Daily Archives: October 25, 2006

Ghosts from the Past in Long Beach

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Ghosts from the Past:  Living History Tours
October 29, 1-4 p.m.
FREE

Tour the 162-year-old adobe house with "ghosts from the past" who will step forward in time to haunt the Rancho halls.  These "living" history tours will take you to the realms somewhere between 1840 – 1940.  Which era will you visit? . . . You might discover what it was like to live on a booming cattle ranch.  Perhaps you will learn first-hand how long it took to shear 28,000 sheep.  Or, you will possibly explore how a crumbling adobe was transformed into a modern 20th century home. . . . Take a fascinating journey through time with costumed ghost interpreters, portrayed by members of our talented  Friends of Rancho Los Cerritos.  Tours will be offered every half hour throughout the afternoon, with the last tour leaving at 4:00 p.m.

Portal Page Flakes, Long Beach

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I tested an interesting iteration of something we have seen before but repackaged with more modern functions and services.  PageFlakes is a new sort of portal.  Sure, we know portals from Yahoo, Netscape or AOL but they are so 90s.  Welcome to the new century.  PageFlakes allows you to bundle your own content on one page such as Flikr albums, You Tube videos, the inevitable weather forecast along with obviously, the news.  And you can add RSS feeds, etc.

Until now, I have pretty much depended on Bloglines to give me my daily dose of blogs where I get %75 of my news but PageFlakes look like a worthy replacement since it can do what Bloglines does plus more.  However, after a few weeks I abandoned it.  It became quirky and I did not like how their featured item could not be sized and less obnoxious.  It is a great site and I will give another try soon.

In conclusion, PageFlakes takes the idea of a portal and adds more recent functionalities, amongst which RSS, other Page Flakes pages, allows you to share notes, calenders, allows you to set reminder notes.  It is pretty flexible and not in your face.  I give it a four out of five stars, until I play with it more.

Go and check it out and tell me what do you think.

Seller Market Reality Check, Long Beach

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I am not trying to be hard with sellers, but some whom I met had unrealistic expectations.  I am writing about it.  Still many sellers out there will not listen to the advice of their real estate agent to lower their asking price. These properties still on the market for the very same reason: priced to high. In addition to the price — which in today’s market become more important marketing tool, the conditions of your house have to be in line with your pricing.

Here is a sample of unrealistic expectations, according to Realty Times.

The property must sell for this price because I need $400,000 for the next home. The truth: Prices are established by the marketplace according to what buyers will give away, not seller needs.

Similar homes in a different neighborhood command a particular price, therefore my house should sell at the same price if not more. The truth: What happens elsewhere is irrelevant. What happens in the immediate neighborhood is what counts but even more so, the conditions of those homes might not match mine.

(My favorite and unfortunately, all to often true)  This home would have sold for $500,000 last August and we will not accept a lower price. The truth: It’s not last August. It’s now and the marketplace reflects current supply and demand.

Here is the Metrodchomes article.