Lazy, Hazy Days

Chatham

The Dog Days have come early this year, along with the cicadas. The beach parking lots fill early, even mid-week. Captain Frosty’s parking lot is at capacity. And the house hunters abound. Not necessarily the buyers, though. The sold column remains a bit scant in the daily tallys, and still the majority in under $ 250,000 purchases, in my observation, although there are exceptions by neighborhood and community. A home on Route 6A in Dennis I have watched go from $ 650,000 just sold for $475,000.00. The forclosures continue as well, I’m sorry to say. So if you can brave the crowds, come on down and do some shopping. In Dennis we have Northside concerts on Monday nights at 7:00 and Southside concerts on Tuesdays. See the blog for details. Stay cool!

Idylls

The amazingly warm, ok hot, temps this past week have been extraordinary. The ocean has been so warm, and we’ve been swimming along scooping up sand dollars at Mayflower Beach ( please put back the live ones.) The Village Garden Club of Dennis has planted the various gardens throughout town to beautify our public spaces. It takes the efforts of many volunteers to keep the gardens planted, watered and weeded.

The Boston Globe on Sunday featured a home in Wellfleet along Black Fish Creek. The owner, poet Alan Feldman, spoke about the ways of old houses. “A house should be old enough to have a soul,” he said. He preserved his home’s “escapist novelty,” noting that “We’re always trying to get somewhere in life, and Summer is about getting back. You slip into the same old clothes, take the same walks…It’s a return to cyclical time, as opposed to the linear time in which we live.”

That’s what your Summer home on Cape Cod should be about. Some of us are lucky enough to have endless Summer.

A Bit of Old Cape Cod

This past weekend we visited the Taylor Bray Farm in Yarmouth Port. They had their big Sheep Festival, with herding by dogs, hayrides, spinning, and more. It’s a great family event in a beautiful spot. We visit often (and are supporting members) to see the animals including Highland cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, and miniature donkeys. In the summer you can pick your own blueberries. In the Fall there is a Harvest Festival and a big pumpkin patch. If you just stick to Route 6A (or gasp! Route 6) you will miss these terrific Cape Cod cultural events. Get off the main drag, taste some honey fresh from the hive, wear a sweater right off the lamb, and experience the countryside by the sea.

Did You Know?

Shingle/shake: Wood shingles are sawn by machine and are relatively thin. Wood shakes are larger and thicker than shingles, and are split from a solid block of wood rather than sawn. So when you are driving around the Cape, are those silvery houses covered with shakes or shingles?

New Listing: Four Bedrooms, Nearly 3000 sq ft

It has settled down from the glorious Memorial Day crowd. I can’t remember better weather. This new listing abuts the previously blogged-about horse farm listing. It’s a terrific four bedroom, three bath home on a quiet street 1.1 miles from West Dennis beach. See it at my website www.LisaMorales.com. There’s just tons of space in this house, a large deck, newer water heater, not-the-original boiler. It certainly needs cosmetic updates, but that’s the fun part, right? Priced well below the assessed value to sell quickly.

The big news here, of course, is Senator Kennedy. He came to the Cape to recover after his recent diagnosis. He has been “my” Senator my whole life (even when I moved out of Massachusetts I still considered him my Senator) and it is unsettling to think that he may be forced to retire. I refuse to think anything worse. It was fantastic that he raced in the weekend’s Figawi race from Nantucket, coming in second on his boat, Mya. I of course think of his brother racing the same waters alongside him. That tradition runs deeply here on the Cape. My grandmother was a real Kennedy fanatic, and three years ago when my mother passed we came across all of the newspapers collected up that had JFK headlines, collected by Grandma. It’s a real Massachusetts passion, even today. I wish Senator Ted the best on his tough road ahead.

Times They Are a Changing

I have never thought of myself as a creature of habit. I am more freespirited, and do things in a random matter except if it relates to work. Even then I am known for a creative flair in matching people with properties, and of course in my staging. I take different routes when driving or walking, I sit in different spots on the beach each day. So when the local market, the Dennis Public Market or “DPM” recently made some changes, I don’t know why I was so thrown off. The Market is on Route 6A, the Old King’s Highway, that runs along the northern spine of the Cape. It is at the end of the street that leads down to the beach, and my house. I have to pass it to get home. There are photos on the walls that look pretty ancient, with DPM wagons pulled by horses. There used to be a thrift shop on one side, but that moved out last year. The changes were gradual. New roofing, shingles and paint. All good. Then they moved the newspapers. Hmmm. They carry newspapers from all around New England and even New York (!) since folks from those places show up here. Then came the new door a few weeks ago. Two ramps lead up to the door, from the front and side parking lots. At the juncture are the community bulletin boards and stands for the real estate books and tourist books. In the Summer the corn on the cob goes out there so shoppers don’t make a mess in the store testing the ears. If you wanted to push a grocery cart or a baby carriage up those ramps you then had to encounter the “old” doors, one for each direction, stalwart and difficult to push so that one employed elbows and shoulders in the process. And the newspapers were right there, so you had to work around them next. The new doors were automatic with a magic eye! New fangled things! Cold air blew in behind you and carried across the magazine rack into the produce section. Magnificent. The first time I pushed the stroller in it was a treat. So this progress was indeed good. Prices at the DPM, unless the weekly special, are a bit higher than the big box store but I like to support local business. And I can get wine to go with dinner in one stop. So I made my nightly stop to see Phil and the crew. And then I came in this week and the magazines were gone, replaced by shiny and bright new check out counters. This was too much. There was no more gradual entry, no separation between the street and the inner sanctum. Once a day I had indulged in scanning the headlines for the latest carryings-on in Hollywood and beyond. I looked at the various Cape Cod local journals for small town news. Gone, stacked vertically on a turning rack where I would have to publicly peruse them. No way.
So my visits are all business now. A few doomed lobsters have appeared in the tank. Soon suntan lotion and styrofoam coolers will line the aisles. And the new doors will whoosh open to mix the hot breeze with the air conditioning blowing out from where the magazines used to be.
*I know the Dylan line isn’t exact-I don’t wan’t the music industry after me!

Small Town Art, and Then some

I’ve been busy today, finishing preparations for the Dennis Arts and Culture Council 2nd Annual Photography Contest. Whew. Putting this event together has been quite a project, and the results have been worthwhile. I co-chair the Council, and wanted to continue to self-generate a project and not wait for a grant applicant to come to us with a request. I appreciate good photography. So I put it together with the blessing of Tish Murphy, Librarian, who gave us the space to hang the exhibit. I wrote the rules, made and distributed the flyers. Nicole Muller of “The Register” community newspaper gave us a blurb and helped judge the entries. I solicited donations and Treats Catering provided a beautiful fruit and cheese platter and Stop and Shop provided drinks. Council members joined me to hang the photos yesterday, and my goodness it looks like a real exhibit! There are youth and adult divisions. Lizzie Murphy won the youth contest with her photo of a Charleston, South Carolina landscape. The adult division was topped by John Shilcusky, who captured an artist’s easel attached to a photo and a painting of vivid hydrangeas. So I’m proud to have participated in bringing art to town, my first such endeavor. If you’re in Dennis before June 2, stop by the library on Hall Street to see it.

Real Estate tidbit:
UP UP UP-67 Cranberry Lane in South Yarmouth sold for 101.57% of the last listing price. It went from $409,000 to $324,900 to $330,000.

DOWN DOWN DOWN - 27 Old Hills Road in Dennis sold for 90.66% of the last listing price. It started at $ 949,000 to $899,000 and sold for $815,000.

Pricing is everything!

“Adoption and Education” Seminar in Dennis

I’ve been asked to pass along information on a workshop to be held tomorrow for parents and educators. The workshop will focus on the unique educational issues faced by adopted children who have resided in overseas orphanages and foster-care. It will be led by Dr. Boris Gindis of the BG Center School. He is an International Adoption Physician. This whole event will be at the Dennis Public Library , 5 Hall Street, Dennis Port on May 2, beginning at 8:30 a.m. The Parents’ Workshop is 9am-12 noon, the Educators’ Workshop is 12:30-3:30pm. Questions should be directed to the Cape Cod Adoption Network at 508-385-7815. Funded by contributions provided by the Cape and Islands United Way.

I hope that this program benefits you and your children or students. I make no statements of support for Dr. Gindis, whom I do not know.

May Day/May Day

The end of the month means something else to Realtors: closings. In checking the up-to-the-minute listings marked “sold” on the Cape Cod and Islands MLS just now I saw something that has been creeping in more often: selling prices greater than the listing prices. I scour the “solds” daily because it’s my job to be informed. Normally, selling prices are 93% to 97% of the LAST reported listing price. This has nothing to do with the price the home came on the market at. But recently I’ve seen homes selling at 102%-105% of the listing price, and I have had my own buyer-customers get into little bidding wars over properties. Desirable inventory is in ever-shorter supply in some areas, creating pockets of classical economic supply/demand drama. Lesson: if you see it and want it, buy it. Don’t let the media lull you into a sense of complacency.

I will have a closing in May in Mashpee on 6 Chatham Lane. See the webpage I designed for this home. After the closing I will change it to a “We’ve Moved” page for the buyers, so that they can show all of their friends and family their new home. It’s particularly nice as it’s their first home.

There will be a May Day family concert by Peter and Ellen Allard at Ezra H. Baker School gym in Dennis, 6:00 p.m., public welcome. Sponsored in part by the Dennis Arts and Culture Council and Mass Cultural Council.

Whether May Day is a workers’ acknowledgement day ( International Labor Day) for you, or a day to wear lily-of-the-valley as in France, enjoy the inevitable step toward Summer.

April Showers on the Housing Market

The Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors reports that both numbers of sales and average sales prices are down against last March. This is no surprise to me as included in those sales numbers are a plethora of bank owned and short sale properties dragging values down. It has been a rather sad Spring, and while 811 properties were sold in the first quarter, 6,352 remain on the market. The opportunity market continues for both buyers and sellers, as people are here and willing to buy, and depending on when the sellers themselves bought it is a good time to extract themselves from a costly propert and downsize or upsize as the case may be. NPR reported today that the Fed will consider yet another rate cut, and while that does not necessarily translate into mortgage rate reductions, it tends to stimulate spending and create consumer optimism. What does this mean for you? If you can, buy. Real estate is still a good LONG TERM investment. They aren’t making any more Cape Cod, quite the opposite. Unique and exquisite properties will always hold their worth. I can show you some that are indeed special. And if you want a place for family and friends to mill about and BBQ after dragging the floats back after a long day riding the waves, I have that too…on sale.