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I spent the rainy, stormy weekend last week, tackling a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle with mounting frustration. Normally, I breeze through these things, having grown up in a household where we almost always had a puzzle set up in the corner of the living room for most of my young life. (It was as close to Europe as my family ever got.)
Not this time. This particular puzzle of a well-known Serrat painting, had, essentially, only two defining puzzle shapes. In other words, every piece fit into multiple spots. Consequently, I found myself removing, replacing, and resetting nearly as many pieces as I was successfully placing, as I slowly, SLOWLY(!) slogged along. Not good and NOT fun.
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Early Tuesday morning, I met a few friends and we headed to the SF Flower Market to purchase flowers for an upcoming garden show. (I'm still unclear as to how I "volunteered," but there you go.) Novices at best, we made our way through the mart in quick time, deciding on a color theme, and plunking down our money as if we knew what we were doing before heading back to my house to "design" our arrangement. (Fake it 'til you make it.)
For all the gardening I do (and I do A LOT!) flower arranging isn't a skill set I naturally possess. I fall more into the category of shove several bunches of one gorgeous variety (tulips, peonies, dogwood, and ranunculus are currently in season) into an attractive vessel, et voila, instant beauty! Hola! I'm back from a quick trip to Espana, having taken advantage of a pause in my schedule to visit my sister, Jill, in her new apartment (and in her new life) in the historic "Gotic" neighborhood of Barcelona, where she's officially an "expat," retired, and absolutely thriving! (Thank you Sarah, Kate and Elizabeth for the coverage.)
Barcelona is a walker's paradise (flat and scenic), so we'd start the day with a stroll on the beach with her dog, Luna, find a local "cafeteria" for a "cafe con leche," and then explore the numerous museums, cathedrals, markets, art galleries and shops along the way before retiring in the late afternoon. One evening, we took a cooking class where we learned to make paella and potato tortillas (potato omelettes), and on another day, we met up with a group of like-minded travelers for a "Gaudi Bicycle Tour" around the city that was capped off by a stop at the world famous "La Sagrada Familia" (The Holy Family). "Hopefully, this is all of it," my email said. "I've spent more than $2,000 this week meeting your requests for a water pressure monitor valve, household temperature gage, and central fire monitoring system . . . "
Which begs the question: If a house that has NO knob & tube wiring, new copper plumbing, new electrical panels, a composition-shingle roof (w/solar), Tesla Battery walls, insulation between floors, walls, and ceilings, double-pane windows, new furnace(s) and water heater(s), renovated kitchen and bathrooms, low-flow water fixtures, and a security system that includes strategically-placed cameras . . . IF MY METICULOUSLY MAINTAINED, and COMPLETELY RENOVATED HOME (!) is struggling to retain homeowner's insurance, what house actually meets the more stringent requirements insurers are demanding? How are average people supposed to keep their homeowner's insurance? When you measure your career in decades vs. months, or weeks, there's a certain history that you carry into your daily work experience, and a level of expectation that frankly, colors your perception. While it's important to evolve with the times, there are some traditions that probably shouldn't have been left behind so casually. And, given the speed and technology of today's current marketplace, they'll likely remain a lost art forever.
Too bad. The sun is shining, the days are getting warmer, and the trees are beginning to leaf. In other words, spring has sprung.
Alas, so have the deer! With no natural predators to cull the population, both doe and fawn are in ample supply, and they seem to love our block in particular. As soon as evening sets, they're wandering the street in small groups of two or three, freely munching on everything they can find . . . . "I inherited a property and it's in pretty poor condition," the email said. "Can you come by later this week, and tell me whether I should fix it, or sell the home "As Is?"
I'd be happy to, but the choice to fix a house OR sell it in its current "As Is" condition is predicated upon the structure's underlying health. Although I'm certainly not opposed to giving my opinion (829 blogs posts worth of them!), if the deferred maintenance is such that the pest report is going to identify hundreds of thousands in dry rot, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense (or cents) to spend your hard-earned dollars on cosmetic improvements WHEN the house will still present poorly. Put more succinctly, we are going to need more information to answer the question. So where do we find the answers? For years, we've told our clients that the price of a property didn't matter as much as the "PITI" (principal, interest, taxes and insurance), with the assumption that most people never pay off their home loans until they sell. (That' remains true.)
In other words, owning a piece of the "American Dream" was all about the carrying costs, and for the most part, it still is. However, it's important to understand that the "carrying costs" of home ownership have gone up significantly over the past few years, and unfortunately, as long as supply continues to fall well short of demand, I don't see that changing anytime too soon. (Short of a major recession and I suspect, that none of us wants to see our economy hit a brick wall. Of course, I'm not an economist so I'm spitballing here.) I LOVE everything about the Olympics: the competitions, the drama, the stories, the sportsmanship, the pursuit of excellence for excellence's sake, not to mention the personal sacrifices each of these young (and not so young) athletes makes to reach the pinnacles of their sport. As they gather from every corner of the world. I'm truly in awe.
However, watching the 2026 Olympics currently being broadcast from Italy, it occurred to me that I may have missed my golden opportunity. No, it's not ice skating, or downhill skiing, or aerial snowboarding; it's curling! You know, that odd sport we only watch every four years, that involves a 42 lb. polished granite stone, some slippery shoes, and a broom? (I don't mean to brag, but I'm an expert at sweeping.) Often, when meeting potential Sellers at their home, the first order of business is to walk through the house. As I’d represented the Sellers when they bought the home several years earlier, I was familiar with the layout, but as they'd made several improvements, it was nice to get reacquainted with the property. However, out back, Mother Nature had intervened, and a MASSIVE tree had taken over much of their SF view.
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AuthorJulie Gardner, has been writing The Perspective for 19 years and has published more than 850 humorous but always informative, essays on life and real estate.
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