The Mystery of Life

A good mystery offers you
life the way it should be.

Plenty of clues.

A logical path to follow.

The Good guys win, and
the Bad guys are punished.

Unfortunately life isn't always like that.

Buying and selling Real Estate can be
especially confusing and illogical.

And you can't always tell the Good guys
from the Bad guys. So...

Contact me. I'm one of the Good guys.

Fly Away Home by Marge Piercy has bad guys,
but it's a novel, so they are not punished as
much as they would be in a mystery. Ross
Walker who divorces his wife Daria to find
himself (through an affair, of course) is one.
So is the "torch" who helps gentrify Allston by
setting fires to buildings. It gets the tenants out
and the insurance money pays for the rehabbing.
Daria Walker finds out her husband owns buildings
that she didn't know about -including some listed
in her name- by doing hours of research at the
Suffolk Registry of Deeds on Pemberton Square
in Boston. It's all property that he tried to hide
from a fair divorce settlement.

To track down ownership of a building you
need to know when it was sold, and either the
seller, the grantor of the deed, or the buyer, the
grantee. Buyers are also listed as grantors if
they take out a mortgage. Then they are the
grantor of the mortgage "deed" and the bank is
the grantee. The same way the buyer is the
mortgagor and the bank is the mortgagee.

Update: Since this card was written, The Suffolk
Registry of Deeds has moved to the new court
house 24 New Chardon Street and you can start
your search for property records on line at
http://www.suffolkdeeds.com/.

Lillian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who... series stars
Koko, a Champion Siamese who uncovers clues to
the mysteries and murders investigated by his master
Jim Qwilleran, a reporter.
But sometimes, the loving detail lavished on
describing every meal that Koko and Yum Yum (his
female companion) deign to eat or regally refuse,
contrasts with the short shrift given to advancing the
mystery. The cats are a big distraction!
And so it is in real life: Animals can distract
buyers who come to look at a house to buy.
If the buyers like pets...
they're distracted, making friends;
if the buyers are scared of pets...
they're distracted, worrying about being bitten;
if the buyers sre allergic to pets...
they're distracted, itching and sneezing.
So let "out of sight, out of mind" apply to your cat,
dog, iguana, or whatever, when buyers come to call.
It makes it easier to keep the buyers focused on
deciding to make your house their house.
Which is what you really want.

Award winning author Jane Smiley is not known for
writing mysteries, but one of her books, Duplicate
Keys, concerns the murder of two members of a
close-knit group and the group's subsequent dis-
intergration. It takes place one summer in NYC;
Zabar's is a featured spot. Of course, the police want
to know how many people had access to the apartment
where the murders took place. Two of the friends
compile a list of 47 names. But missing even from
that long list are the names of friends of friends of
friends with copies of the keys.

Obviously, no professional broker is going to make
47 copies of the keys to your home. But Real Estate
Agencies have different philosophies about who is
entrusted with the keys to show your home to
prospective buyers. Some agencies allow any available
agent (even from another agency) to show the
property any time a potential buyer inquires, rather
than risk losing that buyer to another property. Other
offices designate one or two specific agents to
conduct all showings, which therefore can be done
with greater depth and consistency. If you're not
sure which is best for you and your situation...

Update: Since this card was written, buyers have much
more opportunity to preview a property on-line, including
looking at photos and floorplans and street views. Therefore,
they are much less likely to insist on seeing a property in
the flesh RIGHT NOW! It does mean that how your home
is marketed on-line takes on even greater importance, as
buyers are apt to delete a property from their search based
on what they see on line.

Dorothy Dunnett's Dolly and the ...Bird series is
a set of rollicking good adventure mysteries.
Dolly is a fabulous yacht. The "birds" are
various women(curtesy of British slang). And
Johnson Johnson is the mysterious bifocaled
owner of Dolly, portrait painter extraordinaire,
and spy with a double-barreled name.
What's amusing is that the "birds" are never
quite sure who Johnson Johnson is working for
or if he's a good guy or a bad guy.

In real estate it's almost as confusing.
Do you know who your agent is? There are
Seller Agents representing sellers,
Buyer Agents representing buyers,
Dual Agents representing neither side
exclusively, and don't forget
good old Sub-Agents.
But ultimately, what both buyers and sellers
want are real estate professionals who are
fair, honest and ethical when helping them
to make one of the largest decisions of their life;
whether to buy or sell a home. So...

Update: Since I wrote the card in 1995, sub-agency
has almost disappeared and buyer agency has
become popular, at least in name, with Designated
Agency and its pitfalls becoming common.

Linda Barnes writes of Carlotta Carlyle
cabby and detective on the streets of
Brookline, Boston and Cambridge, who
drives with the best of them and knows
most of the shortcuts. Never take a shortcut
around here unless you know exactly what
you're doing! Legend has it that cows laid
out the streets of Boston, to account for their
crookedness and lack of a grid. But we can't
blame cows for at least five different
Washington Streets in Boston alone.

A good broker needs to know where the
streets are hidden as well as, or better
than a cabby.

Can you solve the minor mystery of where in the
world in Brookline are Clark Court, Lowell
Lane and Webster Place? (Hint: nowhere near
Clark Rd., Loweel Rd. or Webster St.) Give up?

In Cruel and Unusual by Patricia D. Cornwell
Dr. Kay Scarpetta has risen to become the
chief medical examiner for the Common-
wealth of Virginia. One of her duties is
performing the autopsy of a brutal murderer
sent to the electric chair. It is clear that
something has gone very, very wrong when
the dead murderer's fingerprints show up at a
new crime scene. The plot is technical,
very intense and not for the squeamish.

It deals with death in its many particulars,
which can make people uncomfortable.
Often buyers want to know if the seller has
died and how. Almost always, this has no
material bearing on the property being sold.
Brokers are caught between protecting the
privacy of the family (especially in the case of
violent or traumatic death), and disclosing
fully to the buyers. If there is any question,
about whether buyers should be told, the
consent of the family for full disclosure is
the best policy. So, for a relaxed, pleasant
experience buying or selling a home...

Peter Lovesey's The Last Detective stars
Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond who
rails against all the newfangled gadgetry that
he's expected to use to solve crimes that only get
in his way instead.

The top dogs provide you with all those aids
and expect you to be super-efficient, but
when all's said and done you're
investigating people, dodgy people,
dangerous people, frightened
people...You've got to talk to them, get
inside their minds and tease out the truth.

No good real estate broker would dream of
giving up her MLS, cellular phone, fax machine
or computer. They allow her to work faster,
farther, and more efficiently. But selling real
estate is about understanding people. Often
frightened people, sometimes dodgy people,
seldom (thankfully) dangerous people,
but people.

And all the gadgetry in the world by itself can't
put people together with the houses they're
ready to call HOME.
For that you need a good Realtor®. So...

Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott
Davidson is one in a series starring
Goldy Bear as a caterer in a "culinary
mystery". Unfortunately, the recipes
sprinkled throughout the book are better
constructed and more plausible than
the plot or the characters.
But the heroine does have the endearing
trait of reaching for chocolate in times of
stress. Very good Lindt chocolate, mind you
(my Swiss grandmother would approve.)
Alas, chocolate only works as a de-stresser
when it's actually melting in your mouth.

While buying or selling a home
can be stressful,
chocolate isn't the best answer.
For a less fattening and more helpful
solution, hire a good Realtor®.

You can learn much about the making
of antiques, both real and fake, from
Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy series.
The ladies all chase Lovejoy because
beneath his rough, grungy forever-
broke exterior, he's rather charming and caring.

The crooks all chase Lovejoy because
beneath his rough etc., exterior he's a
divvie. Able to just know if something
is a true antique made with hard work
and care, no matter if it's covered with
grime or thrown in with a lot of
pretending junk.

Remember when you search for a home
in Brookline that many of the houses
here could qualify as antiques. And
sometimes it takes a divvie to
discern their charms through the layers
of paint, the clutter and the sixties'
renovations. So...

When Tom moved to the Boston area
he assumed that he would buy a house
here. After all,he had just sold one on
the West Coast, he liked the privacy
they afforded and he wanted a yard for
his dog. But the houses in his price
range were too small, too
unimaginative, and so suburban it gave
"city person" Tom the willies.
Unfortunately, he didn't know the
options the Boston area offered. He was
missing the clues to the city. But the
broker knew the gestalt that Tom would
love and said "Trust me."
It was a condo in a Grande Dame
Victorian row house with great spaces,
fireplaces, wonderful windows,a patch
of private garden, an upstairs &
downstairs and plenty of parking.
Tom loved it. Bought it. Called it
home. Another case solved.

Dr. Watson was shocked and amazed (in The
Study in Scarlet) to realize that the brilliant
Sherlock Holmes knew next to nothing about
literature, philosophy, politics or even that the
earth orbited the sun. Holmes' explanation
was that he viewed the storage capacity of the
brain as limited and chose to stock only such
knowledge that would help him in his line of
work, as the one and only Consulting Detective.
Research has shown that the memory
capacity of the brain is not as constrained
as Holmes thought. In fact, the more
interconnections you make between pieces of
information, the greater amount you can recall.
Remember when choosing a broker that good
brokers know more than just the legal, archi-
tectualvand community information needed to
sell a house. Good brokers have a depth of
knowledge that allows them to connect with
people from all over and put them at ease.
Because you're not buying shelter,
you're buying a home. A place for your
hopes and dreams.

If you like your crooks bad,
the weather worse,
the work tough and the
heroine tougher,
read Dana Stabenow’s
Dead in the Water
about the investigation of murder on a
crabbing boat in the Bering Sea sailing
through fog, ice storms and heavy seas.
It’s chilling enough to send you diving
under the covers.
No heat on a cold night can be
dangerous even here on dry land
so have your furnace (for hot air) or
boiler (for steam or hot water) checked
and serviced each year. And call early
if you want it done in September.

John Putnam Thatcher, prudent,
conservative banker to the core,
uncovers the greed behind the murder,
mayhem and malfeasance at the client
companies of the Sloan Guaranty Trust
in the very satisfying, old-fashioned
mysteries penned under the name
Emma Lathen by Mary Jane Latsis,
an economist and Martha Henissart,
a lawyer. Before the bank lends its
money John Thatcher makes sure
all is as it seems.

And so should you. It's only prudent
to do structural, mechanical and pest
inspections before you buy a home.
You're unlikely to turn up murder
or mayhem, but you may find an old
furnace or a leaky roof.