going green

Keeping Vienna’s Northside Park free of invasive plants.

The Town of Vienna Parks and Recreation Department is seeking volunteers on Saturday, September 26th to help identify and remove invasive plants in Northside Park. As in most suburban areas across the country, non-native plants are growing out of control and impacting the natural environment for native plant species.

The Northside Park Invasive Management Team Training is set to meet from 9 to 11 a.m. at the Glyndon Street side of the park. From Route 123, turn at the TD Bank and continue up Glyndon Street NE until it dead-ends at the Park and Vienna Property Yard.

Volunteers should bring gloves and wear comfortable, protective clothing such as long sleeve shirts and long pants. You may want to wear water proof shoes or boots.

For more information, contact Vienna Parks and Recreation Director Cathy Salgado at 703-255-6356 or via e-mail @ csalgado@viennava.gov

going green

Digital signature saves the home sale negotiation!

One of my real estate associates at RE/MAX Presidential recently went on a vacation and I agreed to handle her clients. Yes, we all need vacations (even real estate agents) to recharge our batteries and add a little adventure to our lives. In her case, it was a motorcycle trip in Wyoming and Montana with her husband.

One of the cases involved a town house with three offers, all below the asking price, and the seller was holding firm.

Hey, people seemed to be lining up so why not hold out for more money? They were already selling at a loss and the press seems to be reporting a “pick-up” in the real estate market. And isn’t this a real estate negotiation strategy?

Well, not really.

When I took over, the offers were already about ten days old and the buyers were losing interest, fast… and the buyer agents were getting impatient. The story is more involved but I’ll just get to the meat.

The sellers had tried to wheel and deal verbally, but agents know that they need to see counter-offers in writing. And then, one of the buyers withdrew their offer. The two remaining were also threatening to walk. [side note: most real estate offers in Virginia do not have written deadlines unless specified by the buyer or seller]

When the seller decided to take action, I scanned in the paperwork and uploaded it to DocuSign, my digital signature service. The seller was impressed with the ease of the technology, clicked where instructed and the counter was ready. Sent! And promptly REJECTED!

So they countered the second offer, and it was accepted with a minor change and “clean-up”.

“We want it back by 5:30 or it is withdrawn,” said the buyer agent.

Since Mrs. Seller works in Washington D.C. and Mr. Seller works in Fairfax, Virginia, getting the “cleaned-up”, accepted contract quickly signed using digital signatures helped save the best contract of the three. Waiting was a gamble that almost back-fired, and if the technology had not been in place then they would have been back to square one.

going green

Filling in the Vienna Insider’s Guide… slowly

Most of the time putting together this blog is so exciting that I can’t wait to get rolling every day. But often it seems like it may never get done since every new idea breeds another, and yet another brilliant idea.  And the actual selling of real estate gets heavy too.

As a result, my older concepts get back-logged as I try to produce relevant, topical new posts. But I’m sticking with the game plan and filling in some pages as I go… heavily anticipating my next review coming in mid October with “the team” over a few cups at Starbucks.

I have completed two new pages in the “Insider’s Section” that I hope you will check out and give me some feedback. Think like you are planning to move to Northern Virginia and your best friend from college, Jimbo, suggested Vienna because he lived here in the 1990′s.

The first new page is: Vienna Town Green

The other new page is: Meadowlark Botanical Garden in Vienna 

So take a look for now, and I hope to keep on filling in the blanks (and I’m open to ideas).

Cheers!

going green

Digital signatures = Better Service for my clients

The age of the digital signature has arrived… for my real estate clients.

My motivation to add this technology came when a client faxed back a counter-offer to my office in June and it was unreadable. People just aren’t faxing as much, and when they find a fax machine it is probably more than five years old, and as you know, real estate agreements need to be in writing to be enforceable.

So, I needed to find a good solution.

Over the years, clients have faxed things to me from almost every office building in Tyson’s Corner, McLean, Reston, and many in DC. But I have also received them from cruise ships in the South Pacific, the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Barbados, Ireland, England, India, Russia, Germany, El Salvador and Canada.

Then, in July, an agent e-mailed a counter-offer to me with a digital signature and digital initials where necessary. Clean, professional, and with documentation that it was genuine, I knew that I needed to investigate.

Maybe I had just found my solution?

So starting today, July 31, 2009, my clients will be able to sign documents electronically saving them time, image quality, and the hassle of finding a fax machine. When I send a document for initials or signatures, I will clearly identify each spot with an electronic post-it note where you will need to take action. In most cases, you need to click on the post-it note and DocuSign will place your signature or initials.

Once you have done your electronic signing, you will save the page(s) as a PDF file for your records, then e-mail me the document as an attachment. Simple and easy!

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