• Kelty Camp Hauler 2 (x2): Stored an amazing amount of food, drinks, diapers and toys. I kept mini first aid kits tucked into the front zipper pouches, these were incredibly handy both on the car trip and in our rental apartment.
• Bobble BPA free water bottle: I used this to make filtered water for ice cubes and to refill our water bottles each day. Much lighter and handier than packing bottled water for the whole trip.
• Bedbugz inflatable bed rail: Installed this under the sheet on the side of the king bed where my son slept; kept him from falling out of bed.
• Embark Air Bed: Comfortable night’s sleep on the living room floor of our rental apartment, it blew up very quickly with my Coleman electric pump (also used pump for bed rail). At $19.99, much cheaper than renting a two-bedroom apartment, also convenient b/c I didn’t have to worry about kids falling out of bed.
• Thule Quest Rooftop Cargo Bag: Folds up compactly into an included small zipper bag, easy to store in between trips. Invaluable for travel with a car (ie. non-minivan or SUV). NOT waterproof but I brought garbage bags for our luggage in case of rain.
• Pottery Barn Kids rolltop lunch bag: I kept bottles of milk, sandwiches, cookies, and a frozen water bottle in this each day of our trip. It is slim so fit easily under the stroller and in car backseat, when it emptied out I cinched the top down to make it more compact. Best $6 I ever spent, really glad I bought five so I can use them for school lunches.
• Cloud B Constellation Night Light: Helped my little one go to sleep at night; he sleeps with the turtle at home so was immediately comfortable in DC apartment when the stars lit up the sky. Only downside; he kept putting the turtle in a dresser drawer, so the risk of forgetting it was very high.
• Toddler windbreakers: Lightweight, easy to pack into small spaces, useful in case of rain or icy cold museum air conditioning.
• GoLite Women’s Wind Jacket: Zips up into an incredibly small pocket, the whole thing is the size of an apple and weighs about 4 oz. I keep this in my handbag at all times, it saves me having to pack a jacket when we go on walks and the weather is cooler or rainier than I expect. Also useful in icy cold grocery stores.

I cannot say enough good things about Oakwood Arlington, the temporary corporate housing where we stayed. My kids felt at home as soon as we set foot in our one-bedroom apartment (my daughter keeps referring to her other house, gulp), the apartment was spacious and extremely well thought out, with plenty of cooking utensils, towels and sample size packs of dish, laundry and dishwasher soap complete with sponges.  The service level was not up to the level of a regular hotel since there was no daily maid service, but the maintenance staff brought us extra face towels and blankets; it was much more like living in a luxury highrise with concierge. The compact and very speedy washer/dryer in the kitchen was a godsend; I did two loads of wash each day and came home with luggage full of clean laundry, a nice novelty.

We loved the large outdoor swimming pool and nicely appointed community room with large flat screen TV, billiard table, and lots of comfortable seating. The building was constructed in 1960 but has been maintained and updated very well. We liked the indoor garage one floor down from the lobby and outdoor balcony overlooking the pool so we could see if my daughter’s buddy was swimming. The building residents were friendly and approachable with very nice dogs, I think they assumed we were state department employees like them.

However, there are two things that are crystal clear to me: 1) 18 months ago, when I bought my four-bedroom, Hoboken was in a fiscal crisis. There had just been a huge property tax hike to cover large unplanned expenditures (I remember something about an unauthorized, expensive pension payout), and 2) Mayor Cammarano had just been arrested for accepting bribes, and I received a number of concerned emails from people who were thinking about moving to Hoboken but were deterred by the amount of very bad press the city was receiving. We are now thankfully past that terrible time in Hoboken’s history, but where do we go from here?

I am a careful steward of my family’s finances. I put almost all our expenses on two credit cards (American Express Blue and a Upromise mastercard because not everyone takes AMEX) so I can track our monthly spending. Our household expenses are not static from month to month since we have large sporadic payments (quarterly property taxes, annual car and homeowners insurance), so I keep a significant cash cushion in a money market to cover those predictable expenditures along with unexpected ones like car repairs or illness.

Only when all of life’s major and minor expenses are safely covered do I undertake luxuries like the family vacation we recently took to Washington DC. Did we have a wonderful time? Absolutely, the kids were angels on the car trip and had a blast visiting the Smithsonian and Capitol Hill. Did we get a great deal on corporate housing? Yes, we spent only 75% of our projected vacation budget and will go for a longer visit next time. But was the experience worth jeopardizing our household’s long-term stability? Not in a million years.

There has to be balance in all things in life. A city is no different from a household in that regard. My family is weathering the current recession incredibly well because I plan well. Many aspects of life are not predictable, but I have found that having a cash cushion gives me many more options when I am dealing with them. My credit options are incredible because we always pay our bills in full, on time, and keep a healthy chunk of cash in reserves. I just received a Upromise Mastercard with a 15-month 0% APR on purchases, along with up to 10% college rewards on gas, grocery, drugstore and dining purchases.

When our car gets dinged up by parking on the street, I pay cash upfront and negotiate the price with the body shop rather than go through my insurance company. I get much better deals by paying cash, plus my insurance premiums don’t go up, which long-term more than offsets any immediate savings from getting my insurance to pay for repairs.

Safety is important. So is compassion. But even when I feel like we are in great financial shape, I know misfortune does not discriminate; my husband’s industry could crater, one of us could get sick, all sorts of minor and major events could conspire to sink our financial ship. I have a responsibility to my family to give them good lives in the most prudent, thrifty way possible. That means not everyone is going to get what they want 100% of the time. I feel terrible for the families of the Hoboken police officers who are facing layoffs. I would not wish myself in their shoes and would love for there to be a way to save their jobs. But creating an enormous public outcry does not change the facts of the situation. Not too long ago, Hoboken was on the edge of insolvency and is still far from financially healthy.

One budget surplus is not the same thing as thrifty, careful, long-term management of income and expenses. A city has many more wild cards than my household; soaring pension and healthcare obligations to retirees, a hospital with a multi-million dollar annual budget, various maintenance and repair issues, all while facing decreased revenues. It will impact the lives of many thousands if any one of these extremely expensive wild cards forces Hoboken into or near bankruptcy, which is happening in California. I know it is hard to cut spending, but it has to be done for this city to have a solid, sustainable future. That is what I would do if my household had just experienced a major budgetary scare and was on the first step to the road to financial recovery. The money has to come from somewhere; if not the police budget then somewhere else.

Update: This groupon expires on 10/31, so check your calendar before purchasing. I plan on using my playspace passes for playdates with friends who are not Kidville members to make sure we use them up.

I’ve seen your blog and have found it very interesting reading. Is there any chance you might be able to offer advice from a realtor’s point of view so that my husband and I don’t unintentionally behave inappropriately and become nightmare clients for our realtor. What I mean is that we have a history with our realtor. When we bought our previous little 1 bedroom in Hoboken in 2000 our realtor represented the seller. Then we found out she lived in our building. So, we were neighbors for the six years we lived there and then we used her to sell our condo before we moved to London. I meant no disrespect to her when I posted a message on the Yahoo Hoboken Moms site. I simply thought I’d take advantage of all avenues available that might help us find a condo we really like. I’ve had two responses from people who were planning to put their condo up for sale but have not yet listed with an agent, and whose condos sound like a potential match for us, and who have invited us to come view them. This is where I want to make sure we do the right thing and not disrespect our agent who is working for us trying to find us the right place. Is it inappropriate to now go and view a condo without our agent? Should we contact her and ask her to accompany us to the viewings? Are we likely to annoy her by telling her we’ve found places we’d like to view without her? I don’t know how to proceed from here and have a feeling like I might have done something “wrong” from a realtor’s point of view. From our point of view, we’re just desperate to find a condo to settle in and call home and want to do anything we can to find it without behaving unethically or offensively.

Any advice would be greatly, greatly appreciated!

Best wishes,
G.

————

My answer:

Hi, G.,

Hoo boy, that is a really sensitive area. First of all, let me be clear that I am not a realtor. I am coming at this from a buyer’s standpoint, the same as you. That said, I know a fair amount about MLS rules. Not anywhere as much as a realtor knows, but more than most people. So glad to hear you find my blog useful, it’s always great to get feedback from other moms so I know I’m not just talking to myself!

You didn’t do anything wrong by posting your notice on HobokenMoms. You are legally allowed to view ANY apartment with a different realtor. You could see five apartments with five different realtors and it would be totally legit. The only obligation you have to your realtor is that you have to place an offer on a unit that she showed you through her. If you make an offer either on your own or through another realtor, that would be a definite MLS violation and she would have grounds to sue you and the other realtor.

That being said, there is kind of an unspoken agreement that you owe something to the realtor who got you up to speed on the market. If you have a relationship with a realtor and she is the only one who is showing you properties, then 99.9% of realtors would feel that you owe them the commission in exchange for the time they invested in you. That ONLY applies to MLS listings, however. In a FSBO transaction, such as the two owners who contacted you, the seller has no obligation to pay a realtor fee. You can tell your realtor about the FSBO sales but legally the seller does not have to pay a fee and most likely will refuse to do so.

What can happen in situations like this is that the buyer independently pays a fee to their realtor. That is very, very rare, but I have spoken to realtors who have seen it happen. The other problem is pricing. Typically FSBO sellers are looking to sell their property at the same price as they would have through the MLS, which means they get to keep the commission they would have paid to the realtor. It is highly unlikely they will drop the sale price enough to compensate for the fee (typically 5%; on a $700k sale that works out to $35k). That means that you will have to pay the market price PLUS a voluntary fee to your realtor.

You can certainly try to bargain down the sellers to make them drop the price enough. However, I have found that sellers are FSBO for a reason; because they don’t have a gun to their heads to sell and want to try to sell on their own first before going with a realtor. That lack of urgency almost invariably means they price their units too high and are unrealistic about the true market value of their property. Every single owner I know, including me, thinks their property is worth the absolute maximum possible. It usually takes a few months of dealing with showings to make owners get realistic and drop their price two or three times down to fair market value.

When you make it easy for them by appearing out of nowhere and want to buy their unit, they haven’t had a chance to experience the true grinding ordeal of listing their unit and so are almost always very difficult to negotiate with (ie. you make a low offer, they get insulted and refuse to counteroffer).

The flip side of the realtor compensation structure is that it’s like hitting the lottery. 99% of their clients wind up not buying, so they waste a lot of time on people who don’t pay off. It’s buyers like you and me, who only look when we are truly serious, who are their fantasy. In the three times I have bought properties, I spent exactly one day each time going to showings, so I estimate my realtors have gotten compensated at well over $1k/hour. That’s just crazy, you don’t owe anyone that kind of payoff.

What I suggest if you do buy FSBO is calculate roughly how many hours your realtor has spent on you, both on showings and doing research on your behalf. Multiply that times $50, and then make sure your final sales price is low enough that you can pay that amount to your realtor. The MLS contracts I have signed that allow me to sell FSBO include an addendum allowing for $2k payment to the realtor if I sell on my own to compensate them for the time spent marketing my unit. That is usually more than fair on an hourly basis.

If your realtor agrees to this structure, definitely bring her along to the FSBO showings to help you negotiate. She can prove her worth by giving you comparables of recent sales to help support your offer, and give you advice about the contract details and closing docs (ie. flood insurance). That is where a good realtor can really shine. I can’t promise you that she won’t be pissed that you are pursuing FSBO sales, but if you are upfront with her about your plan, then any reasonable realtor will be okay with it. She won’t be happy, but she won’t be furious.

Kathy

And then the next day, I can barely wake up when my husband is leaving for work, and the whole thing repeats itself. It drives both of us crazy, but I can’t seem to break the cycle.

So when a friend told me about Serenity Zen beverage and gave me a few cans, I figured, why not? At zero calories, it’s not like it’s going to break my careful calorie watching. So I stuck a few cans in the fridge, had one the following night, and thought it was a fluke when I started passing out over my keyboard around 11pm. The taste was pleasant, kind of like cream soda mixed with ginger ale.

I am not a big soda drinker, so it was about a week before I looked in the fridge for another can of Serenity. Much to my surprise, the three cans I thought I put in there were gone. I shrugged, stuck another three in there, and forgot about it for another few days, and those cans disappeared too.

That was when I yelled out to my husband, “Sweetie, did you drink the Serenity I had in the fridge?” Turns out he has been having a can a night for the last week. My husband travels overseas for business, so when he visits countries in an opposite time zone (ie. Malaysia, 12 hour time difference) it really messes with his internal clock. He started drinking the Serenity because he liked the taste, but kept going when it actually caused him to fall asleep at the right time every night.

I asked him, “Does it really work?” And he said, “Yeah, I got woken up in the middle of the night last night and felt really groggy, when normally I can’t go back to sleep.”

We are now on day 10 of my husband’s Serenity streak, and it shows no signs of abating. The guy has a pretty stressful life, so if something this small can help him relax at the end of the day, I am all for it.