Wellington, FL

Active Rain is the media's go to source for everything real estate!


We received a call last month from Realtor® Magazine.

The writer had found our blog on Active Rain along with the posts that we write about our expired marketing niche and system.

We will be in the Realtor® Magazine; the March issue. So be sure to pick yours up and let us know what you think about the article. It is an honor to be in a magazine that is for our peers.

It was a long interview and there was a lot of information and stats that we had to prove and provide. Going through some of our old files to gather up the facts correctly was my biggest obstacle as being paperwork organized is not my strength! Memories came to the surface of breaking into the luxury markets here in Wellington Florida. We are looking forward to seeing the article.

I was hoping to have my coaching website up and running before the article comes out as I know we will be getting more calls and it may be hard for me to return each of them. I already have so many calls and emails from agents with short sale questions and SEO questions and then a lot of agents want us to send them our brochure, etc. I do need to get on getting something on our new website!

A few weeks after the interview we get a call from the Realtor® Magazine's photography department.

She was so nice! In fact, we must commend all the staff we worked with at Realtor® Magazine- they were all so courteous, respectful of our time and polite. I was very impressed. They contracted with a top notch Photographer here in the Palm Beach County area- Randy Smith. When she told me he was a good and very professional photographer, that was an understatement.

Randy spent time going to our website. He viewed all of our listings to get a feel for our market. He then spent 2 hours talking to me on the phone. He is a mac fan so he gave me some photo tips working on the macs. We set up a photo shoot which was going to take 3/4 of a day. We set up indoor and outdoor scenes. It was a lot of work. When I was 16 and 17; I had a lot more energy to stand up all day long on the sets and in front of photographers' cameras! It was like going back in time:)

After the shoot, Nestor invited Randy to go out to dinner with us. At the end of the day, we marked it up as a great success plus we got the side benefit of hooking up with a photographer that is really talented. Here is Randy Smith's Website. He travels throughout the world on photo shoots as you can see as you browse his virtual galleries.

I have his permission to post some of his photographs. The one right above is at a Bed and Breakfast in Loxahatchee Florida- which borders Wellington to the north. We can not show you any of the photos that he took of us yet because Realtor® Magazine gets to publish them first. I am excited to show you some of the photos because they turned out really professional, showing our personalities and are a great representation of our brand.

Here is to more video blogging with us setting up for the indoor photo shoot. One of our friends, Jorge, allowed us to use his home for our photo shoot and you will get that during the video.

Enjoy more video blogging!

Copyright © 2010 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved.*Active Rain Is The Media's Go To Source For Everything Real Estate!*

Wellington Horse Shows bring a lot of people here to Wellington Florida each and every year for the Polo Season and the Winter Equestrian Festival that starts in January and ends in April.

Fl Horse Properties come in small one acre parcels to 20 plus acres.

Join us as we take you along for a video tour of some of the Wellington Horse Properties. You will enjoy the journey. Please leave a comment in the YouTube comment area!

Our first stop is a new construction custom estate home that is listed for $6 Million dollars right next to the Polo Fields and within hacking distance to the Palm Beach Equestrian Center for all the Winter Equestrian events that include hunter jumper and dressage competitions.

The Stables are attached to the house. The main living area of this estate is above the stables. There are fenced in paddocks and a turn out or exercise ring in front of the estate. The video tells the story better than I can here. You have to see these horse stables. I am sure many of you would say this is good enough for your teenagers to live in!

When people tour FL Horse properties in Wellington Fl they most often say that you can not tell the difference between the house the people live in and the stables the horses live in. Actually some of our friends keep their stables and barns cleaner than their homes.

To view Florida Short Sales- Click here. We know Palm Beach County Short Sales and Port St Lucie Florida Short Sales and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your home in Palm Beach County Florida: Call us today.

Copyright © 2010 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved.*Are You Tired Of The Buyer Walking? Short Sale Listing and Selling Strategies*

Wellington Florida Homeschool- Making History Come Alive or Not So Alive!

Some of my favorite subjects to teach our son are history and geography. One of the perks is that you get to choose your own curriculum. Because we have homeschooled 6 children it is much easier this time around. We use a biblical time-line and teach history from a biblical perspective which is much different than my secular education in Germany and in Stanford Elementary.

One of our neighbors also homeschools her children and it just so happens that our son is about a year younger than one of her sons. Needless to say; they are very good friends and we do a lot of coop teaching.

We are learning about Ancient Egypt right now. With the internet and the public library there is no lacking in materials and references about Ancient Egypt. In fact, there is TOO much- most parents get information overload. So we do unit studies with full immersion into a subject. So when we study Ancient Egypt we spend two hours a day on this area. We incorporate music, math, science, art, language art, reading, history and geography.

Part of our hands on learning section was science and art combined. The two boys mummified chickens. They each got their own chicken. The Museum of England has really good instructions and lesson plans.

We found out that in Ancient Egypt most people mummified their loved ones. The difference was in how fancy of a funeral you could afford. The poor people just placed their loved ones in the sand in the desert. The salt in the sand mummified them perfectly. We had to buy a lot of salt for this experiment.

Oooh! We also found out why you use all those spices! To cover up the smell of decay! We realized that such a small animal as a chicken smells pretty bad as it is drying out. You can only imagine how bad the humans smelled!

The museum instructions said the initial drying out process would take about 4 to 6 weeks. Every week the boys would have to take the salt off their chickens, re-spice them really good with cloves and Cinnamon and then salt them again. They wore plastic gloves since we did not want to get those germs on us!

What we failed to realize is that we live in Florida and it is very humid here. The drying out process took 8 weeks!
The boys were very patient.

Finally they wrapped their dried out chickens with glue ( to substitute for the resin) and gauze. The cashier at Target was looking as us strange when we bought so many rolls of gauze- we explained that we were making chicken mummies,LOL!

Now the chickens were given an Ancient Egyptian funeral, placed in 'Gold' coffins they made from shoe boxes and then buried in our back yard. In one year they will dig them up and check them out!

Our 7 year old son participated in the 3rd annual Track and Field Meet put on by the Christian Homeschool Athletic Association of Florida- more commonly known as SAINTS.

This is such a fun event for the kids. As homeschooling grows faster and faster and parents are pulling their kids out of public schools on a monthly basis it is such a blessing to have good, wholesome physical fitness group programs where the kids can compete with politeness and focus on what is important.

A teacher I know told me that parents are pulling their kids out of public school to homeschool on a daily basis in Florida. Florida is a homeschool friendly state. Governor Chariie Crist issued a homeschool proclamation and declared that March 30 - April 6 is Home Education week in Florida.

I am always impressed whenever we go to any homeschool field trip or event with how well behaved the kids are, even the teenagers!

But this track and field event could not have been possible without 'Coach Rick' who started the CHAA program. The first year he had 13 kids in he program, today he has over 2,100 kids in the PE program and he just opened up a new program in Austin Texas. I thought about Jason Crouch and how this would be a great program for his homeschooled children in Austin.

Rick Andreassen was also named the National Teacher of the Year in 2008. You can read the story on a post I wrote here. He has since been inducted into the Who's Who of American Teachers. Rick is the first ever homeschool teacher to be awarded with teacher of the year.

But there is something we did not know about Rick that really got the kids excited. He was one of the torch runners for the Summer Olympics held in Salt Lake City Utah. Our son held the Olympic torch in his hand! That was really cool!

If you are new to Florida and homeschool your children- check out CHAA for your PE part of homeschool. The sessions are held once a week at different geographical park locations all around Florida. You can go from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. for a half day session or your child can enroll for a full day program. Our son loves it so much that he is in the full day program. That gives you as a homeschool parent a day off during the week! He looks forward to going every week and has made some good friends also. It is the one subject I never have a problem getting him ready for!

MISSION STATEMENT For CHAA:

• To teach fair play, good sportsmanship, teamwork, goal
setting, develop Godly character, and instill Christian
values
• To teach "Safety First" in all activities
• All activities are designed to be a "learning time"
• To encourage growth in each child's special talents and
help to develop new ones
• To stress RESPECT to God, parents, leaders, self, one
another, equipment, and the environment

For more information regarding SAINTS, CHAA, Christian Homeschool Athletic Association Of Florida's programs and locations check out the their website at www.ChaaSaints.com or call Rick Andreassen who is the Founder and director at 954-717-4428.

To view Florida Waterfront Condos For Sale - Click here. We know Palm Beach County Short Sales and Port St Lucie Florida Short Sales and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your home in Palm Beach County Florida: Call us today.

Copyright © 2010 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved.*Olympic Young Hopefuls- Track and Field Events Kick Off For Florida Homeschool Athletics Program!

Stop The Banks! The Banks' Lobbyists Are Trying To Change The Foreclosure Process!

It is not a good thing to give the banks more power.

If you are a real estate agent or a homeowner in the state of Florida please contact your Congress men and women today, please contact your state Senators today! Do not let this plea go unanswered.

I just wrote a post about how if you are in the business of real estate you need to be involved with the political process and this call to action is NOW.

If you are a short sale agent, if the banks get their way with this, this will directly impact your short sale closing ratios. This will also put more of your sellers at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. Make sure you read the 53 page bill.

Get your Board of Realtors® involved with defending the very essence of NAR and state boards- the protection of homeowners' rights.

Already Palm Beach County has stopped the foreclosures "on the courthouse steps". Actually the foreclosure sales were held in the court's cafeteria but now in order to facilitate so many foreclosures, the county clerk has put all the foreclosure auctions online. This is yet another hurdle to us agents who are scrambling to get the foreclosure stopped because we have a bank that does not know how to talk to their other departments!

The Florida Supreme Court just made a ruling that all banks that are filing foreclosures must offer the homeowners mediation from now on. This new rule started to be in effect on January 1, 2010. Well, this bill slaps the Florida Supreme Court right in the face! It would be a mute rule.

So the banks have now pulled their resources together and are lobbying the Florida house and congress to get this new bill passed. The Florida Bankers Association is a 400 member lobby.

They are trying to undo decades of Florida law by undoing our judicial foreclosure process and change it to a non judicial foreclosure process where homeowners could be foreclosed on in as little as 3 months. Florida has been a judicial state for decades. They want to get this on the books by July 1 of 2010. This would been that they could bypass the judges. Of course they want to bypass the judges. After all, the judges are making the banks show proof of ownership of notes and making the banks obey the laws of service in the state of Florida. The judges will 99.9% of the time rule in favor of the homeowner postponing the foreclosure when we have an offer for a short sale.

37 states have fast track foreclosures. But Florida is and has always been a state where homeowners' rights matter.

• 172,894 South Florida homeowners were served with foreclosure lis pendens notices last year.

This 53 page bill states that the non judicial foreclosures must be completed in no less than 3 months and no more than 1 year.

Here in Florida in a judicial process it takes 18 months or more to foreclose on a property and longer if you hire an attorney for foreclosure defense.

I love how they try to sell this bill as doing some good for the people. That is a bunch of loaded boloney. The bankers also put in the bill to keep their right to deficiency alive and well in the state of Florida. But then the bank throws a little morsel to the homeowners saying they will waive the deficiency if the homeowners do not wreck the house.

It amazes me how they package this bill. The name is so deceiving. They must hire a marketing company to come up with the names for bills so that they sound good to the people.

The name of this bill is:

The Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act!!!!

What a joke! How in the world do they get to put a name like this on a bill that is just there to protect the banks' interests?

They mask this with pretending that this bill is really helping! The sponsor of the bill said that this is to help break a foreclosure crisis caused by mortgage fraud. Excuse me? How is taking away judicial rights helping break through fraud?????

He also said that this bill protects the innocent victims- the neighborhoods. How is that going to happen? Agents- please send your congress men and house representatives photos of homes you drive by that are BANK OWNED!!!!

The bankers spokesperson said that getting the foreclosures into the hands of the banks and out of the homeowners' possession will help with blighted urban neighborhoods and help relieve the judges who are overworked and have too many cases. He also said that this will help the HOA's and keep the houses nice and neat. What a good scam to get you to believe that taking away more rights is somehow a good thing.

Governor Charlie Crist would also have to sign this Pro Banker bill if this bill becomes law. He is under a lot of pressure from the populist movement and they are not happy with the bankers right now. This may not be a move he is willing to take to risk the Senate race he is in.

The Florida legislature resumes again on March 2. Please get the word out to all the attorneys you know, all the homeowners you know to stop this bill. You never know when you may be in the same situation as these people we are helping to save from foreclosure.

Avoid Foreclosure! Call Nestor and Katerina Gasset for Short Sale Information Today- 561-753-0135 or learn more at Short-Sales-Florida.com.

To view Florida Short Sales- Click here. We know Palm Beach County Short Sales and Port St Lucie Florida Short Sales and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your home in Palm Beach County Florida: Call us today.

Copyright © 2010 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved.*Stop The Banks! The Banks Are Trying To Change The Foreclosure Process!*