Music Room

Sometimes a music room is that corner where the piano just fits, so you tuck the guitar stand next to it and your clarinetist uses the piano as a music stand.

Home can be small with multi-purpose spaces. Keeping it real.

Contemplating Space

Although I live in a detached, single family home, one of my favorite books about home is "Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure" by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, a New York City-based stylist.

From this book, here is a thought for the day, a suggestion rather than a quote per se.

Sit for ten minutes in a part of your home that you never sit in.

Meditate if you will. Contemplate your home with a new perspective. Consider unused corners. Minor tweaks can freshen up your day or week.

Here is one of my bookmarks, some fun simple ideas for "5 Ways to Freshen Up Your Daily Life". If you would like an actual paper copy, drop me an email.

Enjoy this wonderful day.

Real Emotions

I was planning on writing today about the emotions that installing a for sale sign in the yard can evoke for sellers, their children, and even their neighbors. That sign is a symbol of change, and change is challenging. One of my daughters said that when the sign went up in front of our old house, she knew it was real and she was saddened.

Today, I was further reminded of how, in my job as a real estate professional, I often encounter people during emotional times. Selling a house, many have written and researched, is right up there on the emotional index. Well, there are other instances when clients need my help. A horrible event occurs and one client can no longer live in the rental we found. Another client receives disappointing news and their anger spills over. And I take a deep breath and work on a solution that can hopefully help.

And even with a sign installation, in my experience, talking with the client about where it should go and to prepare them for its appearance can ease a touch of their stress.

More on Real

Early in my blog's life, I had written about How Real Estate is Real to me, and to others. I found some more concepts jotted down in a lovely old notebook I found on my bookshelf today. I guess I was inspired to look through some past notes and files after my back-to-school school-supplies shopping trip with my daughters.

Real estate is real due to its immobility, it indestructibility, its uniqueness. True, one could technically move a house, usually for historic preservation purposes, but it is a rare occurrence. Also, houses can be sadly destroyed by fire or another horrible natural disaster, but outside of mining operations, the land part of the real property remains and cannot be destroyed, and most homes remain in use for generations. And even in the most banal cookie-cutter subdivisions, each piece of property and all its improvements maintain a unique combination of characteristics, especially over time.

Real estate is real because you can touch it, you can see it, you can drive by and circle the block, you can knock on the door, shimmy through the scrawl space or attic, photograph it, share it. And from a pure legal and taxation perspective, real estate is real because they know where to find you and it. Real estate is an asset, an investment, not just on paper but in tangible fact because you can use it. Its value does fluctuate with market forces, sometimes painfully so in a down market like this country experienced recently.

I love helping people with real estate transactions because real estate is home, enjoyment, family, perhaps income (if an investment property), comfort, shelter. Real estate is real and I appreciate and respect that.

How Real Estate is Real

Real estate is real. That is one of the reasons I have enjoyed real estate for so many years: you can touch it, visit it, improve it, paint it, and of course, live in it.  Real estate is not some intangible investment for which you might get a paper proving ownership. Particularly for your primary residence, but even for investment properties like rentals or second homes, you don't just know about it once a month when you get a statement from your financial institution. To me, this all defines real.

It is worth understanding, I think, a few key terms with respect to real estate.

1. Land: The concept of owning land might seem obvious, but when you own land, you typically own not only the surface of the earth's crust but the soil and other minerals and materials from the outline of your land down to the center of the earth. You also own the air rights going straight up into the sky above your land. It gets a little more complicated if you or a previous owner has assigned some of the rights to those minerals or soil or the airspace above your land through an easement. But that is more Real Estate 201 than 101.  What this means generally is that, subject to local laws and regulations, you can build things upon, or improve, your land and you can grow things in that land and you can use the space above your land.

2. Real Estate: Real estate includes your land as well as any improvements or other human-made physical additions. Improvements include homes, sheds, garages, sidewalks, driveways, paths, sewer lines, and the like. Note that not all improvements allow exclusive right of use (like sidewalks and sewers), but if those are on your property, they are part of your real estate.

3. Real Property: Now it gets even more interesting, because real property includes land plus improvements plus your bundle of legal rights to the real estate. The nuances of these bundles of rights morph into Real Estate 301, but it is useful to know what they are at their core.

A. right of possession
B. right to control the property within the framework of the law (e.g., the right to forbid use of your property)
C. right of quiet enjoyment (meaning, to use it legally)
D. right of exclusion (to restrict access through installation of a fence)
E. right of disposition, to sell, will, transfer, or otherwise dispose of or encumber (restrict) your property

I am happy to explain any of these concepts in detail upon request.