Fed up with my Motorola earpiece, 3 years ago I began investigating new devices and decided the Jawbone headset was most likely the best on the market. I bought a snazzy little red number and have been delighted with it. It truly blocked out noise. I was once standing in the middle of a casino in
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03/11/2009
I showed a buyer homes in Midtown, Sacramento, last weekend. As we drove, the buyer asked me what I thought of my fellow REALTORS. That sounded like an odd question, so before answering, I probed. He said that when he bought his first home, he looked at more than 20 homes with four different age
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03/10/2009
Before you write an offer on a home in Sacramento, the very first thing your buyer's agent should do is look to the tax rolls for ownership and deed transfer information. If it's a company, Google that name, because the owner might appear to be a bank but that company might be in the business of
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03/09/2009
Yesterday afternoon a Curtis Park buyer's agent called me to ask for the code to show one of my listings. It was hard to hear what he was saying because there was a lot of noise in the background. I immediately jumped into my spiel about the home, pointing out some of the wonderful updates the se
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03/08/2009
Ever since the news broke last year about the handful of former Countrywide execs who teamed up to form a new company, Private National Mortgage Acceptance (PennyMac for short), based in Calabasas, California, I've been keeping my eye on this firm. Some people were astonished that the hand that s
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03/07/2009
At first blush, many Sacramento home owners may believe they do not qualify for the making home affordable housing rescue plan rolled out by President Obama, but I know who may, and I'll get to that. First, there are a ton of hoops to jump through. It involves sitting on the phone trying to get t
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03/06/2009
Watching the performances of three outstanding musicians at Mondavi Center last night was a little bit like choosing dessert -- I may love creme brulee, cherry cheesecake and Haagen Dazs Rocky Road, but I don't necessarily want all three on my plate at one time. Mondavi presented Guitar Blues, an
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03/05/2009
Buy a home in 2009 before December 1, and the IRS says you can apply that $8,000 first-time home buyer credit to your 2008 taxes. IRS has revised its Form 5405, which you can access on the IRS.gov web site.Of course, if you want to apply the credit to your 2009 tax return when you file next year,
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03/04/2009
A Sacramento home seller called yesterday to get my advice on pricing. She spoke to her accountant to see if it would make sense to rent out her home rather than sell it in this market. By this market, she was not necessarily referring to the falling market in Sacramento. She was talking about th
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03/03/2009
Sometimes, it's not the bank but Sacramento short sale sellers who make short sales difficult. I had asked the listing agent to get me a key for the home inspection, over and over and over, but she "had problems" dealing with the sellers. If it had been me, I would have made an extra key from the
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03/02/2009
