How We Measure Snow in Maine

Its a very scientific method. We watch how high it gets on the barbecue grill.
 

Technology and Real Estate

I was going to name this post "Cool Things You Can Justify Buying When You Become A Real Estate Broker" but I thought it might be a little too long to fit in the space provided or bring extra scrutiny to some of my write-offs.

My name is Tom Field and I have an addiction to things that go "beep". It isn't a bad addiction and rather than  effecting my work negatively it really helps me help my clients in a way that just wasn't possible as little as 10 years ago.

For example this summer I bought a shiny new digital video camera that makes lots of cool beeping noises. The idea was that I would do video "showings" of my listings in the same way that I show a home in real life. Well, I am still working on that idea (who knew you could have stage fright even when you are the only one in the room?) but in the mean time I had a perfect opportunity to use it in a different way.

I was working with a couple who were interested in a cottage on Damariscotta Lake. We spent a day together seeing almost every camp and cottage available on the lake. Although we saw a lot of homes none of them was really a good fit. Except one cottage. The cottage that they really liked when we did a drive by. The cottage that we couldn't get into because it was rented. The cottage whose tenants didn't leave until the same day as my clients whose return  flight could not be rescheduled. Bummer. But wait, I have a video camera and I would be happy to go to the cottage in between tenants. I spent about an hour wandering around the house and waterfront taping the house and although I felt supremely self conscious about taping myself, I managed to show them what they wanted to know about the property for them to make an offer. Yes, my clients made an offer based on a drive by and a video tape tour. Of course the offer was contingent on a lot of things including their visit to the cottage and liking it, but it gave them enough confidence about the place to make an offer and commit themselves to a purchase and sale agreement. I think that justifies a tax write off for the video camera.

GPS devices also make a lot of cool beeping noises. I know because I have two of them. One is a TomTom. It cost about $100, sticks to the windshield and has an amazing ability to find even the most remote dirt roads in a place like Willamantic where I recently traveled with a friend to find the perfect camp. Amazing technology. It had road names that my 60 page DeLorme doesn't have and it has a voice telling you where to turn next. Oh and that voice can be changed. I found this out when I uploaded the Hannibal Lecter option ("If you value your liver, turn here Clarice"). That one did not last very long. But you get the idea. User friendly, programmable, updatable and I don't have to focus on where my next turn is.

But why would anyone ever need two GPS units? Well the TomTom is great on the road but not everything I do is on the road. Just last week I previewed a property for a couple that is out of state and was planning to come up and look at a 12 acre lot on Biscay Pond. But they wanted more information before they made the trip all the way up. I emailed a survey, I emailed the Google Earth satellite overview and a town tax map but even when you looked at all of them together it just didn't give you a complete picture.  So I took the survey and my GPS unit and went to find the pins. Once I found a pin I set a waypoint on my GPS and moved on to the next one. After I found the points on the survey I came back to the office, uploaded the information to Google Earth, sent an email and we were done. Now they knew almost exactly where the property was, what the waterfront looked like from above, the highest point, the lowest point, etc.

So this is why I don't feel all that bad about buying a new toy piece of technology every so often when the spirit moves me. Now if I can only figure out why a 60" plasma screen television makes me more efficient at work.

Tom Field

Happy New Years!

     Sometimes as I'm sitting at my desk great ideas just come to me.  Many, many great ideas.  Sitting here trying to decide what to write for New Years and I just had another one.  This one is so good I expect it to be widely copied.  You watch, by tomorrow all of the bigger media outlets will be doing this, but remember, you saw it here first.

My great idea is, a Top Ten list! I've compiled a list of our top ten blog posts from 2008 based on how many readers came onto the sight either right after a particular post went up or searched for that post later or commented on it either on the sight or with an email to us.  This has proven to be a very humbling experience since very few of my pithy insights about the real estate market made the list.  But, don't think I'm going to let that stop me, you can count on this site for all of the mid coast Maine real estate information you need and then some!

   So, starting at the bottom, our Top Ten posts for 2008 are:

10. Moose on the Loose ( April 9, these pictures were even seen on New England Cable News)

9. Marking Time in Mid Coast Maine (October 28, a short post about a hike I took with my daughter that I thought no one would read)

8. Pemaquid Areas Best Swimming Holes (August 15, Kathy's one post of the year comes in at #8 and she says she doesn't like to write?)

7. The Running of the Alewives (May 20, People must have thought this was about beer drinking, married marathoners)

6. Subprime Derivatives, part 2 (January 30, a hilarious video, back when we could still laugh about the subprime mess)

5. Moon over The Mills (Feb. 19, a great photo!)

4. Damariscotta Pumpkin Fest (Oct. 10, The Pumpkin Fest is becoming HUGE and we're looking forward to next year already)

3. Don't You Want to Sell Your Home? (Sept. 5, Hey, one that I wrote!  Thanks, Mom)

2. The View from my Office (June 13, I will never again underestimate the power of a good picture)

And our number one post of the year, by far, I even got phone calls from all over the country thanks to this post from July 11:  Boothbay Harbor Fire on the Damariscotta River.

It's been an interesting and very challenging year.  We hope you have enjoyed our blog and since so many now read us on a regular basis we must be doing something right.  Have a great New Years and we'll see you all right back here in 2009!

Peace,

Jim Cosgrove, for Tom and Kathy and Debby and all the rest of the Associates here at Newcastle Square Realty

Merry Christmas from Maine

In Maine, We Laugh

First Snow in Maine

 

   The first "plowable" snow of the year is falling today.  This is coming on the heels of a very cold couple of days so I guess it's time to put away the golf clubs and drag the ski's down out of the attic. 

   One of our local TV stations changes the name of their newscast from "News Center" to " Storm Center" whenever it snows more than an inch and  they have a very catchy tune to go along with it. Plus, the talking heads all wear really nice sweaters.  It's all over with by late March (usually) so unless you live here you miss it.

  

Jim Cosgrove 

Paul Newman in New Harbor Maine

Good bye Mr. Newman. You were a class act in a business that is notorious for the lack of class acts. When you were in New Harbor at Shaw's Wharf and other parts of Bristol in the summer of 1998 filming "Message in a Bottle" nobody in town was talking about what a dreamboat Kevin Costner was or even how hot Robin Wright Penn was, they were talking about what a cool guy you were. Never drawing attention to yourself, no entourage, no pretense, no rudeness. Just a great guy who developed a taste for Pemaquid Ale in the gallon growlers, dropped off his empties at the local bottle redemption place, was willing to say hello to people and never making a big deal about who you were.

Not a great film but yours was a great performance. I still wish that if you were going to do a movie on the Pemaquid penisula that you could have a done a better movie like Richard Russo's Empire Falls (filmed in Skowhegan, Maine) with Joanne Woodward and Ed Harris instead of a movie based on yet another Nicholas Sparks tearjerker. Anyway it was still a pleasure to have you here and you will be sorely missed by many.

Tom Field

Maine, The Way Life Should Be

   While the world waits to see what they are going to do in Washington, I thought it would be good for all of us to think "happy thoughts".  So let me share this with you.

   Early this morning I walked down to Paradise Pond in Damariscotta with Reggie, The Wonder Dog.  The banking system may be melting down and we may be on the brink of a second Great Depression but all Reggie knows is that there are tennis balls that need to be retrieved.  And she's up to the task. A brisk swim and a good shake and she's a happy girl.

   After my very important first appointment of the day, I snapped this picture at just about 9 o'clock this morning.  This is the first tee at Wawenock Golf Club in South Bristol.  You will note that it is a beautiful day and the course is empty.  If you lived here you could be out there right now!

   The State of Maine's Tourism office used to have a slogan, "Maine, The Way Life should Be".  How true it is.

Jim Cosgrove

Give Me A Break

    You're kidding me, right?  Congress isn't really holding up the bail out bill while they debate whether or not to include multi million dollar compensation packages for top executives who lose their jobs?   Well, yes they are.  This is the final end product of a culture where kids can't be cut from Little League teams because it will damage their psyche's and Harvard has to dumb down their courses because too many students are flunking and it makes them feel bad.

   So now these kids have grown up to be executives and they've run their companies into the ground and we've got to give them golden parachutes so they aren't embarrassed in front of the other executives.  What's next, do we tell the Coast Guard that when rescuing captains of sinking ships they must immediately be given a new boat?  Should Congress mandate 4 strikes instead of 3 for Major League Baseball?  Where does this end?

   Some other tid bits leaking out of Washington are that in addition to mortgages many other types of debt are going to be included in this deal.  Student loans, credit cards, even auto loans.  This is nuts. With and RTC type liquidation solution the government takes ownership of loans on mortgage backed securities.  In the Savings and Loan debacle they managed to get back close to 90% of the total outlay once all of the assets where liquidated.  Presumably that would happen this time, too.  So this really is a $700 billion guarantee and will not cost that much.   But, once you start adding on other types of debt with no hard assets behind them, you have nothing to liquidate.  We might as well just declare all debt erased and start over!

Jim Cosgrove

Fall Comes to The Damariscotta Region

Labor Day has always been a difficult holiday for me to accept. Not because I have anything against labor (Go Labor!) or national holidays but because it means the end of summer and moving closer to ….dare I say it? Winter. My wife makes fun of me because whenever she mentions how close we are to Labor Day I stick my fingers in my ear and start singing a “Panama” by Van Halen (it worked on getting General Noriega to give up).

Summer is never long enough, there is always the regret of not taking another trip down the Damariscotta River to Lobsterman’s Wharf in Boothbay or Coveside in South Bristol for a drink on the deck and a few chuckles with friends. The wish of another fishing trip trolling from John’s Bay around Pemaquid Point and then into Muscungous Bay for the elusive (maybe non-existent this year) striped bass. No more fresh corn, no lobster bakes by the shore, no sitting on the beach at Dodge Point in a wet bathing suit (o.k. i can miss that) and limited opportunities to sit on the patio at the Newcastle Public House and watch the cars from out of state try to figure out if they are supposed to stop, yield or accelerate.

But it isn’t all bleak. September is in many ways a better month than July and August. There are more parking spots, fewer chances that someone is sitting at my booth, kids are back in school , the Oyster Festival is coming, the Common Ground Fair starts on September 19th (get out those Birkenstocks) and you can pretty much have Damariscotta and Pemaquid Lakes and the River to yourself.

The fall is often the best time to look and buy property too. Many sellers are more willing to consider offers that they would have rejected outright in June because now they don’t want to wait another year to sell. We have noticed quite a bit of activity recently and I think some of the good deals that are out there will get snapped up in the next couple of months. Remember an asking price is just that, an asking price.

Tom Field   

P.S. A quick shout out and thank you to Nick from the Med Kitchen who made my birthday so memorable with just 12 Germans. Danke mein Freund.