Ed Schneider – Washington DC Real Estate Specialist

The biggest surprise in the April numbers was that the dollar volume of sales was higher than April 2010. This was not expected, because the First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit deadline of April 30, 2010, created a huge bonanza of sales all across the country, including in our own Metro area. In addition, April was the 13th consecutive month showing an increase in the average price over the same months of the previous year.

All of this enforces what we have been reading in the newspapers, that the Washington Metro area is the strongest real estate market in the country. With the relatively weak dollar, we should expect foreign buyers to come shopping in our marketplace, not only for commercial properties, but also for good values in our Blue Chip real estate market.

* Statistics are taken from the Metropolitan Regional Information System for three areas: Washington, D.C.; Montgomery Country, Maryland’ ad Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria and Falls Church in Northern Virginia.

Soon, the Federal Housing Administration will be reducing one of its benefits for buyers using FHA financing. It's been annonce that sometime later this summer, the agency will reduce the maximum seller consessions allowed. These guidelines have provided a negotiating tool to help many a buyer who struggles to come up with more than the 3.5 percent down payment to purchase a property. They can request sellers to pay some or all of their settlement costs.

The maximum allowed seller consession is currently six percent of the purchase price. But soon this will be reduced to three percent, the same amount allowed in most conventional financing using Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae.

So for the purchase of a $400,000 home using FHA financing, a seller has been able to provide assistance to the buyer of up to $24,000 toward settlement fees and even for some costs for needed repairs. This figure will soon be reduced to $12,000 on the equivalent $400,000 purchase.

When will this change occur? It is unclear. FHA originally said it would take place early this summer, but now it looks more likely to be late in the season. So if you would need more than three percent seller help in making your sale go through, it would be in your best interests to get a ratified contract as soon as possible

The architect and his paralegal love bunny bought an Adams Morgan rowhouse as a shell ten years ago. He redesigned the interior and renovated it into an inviting home where the two could entertain friends and family. It served them well and the renovation received plenty of acclaim, starring in an episode of HGTV’s Small Space, Big Style and gracing the pages of Metropolitan Home.

After the renovation was finished, the couple married, and, as a wedding present, she bought her bicycle-enthusiast husband an expensive and unique road bike. It had a distinctive bright yellow frame and special equipment – a niftier handlebar, racing pedals, and a special, extra-comfortable seat. The architect owned several other bicycles, but the couple always referred to this one as the “Wedding Bike.”

Several months ago, the architect rode the Wedding Bike to the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) on North Capitol Street to pick up permits for a project he was working on. He locked it to the bike rack on the sidewalk, in full view of a security guard. But when he returned, the Wedding Bike was gone and the security guard just shrugged.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago: The couple put their house on the market and found a buyer who loved it as much as they did. It sold in a matter of days.

But when they got to the settlement table, there were complications. The lender screwed up and wouldn’t be able to wire funds to the title company for a couple of hours, so the couple decided to take a break and get coffee at a nearby Washington Harbor.

They had been sipping their brew for some time when the husband suddenly shot to his feet and bolted from of the shop. The wife, used to her husband’s quirky behavior, sat a while longer finishing her coffee, then gathered their things and headed outside.

There, she found her husband talking to a police officer and a bicycle messenger, who held the handlebars of a familiar-looking bright yellow road bike. Some of the specialty equipment had been swapped-out and the Washington Area Bicyclists Association stickers removed, but was clear to the couple that it was the Wedding Bike.

The police officer was convinced as well when the architect showed him the police report he'd filed and its original bill of sale – documents he had been diligently carrying ever since the theft. The messenger claimed he’d purchased it on the street, but since it obviously belonged to the architect, he surrendered the bike and walked away.

The wife wasn’t all that surprised by the event. “My husband has the eyes of an eagle,” she said. He also had the persistence of an Eagle Scout to carry those documents with him everywhere he went. He was certain he’d spot his precious Wedding Bike on the streets someday.

But if the stars hadn’t aligned that day – if the buyer hadn’t chosen that particular title company at that particular hour, and the lender’s funds had been wired on time – they would not have been having coffee in that particular coffee shop with the big window, and their beloved Wedding Bike might still be traveling the streets of DC with someone else’s butt perched on the architect’s especially comfortable seat.

We’re living among the shrouds. Our entire first floor but for the kitchen and one small table is covered in plaster-dusted plastic tarp. Sofas are tucked under the dining room table, chairs stacked, electrical equipment stored under the piano. All this to bring the rest of our 1942 home into the 21st century.

This is our third renovation project in the 30 years we’ve lived here. This time, it’s just the living room, entry and a bit of the dining room.

The house is an award-winning end unit, art deco rowhouse in the sought-after downtown DC neighborhood of Adams Morgan. We immediately built a two-story addition on the side and essentially turned a three-story, five-room house into a two-story, two-room house with a rental unit. The layout is an open plan and there’s only one interior door in the entire house, that door being to the bathroom.

Rita and I bought this place soon after our practice marriages ended. We love it, nurture it, and keep improving upon it.

It had always been a dream of mine to design and build my own house – not by my hand, of course, by professionals. And working on this addition 30 years ago came satisfyingly close to fulfilling that fantasy. We worked with a good architect for months, finalized the plans, and then every morning at 5 AM, I’d open it up for the contractors. I watched them demo an exterior wall, dig and pour a foundation, frame and enclose it, then put in the windows, doors and finishing details. The whole process took six months. Fortunately, we didn’t have to live in the mess, like we are now. We stayed in a condo Rita had purchased a block away until this place was finished.

By the time the house was finished we were so ready, we unpacked, placed all the furniture, and even hung our art by the end of that first day.

Over the course of time, we have redesigned and replaced two patios, planted several more trees, cultivated a lush garden (Rita’s doing), gutted and renovated the kitchen, demolished and redesigned the bath, rebuilt the dressing area, and now are undoing and redoing the living room and dining room. Thus, the shrouds, plaster dust and total disorder surrounding us.

Gone is the fireplace we’ve hated since it was first installed. It’s been replaced with a cool stainless steel model. We’re having custom cabinets built for additional storage in this tiny house, swapping out the 80s track lighting for newer, sleeker stuff, and have given up our reputation as “white wall people” by planning to paint actual colors in a few well-chose areas. We also redesigned the entry foyer to include a larger closet, and replaced the old front door with a custom model designed to match the tall, narrow sidelights on either side.

Work has progressed far enough that we unpacked the big-ass TV for the weekend and hooked it back up to our Dish. But we had to hide it again before the workmen got here Monday morning, lest they think we’ve been enjoying ourselves.

We’re looking forward to a day when everything is back in its place, the house is clean and our cat will have all her favorite nap spots back. They tell us that might be another couple of weeks. Or maybe four. Or five.

But the wait will be worth it.

I became quite perturbed when I phoned a friend at his office recently. His new assistant answered and demanded to know who I was and why I was calling, the implication being that she didn’t want to bother the big man with frivolous and unnecessary intrusion by nobodies. The “Why”I was calling was easy to explain. But the “Who” threw me into an existential tizzy that lasted days. I thought I knew who I was, but who am I, really? What is the essence of my being? Have I justified my existence on this planet? Do I matter one iota in this world?

What I do know about myself is this: I’ve been a cheerfully married man for many years; I’m a bit overweight and paying for a gym membership that I don’t use nearly often enough; I am a businessman with a long and varied resumé, a homeowner, an art lover, an ardent sports fan and I have a cat. I’m fairly tidy, reasonably optimistic, cook a little, am most comfortable in t-shirts and jogging shorts, and tell people I’m prematurely graying when it’s not exactly premature. And though I’m not much of a joiner, I am a card-carrying member of ebay who scours the site regularly for bargains. But shouldn’t there be more to me? Shouldn’t I be somehow more… significant?

To solve this cosmic quandary, I did what any intelligent, 21st-Century, right-thinking adult would do:

I Googled myself.

Hot damn! It turns out I am much more interesting than I ever knew.

For one thing, I am a retired Top Gun Hot Shot test pilot for NASA with more than 6,700 flight hours in 84 different aircraft who was the youngest graduate in the history of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Md. I was also the first pilot ever to conduct something called “multi-axis thrust vectored flight” and the first to test five new aircraft configurations. I even flew the high-altitude SR-71 Blackbird which cruises at Mach 3 for more than an hour (way cool). And NASA liked me so much, after I retired they inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor in Lancaster, California. Next to traveling at three times the speed of sound, it’s one of my proudest moments.

However, when I lived in Waterloo, Ontario I was considered eccentric. Sometimes on weekends I'd knock back a few, get out my tape recorder and improvise. Mostly it was just me talking and doing sound effects such as car noises or reciting old TV commercials or just giggling inanely. I used to wrap cassettes of my ramblings in colorful copies of original abstract paintings I’d painted and give them to the local campus radio station and anyone else who would listen. I put out about ten of these masterpieces and I’m proud to say they have become cult items not only in Waterloo, but as far away as Wilmot and St. Agatha. Because of my unlikely fame, I was invited perform at a Waterloo radio station’s mini-festival for bands who had no perceivable talent. I’m told people wondered what I would do live on stage, but I surprised them. I sat in front of the mic and proceeded to sing an entire radio show of Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, the Ramones, Commander Cody and hits from about ten other groups right off the top of my head. People stared in amazement. Or perhaps befuddlement. Sometimes when you’re eccentric it’s hard to tell the difference.

Unbeknownst to my tone-deaf Jewish parents, I was baptized as Catholic and began playing clarinet at the age of seven. I later played saxophone, flute and oboe in orchestras, jazz bands and chamber ensembles. But I switched to voice and choral conducting when I started my studies at the Cal State at Northridge and have since become the choral director of the First Presbyterian Church in Marietta Georgia, where I am an avid cyclist, runner and hiker with hopes to one day complete an “Iron Man” competition while playing Vivaldi on my oboe.

Like my parents, it might surprise you to find out that as Director of Evangelism of the AME Zion Church in Tennessee, I am a nationally known, entertaining and thought-provoking teacher of God's love and inclusiveness to all people who have answered the call to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. I am the featured religion columnist for The OakRidger Newspaper as well.

My mother would be proud, however, if she knew I was a doctor, the Dean Emeritus of the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at USC, in fact, and a published author of many titles, including my classic, Dr. Edward Schneider Reveals What Your Doctor Hasn't Told You, and Your Health Store Clerk Doesn't Know. It presents a detailed overview of the latest scientific and clinical studies on alternative treatments as well as offers a proven formula for the best integrative therapy available. You can pick it up at Barnes & Noble for $19.95. Just take your Ginko Biloba before you head out.

As it turns out I am quite a prolific writer. I authored The Botanical World, Evolution and Morphology of Vascular Plants, Live Well, Age Well: Discover the New Rules of Aging and Stay Youthful for Life, and CEOs and Trustees: Building Working Partnerships. The last one offers practical advice for working relationships between directors and the governing boards of museums, botanic gardens and non-profit organizations. Very handy.

I have also translated Roger Verge's venerable Vegetables in the French Style and authored a highly rated, very exciting adventure e-novel as well. It’s entitled Desert Ship ($9.95 at Mobipocket.com). Here’s a synopsis: Liz and Jessica had been looking forward to a European trip for years. They just wanted to visit the tourist traps, but instead found love and adventure that changed their lives forever. Trips into the Iranian desert, jail, the Dead Sea, and going 2000 years into the past. Jail, the Dead Sea, past-life regression? Do I hear Spielberg calling?

And as if I don’t have enough to do, I am a mediator in Virginia Beach Virginia, a Professor of Information and Communication Technology at SUNY Potsdam, and an Atari programmer with two titles to my credit. In Austin I am in semiconductors, in Dallas Aerospace, in San Francisco telecommunications, in Houston management consulting, in Columbus Ohio information technology, in Detroit market research, in Boston financial services and in my home town of Washington DC I appear to be in cosmetics.

I am also one of the whiz-kids interns at the Spiritual Counterfeits Project. This is a vital frontline ministry confronting the occult, the cults, and the New Age. As you are no doubt aware, this is a critical time. Sophisticated lies are being fed to unwary people and it’s SCP's mission to create crossover material to alert and inform them about the dangers of the latest deceptions.

And oh, yeah. A few years ago in Tampa, I was a cast member and assistant director of the Annual Rocky Horror Picture Show. Hot patootie, bless my soul, I really love that rock `n roll.