Home Buying Etiquette

1. Houses belong to someone even when they are on the market. Owners have a right to know who is asking about their home – wouldn’t you want to know? When you contact a real estate agent or call an office be prepared to give some basic information – name, address, phone number, and whether or not you are pre-approved for a mortgage.


2. If you are not pre-approved for a mortgage, don’t be offended if an agent won’t show you a house. Instead, ask who you can contact to get pre-approved. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and agents have a responsibility to show homes only to qualified buyers. If you’re not ready to get pre-approved, then you’re not ready to look at houses!

3. If you go to an open house be prepared to sign-in and give correct information. If you are under contract with a buyer agent make sure you write that on the sign-in sheet. If you don’t want the agent at house to contact you just write please do not contact next to your information. Refusing to sign-in is rude and sets a tone of distrust – what if you really like the house? You’ve already gotten off on the wrong foot. Giving false information is never ok. Remember, you’re in someone’s home!

4. Houses are shown by appointment, so plan aheadIf someone is living there, they need some notice to pick up and get out – very few people can keep their house ready for visitors with a moment’s notice – can you? Even new construction is shown by appointment – there might be workers at the house, etc.

5. Real estate agents have schedules too. It is not realistic to call an agent or an office from in front of a house and expect an agent come right out to meet you. Imagine calling your lawyer, dentist, hair-dresser, plumber, mechanic, financial planner, or anyone else … and expecting on the spot service!

6. The best thing for you is to set up a meeting with an agent at their office(or other convenient location) so you can talk about your needs and get to know each other. Buying a home is a big investment and can take several months – don’t you owe it to yourself to invest an hour upfront?

7. Buying a home involves the whole family, so it’s ok to bring the kids (although, you will certainly be able to focus better without them…) If you bring them, make sure they understand that they are visiting someone’s home. Keep them by your side at all times, especially in new construction where things are unfinished and may be dangerous. It’s for their safety and for the safety of the home-owners possessions – wouldn’t you feel awful if they broke something? And please don’t let them play with the home-owners’ kids toys – they wouldn’t want a stranger playing with their things.

8. Treat the house with respect. Of course you need to look in closets and cabinets, etc. but dresser drawers, medicine cabinets, personal belongings are off limits. Never sit on someone’s bed or use the master bath – sellers know they give up some privacy when their homes are on the market but again, put yourself in their shoes!

9. Relationships are about trust and mutual respect - loyalty matters. If you are under contract with a real estate agent, always contact that agent when you need information. People can get really impatient sometimes or they don’t want to “bother” their agent so they start calling offices or listing agents demanding information or pretending that they are going to be clients

Call your agent – he/she will call you back! If your agent doesn’t return calls and give you the information you need then find another agent. If you can’t stop yourself from calling an office or listing agent directly, make sure that you disclose that you are working with an agent right away and that you would appreciate some information.

10. Golden Rule/Common Sense – as with everything else, if you treat people (real estate agents) and property the way you want to be treated, the home-buying process will be efficient and the transaction will be a lot easier. If you’re not sure what the protocol is, just ask – we’re here to help!

Sunset Magazine Speaks to Now and Then

The Original California Cuisine, Courtesy of Sunset Magazine

BEFORE Alice Waters picked her first Little Gem lettuce and Wolfgang Puck draped smoked salmon across a pizza, California cuisine meant something else.

The other California cuisine was being served on a million patios in the Golden State by relaxed cooks who grilled thick cuts of beef called tri-tip and built salads from avocado and oranges. They used red chili sauce like roux, ate abalone and oysters, and whipped sticky dates into milkshakes. It was the food of the gold rush and of immigrants, of orchards and sunshine.

And always, there was young, easy-to-drink wine that could be paired with salad or Mexican food, two staples of the patio table.

“It was California cooking before chefs got ahold of it,” said John Carroll, a West Coast food writer.

There to chronicle it — and help create it — was Sunset magazine, the stalwart regional publication that Southern Pacific Railroad executives began in 1898 to lure Easterners to the untamed West. Next week, Sunset has issued a collection of a thousand recipes, many of which helped define that other California cuisine. Although the magazine is Californian to its core, some of the recipes in “The Sunset Cookbook” (Oxmoor House, $34.95) are drawn from the other parts of the West that Sunset covers, like Hawaii and the Southwest. And any state in America might claim zucchini pickles. But laced throughout are some old-school California dishes like guacamole, grilled turkey, cioppino, barbecued oysters, Crab Louis and fish tacos.

Collectively, they summon a way of life that flourished in the postwar boom, when Sunset was a coffee-table staple. In those years the magazine articulated for aspirational newcomers the relaxed, open way people on the West Coast gardened, traveled and ate.

“Instead of being formal like it was back East, where they were worried about china service and having all the right silver, here you could put your bread in a basket and you could eat food outside and you didn’t have to have a maid,” said Linda Anusasananan, who spent 34 years developing recipes for the magazine before she left it in 2005.

“Anyone could be a Californian if they read Sunset,” said Gingi Kinninger, a longtime reader who makes the occasional pilgrimage to the Cliff May-designed ranch house that anchors the Sunset compound in Menlo Park, Calif.

The book comes at a period in which Sunset is getting something of a new life. With the ascent of celebrity chefs, flashy cooking shows on television and online food media, the appeal of Sunset faded — especially among younger readers, according to several chefs and food editors in California.

But its extreme dedication to regional food, its reputation among readers for reliable recipes honed in a skilled test kitchen and its forays into the D.I.Y. ethos of backyard beekeeping and home vinegar making has helped with a rehabilitation. It is, in some ways, the Betty White of food magazines.

Since 2006, Sunset has experienced a 62 percent increase in readers between ages 18 and 34, according to GfK MRI, a media research company. Chefs who typically snap to attention when magazines like Food &  Wine call say they are now hearing from customers when a recipe of theirs appears in Sunset, too.

“I think it is hip again,” said Suzanne Goin, the Los Angeles chef whose restaurants include A.O.C., Lucques and the Hungry Cat. “People talk about it with a different tone in their voice now.”

Ms. Goin’s parents subscribed to Sunset for years, she said, and it influenced her childhood in Los Angeles, which subsequently influenced the way she cooks now.

Her cookbook “Sunday Suppers at Lucques” has a recipe for date shakes that is based on the rich, sweet drinks she used to have during pit stops on the highway to Palm Springs. She also substitutes tri-tip for a T-bone in a steak Florentine recipe. The tri-tip, a triangular cut from the bottom of the sirloin, can be hard to find outside California.

In the Sunset book, a recipe for barbecued tri-tip comes straight out of the traditional preparation found in the Santa Maria Valley, down to a suggestion to cook it over burning red oak.

“It’s very simply seasoned,” said Margo True, Sunset’s food editor. “They use garlic powder, for God’s sake, and dehydrated parsley. But it doesn’t taste right unless you use it.”

The book, like the magazine, tries to stay true to the origins of its recipes. It is by no means a historical book, although it does draw on the vast Sunset archives. (The magazine’s first enchilada recipe? A stacked New Mexican version in 1922.)

“The Sunset Cookbook” also reflects California’s changing demographics. Mexico is well represented, of course, and so is Vietnam and, to a lesser degree, the Philippines. Pho and the California roll even made it onto the list of 24 iconic Western dishes in Ms. True’s introduction to the book. It’s very much in keeping with the sensibility of Sunset and its longtime publisher, the late Lawrence Lane. He figured if you were adventurous enough to move west, you were adventurous enough to experiment and explore new foods — even if you needed a little encouragement.

“The first time they would ever see an artichoke was when they moved west,” said Ms. True, who noted that the magazine pushed readers toward new foods with a decidedly gentle hand. “There was this sweetness of tone, like don’t be afraid,” she said.

Still, the magazine and many of its earlier cookbooks were edited from a decidedly Caucasian — or at least well-assimilated immigrant — point of view.

“It was sort of Anglicized California,” said Jacqueline Higuera McMahan, who writes a long-running column for The San Francisco Chronicle about California rancho cooking. Rancho cuisine comes from the estates, or ranchos, of California’s early Spanish settlers, and is characterized by chilies and a perfectionist’s approach to barbecuing meat.

“That’s kind of what people wanted in many ways, and still do,” she said. “How can I make the real cooking of California but not go too deep into one culture or another?”
Of course, she subscribes.

“What Sunset has done really well is reflect the changes in the way people in the West live,” said Barbara Fairchild, who will retire as editor in chief of Bon Appétit in November. “It’s a style of living and cooking that really is different.” She moved from the East Coast to Los Angeles with her family in the 1960s. It was the first time she had ever seen an artichoke or an avocado. Her father began grilling over the big built-in brick barbecue while the children cooled off in the above-ground pool.

Dinners, especially in the summer, were salads. Red meat gave way to chicken or fish — quite a radical departure for many family menus then.

Today, if you were to go to Ms. Fairchild’s house for dinner looking for a quintessential California meal, she would serve chili-rubbed grilled chicken, a pot of long-simmered pinto beans and a large green salad shot through with avocado and orange, and seasoned with red wine vinaigrette. There would be a pitcher of from-scratch margaritas. For dessert, fresh fruit and a lemon bar or maybe a brownie.

“The fresh with the indulgence — that’s very California,” she said.

What would Ms. True serve you if you wanted a quintessential old California meal? She would start with guacamole, move onto a Santa Maria tri-tip barbecue and end with a mini-date shake and either sopapillas or fortune cookies — a California invention and, she said, the most challenging recipe in the book.
But then again, it could be warm soba noodles, grilled ahi citrus salad and Mexican chocolate ice cream.
Sunset is now less for the wide-eyed newcomer and more for people who embrace cooking in a state varied enough to put kimchi in a taco or chorizo on a pizza.

“The whole point was to help people figure out how to live here, because everyone came from somewhere else,” Ms. True said. “Now it’s to remind them how lucky they are to live here.”

Source: NY Times By KIM SEVERSON

Forbes Magazine List of Most Expensive Zip Codes

America's Most Expensive ZIP Codes
Francesca Levy, FORBES

2 94027, Atherton, Calif.

15 94022, Los Altos Hills, Calif.

15 94022, Los Altos, Calif.

18 94024, Los Altos Hills, Calif.

18 94024, Los Altos, Calif.

20 94010, Hillsborough, Calif.

31 94028, Portola Valley, Calif.

38 95030, Los Gatos, Calif.

41 94062, Woodside, Calif.

73 94301, Palo Alto, Calif.

83 95070, Saratoga, Calif.

84 95030, Monte Sereno, Calif.

92 94123, San Francisco, Calif.

151 94306, Palo Alto, Calif.

10 Reasons Why it's Good to Buy a Home

Enough with the doom and gloom about homeownership.

Sure, maybe there's more pain to come in the housing market. But when Time magazine starts running covers that declare "Owning a home may no longer make economic sense," it's time to say: Enough is enough. This is what "capitulation" looks like. Everyone has given up.

But it's not enough just to be contrarian. So here are 10 reasons why it's good to buy a home.

1. You can get a good deal. Especially if you play hardball. This is a buyer's market. Most of the other buyers have now vanished, as the tax credits on purchases have just expired. We're four to five years into the biggest housing bust in modern history. And prices have come down a long way— about 30% from their peak, according to Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Index, which tracks home prices in 20 big cities. Yes, it's mixed. New York is only down 20%. Arizona has halved. Will prices fall further? Sure, they could. You'll never catch the bottom. It doesn't really matter so much in the long haul.

Where is fair value? Fund manager Jeremy Grantham at GMO, who predicted the bust with remarkable accuracy, said two years ago that home prices needed to fall another 17% to reach fair value in relation to household incomes. Case-Shiller since then: Down 18%.

2. Mortgages are cheap. You can get a 30-year loan for around 4.3%. What's not to like? These are the lowest rates on record. As recently as two years ago they were about 6.3%. That drop slashes your monthly repayment by a fifth. If inflation picks up, you won't see these mortgage rates again in your lifetime. And if we get deflation, and rates fall further, you can refi.

3. You'll save on taxes. You can deduct the mortgage interest from your income taxes. You can deduct your real estate taxes. And you'll get a tax break on capital gains—if any—when you sell. Sure, you'll need to do your math. You'll only get the income tax break if you itemize your deductions, and many people may be better off taking the standard deduction instead. The breaks are more valuable the more you earn, and the bigger your mortgage. But many people will find that these tax breaks mean owning costs them less, often a lot less, than renting.

4. It'll be yours. You can have the kitchen and bathrooms you want. You can move the walls, build an extension—zoning permitted—or paint everything bright orange. Few landlords are so indulgent; for renters, these types of changes are often impossible. You'll feel better about your own place if you own it than if you rent. Many years ago, when I was working for a political campaign in England, I toured a working-class northern town. Mrs. Thatcher had just begun selling off public housing to the tenants. "You can tell the ones that have been bought," said my local guide. "They've painted the front door. It's the first thing people do when they buy." It was a small sign that said something big.

5. You'll get a better home. In many parts of the country it can be really hard to find a good rental. All the best places are sold as condos. Money talks. Once again, this is a case by case issue: In Miami right now there are so many vacant luxury condos that owners will rent them out for a fraction of the cost of owning. But few places are so favored. Generally speaking, if you want the best home in the best neighborhood, you're better off buying.

6. It offers some inflation protection. No, it's not perfect. But studies by Professor Karl "Chip" Case (of Case-Shiller), and others, suggest that over the long-term housing has tended to beat inflation by a couple of percentage points a year. That's valuable inflation insurance, especially if you're young and raising a family and thinking about the next 30 or 40 years. In the recent past, inflation-protected government bonds, or TIPS, offered an easier form of inflation insurance. But yields there have plummeted of late. That also makes homeownership look a little better by contrast.

7. It's risk capital. No, your home isn't the stock market and you shouldn't view it as the way to get rich. But if the economy does surprise us all and start booming, sooner or later real estate prices will head up again, too. One lesson from the last few years is that stocks are incredibly hard for most normal people to own in large quantities—for practical as well as psychological reasons. Equity in a home is another way of linking part of your portfolio to the long-term growth of the economy—if it happens—and still managing to sleep at night.

8. It's forced savings. If you can rent an apartment for $2,000 month instead of buying one for $2,400 a month, renting may make sense. But will you save that $400 for your future? A lot of people won't. Most, I dare say. Once again, you have to do your math, but the part of your mortgage payment that goes to principal repayment isn't a cost. You're just paying yourself by building equity. As a forced monthly saving, it's a good discipline.

9. There is a lot to choose from. There is a glut of homes in most of the country. The National Association of Realtors puts the current inventory at around 4 million homes. That's below last year's peak, but well above typical levels, and enough for about a year's worth of sales. More keeping coming onto the market, too, as the banks slowly unload their inventory of unsold properties. That means great choice, as well as great prices.

10. Sooner or later, the market will clear. Demand and supply will meet. The population is forecast to grow by more than 100 million people over the next 40 years. That means maybe 40 million new households looking for homes. Meanwhile, this housing glut will work itself out. Many of the homes will be bought. But many more will simply be destroyed—either deliberately, or by inaction. This is already happening. Even two years ago, when I toured the housing slump in western Florida, I saw bankrupt condo developments that were fast becoming derelict. And, finally, a lot of the "glut" simply won't matter: It's concentrated in a few areas, like Florida and Nevada. Unless you live there, the glut won't have any long-term impact on housing supply in your town.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Brett Arends.

Newly Renovated Folger Stable in Woodside Opens to the Public September 19th

One of the jewels of the Peninsula’s Great Estate period of a century ago stood dying of benign neglect until a remarkable public/private partnership was formed. Now thanks to the efforts of the Folger Estate Stable Committee the barn built by coffee heir James Folger II has been restored to its glory days.

Read full story on inmenlo.com   

Source: www.inmenlo.com

Photo by Chris Gulker

Menlo Park Named by Two Irishmen in 1854

It was in 1854 that Menlo Park received its official name when two Irishmen, Dennis J. Oliver and D. C. McGlynn, whose wives were sisters, purchased 1,700 acres (some sources say it was 640 acres) bordering County Road, now El Camino Real, and built two houses with a common entrance. Across the drive they erected a huge wooden gate with tall arches on which the name of their estate was printed in foot-high letters: "MENLO PARK", with the date, August 1854, under it.

When the railroad came through in 1863, this station had no name, it was just the end of the line, but it needed a designation. During a discussion about the choice of a name, a railroad official looked over at the gates and decided that "MENLO PARK" would be appropriate, and so the name was officially adopted. This station is now California State Landmark No. 955, the oldest California station in continuous operation.

Source: Menlo Park Historical Association

Death of the 'McMansion': Era of Huge Homes Is Over???

Source: Excerpted from CNBC August 19, 2010

They've been called McMansions, Starter Castles, Garage Mahals and Faux Chateaus but here's the latest thing you can call them - History.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of references made to the "McMansion glut" and the "McMansion backlash," as more towns pass ordinances against garishly large homes, which are generally over 3,000 square feet and built very close together.

What sets a McMansion apart from a regular mansion, according to Wikipedia, are a few characteristics: They're tacky, they lack a definitive style and they have a "displeasingly jumbled appearance."

Well, count 2010 as the year the last nail was hammered into the McCoffin: In its latest report on home-buying trends, real-estate site Trulia declares: "The McMansion Era Is Over."

Just 9 percent of the people surveyed by Trulia said their ideal home size was over 3,200 square feet. Meanwhile, more than one-third said their ideal size was under 2,000 feet.

"That's something that would've been unbelievable just a few years back," said Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder of Trulia. "Americans are moving away from McMansions."

The comments echoed those made in June by Kermit Baker, the chief economist at the American Institute of Architects. "We continue to move away from the McMansion chapter of residential design, with more demand for practicality throughout the home," Baker said. "There has been a drop off in the popularity of upscale property enhancements such as formal landscaping, decorative water features, tennis courts, and gazebos."

"McMansions just look and feel out of place today, given the more cautious environment everyone's living in," said Paul Bishop, vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors.

And homebuilders are heeding the call: In a survey of builders last year, nine out of 10 said they planned to build smaller or lower-priced homes.