Help Boston Shine this Weekend!

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One of my favorite parts of  being a Boston real estate agent for so many years is how dedicated our city is to keeping our surroundings beautiful. We’re blessed to have the fun, vibrant feel of city life while being in close proximity to a beautiful waterfront and rich, historical architecture.  I feel incredibly lucky to live here, so why not keep the place clean? This weekend is the time for all of us to come together and do our part to really make sure Boston Shines.

Over the past ten years, over 5,000 volunteers have dedicated two days of their springtime season to cleanup initiatives and community service projects, all with the intention of making Boston a better, healthier place to live.

Friday, April 27th and Saturday the 28th mark this year’s neighborhood cleanup, and it’s not just about picking up trash and keeping the streets clean;  it’s about genuinely giving back to your community. From putting your painting skills to work at the local community center to planting flowers at the park down the street, it’s simple to find a project that suits your fancy and your talents.

If you’re part of a business or organization who wants to help make Boston Shine this year, you can participate on the 27th. If you’d rather rally together as a neighborhood, you can do your part on community day, April 28th from 9:00 ‘til about noon.

And because the City supports neighborhood clean-ups throughout the year, whether you live in Roslindale, Jamaica Plain or West Roxbury, you can play a role in  making sure your little corner of Boston Shines 365 days a year.  Just go to their website, choose your date and they’ll coordinate with you.

So, put aside just an hour or two this weekend, put on your grubbiest clothes — bring your own gloves because the City only seems to supply size LARGE — and pitch in with your friends and neighbors.  I’ll be in and around Rozzie Village tackling some yucky project or other and would love to say hello!

Linda Burnett

Jamaica Plain/Roslindale Real Estate Maven
Keller-Williams Boston-Metro Real Estate
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OPEN HOUSES CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO OUR HEALTH!

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It’s probably safe to say that as a Realtor in Boston, I walk into more homes in a month than most civilians do in several years.  One aspect of housekeeping that never fails to stun and amaze me is the use of chemical “air fresheners” – that’s Glade, Renuzit, Febreze, Air Wick and the countless generic brands that mimic them. This includes the purportedly “natural” oil-based products.  And carpet cleaners – I can tell before I walk in when a desperate homeowner has sprinkled their wall-to-wall with a chemical cleaner to cover up an untrained puppy or worse, when they believe it “removes” the smell of cigarettes.  Read the labels closely.  “Baking soda” might be in 10-point print, but look at all the 4-point ingredients and put it back on the shelf.

These mass-marketed products contain carcinogenic chemicals.  Period. And vaporizing agents, (in order to disperse the carcinogenic chemicals), that are also poisonous.  Some visitors to your home, whether it’s on the market or not, could have sensitivity so acute to these chemicals that entering a room where the chemicals are present could cause anaphylactic shock, or worse, death.  Our lungs are soft and absorptive and soak up these chemicals like sponges.

It’s the same stuff that’s in those “Little Trees” that  hang from so many rear-view mirrors, but more lethal as science progresses and can now mimic the most obscure aromas and flavors, and get away with calling them “natural”! Big surprise: FDA guidelines for  flavor and aroma labeling are a joke.

Instead of investing in more plastic-contained poisons to make our homes smell fresh and clean, we can invest, (much less money!) in baking soda, vinegar and other non-lethal household cleaners.  Go to this site – the non-profit Environmental Working Group — to vet everything before you buy it.   Learn the truth about the bath soap and shampoo you use, the laundry and dishwasher soap, and, heaven forbid, the fabric softeners — especially chemical-laden dryer sheets.  And when you vent your dryer into your home or into the atmosphere, you are getting an even stronger dose or sharing these poisonous compounds with your neighbors – two-and-four-legged,  winged and furry. Download this free guide to safer home cleaning.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publishing of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s history and expose´of synthetic pesticides and other chemicals developed since World War II.  Let’s honor her memory by cherishing our health and the health of the planet.

For the bigger picture, visit http:www.silentspring.org.  If audio is your preference, listen to a recent interview with Dr. Julia Brody, Executive Director of Silent Spring, and learn the basics of what mass marketing is doing for our and our planet’s health.   I hope these teeny shards of information will help you to pause before purchasing and that you’ll encourage your homeowner clients to do the same – we’ll all breathe easier!

Linda Burnett

Jamaica Plain/Roslindale Real Estate Maven
Keller-Williams Boston-Metro Real Estate
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The 7 warning signs that you’ve hired the wrong broker

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Throughout my years as a Realtor® in Jamaica Plain and Roslindale, I’ve met with many homeowners who are having or have had unhappy experiences with their listing agents.  The reasons for this are myriad, but as a public service (and to toot my own horn, of course) I’m going to share with you the early warning signs that it’s time to make a switch.

1.  Your broker doesn’t give you a list of suggestions to help your house show at its best. From replacing your mailbox to having your teenage son move out, it’s your broker’s job to see your house through the buyers’ eyes and advise you accordingly.  One of my favorite, though painful, aphorisms is:  If you’re comfortable in your home while it’s on the market, it’s not showing right.  If the on-line photos are less than stellar, many buyers will not even put your home on their must-see list.

2.  You have showings and an open house and you don’t have an offer from one of the first twenty parties that sees the house. If your property is priced correctly and shows well, it will generate an offer quickly.  In the Boston market now, homes are regularly going under agreement in under 24 hours as a result of multiple offers.  After two weeks with no offers in a busy market, an honest agent will ask you for a price adjustment.

3. You call or email your agent and don’t hear back within a time frame that feels reasonable to you. Unless your agent has set up another expectation from the beginning, hearing back within a few hours, maximum, is your right as a client, especially with the multi-media options of communicating today.  If I’m too busy and don’t have quality time to respond to a voice or email from a client, I will email, text or call them and let them know when we might have that conversation.  Whether a property is listed at $150,000 or $1.5M, it’s often the largest financial transaction my client has ever undertaken and it’s my duty to understand this and perform accordingly.

4. Your agent urges you to act contrary to your instincts. In real estate as in the rest of life, I’ve learned over the years that one can lead a horse to water, i.e., I can share with my seller clients my experience through the years in like situations, and share with them my feelings and impressions of the transaction in hand, but it is ultimately up to the owner of the property to decide what’s right for them.  I’ve learned a lot about negotiation from my clients, both seller and buyer, throughout the years.  I believe firmly that if a transaction is meant to be, it will be.

5.  Your agent is not willing to go the extra mile for you. In the course of pre-marketing, marketing and actually facilitating the sale of your home, there are many occasions where your agent can step in and make your life easier.  From meeting a contractor at your house while you’re at work to paying for incidentals for which they’ll be later reimbursed, your agent should be gracious and available to be your proxy in the many situations that arise.   To me, this is a normal aspect of every listing relationship.  These are the small ways in which superior agents make the often wrenching home sale and moving process a little more pleasant and which will be remembered long after the sale is closed.

6.  Your agent normally works in a community miles away from yours. No matter how much you love your agent, intimacy with the local market and the local agents are invaluable attributes for a listing agent.  Many times homeowners will hire a family friend from Hanover to sell a home in Boston and vice versa.  The result, especially in a slower market than we’re experiencing now in the greater Boston area,  can be inaccurate pricing, difficulty commuting to showings, and a general lack of engagement from the local agents who, seeing an out-of-area broker’s name on a sign will often assume the property is incorrectly priced or difficult to show.  As in all things, shopping locally is smart shopping.

7.  You get the feeling your agent is not being honest with you. Sometimes it’s hard to share with a homeowner negative feedback about their property or discouraging news about the market, interest rates, and the many other aspects of marketing a property.  My hard-learned experience is that sugar-coating leads to decay — of the agent-client relationship — and unrealistic expectations that also lead to unhappy endings.  Your agent needs to be smart and skilled enough to deliver information to you from day one that will keep you both on the same page and focused on a win-win finale for everyone.

Linda Burnett

Jamaica Plain/Roslindale Real Estate Maven
Keller-Williams Boston-Metro Real Estate
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