only waiting to get a toe hold, a nice cleared patch of land with no competition from the slower growing endemics is exactly what the Jacobs scourge and Albizia Tree are waiting for, removal of these "Weeds" can be intensive and costly ($4,000.00-5,000.000 to cut the Albizias on a 8,000'-12,000' lot, this does not include chipping or removal of the cut trees or poisoning or removal of the trunks). The other undesirable most likely to ruin your newly cleared and soon to be actively listed property, is man. A thickly wooded land lot is very challenging to dump a wrecked car on, a cleared lot is not. I have seen a dozed lot "sprout" 3 abandoned vehicles in one month. At a few hundred dollars a pop for removal it doesn't take long to "loose" any potential profit from the "improvement".

And finally, most people state that one of their main choices for purchasing acreage in the forest/jungle is for "privacy", a place to get away from everything & everyone... how likely is it that a buyer is going to purchase a property that has had one of the main desirability points removed?

Best course of action? Position the land properly for sale; Hire some one to cut back the frontage from the road, have it staked, any rubbish removed, price it properly and market it aggressively!

And leave the Ohia Trees to grow...

I recently read Susan Sawyers blog on being a Honest REALTOR and it really struck a chord, my comment became so long in response that I had to turn it into a blog! Susan's blog also got me to thinking about REALTOR Stereotypes; Some are good and we need to encourage them, while others...well, not so much...

As far as being a Honest REALTOR; One comment to Susan's blog was by Randy Landis who heard another Realtor's spouse make the statement that "Realtors have earned their reputation around here" and it wasn't meant in a good way".  Sadly this is all to true. It is up to us as REALTORS to control our industries reputation, self policing is one thing that we can do on a very base level to help our industry fight the "Crook" image. Because most REALTORS are actually very nice people we tend to not want to get someone "In Trouble", and the malefactor doesn't get reported for their wrong doing....so they keep it up, the public gets hurt and once again we hear "all REALTORS are crooks"... We have to do a better job of following our own Code of Ethics, and of encouraging our compatriots of doing the same. 1st step, let them know their actions are inappropriate and give them a chance to correct the action. 2nd step, submit a grievance with the local board. 3rd, legal action. Most REALTORs respond very favorably to step one (I know I do!) and appreciate the "Help".

Another stereotype I hear is that "All REALTORS are rich, they are only in it for the money"! Oh, if only! The general public has no idea how much we spend on being REALTORS, between belonging to a state wide board, the national board, a MLS service and if you have a designation with a yearly fee... you can be spending a easy $2,000.00 at the beginning of each year just to "top off the tank"! And then the CE classes, the cost to earn other designation and take mandatory classes, charges to post on the internet, advertising cost, cost of the technology, cost of the desk fees, cost to present the proper professional image through our clothing and vehicles (that have to transport our clients, which adds to our insurance cost). etc... ad nauseum... Many REALTORS are lucky if they make minimum wage...but that's another post for another day. Perhaps the image comes partly from the fact that quite often being a REALTOR is a Spouse career (IE: one spouse has a well paying 9-5 job and the REALTOR spouses income is "gravy"), or a retirement career. Rarely do we see someone enter university with REALTOR being their career choice, usually it is a career "fallen" into when you show an aptitude for the work (Or decides "Gee, that doesn't seem so hard...and look what they got paid! I could do that!"...). And yes we are in it for the money, duh... I work hard, I want to get paid for it and I am really tired of apologizing for it :)  So don't be shy about letting people know what your fees are and why you charge what you do, education is the best explanation!

The "Soccer Mom" stereotype: Ok, it's true...many of us Moms enter Real Estate because "it's something I can do while the kids are in school". No, no it isn't...it is a full time (and more than full time) job that requires a ton of education, extreme focus on your clients needs, and being available to meet with your clients according to their schedule (If they work 7 AM-6 PM you are not going to meet with them at 2:00 PM after a leisurely lunch! The Soccer moms quickly either make the cut and come up to par or go back to the soccer fields. If you don't like or want the negativity associated with that image, change it, don't tell your clients you have to stop and pick up your darling from Brownies, schedule around it. Don't take your children on listings or showings, it's completely inappropriate and NOT SAFE! Don't drop by the bakers to pick up juniors B-day cake while they sit in the car and for heaven's sake do not take a call from your children when in conference with a client! I know those sound like extreme examples but I have personally seen them all happen on numerous occasions... you wouldn't get away with it in any other profession, what makes you think its ok now?

The "Pushy & Manipulative" Stereotype: OI! This one is really tough, mainly because we are talking about a personality type. But there is a reason for it... How many other professional occupations do you know of that provide their services for free, at the drop of a hat, to someone they don't know, who just walked in the door? Ok, well. prostitution does come to mind...nope, nope, they charge for it, sorry... So the only answer I come up with is, YEP! REALTORS! We have trained the public into thinking that our information/knowledge (that we spend years accumulating and thousands of dollars being trained in understanding) is FREE! No charge! Gratas! So what happens? We get a segment of the REALTOR population that has gotten fed up with spending lots and lots of time providing "FREE" information... (lets get this straight; IT ISN"T FREE! We work hard = Labor Charge. We spend lots of money = Materials...any other profession would bill for this. Some other professions bill by the 15 minute intervals for "opinions/advice". As my Broker is very fond of stating "What you give away for free has no value"... Stop giving it away!), so this fed up REALTOR refuses to "give away" what they work so hard to assemble and tries to push or motivate the client into actually "Hiring" them. You know, sign a contract where they promise to pay them for their work? And the customer says, "What? I can't just have it? Fine, I will go someplace else and get it there for free!", and it's on to a new REALTOR that doesn't see the "Big Picture", where they do indeed "Get it for free", and the cycle continues. The consumer does not understand what is happening, they don't get that you are being nice and doing them a favor, they just think that this is the industry modus operandi, and boy are they offended when they get told that it isn't and with every reason...the left hand is telling them one thing and the right hand another...let's get it together people and stop sending mixed signals!

 One of the worst aspects of this picture is that it is usually a new agent that gets hit with the customer that wants the info for free, the agent thinks they are doing what they are supposed to and pours their heart & soul into the project! Makes numerous trips to different neighborhoods to take photos for out of area buyers, scheduled multiple showings with un qualified buyers...shares lunch and tells stories, in short they become bussom buddies. until...the buyer purchases with another agent off the sign he saw while driving in a neighborhood he said he didn't want and the house doesn't meet any of his specifications. That agent just learned a valuable lesson, though most seem to misconstrue it to mean be pushy and manipulative when it actually means "educate the clients asap!"

We assume the clients understand How Things Work...but they usually don't. My mother always told me that when I assume I make an Ass out U and Me, I don't like being made an ass out of, especially not when I do it to myself! Educate and explain, and most importantly; Take responsibility, responsibility if not for creating the mess then at least take responsibility for helping set it straight!

Like most people I have been thinking of my resolutions for the upcoming year... and that entails some hard thinking about the previous years performance, blech... not my favorite thing to do. I am a "move forward" type of person but I tend to hare of in any forward direction even if it doesn't stand to benefit me in the long run. Thus the review of last year...

When my children were young and brought home less than stellar grades we would visit over the report card and the conversation usually went like this; ME: So, what are you going to do? THEM: I am going to do better! ME: OK, how? THEM: uhhhhh....hmmmm, what? ME: sigh...

I learned to ask more leading questions...what had you hoped to do? How close did you get to that goal? What got in the way? They became more engaged in the conversation and once they had ID'd the "problems" were in a better position to change it themselves...

What does this have to do with Resolutions? Well, most conversation about resolutions sound an awful lot like my conversation with my 4th graders... Ask yourself the important questions starting out with; What you want out of life! If it is the same thing as last year but you didn't ahcieve it...find out what got in your way, chances are it was YOU! Stop telling yourself that you worked hard and deserved that 2 hour lunch... instead; ID your goal, how you will achieve that goal and then stay on track until you reach or surpass it! Thats what you really deserve, success.

And if this sounds like self preaching... it is!

Off to the gym to work off those wonderful dark chocolate truffles that I didn't deserve but really really wanted! And tonight I will map out what went wrong, what went right, what could have gone better and just exactly what I am going to do about it!

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou!