Griselda's Blog

A blogger at AR was offended by the following comment I posted on her blog:

“Excellent comments! There’s a constant negativity being fed to the public. That’s why it’s so important to educate buyers and sellers to approach this market from their own personal circumstances, and not from the angle that the media brings to it.”

This blogger deleted my signature (even though she reposted the comments), and said that she considered this as “comment spam.”

At the time this was a new term for me. So I posted again and asked, a bit confused and embarrassed at the same time, to see if I could understand what had happened.  

The answer I received was that signing with a graphic signature “ says ‘I am more important than your post and I want everyone to know it’.”

WHAT?  How is it possible to come up with such an interpretation???  I must be more powerful than I think  I am, to be able do all that with a single copy and paste of my first name… oh my!

Anyway, I did my research about comment spam. Even if I was not familiar with the term itself, I immediately recognized various cases I’ve seen as comment spam.   For example, posting a blatant promotion of your self, business, websites, or blogs, instead of a real comment. Another example is embedding links on the signatures or the comment itself, or adding a phone number or email address to the signature. 

It makes sense to call these examples "comment spam." But to say that my comment fell under the same category as those examples above seems to be stretching the definition a little bit too far. I guess this blogger can call “spam” anything she doesn’t personally like, and she obviously dislikes graphic signatures as the one I included. But I don’t have to agree with her definition. 

And I don’t. 

I usually have a good sense of humor. And, usually, I don't waste my time with stuff like this. But lately I find myself a bit moody. Don't know exactly why. I also have hot flashes...Mmmm...It must be the market, dam it! ;-)

So I said to myself, should I be gracious and leave this woman to her own “spamic deliriums”? Or should I make one more comment. Just to get it out of me. I couldn’t resist, so I made a comment.

This is what I wrote:

“(her name) thank you for all the links. I believe that now I have a clear idea of what constitutes comment spam. I already knew it, only I didn’t have a name for it before. Making comments with links to your own website or blogs is no doubt disrespectful and obviously one of the varied examples of comment spam.

However, I still fail to see how the signing of a first name by itself could be considered comment spam. My first name was written in cursive colored letters without any links added, nor any other self-promotional material such as a phone number or an email address. I also don’t understand how you can interpret that I was saying ‘I am more important than your post and I want everyone to know it’ just because I signed my first name.

But then again each person sees things differently and you are entitled to your opinions and interpretations as well as I am entitled to mine. I realize that when I visit a house I am a guest, and that I am expected to adhere to the customs of the home I’m visiting. So if I find those customs too restricting or exasperating I may respectfully excuse my self and leave. I guess the same logic applies to blogs. So Thank you and good bye. “

I almost added "If offended, feel free to delete" at the end of my post, but I knew she would delete this post anyway. AND SHE DID!
Now since this is MY BLOG, I can do whatever I want. So here it goes!!!

Max, our 8 year-old yellow lab, is terrified of both. We live in Miami Lakes, Florida, and during the summer we have thunderstorms almost every day.  We live in a one-story home with lots of windows and sliding doors, surrounded by palms and other trees. When there’s a thunderstorm, sometimes it feels like we are sitting outside in the middle of it. So imagine how this makes poor Max feel! (just in case you are wondering, we do have accordion shutters to protect us from hurricanes).

Since the time Max was a little puppy he started to shake as soon as he heard thunder or fireworks. I didn’t know what to do. But I knew I didn’t want to give him any medication to calm down. So I covered a sofa with a blanket and put Max on it. It worked. Even though he kept shaking, I could tell he felt safer there. Eventually he would relax. He would cuddle up and look half his size, and he would stay on the sofa until the storm passed, or the fireworks stopped. Then when he thought it was safe again, he would jump off and look for me or another family member. Kind of letting us know everything was fine. 

Well, over the years we have used the same "therapy" to deal with Max's anxiety when a storm approaches or fireworks start. Actually, I’ve seen that this sofa/blanket remedy seems to work faster now than it did years ago. Now Max relaxes just a couple of minutes after jumping on the sofa and making himself comfortable.  The bad thing is that Max has learned to associate the rain with the thunder, so now even if it is just raining he gets all shaky and goes to the sofa!

It was only recently that I talked to the vet about this, because we were at the office when a storm started and Max went crazy, shaking all over. The vet was very glad that we had found a way to calm Max down. He told me that this problem is extremely common and that many dogs become very destructive during storms and some even hurt themselves.

It seems though that Charlie, our seven-month Poodle/Schnauzer mix, doesn’t mind storms or fireworks for that matter. He doesn’t act any different when there’s thunder. He did not have any problems with the 4th of July fireworks celebrations either. So it seems Max will not need to share the sofa after all. I’m sure he is happy about that!
Here is Max on the sofa. This picture was NOT taken during a storm.

Florida is number one in the nation on mortgage fraud. And we are seeing it in front of our faces day in and day out. It is bad. And it is negatively affecting our business and our communities. I guess that I have been lucky that I never had any smelly proposals made directly to me. However I see the signs of mortgage fraud all around me most of the time.


For example, as I was preparing a CMA I noticed there was something weird in the Miami Lakes neighborhood I was researching. There was a home that had been listed for sale on the MLS for about a year and a half and then it was shown as expired. The original asking price was about $800,000. There were various reductions along the way, and the listing price eventually went down to $ 600,000. The house still didn’t sell. Then the listing expired. I was going to use this listing as one of the properties that “didn’t sell”, when surprise, surprise, I find it in the public records listed as “sold” only a couple of months after it was shown as expired on the MLS.  The sale price?  $ 900,000!!!


That price in this market??? I don’t think so. I believe there is something smelly about this deal. I told my buyers why I was not going to use this property to value theirs, even if it was the latest sale in the area. I showed them all the information, including the whole MLS history for this property. The sellers also concluded that something was wrong with that sale, and agreed to list their home at a realistic price. I guess the price was right because the home sold in just five days! I was happy and so were the sellers...

all the way to the bank.

But those inflated prices can mislead real estate agents and owners into placing a much higher price tag on a property than its true market value. Believing there are real buyers out there who are paying these prices, many sellers overprice their homes, and as a result, their homes don't sell. The sad reality is that many of these deals with inflated prices involve shady cash backs at the closing table that the lender is unaware of, so they are  illegal.

These kinds of deals are distorting the real estate market by pushing listing prices up when in reality we are in a depreciating market. It’s economics 101. Each month the ratio between active listings and pending sales is a higher number than the month before. That combination brings prices down because there is simply much more offer than there’s demand. And then when the property doesn’t sell at the overpriced listed price, the sellers blame the realtor for not doing enough. The inflated prices that result of these fraudulent sales feed sellers fantasies of selling at unreal prices and also distort CMA’s and appraisals. In the end, true buyers don't even bother to look at these overpriced properties!

Many times I have also seen the signs of fraud on the MLS itself. Recently I found three properties that had been listed for some time. Then they were listed by this broker (the same one in the three transactions) who miraculously sold each one of them for a price that was much higher than the previous listed price. I am talking about a difference in price that ranged from  $80,000 to $ 150,000 higher than the previous listing price!!! By the way, each one of these three properties also showed that they had been sold for the exact same price as the listing price. Coincidence?

Is this a case of a realtor with superpowers?  I suspect otherwise.  I smell a rat!            


So even for those of us who have not been confronted with mortgage fraud directly, the fight against mortgage fraud is played out almost every day. I can’t directly accuse anybody without real proof (I guess being there at the table and seeing the money exchange hands?). But I attempt to show sellers all the evidence I gather and let them draw their own conclusions. Also, just in case they get tempted with another realtor’s proposal, I point out to them that even if they don’t get a single extra penny out of the deal, participating in a transaction that gives the buyer any amount of cash back that the lender is unaware of is always illegal and can have dire consequences to all involved. 


In one of the various seminars I’ve taken lately on the subject of mortgage fraud (now it seems that everyone is finally aware of it!), the presenter was very optimistic about stopping fraudulent mortgages for good, and she told us the FBI was here in Miami in full force. She said: “the FBI is going to get the bad guys!”  Just a few days later I read an article in the Miami Herald about (guess what?) mortgage fraud. The article mentioned the FBI “ is not investigating the complaint because it has only two agents in its Miami field office working on mortgage fraud.” Only two agents to deal with all the cases here in Miami?! This article left a bad taste in my mouth. Is the government serious about stopping mortgage fraud?  I am really fed-up with what this type of crime is doing to our communities and our business, and it doesn’t seem to me that the government is doing enough to stop it. Tell me, what do you think?