5 - 2008 - Crossland Real Estate

Scorpions in Austin Hill Country

I was stung by a scorpion in my sleep the other night. This was the 5th or 6th time since 1999 I have been stung in my sleep by a scorpion crawling in the sheets. There are many upsides and positive aspects to living in Austin, but the scorpions might be viewed as a negative by most people.

Scorpions seem to like me for some reasons, as I’ve been stung 5 or 6 times now, all while sleeping. Sylvia has been stung 2 or 3 times. Our kids have never been stung by a scorpion but my youngest daughter did get stung by a centipede when she was 6 years old, which was a harrowing, nightmarish scene that night. The centipede, which I captured with kitchen tongs, was 8″ long and about 1.5″ thick – the biggest I’d ever seen. It struggled so violently to escape the tongs that I freaked out and flushed it down the commode. Normally I would have released it far from the house.

This is par for the course living in a rural “country” neighborhood as we do in Oak Hill. We have a large wooded acreage lot that backs up to undeveloped land, so we see a lot of wildlife around the house including deer, squirrels, birds, snakes, spiders, scorpions, etc. We constantly find scorpions in the house and toss them outside, especially in the summer.

So, what is it like being stung by a scorpion? In a word, painful. It’s a sharp, piercing burning sting, similar to a wasp or yellow jacket sting, but worse. Imagine a sharp hot needle being poked into your skin and left there as the searing pain slowly spreads outward.

The good news is that the pain does usually goes away within 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, for me at least, it hurts more than a severe burn. I have a friend who claims to have gone into sweats and hallucinations after being stung multiple times while pulling on a pair of jeans with that had a scorpion inside the pant leg. Your pain and reaction may vary.

So what does a groggy Realtor, writhing in pain, say to the scorpion who stung him at 4AM?

Austin Energy-Efficiency Property Upgrades at Point of Sale

by Steve Crossland

Some weeks ago I received an interesting email from the Austin Board of Realtors government affairs committee. It was a scare letter warning us, as Realtors, that we need to take action to oppose a new ordinance, and it has since been making the rounds on Realtor email lists and forums in Austin. What struck me about the letter was that, on face value, a reasonably intelligent person can quickly ascertain that it contains biased and untrue information.

Let’s have a look at the content of the letter, compare it to the truth, and see what the proposed “point of sale” upgrades might mean for Austin home buyers and sellers, and if there is cause for alarm.

From the letter:

Austin homeowners will need your help to understand the reasons single family homeowners will be required to obtain a license from the city of Austin prior to selling their homes.

Uh, actually they need our protection from your blatant misinformation campaign. Nothing has been decided. This will be further explained below.

The City of Austin is introducing an ordinance to mandate energy efficiency retrofits for all types of properties in Austin, including single family owner-occupied homes. This is ordinance is being looked at as part of Mayor Will Wynn’s Climate Protection Plan.

They intend to enforce it at the point of sale. In other words, prior to the sale of any single family owner-occupied home, a certificate of compliance proving the required efficiency retrofits have been done must be done prior to closing.

Again, not true. Not only “not true”, but not true at a level of incompetence that’s hard to comprehend. A task force is working on a plan, but there is no ordinance. There is no proposal. The task force has Realtor representation, so one would think our Board of Realtors would be better informed than this letter suggests.

But then it gets better, and this is where my eyebrows lifted as they lay on the fear tactics and dish up even more inaccurate and false information.

Is Your Austin Realtor a Beta Test or a Production Version?

by Steve Crossland

I was evaluating some Property Management software recently, which was still in the “beta” stages of development. Beta software is commonly thought to be ready enough to function, but is expected to have undiscovered bugs and flaws, and may not be ready or stable enough for production use. I decided against this particular software because it has shortcomings and limitations I cannot live with.

I started thinking of some of the many past encounters we’ve had with what I would call “beta version” Realtors. These are freshly minted, green agents who have passed some testing requirements, such as passing the real estate exam and completing basic training classes, but have not yet been proven as stable and reliable in a “production” environment.

Now all they need are some beta testers. Like beta software, many of these beta agents will never achieve the level of maturity and stability required to move into full production release status. They’ll never become Version 1.0. But they will be tested by some users (clients), with varying results, before the market spits them out. Some will pass the test and become great agents, but they still have to be tested first.

Will that beta tester be you? And is it a good idea to use a Newbie Agent to help buy or sell your home in Austin?

Scorpions in Austin Hill Country

Austin Energy-Efficiency Property Upgrades at Point of Sale

Is Your Austin Realtor a Beta Test or a Production Version?

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