Broker's Tour and a new granite vendor

Another week has passed and two more to go before I go on a brief vacation, (a long weekend). I hope many of you reading this got a chance to visit Alameda's Park Street Art and Wine Festival. It was packed, I hear upwards of 100,000 packed the 4 block long affair over the two days. While I'm looking at the gourmet food booths Nancy is looking at the colorful garden décor but we both stop in our tracks at home remodeling booths.

One of these booths really captivated us. It was a company called Granite Transformations. What sets this company apart is not only the cost but how and what they do. Of all the custom countertops I have seen, all required removal of an existing countertop which in the city of Alameda requires a permit which also will include an electrical upgrade by having to place electrical outlets within 2ft. of a stove or sink and then every 4ft which can get costly. Electrical boxes are no longer allowed in closets as some older homes were built so they may also need to be relocated. The way around the permit process is to install something on top of an existing countertop which this company does. The samples at the booth were about half the thickness of the standard one inch thick slab of granite so they were close to half an inch to maybe three-fourths of an inch thick and included a bull-nose end. Nancy and I just happen to be looking for a way of upgrading our bathroom counters and this probably will be the way we approach it. They also make a colorful "green" product that includes glass pieces for a real snazzy look.

At the show they were offering a sink to be included in the job but I'm sure that won't be offered after the fact, but who knows. Click the link above and check them out, they appear to be franchised across the country and if they do what they say I can see them getting busier just in Alameda. Oh I did ask for references from within our office's clients and did receive a couple of very positive recommendations.

Now I have a software question that maybe one of my readers can help me out on. I use Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox on my laptop. One happens to be faster than the other and my Multiple Listing Service (MLS) only works on the other. But while I browse with one browser and create bookmarks to save for a later date they aren't available in the other browser without doing an export and import from one browser to the other which includes having to clean up duplicate entries in the imported to browser. So my question to you is does anyone know of a software tool that easily adds bookmarks created in one browser to be transferred to the other automatically? I'd be interested to hear what you may have found. I'll also be posting the same question on the Yahoo XP group I belong to. Thanks in advance.

With that here's what's happening in Alameda's market.

BROKERS TOUR

NEW

LIST PRICE: SOLD PRICE: DOM:

HIGH LOW AVERAGE MEDIAN TOTAL PRICE LISTING COUNT $989,000 $297,900 $541,796 $499,000 $7,585,147 14 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 14 0 7 6

PRICE CHANGE

LIST PRICE: SOLD PRICE: DOM:

HIGH LOW AVERAGE MEDIAN TOTAL PRICE LISTING COUNT $1,850,000 $224,900 $670,553 $509,000 $10,058,300 15 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 378 11 89 61

PENDING

LIST PRICE: SOLD PRICE: DOM:

HIGH LOW AVERAGE MEDIAN TOTAL PRICE LISTING COUNT $10,400,000 $180,500 $678,549 $467,400 $74,640,495 110 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 326 0 46 25

SOLD

LIST PRICE: SOLD PRICE: DOM:

HIGH LOW AVERAGE MEDIAN TOTAL PRICE LISTING COUNT $769,000 $419,000 $552,842 $549,000 $3,869,900 7 $777,000 $410,000 $551,350 $540,000 $3,859,450 115 7 32 20

ALL ACTIVE

LIST PRICE: SOLD PRICE: DOM:

HIGH LOW AVERAGE MEDIAN TOTAL PRICE LISTING COUNT $1,850,000 $224,900 $648,189 $599,000 $90,098,285 139 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 378 0 70 49

Ciao for now Chuck