About Alexandria City County, VA

I had previously written about an EMT of the Alexandria Fire Department that died last week in the line of duty, Tribute to Fallen EMT at Fire Station 206 in Alexandria. His memorial service starts in about 15 minutes and a huge turnout is expected. We live just around from Station 206 where Joshua was stationed and I took a short walk to do some thinking at lunch.

Those attending the service and coming from I-395 onto Seminary Road Eastbound will be greeted by this sight.

That flag hanging from the tower trucks in a light rain, reminds me that we are incredibly fortunate in this country for all the opportunity that we have and of the sacrifices made by a countless number of our civil servants & military.

Tomorrow the City of Alexandria and family, as well as firefighters from around the country, will says good bye to Joshua Weissman. Joshua is the EMT that perished in the line of duty last week Tribute to Fallen EMT at Fire Station 206 in Alexandria while responding to an emergency call on I-395 and fell from the highway into Four Mile Run.

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The memorial service is scheduled to begin at 1pm and will be held at Beth El Hebrew Congregation at 3830 Seminary Road, but with 200 fire vehicles expected for the procession and potentially over a thousand attendees, the out pouring of support will overwhelm the buildings capacity. Tents have been erected across the street on the grounds of the Episcopal Seminary to capture the over flow crowd, on a day with projected rain showers all afternoon

Residents that are not attending the ceremony are urged to use alternate routes to help relieve the anticipated congestion in the area.

The link below will provide a map with anticipated closure times around the site of the service and procession to the cemetery.

http://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/fire/info/WeissmanProcessionMap.pdf

This is the scene at Fire Station 206 at the intersection of Seminary Road & N Pickett St in the City of Alexandria, which is located just around the corner from our home. The ambulance draped in black, along with flowers and a photo are all in tribute to Paramedic Joshua Weissman, who passed away on Thursday after suffering injuries in the line of duty the previous evening.

According to the Fire Department and numerous news sources, Weissman's EMT unit was responding to a car fire in the HOV lane near the intersection of I-395 and Glebe Road around 6:30 pm on Wednesday. Because the HOV lanes had shifted to a Southbound flow and Station 206 is located south of the scene, the vehicle was in the Northbound local lanes when it came upon the fire. In attempting to reach the vehicle, Weissman attempted to cross gap between the two roadways of roughly 3 feet, but instead fell 20 feet to the rocky creek below. He was rescued from the Four Mile Run and taken via Medivac to Washington Hospital Center where he succumbed to his injuries. He is survived by his wife Rebecca.

Unfortunately, I did not notice this last night as I drove past last night on the way home, but when I took my son to preschool this morning it was unmistakable. It is a vivid reminder of the risks associates with the choice to serve others when they are the most in need. To Joshua's wife, we keep you in our thoughts & prayers at this most troubling of times.

As a side note and remberance of the summer, there is a fantastic open house at this station with a real fire house for the kids... and every year I have to drag my son away from it. If the fantastic members of the firehouse let him have his way, he would flood Seminary Valley and run up one heck of a water bill.

There have been quite a few posts in the couple of weeks regarding the efficacy of doing an open house, if you do one at all, that really brought a lot of comments. I'll get to that later, but most of all I want to say THANK YOU to the several agents in the Alexandria & Arlington real estate market that held open their listings on Super Bowl Sunday and helped me help all my buyer clients at once.

Let me set the stage for my thank you....

I am currently working with several buyers and like most well qualified buyers they have jobs that take up the majority of daylight hours on weekdays. Along with some having children and other obligations, they all seem to want to go look at homes on Saturday or Sunday between about 10am - 4pm. What a shock... it is about them and they want to see homes when it's convenient for them. Last Friday I received an email from one of my clients that says that they want to see 2 new listings on Sunday before they people come over to the Super Bowl party that they are hosting. They have already written an offer, but didn't get the home, so they just need to find the right property. Not a problem, both are on lockbox and I arrange make arrangements for showings. On Saturday morning, I get an email and then a call from two different buyers that want see just a couple homes on Sunday... before they go to their respective Parties for the big game.

Trying to balance multiple clients can be challenging, but I checked on the listings that each one wanted and the majority was being held open. Solution provided! I sent the last two clients that wanted to see property off to the open houses, armed with my business cards and reminder to keep a good poker face, even if they love it. Turns out that one of the couples didn't like what they saw, so they are back to their automated search and will let me know when a home pops up. However, the other client think that one of the houses is a winner, so we're headed back tomorrow when they get back into town and I will be bringing a contract with me just in case.

Now my thank you isn't about making my life easy, though they all did, but it was about them taking the time to provide access to their listings so that my buyers can view them and make an offer if they choose. There are many buyer agents here that are working with 3, 4 or more buyers and you can only put one in your car at a time, so an open house does have value.

Like everything else in real estate it is a local issue; whether by custom & relative proximity to others, there are valid reasons to OR not to hold an open house. If the property is the only one in at the end of a 20 mile box canyon... I don't care if you are offering homemade lemonade, your turn out will almost certainly be small. Whereas if there are 3 other homes at similar price points within 4 blocks of your listing and they are all open on a given Sunday, it may benefit your client to hold it open and provide it with equal exposure. Here in the Northern Virginia real estate market, proximity to other opens isn't normally a problem, particularly in Arlington, Alexandria or close-in Fairfax County.

I hold open houses and say they work! Please share any success story from your open house experiences or flops.