Month: February 2020

Putting Together the Right Team in Selling and Buying a House – Part I

JoAnne Tucker / / Personal Life

It should not come as a surprise, yet it still does amaze me, that the many experiences I had directing the Avodah Dance Ensemble (and then being part of a team producing and directing short films for Healing Voices-Personal Stories) are so relevant in other aspects of my life.  This was especially true recently when we sold our Santa Fe house and bought a new one in Costa Rica.

I’ll begin with selling the home in Santa Fe.  I thought it would be a breeze to find a listing agent, and wow was I wrong.  We asked around, looked at reviews online and then finally decided to interview two or three agents.  The first person we arranged to see had very high reviews online and so we called and she came over.  She had a lovely personality and gave us a listing figure that surprised us at how high it was.  She also said we didn’t need to do anything to put the house in order.  Hum…. That didn’t seem too realistic.  She was overpricing, and when I went to explore her website I saw quite a few homes that had reduced their price. 

Our neighbors across the street raved about their realtor so the next appointment was with her.  Exactly the opposite of the first person.  As we walked through the house together she pointed out all the things that were wrong.  When we sat down to discuss it further we could see she was undervaluing the house and was really acting like a buyer’s representative, not a listing agent.

We were somewhat frustrated and not sure where to turn next.  Then I decided to call a realtor friend that I knew from being on the Board of New Mexico Women in Film.  I hadn’t called her before because she was new to real estate.  She asked if she could bring a friend who was mentoring her. They came together but the mentor totally took over and my friend never had an opportunity to say much.  The mentor nailed the price as to what we hunched it was worth and had a nice positive attitude.  Unfortunately, she started pressing us to immediately sign the listing agreement which she had brought.  Three times we told her that we wanted to think it over first!! She continued to press us. There were follow-up calls from my friend, who was clearly being directed to press us, too.  Well… that wouldn’t work for us.  The thought of her bringing us an offer that we might be hesitant about and having to deal with pressure from her was just not to our liking.

We were now getting more discouraged.  We had never imagined that it would be hard to find a listing agent.  A day or two went by with both of us wondering what to do.  Then I remembered that our Healing Voices intern had worked part-time for a realtor at Sotheby’s.  I texted our former intern, and she highly recommended the realtor, Emily Garcia, so we put in a call.  Emily set up a time to visit our home. When she arrived she set a relaxed and friendly mood and said this visit was just to get to know our house.  She wouldn’t even quote a listing price until she had a good sense of the house, and then she would go back to her office and research it.  It was a lovely experience walking her through the house.  She was very positive and said she would help me stage it so it would have the most impact for showing.  At the end we shared the price that we thought was right.  That evening we got a call back from her saying we had nailed the exact price!! Yeah!  She then asked us to come down to her office to go through things.  We did.  There was absolutely no pressure to sign and we liked that.  She introduced us to other members of her team that would be working with her.  It was clear she was very well organized and had put together a good team to handle all the details of selling and closing!

Whew… we had found our right listing agent.  The next step was to stage our house.  One of our daughters clearly told me to listen to whatever Emily said — she knew best and it would work to our advantage to just follow her instructions.

Emily Garcia our listing agent
http://emilygarcia.com

Emily returned and I walked with her through the house, pencil and paper in hand, making notes of all the things that she said needed to go, and of the different places for pictures to be hung to enhance the Southwest look of a Santa Fe home.  Those things that were easy to do, we did right away.  I had a pretty long list of things I would be needing to do.  For example, reducing the bookshelves by at least one-third.  Some of the things on the list involved moving furniture that was too heavy for Murray and me.  Emily gave us names of several people who could help us. I called one on the list and set up a time to meet with him. Emily joined us that day, continuing to tweak her instructions on how to make our home look its absolute best.

OK…..  how did it feel to have someone staging our home? Well I think it was a little hard for my husband but again my theatre/film experience came in handy.  Our home was now a set for a performance that needed to look just right.  Emily was my set designer and my job was simply to follow her instructions.  I could tell she had a real sense of design and what would work, so it made it particularly easy to just do it. 

The day photos were going to be taken Emily again joined us and tweaked a few things to get everything just right.  I also immediately connected to the photography. 

I was impressed how Emily approached the write up. She had us fill out a questionnaire and write down the things we really loved about our house.  Murray and I each did it separately and some of our phrases became part of the description.

Once the house was ready for the photos to be taken I knew it was time to immediately put it on the market.  We had considered waiting until we moved out, but some quick research showed there was very little for sale in our price range and no home as lovely.  So pictures were taken on Monday. They were available on Thursday. Thursday night our house was MLS listed. Friday and Saturday we had to be out of the house most of the afternoon as we were getting quite a few showing appointments each day.  By Sunday morning we had an offer that we later in the day learned was slightly over the asking price.  WOW…. It had worked.  We had found a good listing agent and had followed her instructions. It was worth interviewing four different people and taking our time to find just the right person. 

Through the next few weeks other members of Emily’s team stepped up and proved how valuable they were.  Lesson learned and reminder to myself… just as I carefully auditioned to find a dancer to join the company, it pays to take my time to build the right team in all aspects of my life. Thank you, Emily Garcia for the great job you and your team did!


Picture taken right after we signed the papers to close on the house.  From l. to r. Murray, JoAnne, Diane Woods from the Title Company and Emily Garcia

Pictures from the brochure show how beautifully Emily helped us stage our house.

Putting Together the Right Team in Selling and Buying A House: Part 2

JoAnne Tucker / / Personal Life

We had no intention of buying a home in Costa Rica when we visited in late October.  We were here to check out how we could handle the high humidity in rainy season. We did think it would be useful to get a sense of the real estate market with the thought we might buy at a later date, and to get to know the different neighborhoods in the community of Atenas where we thought we might like to live, so we reached out to Marian Veltman to show us around.  We had rented a house that was managed by the company she is connected with. In fact, her husband had picked us up at the airport and when I asked him about Marian showing us around, he commented, “She won’t just sell you a house, she will make sure you are really settled in it and know your way around the community.”  Hum, I thought, that is an interesting comment…

So Murray and I began going out with Marian and getting to know the different neighborhoods.  We saw lots of homes that didn’t interest us.  As we went around, I was impressed that Marian was listening and paying attention to our interests.  Murray really loves his swimming workout,  and finding a house with either a large enough pool or easy access to a neighborhood pool was taken very seriously.  When we heard about a community that was over a half-hour drive away and where Marian had a house listed, she even enthusiastically contacted another real estate person to make sure we could see a second available house in the area and drove us down.  That was a fairly challenging drive, especially when we got near the community and drove a very narrow, rough, dirt road.  But we didn’t like either house.

And then one day when we were looking at homes, we drove up a very lovely driveway to a house that we both loved and everything changed!

View from the top of the driveway.

For us and our needs this house really stood out! Now we began to think differently.  We calculated our budget and put in an offer based on what we could afford, knowing that it is much easier to buy in Costa Rica than to sell.  We learned more about closing and the taxes you have to pay along with lawyer fees in Costa Rica.  The closing costs are actually higher than in the US. We took all these costs into account.  Marian was respectful of our thinking, not pushing us to go higher in any way, which we really appreciated.  It took a bit of negotiating and we liked the very personal way she worked with us and the seller, and we came to an agreement which was in our budget.  So this stage of getting an offer accepted was complete and it had all been extremely positive, working with a very professional, knowledgeable person who had lots of energy and positive outlook.  When we left to go back to the US, she said she would be at the airport to pick us up when we returned to Costa Rica.

And 2 ½ months later she indeed was there, along with Piet, one of the property managers whom we had also met.  We indeed needed two cars for our 8 very large bags and 4 additional carry ons!  (We decided not to send a container but to take only what we could fit into suitcases. We were flying Southwest, which allows you to check 2 bags each, along with paying for extra bags and overweight.  It was well worth it to have our stuff with us right away.)

Murray and I at the airport (photo taken by our son-in-law who helped us to get to the airport with all of our bags.

Three days later, we closed on the house.  Marian had carefully prepared a list of useful numbers for us and promised to take us shopping the next day.  In the meantime (and over the next few days), we enjoyed some wonderful pastries that were a gift from her.

Bright and early the next morning, Marian picked us up and we spent all day shopping, going from one store to another to make sure we had the basics to get started in the new house!  Beds for all the bedrooms, a sofa and a TV for the living room, pots and pans for the kitchen, dishes and glasses and on and on went the list.  By the end of the day we had all the basics that we would need!  She promised to take us again.  We were deeply grateful for her help.  It didn’t end there.

Murray and Marian after our long day of shopping. Murray was exhausted! Marian still had lots of energy! I was somewhere in between.

Among the many challenging things for new expats is banking.  When we had gone to contract on the house and expressed some of our concerns about how we would function in a new country, our lawyer had said that his secretary would help us set up a bank account. She did, and she set up some of the bills, like electricity and phone, so they would be paid automatically.

Other bills, like our homeowner’s fees and water bill, would have to be paid differently and not online. Until one has some form of residency here, banking is limited.  I found myself very overwhelmed about how to pay the bills at another bank.  Marian and I had emailed back and forth and we had planned that we would do another shopping trip together.  When she picked me up I expressed my concern about paying these bills and so we decided to stop at the bank where they could be paid and she could show me how.  It ended up being very easy and I was so excited and relieved that I just wanted to hug her and do a dance of joy!!  The transition was getting easier, thanks to her generous help. 

Among the things she knew I was looking for was an inexpensive coffee table.  A few days later Marian texted to say she thought she had found one when she was out shopping.  She sent us a picture and we said “Yes! Buy it!”  She even had it assembled for us.  It works perfectly in our living room.

And of course she knows the local vendors and how and where to get things.  She helped Murray get his cell phone.  She recommended someone to upholster the well-worn dining room chairs. (The previous owner had agreed to leave a few things such as the dining room table and chairs for us.)  She is very fluent in both English and Spanish and that makes it very easy for her to help those of us who have very limited Spanish. 

I’m used to being in charge. I am learning to ask for lots of help as we make this transition to a new country.  We feel so fortunate to have the help of Marian and indeed the comment that her husband made about her not just selling us a house but also helping us to adjust and become a part of this new community is very true!

More lessons learned.  When you find the right person, welcome them into your life, don’t be afraid to ask for help and most important let them know how grateful you are for their help. A deep bow of gratitude and thanks to Marian Veltman.

https://www.godutchrealty.com/costa-rica-real-estate-agents/atenas-real-estate-agent/
Marian Veltman of GoDutch Realty
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First Dance Classes: Remembering Genevieve Jones

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood, Personal Life

My cousin Maxine, who is a year younger than I am, started taking dance classes when she was 4 or 5 and my family would drive to Uniontown, which was about an hour from where we lived in Pittsburgh, to watch her recitals.  These were long evenings with kids in satiny, glittery costumes doing various routines.  Usually the kids had several costume changes since they were in quite a few numbers.  So when my Mom wanted to expose me to dance classes she selected Kelly’s School of Dance, which was in our neighborhood and run by Louise Kelly.  Louise was one of Gene Kelly’s sisters.  Gene had grown up in Pittsburgh and now was in his prime in Hollywood. It was somewhat similar to the kind of dance school that Maxine had gone to, with the emphasis on recitals and costumes and young kids being exposed to tap, acrobatics, and a kind of intro to ballet.

My cousin Maxine in one of her recital costumes. (When I shared this picture with Maxine she remembered the following about the picture and the role her dance classes played in her life.)

My recollection is that this was taken when my ballet dance class performed Swan Lake. I think somehow we must have had individual photos. I was definitely in the chorus of ballerinas and sort of remember being in a semicircular formation with the other dancers. Note the braces so I think this was towards the end of my involvement with dance training 6 days/week when I decided as a teenager that I liked academics a lot more than dance and did not have the talent or the desire to be a ballerina or a dancer.

Today, I am most grateful for the self discipline, the coordination, mental development, the muscular training and the appreciation for the art of dance that I received from all of that hard work. My involvement with Tai Chi over the past 10 years brings back so much of the joy of dance – practicing steps, being graceful and remembering combinations. I also attribute my physical strength and my ability to comeback from my traumatic brain injury to this early training.)

Once I got to know my friend Regina and learned about the dance classes she was taking I thought I would like to try the kind of dance she was doing. Regina was studying with Genevieve Jones and had recently been in a delightful production of Johnny Appleseed. She was invited to play a skunk with an older group of kids. Genevieve had a totally different approach to working with kids.  Students were encouraged to make up their own movement, usually to a story she shared.  The music was mostly live accompaniment.  I wanted to do this instead of learning routines!!

Genevieve was a real pioneer in modern dance in Pittsburgh.  She was born in 1906 in Pittsburgh and attended the University of Wisconsin, majoring in dance.  (The University of Wisconsin-Madison, according to its website, offered the first university dance degree program in the country.)  Genevieve brought her love of modern dance back to Pittsburgh.  In the 30’s she began bringing such dance legends as Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, and Jose Limon to her hometown.

I soon was loving the creative movement classes she led, and I remember one dance program in which I was an Irish Lady and we danced a poem about the Irish famine when people only ate potatoes.

Practicing in costume for the Irish Lady, in the living room of our house on Shaw Avenue in Pittsburgh. I think I am about 10 in this picture.

In addition to the children’s classes that Genevieve taught, she also conducted quite popular ballroom classes for pre-teens.  Five of us from Shaw Avenue carpooled to these classes. One of our parents would drive us to the class and another would pick us up.  Jimmy Levinson, Joan Davis, Regina, Bobby Moser and I would pile into a car and off we go to her very large studio with chairs all around the room.  I seem to remember we had to wear white cotton gloves and it was all very formal learning how to do the basic ballroom steps.  We learned to graciously accept being asked to dance, and when it was women’s choice, to ask someone to dance.  Afterwards we would go back to one of our houses and have fun hanging out together.  While I didn’t keep in contact with Joan Davis, I do know that Bobby Moser took over his father’s interior design business in our neighborhood of Squirrel Hill. He died in his sixties. Jimmy and I have kept in contact through the years.  He has done amazing things in agricultural economics and with work in India. His son is part of an amazing non-profit in India which works with pregnant women and their newborn infants. And of course, if you have been reading this blog you know that Regina and I continue to enjoy both our friendship and working and collaborating together.

As a teenager I began teaching classes in my basement as a way to earn some money and found myself using many images and ideas from Genevieve Jones’s classes.   And many years later when I had a full-grown practice working with children in Tallahassee I again turned to ideas I had experienced in Genevieve’s classes.  By that time she had published a book sharing her stories, telling how she guided children in using them in movement, and providing original music from the person who had accompanied her classes.  Her materials were wonderfully useful, especially for working with children ages 3 to about 8. 

I also remember the simple imagery she used when doing some warm-up exercises like saying hello and goodbye as we pointed and flexed our feet!!

Teaching in Tallahassee, Florida, saying “hello and goodbye” with our toes. Picture taken around 1975.

Genevieve was a wonderful influence in helping me develop my creativity and starting me on a fun journey in dance.  As I became a teenager I wanted something different and found other dance teachers with a more disciplined and structured approach. 

As I was going through my scrapbooks getting ready for our move to Costa Rica, I came across an obituary that I had saved, written when Genevieve died in 2002.  In it she is quoted as saying, “Dance (always spelled with a capital D) is a sacred thing, a great and wonderful thing.” 

I very much wanted to find a picture of Genevieve Jones to include in this post.  I wasn’t able to, but what I did find, in a literary journal, was a wonderful piece entitled “Letters to Genevieve,” which describes her beautifully and shows the profound impact she had on one individual’s life. The work was written by Sarah Golin, and here is the link to it. https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v18n1/nonfiction/golin-s/letters-page.shtml.  Thank you, Sarah, for writing this. 

Regina Ress has also written about her experience in dance and the influence of Genevieve Jones. Here’s a link to it. Thank you, Regina, for sharing this.

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