Keith Rockmael

With all of the goings on in the City this past weekend (Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Bridge to Bridge race), we found time to volunteer at the MEDA 6th Annual San Francisco Homeownership Fair.

The diverse crowd strolled though the block long event in the Mission and checked out the various vendors and information sessions – including stabling and improving credit (something that most everyone needs to do these days) and one special session about foreclosure prevention – our specialty.

As with any event, people get out of it what they put into it. We think that information remains far more valuable than key chains and tchotchkes that some banks and other companies offered. We offered foreclosure lists and updates, detailed area statistics and buyer property updates. People ate it up.

The crowds certainly showed up (maybe some to win the flat screen TV) but most came to be educated and have motivation to buy. A few did want help with their distressed properties. Even if we tried, we couldn’t tell how many people attended this past weekend (the 2009 version attracted over 700 people) but it probably equaled last year.

Certainly, many people continue to fear the housing market (lack of trust in the banks, fear of additional price drops, and difficulty in securing loans) but a lot of solid information can often overcome a little uncertainty. We remain pretty certain of that.

Now we've seen some down and dirty marketing before but this may be the most cost effective. How much time and money could this person have spent to create this sign? Not only that but the fact that the person placed this sign on a random corner in the Berryessa region of San Jose seemed curious to us. We had enough curiosity to call the number to see what they are up to. Was this some foreclosure purchase scam?

We called the number and listened to the recorded message that went on for longer than the sign probably took to create. The Realtor stated that this was a Home Buyers Awareness Hotline and a Consumer Awareness Hotline. He mentioned that perspective homebuyers could buy homes in the $200,000 - 500,000 range with zero down payment, and that they did not need a large down payment. Of course, he didn't go in specifics but buyers can use Homepath to purchase a home where a borrower can buy a home for zero down-- using a Fannie Mae loan-- if the home is bank-owned, and owned by Fannie Mae. We see some issues with this loan program, like the fact that Homepath requires no appraisal. That Homepath deal is for another post but the recording says that this Realtor is service oriented.

We learned early on not to judge a book by its cover but we just not sure how much trust we would instill in a person or service whose image can be seen on a dusty piece of cardboard.

Carnival San Francisco - Green Section

Carnaval here in San Francisco may not be as sexy, rambunctious or famous as its counterparts that take place in Rio or New Orleans but that doesn't mean that the 2-day event doesn't mean that the crowds don't enjoy the fun, sun (the weather actually cooperated with glorious 80 degree SF weather) music and sexy costumes.

With all of the things going for Carnaval why can't there be some added consideration given to making the event more Green. We did spy a plethora of compost and recycling canisters and the beer areas did utilize the non-plastic cups. The event did have a small cluster of vendors dedicated to products or services at least slightly aligned with being somewhat progressive. Earthlust sold slightly dented reusable water bottles at a discount, San Francisco Vegetarian Society, Zip Car, Rainforest Action Network and some others. Sure these aren't as sexy as some of the other venders but Green can be sexy as evidenced by some of the Hollywood A-listers creating Green events or supporting various green products.

Nos gusta gazing at the colorfully sexy costumes and gyrating to the various Latin beats but wouldn't it be great to see some of sexy thinking combined with some Green ideas?

Every once in awhile we get desperate enough to enter Safeway (mostly late night) for items that the not so green corner store doesn’t have. Just the other night we made one of those late night expeditions to the Safeway on Market Street with our reusable bag in hand.

After selecting a few items we ended up choosing the self-service line. We only selected the self-serve line because the human based checkout lines (the few that they opened) had monstrous lines. We certainly don’t support the notion of self-service as it simply eliminates jobs and makes things worse for the local economy (but of course it helps Safeway’s bottom line). Ever hear of the 3 Ps? People, planet, profit.

Before doing our own self-service scanning, we asked for customary bag credit (not that 3 cents will significantly cut our bill down but just to make a statement). The two people overseeing the self-serve robot lines said that they don’t offer the bag credit any more. We asked what they were now doing to encourage people to bring their own reusable bags (e.g. the weekly raffle that Trader Joe’s offers). The smugly replied, “Nothing.”

They honestly didn’t seem to care if customers bring their own reusable bags or they distribute plastic or paper bags. It doesn’t seem that sustainability can be found in Safeway’s culture or philosophy. If this store wasn’t in San Francisco, we might have thought that we clicked our heels together and ended up in Kansas.

Who hasn’t seen someone get tossed from a bar, maybe even a baseball game but how about a real estate auction? Yes, we actually witnessed it because unfortunately it happened to us. That's right, on Friday Statewide Real Estate Auctions held an auction out in West Portal.

Here's the video before we got tossed. Click here

The draw here - an opening bid of $449 with a house that we expected to go before between $900 - $950K (the house sold for $935K). The listing and showing agents seemed nice enough answering questions and handling the 50-plus people jammed into the house. When the broker Bodhi Kroll came and asked us what we were doing, we just said that we wanted to show some of the footage on our blog he seemed to get a little defensive. We asked him if we could ask him a few questions about the process of the auction. He said sure but only if we turned off the camera. Have something to hide? We asked him how the reserve price worked? "That's proprietary information" he snapped. We didn't ask him what the reserve amount was just how it worked here at the auction.

We then wandered through some of the house filing some of the chaos. Then, the action starts with Kroll explaining the house rules before the bidding.In mid sentence, he looks at our camera guy. "I thought that I told you I didn't want that camera on." We pointed out that several other people had their iPhones going. That didn't matter to Mr. Broker or that we had a client waiting to bid on the house. He asked us to leave. In the pouring rain. We aren't 60 Minutes. Was he afraid of us stealing his soul or maybe just buyers?

Is that how you hold your auctions in the East Bay? Perhaps he was afraid that someone would copy his idea of doing a real estate auction? He seems like one of the guys who deals in scarcity instead of abundance.

Got transparency?