As you can see from the photo it wasn't really a vacation.  I have never been to San Diego before. It was nice to see my friends and be in such a lovely place. I spent a day and most of a night taking pictures.I may have gone some other places and done some other things too but no one wants to read about that.

Then I came back home, where I work a zillion hours a week and for excitement I go to the grocery store. I have been using foursquare, it is like a game where players check in by text message or via smart phone when they go out and have fun.

The person who has the most check-ins in a single location becomes the mayor of that venue. Yup you guessed it, I am the mayor of the local super market, Cooper's Supervalue on W7th street.  I am also the mayor of coopers supervalue, also on W7th street. Funny after all these years I never noticed that there are two grocery stores at the same address with similar names. I need to slow down and pay more attention, maybe I have been working too hard.Erik Hare thinks I should take advantage of my mayor ship and in Erik speak "affect meaningful change". 

My apologies if I was slow to answer your phone calls last weekend. I think I got sand in my blackberry.  I will be around this weekend. Working and getting ready for that all important thanksgiving dinner.   It is nice to have the photos so I can remind myself that there is more to life than being the mayor of the local grocery stores. 

A couple of years ago I got a call from a postal inspector regarding a vacant property I had listed.  He was not interested in buying the home but called the number on the sign as a way to get in touch with the sellers.

It seems that people leave their homes vacant and forget to have their mail forwarded or stopped.  In this case someone had used a stolen credit card, to order merchandise which he had sent to the home.  He also had mail and bills sent to the same address.  He would wait until it got dark and go grab his stuff.

The mail box was a country style box sitting out on the road.  The seller later installed a lock on the box and had mail delivery to the home stopped, he picked it up from the post office on his way home from work.  Mail can also be forwarded.  At any rate if a home is vacant the mail needs to be stopped.  This can be handled on-line at the USPS web site,  or in person at the post office.

Your neighbors should be asked to keep an eye on the house and should be told that mail and packages will not be delivered to the home.  You local police department should also be notified that the property is vacant.   If the home is for sale make sure that none of the marketing materials mention that the home is vacant. 

I am not a REALTOR®, but I work with a lot of them. And what many of them are all gussied up about is the extension and expansion of the federal first-time home buyer tax credit. If you haven't heard, it's an $8,000 coupon for buyers moving into their first house to live in or $6,500 for those who are tired of the house they currently own and want something harder, better, faster, stronger.

It's more involved than all that, but there's a REALTOR® somewhere around here who can explain the dull details. I know these details and other topics of real estate interest because 1) I'm paid to know this stuff, and 2) I have a mortgage to pay.

Yep, I'm a first-time home buyer. Well, honorary first-time home buyer. I'm up to two years in my unique (old), spacious (many small rooms), conveniently located (centralized urban core with public schools that can't compete with suburbs in most high school sports), North End (decidedly not Summit Avenue) home.

Two years go by fast. All the fresh-faced, first-timer things I thought I would accomplish are nowhere near done. My yard still looks like a scabby, balding head. Every room in my house is still painted toupearrhea. Tree branches still dangle dangerously over a never-used phone line still connected to my home.

Alright, I suppose I've gotten a few things done. My front porch has a nicer floor (considering that it was chipboard for 18 months). I made a closet room (does it still count as a 5th bedroom?). And yesterday was a big one: I got all the ducts cleaned and my furnace serviced!

Prior to purchase, the home inspector said we had a fantastic furnace but that it desperately needed to be cleaned. All we heard was "fantastic furnace" and ran that baby hot for two years without so much as changing the filter. Probably because I didn't know there was a such thing as a furnace filter. I'd been renting for 20 years. What did I need to know about a filter?

You should have heard all the weird crap being sucked out of my vents. Cutlery? Decomposing mice? A sack of Spanish pesetas? I could feel my nasal passages clearing as the furnace guys worked their magic. They also cleaned my dryer vent and my carpets. Proud! Exciting! Progress!

They don't tell you how sad and dull you're about to become at closing. Like baby's first poop or smile or tooth or word, homebaby's first painted room or framed artwork or granite countertop is remembered forever. Homeownership ain't for the faint of heart, but it's a lifelong heart tugger once you're in.

Now go put those government coupons to good use and join me in learning the finer points of sump pumps, exterior light fixtures, chain-link fencing, weatherproofing, cabinetry, overhead light wiring, pest control, roofing and siding, drainage, foundation repair, ...

P.S. - If you click that teddy bear image, there's a contest from local company, 3M, to win said teddy bear.

One hot topic of discussion was the impending wave of foreclosures that we all believe will hit the housing market in 2010, many will be caused by ARM resets and job loss.  

The "meetings" were mostly at bars and one was kind of on the beach but they still count. Today meetings will be in coffee shops and over the internet via skype which isn't quite as much fun but it gets the job done.

Even though I was in sunny San Diego and when I woke up yesterday morning it was about thirty degrees warmer than it is here I would rather be here in Minnesota.

It would be nice though if we had flowers like these blooming in November.

by Erik Hare

Thanksgiving is a day for all of us to remember what we have to be thankful for.  It all started when a small and pious group managed to survive the crossing of the ocean to a distant land where, with a lot of hard work, they were free.  In Saint Paul, the festivities continue in a more immediate celebration of culture, freedom, and thanksgiving for the safe delivery of a people in the annual celebration of Hmong New Year, held each year the after Thanksgiving at RiverCentre.  This year, the festivities run from November 27th to the 29th.

The Hmong (pronounced with a silent “H” in English) are a people who lived in the remote parts of Laos until war came to their part of the world.  As they became swept up in the conflict that fanned out over southeast Asia, they became fierce fighters for freedom and independence, siding with the US.  When we withdrew from Vietnam, the Hmong found they could not go back to the lives they once led.  As they were hunted down for their role in the war, most made a perilous escape to refugee camps in Thailand, huddling in tents awaiting some kind of salvation.

Many groups in the US understood our obligation to these brave people who were caught up in a conflict they didn’t start.  A trickle and then a flood were offered asylum here in the US.  The warmest welcome for many was here in Saint Paul, a city with a long heritage of welcoming people from distant lands seeking freedom and a chance to start over. 

This year we celebrate the 33rd Hmong New Year in Saint Paul.  It’s a celebration of culture, including music, crafts, food, and a thick helping of warm community spirit.  A generation on from the initial deliverance, some of the people who arrived with nothing have become successful business owners and community leaders, including two legislators and a School Board member.  The strong community of the Hmong is critical to the process of lifting an entire people out of the poverty as they continue to achieve more and more. 

The most visible part of Hmong New Year are the those who arrive in colorful traditional costumes, decorated with coins on strings and complicated handcrafted fabrics.  The next generation of kids born here happily wears the heritage that was delivered to a land that, in the end, did its best to make good with the promise of freedom to the people that have suffered so much.  The Hmong are strong and united, wearing the clothes of both worlds well in their daily lives – but Hmong New Year is the time when they are proudest in their traditional robes.  The heritage of a people from rural, tropical hillsides can remains intact in the urban, chilly prairie.

There are still many Hmong stuck in refugee camps in southeast Asia, but a few are able to make the journey over to deliverance all the time.  There is always a new story of thanksgiving every year as families are reunited and the community gradually lifts itself out of the stark poverty of refugees.  For those of us whose only role in the stories is to be as welcoming as possible, what we get in return is a deep inspiration.

To know the Hmong is to know what we have to give thanks for. Each year, at Hmong New Year, we are blessed with the stories that make our native traditional Thanksgiving all the richer for the renewal.

Most of my business bills are on auto pay and I don't look at the actual bills very often but I like to check my cell phone bill every month.

Most folks don't realize that third parties can charge their cell phone service provider and that provider puts those charges on your bill.

For three months in a row there was a charge on my bill for "premium services"  I called T-Mobile to ask them exactly what the charge is for.  It turns out that sometimes when those companies send text messages to my phone with information about ring tones that I can buy even if I ignore the message they put a charge on my bill.

The company that was charging me is call CellJamz I ended up talking to them too and they verified that my phone is blocked and that they had stopped charging me.  Their customer service was quick and friendly but they did not acknowledge that their business practices can cause people to be billed for services that they don't want, didn't ask for and never actually receive.

I was able to get the charges removed from my bill but new charges appeared the next month.  Ultimately I had to have the company blocked from being able to send messages to my cell phone.

If I did not check my cell phone bill I would be paying and extra $10 dollars a month for ever. For the company that charges the fee it is a great gig. I wish I had a way to make money without having to work for every dime and provide service.

Check your cell phone bill and if you can not find an explanation for every charge and fee call your provider and ask questions.  In general I won't pay for any service that I did not ask for and agree to pay for.  There are also phone companies, a cable company and a satellite TV company that like to give customers free services that they never asked for and then after a few months they start billing for them. It is a good idea to scrutinize and bill that comes from a phone, cable or satellite dish company.

As I write this and prepare to leave I am slammed with one emergency after another and am working 16 hours days to get everything done before I go. Some of the things I am doing are about being pro-active and heading off emergencies. 

Business picks up every time I leave town and I can count on having at least one of my listings sell. I let my clients know that I will be gone, and that there will be an offer and who will handle it if I happen to be out of cell phone range or speaking at the exact moment that it arrives.   It will arrive at a moment when I am off the grid, like two seconds after the flight crew tells us that we have to turn our phones off at the start of a three hour flight. I love it when I land and I can see the emails with offers on my listings, it is almost magical.    I have considered having my sellers pay for a trip instead of paying a commission  because I believe it would speed up the sale and in most cases it would save them a lot of money.  I would spend less on marketing and would have more fun. 

Realtors do not get as much respect as say ambulance drivers, or firefighters but we really should.  We handle some of life's biggest emergencies and probably save lives every day.   We sometimes get less respect than Lawyers and that is just wrong. Most of them can not be reached after hours.

I used to say that there is no such thing as a real estate emergency but clearly I was wrong.