Real Estate Views from St Pete

Lots of people up north think we're missing out because it's warm here and we don't have any snow.  No - not at all!

Not only do people here decorate their homes on the street side - many more decorate their homes on the waterside.

December 13th is a day to enjoy the Boat Parades in St. Petersburg.  Decorated boats join the parades (there are several in the Tampa Bay6 area) and you see t6he lights, and hear the music, and enjoy the fun the participants are having.  Hmmm - many years we've had people to our home to watch the Gulfport Boat Parade as it goes by our dock - but this year it's only going down one canal in our neighborhood.  So

we may leave the neighborhood and go down to Downtown St Petersburg and watch that Boat Parade.

Yes - we could decorate our boat and join one or several parades, but as I get older and lazier, I'd rather not participate, but just watch the others as they go by,.

Baywalk Shopping Plaza opened as a great success in downtown St Petersburg, with an assortment of shops and restaurants, as well as a multi-screen movie theater.

Recently one of the partners bought out the other partners and planned to put lots of money into renovations.

Point 1: the new owner was hit by a common theme - banks pulling back on commitments for expansions and development (as well as pulling back on lines of credit).

Point 2: Foreclosure doesn't mean Closing. Nor does a Bankruptcy Filing mean Closing. Often it's an opportunity for restructuring debts, labor contracts, and other obligations.

Ann Taylor is still open - but they are closing many stores around the country.

Grille 121 is open for lunch and dinner, and you can eat inside or enjoy the outside here under the blue umbrellas. Gratzzi's, a long time favorite, is also open for lunch and dinner.

We hear about getting a Voice in your blog posts. It's really very simple - you should sound like you. Your writing should be similar to what you'd be saying over coffee with a friend.

A local real estate agent started blogging recently, and none of his posts sound like him. On a whim this week, I took the first two sentences of his post, put them in quotation marks, and put it all into Google search.

Gee, it wasn't surprising to find more than a dozen exact posts from agents around the country - well, not all of them were exact. Some changed the location in the headline or first sentence - i.e., the impact of tighter mortgages on the (insert city) real estate market. I don't think he plagarized, or used the Cut and Paste technique - I think he paid for a service that does blog posts for agents all around the country - the same blog posts. Is the blog you? or a hired gun?

To me, that's not what blogging is about.

You may fool a potential customer for a while, so that they call you and come to you to look at property or talk to you about listing their home - but when what you say and how you come across doesn't match the personality they came to know on your blog - Bye Bye.

Readers don't want shortcuts, they don't want a canned post about real estate - they want to really know your market and really know you. It's not about spending money, it's about sharing yourself.

p.s. I'm not suggesting a VA can't be useful in cleaning up a post, correcting the spelling or grammar, or finding links to your previous posts - as long as it's your voice coming through.

Our team is lucky to have Amy, our Information Guru. We'll often call her from the field with some of the wall question a client has asked, or some tidbit that we need (as well as often asking her in the office). It's great when she calls back quickly with the information. She'll sometimes ask - Do you know where I found it?

No.

On one of your blogposts!

So, you see, we can be our own resource.

Yesterday 200+ luxury real estate agents received an appreciation gift from the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing. The Institute gave ALL of their founding members (those who joined in 2003 and have stayed with them for the five years since) a free one year extension of their membership. They gave up over $50,000 in revenue to help these agents in generally tough times and to really say,

                                               THANK YOU, and we do appreciate you.

I've blogged before about all the benefits and values the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing keeps adding for their members. This was truly a wonderful Thank You for me and all the other Founding Members.

The CyberProfessionals have one of their two meetings a year at the same location as the NAR convention, just two days earlier. One of the things we do is to go to the Expo armed with these stickers and post them at the booth of a company we find has something cool that the rest of us should see. Saves time and makes sure we don't miss anything.

Since ActiveRain wasn't staffing a booth at the tradeshow, I thought I'd use one of their "moving billboard"s for our sticker.

ActiveRain is a great tool and a cool tool, and so are all of the ActiveRain gurus!

So often we see assisted living facilities that have rigid schedules, much like hospitals. Wake up now to have your breakfast - hurry off to lunch - it's bath time, etc. It's nice to see a change, even knowing it's probably an effort to stem the declining number of residents.

Westminster Communities of Florida, like many such facilities, have different choices and areas for different levels of care. Here in St Pete, Westminster is focusing on their "Person-Centered Model" which allows residents to decide when they want to get up, when they want to go to bed, what their meal preferences are, and what they want to do during the day.

When my mother was at the Northshore (now closed), they advertised themselves as a Cruise Ship without the ocean.  They had lots of recreational choices and an afternoon Happy Hour,

Our industry, too, needs to focus on how our clients want our services, and when. Many have already decided that they'd rather look at homes at night in their jammies rather than spend a sunny Sunday afternoon looking around.

The Davis-Anthony Home & Garden Shop in Parkshore Plaza in downtown St Petersburg opened less than 2 months ago, and is such a success that they're already in the process of opening a much larger shop just a block away at 400 Beach. Condo dwellers and homeowners with yards have found a treasure trove here.

Davis Freeman and Philip Anthony Weber will be transforming their current location into a spillover store with some discounted items.

Davis and Anthony came to the historic Renaissance Vinoy Hotel for a weekend getaway, visited the Saturday Morning Market and discovered the wonders of Beach Drive and downtown St Petersburg. Look how far they've come!

Second home owners and travellers may be interested in their plant maintenance services - as well as Black Thumb gardeners like me! I love fresh flowers and plants, but absolutely can't keep them alive.

While you're visiting the Davis-Anthony Home & Garden Shop, stop for an early morning coffee or an afternoon gelato at Paciugo Gelato or enjoy lunch and dinner on the sidewalk tables at Parkshore Grill, both in the Parkshore Plaza on Beach Drive in downtown St Petersburg.

The residents of Vinoy Place, 400 Beach, Parkshore Plaza, The Cloisters, The Florencia  and Bayfront Tower have all of these just steps from their door. There's a lot for them to enjoy as they stroll along Beach Drive in downtown St. Petersburg - and across the park they have the waterfront, which always has something interesting to watch.

St Petersburg has the largest collection of Dali's works outside of Spain. The Salvador Dali Museum is currently located in a waterfront building that has an unexciting exterior. All that is about to change with the new building that's coming to Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Groundbreaking is scheduled for December 12th, with completion in the fall of 2010.

Yann Weymouth has designed this Daliesque structure with the flowing glass dome that oozes around the concrete block. What a sight looking out through the glass to the Tampa Bay waterfront! There's also a unique spiral staircase that leads up to the 3rd floor galleries and continues into a sculpture as you look up.

This will be a great complement to the adjacent Mahaffey Theater and to the other wonderful museums along the waterfront in downtown St Petersburg.

Come spend a weekend at the historic Renaissance Vinoy Hotel and visit The Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of History, the Holocaust Museum, the Dali Museum, and check out the numerous small galleries.

You might even want to come during the annual Mainsail Arts Festival held in our beautiful downtown waterfront parks. The 34th annual festival will be held on April 18 and 19, 2009.

11/28:  You're invited to the Groundbreaking of the new Salvador Dali Museum.

What a difference it makes to install pavers over the concrete pool deck and to install coping around the pool. The fiberglass pool and "coping" detracted from the value of this renovated waterfront pool home in St Petersburg Florida. Once the owner installed a new paver deck and coping, the exterior of the home matches the interior. The next step is to landscape around the pool and down to the dock. Add some LCD lights on the steps leading down to the dock and it's  --  ohh la la!

The following is a comment posted yesterday to a blog I wrote over two years ago:

We put an offer on a home on monday and Seller agent confirmed there are no offers at the time. He didnt respond to us on tuesday and on wedeneday he came back and said they accepted another offer and he has multiple offers on that house on monday. What can we do at this point. I am willing to pay full price on the house, atleast he should have asked us to put the best offer .. It is very very un ethical .IF any attoney or any one who can help me please respond.. Your help is greatly appreacited.Thanks

What would your response be?

St Petersburg Florida has a new resident - the owner of The Angry Tuna Sushi Company which offers catering and personal chef services. Chef Seamus Easterly has over 10 years experience creating these masterpieces. The Angry Tuna Sushi Company uses the freshest and highest quality ingredients - some are flown in, and some are selected from the fishing boat, before it even reaches the docks.

There are many good sushi restaurants here in St Petersburg, and some caterers do offer sushi, but I haven't seen the wonderful cornucopia of choices that Seamus offers.

The Angry Tuna also has locations in Miami Beach, Jacksonville and Florida's Panhandle.

So - the next time you're planning a party or event in the St Petersburg or Tampa Bay area, check out The Angry Tuna Sushi Company - and tell them that The Simms Team sent you!

Those of you using gmail may have noticed that by default your signature line is at the bottom.  This may sound sensible, but when you've had several back and forth e-mails, it gets lost way way down on the page, unless you take the time to cut and paste it or redo it.

Doesn't have to be.  You can have your signature automatically come at the bottom of your new gmail reply.

1. When in your gmail, click on Settings in the top right bar.
2. Click on Labs  (that's right, don't go to the Signature box on the general tab)
3. Scroll down to Signature Tweaks.
4. Click on Enable.
5. Then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.

That's it! Then your signature box will come up at the top when you click Reply, so that it is right below whatever you type in as your response.

Part of Marketing is always making it easy for people to reach us. They may want to call you instead of e-mailing. Moving the signature to the bottom of your reply helps.

p.s.  since I use an e-mail account for my general business and a g-mail account when I'm at home or out of town, I'll usually say to my team mates, either  "email it to me" or "gmail it to me". That's shorter than saying, email it to my gmail account.

Parkshore Plaza, one of the newer luxury condominiums in downtown St Petersburg, has a minimum rental period of 90 days, with a provision that an owner can only rent it out once a year.

I thought I knew what this means - you could rent it out for the winter season, for example, but then you'd have to either occuply it yourself or leave it empty for the rest of the year - you couldn't also rent it out for the summer. That makes sense - most condos do want to have stability, and this allows an owner to benefit from a seasonal rental or a temporary absence, while keeping the property from becoming a hotel.

One of my clients rented his condo, furnished, for a year. At the end of the year, the tenant wanted to extend for another year (at a reduced rent, but that's fodder for anothr post) which the owner agreed to. The tenant's situation changed, and after a few months into the second year, needed to terminate the lease.

OK - then we'll find another annual tenant. The first rental was for 15-16 months, and the owner is prepared to find another tenant for a year.  Hold on, says the Condo manager - you've already rented the condo for part of the "second year" so you can't rent it again. It has to stay vacant for the next 8-9 months until you start another year. I don't understand how one 15 month rental and another 12 month rental would be a violation of renting it out only one a year.

This just doesn't make sense - there was no turnover in occupants, there was no wear and tear of moving in or out - how can this be a sensible interpretation? Further, the manager says that the "one rental a year" is spelled out in the condo docs rather than being a Rules and Regulation - i.e., major problem to change!

Have any of you come across the situation before? How was it resolved? 

According to my recently posted  condo rental market update for downtown St Petersburg the market is alive and well, with a 9 month inventory.

Annual rentals are available from $750/month for a small 1 bedroom or efficiency, up to $5,000/month for a luxury 3 bedroom unit. It's hard to find a seasonal rental in downtown St Pete, but there are lots of selections on the Gulf beaches, from St Pete Beach to Clearwater Beach. Most are annual rentals due to building restrictions, only a few are age restricted, and some allow pets. Most, but not all, have secured parking, generally under the building.

Between the condo buildings are shops and restaurants. Across Beach Drive are beautiful public parks and a museum, and beyond the park are yacht basins and a view of Tampa Bay. Downtown St Pete is very pedestrian friendly - you can go days without wanting to get in your car.

If you've never learned about DISC personalities, please take the time to do that. At some of the Howard Brinton Universities we actually role played the types - how would you answer the phone, how can you tell from their answering machine message, etc.

We use ACT as our database and contact system, and we've created a field to input their DISC type. Whoever is setting up the record puts it in. It really helps when the others are talking to a client to immediately se their type and know whether to cut to the chase or to check on all the family before getting to the reason for the call.

Some people are naturally inclined to give you an answer that goes on and on, just as others are inclined to give a simple Yes or No, or - in some parts of the country, an  Unnnh!

We all should have learned about the DISC personalities, and how to respond to them. If I'm a D (and I am), just give me the bottom line and save the novel.

One of our team members likes to expound and explain - I got the response actually from her, in one of her explanations:  after a while, I'll just hold up my hand and say -

Please!  Just tell me the time, don't tell me how to build the clock!

This weekend is Rib Fest at Vinoy Park in downtown St Petersburg. This year is the event's 20th anniversary of the Northeast Exchange Club's Ribfest, which contributes to a number of youth-oriented causes, "one rib at a time". They've raised over $2.6 million dollars.

Enjoy ribs (just try to decide whose is the best), music, and tomorrow there's even a car show and a motorcycle show.

This afternoon I was in downtown St Petersburg and people were coming from blocks away to enjoy the food, music and fun. There's fun for the kids, too.

The latest market update for luxury real estate in Pinellas County Florida has been posted.

Only 3 homes over $1 Million sold in October, but 8 homes went under contract. Based on the latter, there's a 66 month supply. Less than half as many homes went to contract as in October 2007.

7 luxury condos over $1 Million sold in October in Pinellas County, most of which were new. The new condos sold at anywhere from 82% of list to 100% of list. Yes, there's a difference in condos! The 100% sale was at Sandpearl Residences on Clearwater beach, built by JMC Development, and affiliated with the Sandpearl Resort, the newest luxury hotel on the Gulf of Mexico in Pinellas County.

One of the new listings this month is a 7,000 sq ft home on the Gulf of Mexico in Redington Beach, offered for $11 Million - with 120 feet of sand dunes along the Gulf of Mexico with its soft, white, sand.

The Pinellas County Florida market update for October 2008 has been posted. Here are some highlights:

• number of single family home sales up 8% from a year ago;
• 17 month supply of single family homes in Pinellas County;
• average and median prices still declining, though slower;
• 33% more single family homes went to contract in October 2008 than in October 2007

• 10% less condos sold than a year ago
• 28 month supply of condos in Pinellas County Florida
• Number of sales, median price and average price still declining
• New condos selling - some at full list price, other developments selling at 17-18% below list.

and Yes, Virginia, there is still mortgage money available, if you have good credit and a down payment.