Knife Catching 1525 Gibbons Drive.

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

Well I honestly was not ever planning to review 1525 Gibbons Drive. We can't afford a house on Gibbons but it is a pipe dream for us to live there so we wanted to go check out the house just for the hell of it. But, being barred from entry and being told that the house owner specifically asked that I not be allowed admittance has rubbed me the wrong way.

To reiterate, my opinion is that people with nothing to hide wouldn't have a problem with an impartial review of their house. I've decided that for every open house that I am barred from I will write a fictitious and satirical review.

Knife Catching 1525 Gibbons Drive.

Unbeknownest to the homeowners and Realtors I have the ability to astrally project myself to where ever I please. After being barred from this house we went to Franklin Park and as the wife and baby played in the sandbox I took a nap in the shade and was able to astrally project myself to the open house in time to view it. Since I can not take pictures in that state my review will have to depend on my ability to form pictures in your minds with my words. But to help, here's a link to the listings website full of pretty pictures and verbiage.

I was able to 'get' to the open house just minutes before they ended for the day. As I moved around the house I thought to myself that the house was nice enough....what I saw after the doors where closed and all the looky-loo's where cleared out is what I feel I must talk to y'all about...before its too late....

The Realtor went into the backyard and pulled a small metallic device from his pants pocket. As he did the air in front of him shimmered and a small, I'll have to call it a craft, appeared. The craft was saucer shaped and was shiny and mirror-like as if it was made out of liquid mercury. As the Realtor slowly approached the ship a section dissolved to form a doorway. I noticed that with each approaching step the Realtor's human features seemed to be slowly melting away
and where being replaced with reptilian features. Actually if I had to peg it, I'd say that he looked like a meaner, scalier version of a sleestak with a double row of razor sharp teeth like a shark. As it reached the saucer door the transformation was complete and I gasped with astonishment. Just then the now Reptilian Realtor whipped his head around and started tasting the air with his long forked tongue. It was as if he could sense me some how and I froze in fear. After what seemed like an eternity the fearsome creature turned and entered the craft.

Half scared outta my wits but knowing that I had to 'do' something I followed the Reptilian Realtor into his ship. Upon entering I was shocked to see that the inside of the craft appeared much, much larger than the outside!?! I'd guess the exterior dimensions at about the size of a big SUV but the interior room I was in was at least 40' on a side. I followed the strange creature to a large table in the center of the room where there were already several of the creatures seated. They fell silent as the Reptile Realtor I was following took his seat at the head of the table. From this gesture I assumed he was their leader. The creatures started talking in the strangest language that I'd ever heard. It sounded like a cross between the Australian aboriginal pops and clicks with different styles of snake like hissing. Just hearing it made my blood run cold.

The creatures seemed to be discussing some sort of plan. The head creature would wave its hands around in front of him and different graphics would appear in the air, hovering over the center of the table. They seemed to be discussing some sort of plan...but for what I did not know. I did notice the strangest thing, every once in a while a complete sentence in English was uttered. The first time I heard it I thought I had imagined it but I listened more intently and heard the same couple of phrases over and over again...

'Its a great time to buy.' 'Its a great time to sell.' 'Don't worry about the brick foundation.' Where the phrases I heard repeated the most it almost felt like some kind of religious mantra...otherwise, it just looked kinda like any old boring work meeting with the boss but with way fancier PowerPoint.

One of the underlings at the table started to get animated and gesticulate wildly. I think he was trying to 'get the floor'. With a nod from the leader this underling jumped up and starting fiddling with the controls on a nearby wall panel. Two cylindrical objects about the size of a porta potty but made out of the same liquid mercury metal as the ship lowered from some hidden recess in the ceiling. From the pod closest to me I could hear muffled screaming and banging! 'Who or what could be in there', I thought. The technician fiddled with some more knobs and the liquid metal on the pods started to disappear into a door shaped opening. I was so excited that I moved around to in front of the doors to get a better look. As the door dissolved lights started to fade up from inside slowly revealing.....Oh No!!!! I was being pulled away from this incredible scene and back to my body resting comfortably under one of the big pine trees in Franklin park.

I awoke back inside my own body with start to my incredibly adorable 14 month old shaking my tummy with both hands and saying, 'Da! Da! Da Da' for it was time for me to take her on a slide ride.

As I scooped up my daughter I thought, 'Wow this explains so much, why I was barred from seeing the house and why some Realtors use those annoying phrases all the time. But what was in those tubes? What exactly is this 'plan' they are working on? I guess I just have to wait for the next open house I'm barred from to get another piece of the puzzle.'

To Be Continued....

Okay okay so I'm no Bill Gibson....heck I ain't even a Bill Shatner when it comes to writing Sci-Fi..but hopefully you found this amusing.

We've Been Banned!?!?!?!

I was sorta wondering when this was going to happen but dang it caught me by surprise today!

We went to look at a listing on Gibbons drive today. When we walked into the house the listing agent told us that the owner of the house specifically requested that we not be allowed access!?!?! Holy Fricken Moly we've been banned! Or barred I guess you could say.

I should of known something was up when there was a sign posted at the entryway declaring that taking pictures of the house was not allowed! Never seen that before....

The listing agent who is also the listing agent on 1417 Central was VERY unhappy with my review of the Central Ave house.... It looks like we're, me, my wife AND my baby are not going to be allowed into any listings by Alain Pinel realty company. Even after I told the agent that we were just looking and that I wasn't going to 'review' the house we where still not let in.

I go back and forth about this where I feel cowed and just want to give up the reviewing to getting my Irish full up and wanting to do something ridiculous in response....what I did tell the Realtor was that first thing Monday morning I would go down to the permit office and check the permit record and redo the review if any new information changed my opinion of the house.

Now, at this point I was going to go into a detailed dissection of the rather heated conversation we had on the front door step of the rather well attended open house but I'm not. I don't want to get into a pointless he said, she said kinda thing but the showing realtor seemed to be mostly upset with two things. 1. That I misquoted our conversation and 2. that I was representing my opinion as fact.

On the misquoting of the conversation thing. I'm just going to say this. I've been employed for the last several years as what can best be described as an investigative journalist. I'm very good at getting interview subjects to drop their guard and answer questions honestly. After our conversation I immediately went home and wrote up my notes. So yeah, I guess its possible that I could of miss-remembered our conversation. Lets just say that he and I remember having a very different conversation and leave it at that.

I thought that it was pretty clear that these 'knifecatching reviews' that I've been doing are just my opinion and only my opinion. In fact the review of 1417 Central Ave starts off with what I thought was a pretty straight forward disclaimer.

Read This: The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. You should probably regard this as just the incoherent babbling of an unbalanced mind....

That seems pretty straight forward to me, no? Maybe I should have a 'write a disclaimer' contest. Everybody can write what they think would be a good disclaimer in the comments section and I'll pick the best one and use it on my reviews from here on out.

In the spirit of fairness I'm going to go back through all my knifecatching reviews and add the following disclaimer.

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

There, what more could the Realtor want? I basically say that I'm a know-nothing moron who should really just be ignored.

Why Do I Do These Reviews?
Why not? In our modern society you can find impartial reviews online for any kind of techo-gadget at cnet. Cycleworld and Road and Track do reviews of new vehicles, but where's the impartial reviews of houses? Our houses, as people say, the biggest chunk of our net worth, most peoples largest asset, yet where are the impartial reviews? The selling Realtor isn't going to say anything that could sour a deal. The buyers Realtor has the same motivation. The house appraiser knows that he will lose business if his reports cause too many escrows to be broken, same with the appraiser...all these people have a vested interest in you (the buyer) staying ignorant. Who's really on the side of the buyer? It just seems like the deck is stacked against buyers. Which seems crazy to me as this is the single biggest purchase people ever make.

The Genesis Of My House Reviews.
Really, this just started off as a way for us to keep it straight in our heads which houses had which features and to help us evaluate the houses. We would do the thing where we would confuse the features of one house with another, so we started taking pictures to keep them all straight in our heads. Then we would sit down and after looking at the reports figure out what the house needs and estimate what that's going to cost. Then we back calculate what we are willing to pay for the house so as to not end up putting way, way more money into a house than it will ever be worth. Isn't that basically what everyone does who's looking at buying a house?

Is it my fault that a lot of the houses do not appear to be priced to their condition?

I want to be clear on something. We are not looky-loo's. We are seriously looking for a 'finished' old house to buy in Alameda in the right neighborhood with features that meet our perhaps unique requirements. We have a big ole hunk of cash saved up for either a down payment on a new house or to remodel our current house. We are officially pre-approved for a loan that's so large it literally scares me. We are serious buyers and as a part of our process we check the permit records and the 'public facts' of any house we are interested in.

Now, vague threats of legal action aside...the Realtors at Alain Pinel have figured out a way to censor me. If all the Realtors on the island decide that I will not be allowed into any more open houses then well, I can't really review them can I? But of course they are also turning down a serious buyer.

One Final Note
It will always be my first, second and third take that someone who doesn't want an impartial review of their house has something to hide. The cockroaches and rats gather where the sun doesn't shine. If, in a parallel dimension, I was a realtor when I did an open house I'd have front and center the complete termite report, the complete house inspection AND the complete certified permit record. I would know all there was to know about the house and represent and price it accordingly. I would have nothing to fear from an impartial review.

I figure that if the sellers think I'm the anti-Christ and buyers think I'm the second coming then I must be doing something right.

And that's the way I see it.