http://www.locationloquation.com/

McNulty Realtor, 2212 S Shore Ctr, Alameda, CA (2026)

05/26/2025

Today, 5.26.25 facebook seemed to be a strong mix of “eye-candy” and propaganda. I can learn to do without this!!!!

05/26/2025

In 1977, placed his family’s peanut business into a blind trust to avoid any potential conflicts of interest during his presidency. This move was intended to ensure that his decisions as president would not be influenced by personal financial considerations. Despite this precaution, the business faced financial difficulties, and after leaving office, Carter sold the enterprise to settle debts exceeding $1 million .

In contrast, ’s administration accepted a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jet from Qatar, intended for use as Air Force One. The jet will undergo extensive retrofitting by the Department of Defense, with costs potentially exceeding $1 billion . Additionally, the Trump Organization, now managed by his son Eric, has entered into a $5.5 billion deal to develop a luxury golf resort in Qatar, in partnership with Qatari Diar, a company owned by the Qatari government . These developments have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest and the influence of foreign governments on U.S. policy.

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Help this information get to more voters. 🇺🇸 A well-informed electorate is a prerequisite to Democracy.—Thomas Jefferson

Integrity and ethics are gone repost

02/10/2022

I have noticed that the real estate market has become very slow. A lot has to do with the increase in prices. Fewer of us can pop for the dream home when it appears on the market. But still, they sell fast.

11/12/2020

I was reflecting on a scary thing that happened when I “showed” a house to some clients a few years back. Check out https://www.locationloquation.com

Medium-busy Realtor and the Rat

On being a medium-busy Realtor, and on finding enormous rats or something!

I haven’t been among the busiest realtors who have been bringing in enormous sales commissions. And I haven’t been among the slowest house sales and purchase real estate agents either. Generally I find myself in the middle of all that somewhere.

Somehow my life eventually evolved into being “a realtor” for over 30 years. One of the best things, it seems to me, about being a medium busy realtor with medium sales volume has been doing the work. Giving people a service. And while doing that work I often got to know the people I worked for pretty well.

People who are receiving their agent’s services are usually receiving a lot of person-to-person contact. Person to agent contact in the normal work pattern across many weeks, usually.

There are other agents, the “top producers” who are too busy for that. The busiest realtors have “teams” to cover a lot of the customer service needs and tasks. Team members, from what I have seen, skip around from customer to customer.

Top producers are far less likely, I guess, to become eaten by giant rats or some carnivore than am I. So I’ll get to my rat part of this story soon.

At my level, I got exposed to more of the banal paper work of the business and maybe a bit more of the adventure as well. There are some adventures I don’t wish on any agent or their customers.

The individual mid-range agent usually has focus on his or her tasks with the same customer from beginning to end of the service cycle.

In a case like this I’d say that one of the best things is working through the myriad of challenges to be met and addressed along the path to selling or buying a home.

That’s what is needed to get the job done. A not-so-busy realtor can have a full day any day. Rats excluded. There will be a lot of paying attention to seeing that things stay in order. Keeping sometimes challenging requirements in order to accomplish the desired result. Be it a purchase of a house or the sale of a house. Its about having and holding on to a reasonable plan and getting the job done.

What I have described as “not-so-busy” realtors are really the common variety of agents. Like me. This was me anyway. Up until I stepped into what I call “semi-retirement.” We medium busy realtors, or at least the better part of this group, get the “people person” part of it, anyway. We want to know who we are dealing with. We’re providing customer service in the traditional way. Earning trust and getting to know our customers. Celebrating with them when the job is done. And keeping in touch.

And we get all the challenges that come along with the work too. Dealing with people offers a lot of nuances. Some would be better forgotten. Some are treasured memories and a few can be a bit astounding.

Like the day I saw the “teeth in the screen” that I still remember vividly. Teeth and little tiny claws. Or nor so tiny. And heard the scraping if those claws on the back of a wood panel inches from me and a child I was holding.

The Teeth and Claws on the Screen

There was a certain house that popped up as a “New Listing” on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) one morning. The features of the house had a view of the bay and was near the freeway for a convenient commute. Perfect for the commute to San Francisco, it seemed.

Anyway, it sounded like just what my clients, Daisy and Tom, wanted to know about. I emailed them some info. They said that they were excited and wanted to see it right away.

So, I informed the listing agent that we would visit it in the afternoon. She, the listing agent, responded that there was a BO (Broker’s Open) planned for the next day but we could go ahead today if we wanted.

Daisy and Tom would meet me at the house and would, as expected, bringing along eleven-month old Jeremy.

Jeremy had seen a lot of houses with us recently. He even seemed to know me by now. I would sometimes carry him as we walked through houses. That can be one of the perks for “people persons”, agents like me. Jeremy seemed to like my beard.

This particular ranch style house was built on a hillside with the rear side windows and yard providing a broad view of the bay and distant hills. The upstairs bedrooms, all 3, provided the same view too. I had noticed that Daisy and Tom hadn’t seemed impressed with the house’s front and its entry. True, it wasn’t much. I held my thoughts on that.

The slope provided the house construction with a useful downstairs family room opportunity, a laundry area and a storage room with access to the yard. There was a crawl space that was concealed by paneling. The paneling covered the house’s foundation and dirt and building framework. The panelling had occasional simple doorways to make access easy.

As we walked down to the basement Tom noticed one of the little doors along the stairway, built into the panelling. He opened it to find a camera security system. Before I had a chance to caution him about taking care not to effect it, it wasn’t our house, he had already pushed some buttons. A small video screen had lit up to display live pictures of the driveway, then the side yard, then the front yard, the rear yard and then the kitchen and the basement area and also a darkened space with dirt and wood framing. That was the basement view, where we were entering now. I took that to be the crawl space under the house. The space just behind the panel and cabinet door we were standing at.

Daisy took a look at the rotating images. Tom seemed comfortable with what he saw and proceeded into the basement. I was holding Jeremy and protecting my glasses, which Jeremy was learning to reach out to touch with increasing interest. Daisy and Tom moved into the basement laundry area.

I stayed checking out the security videos. The rotation of the screens came around again to the dark crawl space but the image that I saw had changed. Something was different. The house framing and foundation wasn’t visible this time. But it’s walls and dirt soon returned to the screen. A gray field had passed across the screen. What had just passed before the camera? I didn’t know.

The image had passed showing movement and turning of an object. Something had moved. It had passed the camera view. It had filled the screen. Close to the lens I supposed. I waited for the cycling of the images to return to the crawl space camera. Soon I saw two eyes and then a paw with claws. Cat like I thought. Long claws passed quickly into darkness.

Daisy and Tom had proceeded into the basement while I watched to procession of screens. I heard Daisy ask “What’s in here? Can you open this Tom?,” she said.

‘Let’s see,” said Tom. “Just a lot of dirt is all I can see.”

“Hey you guys,” I called to them. “Be careful.”

“We’re going into the yard,” called Daisy.

Once again I saw the image of the crawl space come around and this time I saw eyes and a nose sweep across the screen. Then I heard the screech of a cat, a big cat. Like a hiss. Then a tremendous scuffle sounded. So quickly it started, an angry screech was startling and then it all stopped.

Daisy and Tom came back to us in the stairway quickly. “We’re done John. No need to go further.”

“Let’s go,” I said. Tom, close that basement door please.

“Too much highway noise John,” they both said in the same breath.

The cat screeched again. Daisy and Tom were taking Jeremy from me and didn’t seem to notice. I heard it again. It wasn’t just me was it? There really was some form of big rat or cat or dog or marmot or something in there wasn’t there? Some kind of “critter?” Something I’d not want at a Broker’s Open. That’s for sure.”

Locking up to leave I had a little trouble operating the front door key and the lock box. My attention and my nerves were way off.

“Did you,” I said to them both, “close up that door to the crawl space just now?”

“I’m pretty sure that I did,” said Tom.

We left without my mentioning what I had ringing in my mind.

I called the agent after I returned to the office. Left her a message. She called back. “OK, this is what I saw,” I told the agent my experience and suspicions. “I don’t even know what I saw. I would get that key out of your lockbox. Make sure things are safe before any more people go in,” I told her. “ Don’t go alone. Be careful.”
Posted on November 8, 2020
Categories On Society
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08/13/2020

The activity in local real estate is pretty surprising to me. Values (prices) are strong and people who can are looking for homes for their COVID-free (I hope) futures.

04/04/2020

Pandemic Dream .. .
The streets in Oakland were now strangely reconfigured. Getting to the office on a first visit was a challenge. Familiar as I was with the avenues and streets, the addition of two or more strange roadways made that difficult. Every route was unexpected. Still, the address, which I had written on a manila envelope, was posted on a large building and I could see a parking garage near it.
Inside was the room of desks where I had come to work. To help. A column of desks lined each of two walls with a pathway between them. The desks stretched into a vast hall deep into the office and out of sight into darkness. Most desks were unoccupied. Most desks looked unused. Their tops were clean and shiny. A few were cluttered on their desk tops. At each of those few occupied desks sat a person with a pen in hand or a computer in front of them.
The clutter was a familiar kind of clutter. I recognized it as that scattering of papers typical to the editorial office of a small newspaper. I’d been there before. Years ago. I was there, this time, having been called in to help. I agreed to help. In this dream. My dream. I was answering the call from an old friend.
Could I help get a first edition out to the printers? The staff, the few individuals at the various desks, were trying to get this new newspaper finished for printing. But it didn’t look like it really. They hardly moved.
It all seemed remote and without hope.
In the time of the pandemic all things were strange. The dream wasn’t unreasonable. Especially to the dreamer.
After selecting a desk I put down my envelop on a chair seat. I pressed my chest onto the desktop. I looked at the neighboring desk and it’s seated occupant, who had paid no attention to me. I quietly laid my cheek onto the desk’s top corner surface and fell into a deep sleep.
I moaned upon waking. It was hours later. My body ached from spending hours in a contorted position on the desk and with one leg partly reaching out to a chair.
Pushing my body to stand, slowly finding my legs and steadying them against the desk, I could see much was the same as when I had arrived. If the few writers at the few occupied desks were busy I couldn’t tell. They must be writers, what else could they be, I thought. They remained sitting at their desks.
Then I noticed a “galley” sheet on the desk where my head had laid. The “broadsheet” white paper had a vertical layout marked in gray chalk and dark, heavy pencil lead. It was a front page layout. A mock-up.
If this proposed front page of a first edition of a city newspaper had any copy to fill it, I wasn’t aware. There wasn’t any text on it. Just chalky lines were only indicating columns and squiggly lines where text would be placed. The concept was familiar, old school.
Text, copy and news wouldn’t be my project. At least that wasn’t mentioned in the the call which prompted my visit to the office.
“Would you come over right away and get things in shape,” I was asked. “What’s up?” “You’ll see.”
I’d done it before, helped save an edition for a publisher in a mess. But this was different. And this time I slept on the desk without concern. What help I could be wasn’t clear. Sometimes nothing will help. It never would become clear to me if anyone had a vision to save the publication. It was not yet my problem. It looked immediately like it wasn’t going to become my problem. So I had slept on it.
I took the galley into my hands and held it before me. My arms were stretched out to take in the view of the whole page. A single page. Page one, broadsheet. I held it as a statue holds a shield.
Suddenly a man in a white shirt appeared and pulled it from my hands and replaced it with a similar sheet. He tore the sheet from my hands and put its replacement between my fingers with a pinch. It was an update. It had the headline on this one. So they had a story. And this was it’s headline.
At the top, the masthead, The Globe
Vol. 1, No. 1

Pandemic Edition
US
Finished
or
Ruined!

In cursory script the writer had scrawled , “You choose”
Making this choice of headlines wasn’t easy but I knew that either would do in the end.

10/18/2019

The Golden Slippers Fight Club
Gym membership has its benefits for sure. Fitness benefits are ostensibly the main reason people join a gym. Strengthening is at the core of reasons people join. Kids join to get stronger, be less wimpy, plan to take on the school bully or become the school bully.
Senior citizens have the experience of being advised by doctors, nurses, loving family members and their more fit senior friends to take care of themselves. It can mean that the aging men and women we know are lifting “free” weights, pulling ropes, doing curls, working to tighten their “abs”, spinning the cycles to the music, taking a few laps in the pool and other such exercises described in books or directed by a “personal trainer.”
And with some of this these seniors are experiencing muscle pain like they haven’t experienced in a long time. Or like never before. And some of those people, the lesser number of these, even return to the gym for more. The tough ones come back.
I want to tell you about a certain personal trainer who took a few seniors over the brink. He organized the first ever Silver Slippers Fight Club. It grew from a single digit membership to a double digit then it apparently imploded. The last SSFC club for that matter. Or that’s the story for public consumption anyway.
It was founded, it seems, due to one man’s frustration with aging.
The frustrations of the trainer. The Silver Slippers Fight Club started in a noontime fitness class. The class was held in a private exercise room at a gym. Training went beyond normal shouts for “reps” and “you can do it.” But the spirit of the SSFC did begin with those kinds of encouragements. Soon the mindset of the trainer changed to “don’t think you can’t do it” and “they don’t expect it of you to be strong, to be powerful. Well, show them that they are wrong.”
The trainer, a senior aged person himself, added his own motivations into the exercising. “Who told you you wouldn’t be able to to this?”
All the sweating became an “us” against “them” issue.
The number of those attending the class in its third week shrank in half. But then it stabilized. The trainer became a coach. He shouted in the classes of his perceived objections to stereotypes of the aging community. Are brought fight attitude into his training. “No pain, no gain,” was replaced with “you’ll rule, you’ll win.”
He shouted out that “we aren’t the passive little lambs that they make of us.” And he said that these sometimes were gym members who had a whole lot of fight in them left. And this fight might be their last chance to put into the ring and get into like now! To smash into the society. And that he was an “old fighter” and as their personal trainer he had something to prove. Some bought in. And the management of the gym didn’t know. Or didn’t understand how bad it was going to get.
The fight, the spirit of fighting, that he proposed was going to be hard, tough, physical and mental. The mental part was their advantage. That was strongly in their favor.
“Age has prepared you for this fight. And you will be strong, quick and have the stamina to outdo and outlast this gym full of sweaty idiots when we get through,” he said. He said this to the elite, his personal trainees. “They won’t understand that out there in the weight room. We will let them suffer under their weights, their bars. They can look into those full wall mirrors at how muscular they are. They won’t see us. Until we are ready.”

06/01/2019

My. Tabletop Decoration

06/01/2019

Spinning! This site should have a new spin to it after all these years. Stay with it as it gathers momentum.

08/01/2018

Viewpoints in Alameda

03/17/2018

Last Tuesday’s brokers tour took us to Alameda-by-the-Sea. I haven’t ever lived with such fine water views. There is still time. 🤤

McNulty Realtor

05/26/2025

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