About Sacramento's Land Park

When I counsel home buyers for Land Park, I typically ask them which direction they prefer their home to face. Much of the time, they look at me like I'm looney. Then it hits them, yes, the direction a home faces is a preference.

In the northern hemisphere, southern exposure gets the most sun, even though the sun moves from east to west. But the way the streets are laid out in Sacramento, especially in the core areas close to downtown such as Midtown, Land Park and Curtis Park, many streets run east and west. This means most of the homes face north or south.

However, in East Sacramento, many streets run north and south, so those homes typically face east or west. If your home faces east or north, the front part of your home will receive the morning sun and the back yard will be hit by the hot afternoon sun.

One of my Land Park neighbors behind me wants to rebuild a shared fence. Her dog has a habit of jumping over the fence. Well, that and the fact the fence is falling down. It doesn't matter much to me since that fence is located behind our garage. But the type of fence matters to my husband because he maintains several raised-bed vegetable gardens back there.

The neighbor asked if it would be all right to build a fence higher than six-feet, and I gave her the go-ahead. Then my husband had a chat with her, because he was worried that an additional foot of fencing would block part of the sun from his garden. He suggested she top it off with chicken wire. When she shared that bit of information with me, I couldn't help but laugh. I suspect my neighbor was a bit horrified by that suggestion. Chicken wire isn't exactly visually appealing. I think lattice would look better.

However, my husband is right about one thing. A higher fence on a southern property line would throw shadows on that part of the yard. So, if you're looking at homes in Land Park, consider which way the sun moves. You may prefer to buy a home where the master suite is shaded in the afternoon, with a sunny morning breakfast nook. Or you may prefer a back yard with a northern exposure, especially if you do a lot of late afternoon entertaining. But look out for those neighbors who tell you to put up chicken wire.

Everybody knows that Sacramento service providers are cutting back on staff, due to the depressed economy. Sacramento title and escrow companies are no exception. The problem that arises is many escrow officers are handling twice, maybe three times, the workload. When you're overworked, you're bound to make errors.

I was auditing a file last night that is due to close next week, comparing the estimated closing statement to the purchase contract. The buyer's loan amount was wrong. Although we haven't yet signed loan docs, I suspect the loan documents that were submitted to escrow were incorrect. This would fall on the mortgage broker but the escrow officer also should have caught this mistake.

On an escrow that closed yesterday, I caught an error on the closing statement before the buyers signed. It was missing a fee that had been submitted to escrow on a broker's demand but was not included on the buyer's estimated closing statement.

I have two more escrows closing today, one for a home in Land Park and another for a home in Curtis Park. Each of those contained errors on the buyer's closing statement. On the Curtis Park escrow, the escrow officer missed the MI insurance. That was about $5,000. It was included in the lender's instructions but it was not reflected on the buyer's closing statement. Hence, the buyer had to take off work to wire the additional funds. I'm kicking myself because the day the buyer signed I had another closing scheduled at that time and could not be in two places at once.

The other escrow officer had made a few mistakes on the Land Park closing as well but we caught those in time. Heck, I've seen some closing statements that were missing the buyer's earnest money deposit or the tax prorations were figured wrong. Basic computations that appear on every closing statement. See, the first person to catch a mistake would be the mortgage broker / lender. The second person is the escrow officer. The third person is your real estate agent, albeit some agents are not trained to read closing statements.

Sacramento home buyers and sellers should carefully scrutinize their closing statements. If your bottom-line number seems incorrect, I hate to say this, but it may very well be wrong.

At least now I know where my housekeeper vacuums. Around objects. She doesn't move them. I'm not at home when she shows up for work, so I see only the end result.

I moved a planter yesterday and found it was stuck to my wool rug. That was weird. I gave it a little tug and it came free. A chunk of wool was stuck to the bottom of my planter and left a bare spot in the rug. There was an ugly ring where the planter had been sitting. That spot was crusty. I peeled back the rug from the floor, and this is what I found:

It looks much worse than this picture shows. The boards are warped. The back of the rug was a little moldy, too.

I cleaned up the back of the rug, poured bleach on the floor and pointed a fan toward it. Hey, the floor was already ruined. I couldn't do much more damage.

These are the original tongue-and-groove wood floors from 1948. Oak flooring like this is prevalent in these types of homes in Land Park. You see many oak floors in Land Park that are face nailed, but there are no exposed nail heads in these floors because the boards are nailed where they attach in the groove.

It would be easier to fix if this had happened along the perimeter, but no, this damage is in the center of the living room.

I have no idea how long ago this plant was overwatered to cause this damage or the extent of the problem. Since the boards are warped, who knows the condition of the underlayment.

It's not as though one can easily remove the boards and replace them because it's extremely difficult to match flooring. New floor boards are likely to be noticeable. If we laid a whole new floor over the existing, all 4 thresholds to this room would be raised, and that would look terrible.

I called my pest control guy and asked him to come over. There is a spot he discovered under my front door last summer that has fungus. We bought stuff at Home Depot last year, meaning to crawl under the house and fix it. But it's obvious now that it's a year a later that neither my husband nor myself is eager to tackle that problem. Besides, I hate creepy crawly things.

Since this spot in the floor is on the way to front door, I have asked my pest guy to check it out and let me know if we need to do something. At least I'll get the fungus removed at my threshold now. There's always a bright spot in disasters.

My husband's solution, however, is to throw the rug over it, put the plant back in its spot and forget about it. I would rather have the boards replaced, check the underlayment for mold and buy a new rug. While I'm at it, probably get a different planter that has visible drainage. Oy.

Today is my 10th wedding anniversary. Every year my husband and I celebrate by giving each other traditional gifts. It's something goofy that we do just for the fun of it. The idea is that the gifts should not be really expensive, but something that we'll look at when we're 90 and say: "Where did that thing come from?" Just kidding.

For our 4th anniversary -- which is flowers, btw -- I gave my husband a rose bush. Lots of the homes in Land Park have showcase rose gardens. Planted it in the middle of our rose garden in the front yard. So, when the landscaping guys tore out the rose garden this week, I asked them to save that particular rose bush, which is now looking sort of droopy in a back-yard planter. But roses are pretty hardy; I imagine it will revive itself.

The photo above was shot on Wednesday, the day our walkway was completed. You can see the former rose garden is nothing now but a mess of weeds and clumps of soil. We're thinking about putting a Japanese blood maple in that spot. No more weeding for me.

Although it may not be readily noticeable in the photo, the guy who cut the brick for the walkway angled it with the curve of the walkway. He also stamped the concrete. He is truly an artist. I have great appreciation for quality workmanship and for people who take pride in their work.

Kevin sprayed both the front and back yard with stuff to kill the lawn. He will come back to spray it again next week. While I won't enjoy the view of an ugly dead lawn, at least I have a pretty walkway to look at.

Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub

My work days lately have been brutal and long. It's that first-time home buyer tax credit that is partly responsible for fueling the unrelenting activity in Sacramento's real estate market, so I often find myself doing 3 things at once, on top of balancing new projects.

An agent called yesterday about one of my short sale listings. He said his buyer was in Spain, but I heard him say that his buyer was insane. "Yeah, yeah, to some extent they all are," I replied.

No, he really is in Spain.

"Oh, I believe you, buyers are crazy mad," I laughed. The guy must have thought I was a nut job.

I've mentioned in previous blogs that because I'm so busy, my yard is beginning to look like that of a foreclosure home. Weeds everywhere. Dead plants. Most of the homes in Land Park (where I live) are nicely manicured and ooze curb appeal. My home? A disaster. The gardeners do a nice job of mowing, but the landscaping is pitiful.

I called my client, Kevin. I've handled 3 real estate transactions for his family over the past year. His dad owns a landscaping business in Land Park, and Kevin joined the family business. If anybody would know what to do with my yard, it would be Kevin. His advice? Replace the lawn, yank out the rose garden and plant an ornamental tree in that space, plus, put in a new walkway.

Work started yesterday. It will take about 4 weeks before the new sod will be laid. First, the workers are removing the old stepping stones and preparing to pour cement for our walkway. About every 7 feet, they'll lay a row of brick to match our brick on the front of the house. Then they'll stamp the concrete.

Our old walkway sort of meandered off to the sidewalk, but our new one will be more centered in the yard, giving it balance. Below is what my walkway looked like before the work began and a shot of the work in progress:

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub