Sue Adler has been the #1 Keller Williams agent in NJ for the past six years, and leads one of the top Keller Williams teams worldwide, with annual production of $62 million in 2010.
Vote to Give Chatham Farmers’ Market A New Barn Home
If you live in Chatham, then you know that our weekly Farmer’s Market is the place to be on Saturday mornings between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m.! The market allows for farm fresh produce, fresh Jersey Shore fish, locally produced eggs, meats, artisan cheese and bread to be at your fingertips, only a few steps from your Chatham home. Other exciting market finds are the beekeeper, cooking and gardening displays and demonstrations, cultural performances, and the opportunity to mingle with friends and neighbors from surrounding New Jersey midtown direct towns. The volunteers and manager Janice Piccolo of the Chatham Farmer’s Market are always looking for ways to enhance your experience, so speak up if you have an idea or would like to be a part of the planning of this fun, community event!
Speaking of excitement, on August 1st, our local Chatham Farmers’ Market was named as one of three finalists in the national contest for a new barn. You can help Chatham Farmers’ Market win an open-air, post & beam market style 24-ft x 36-ft barn built by Yankee Barn Homes , valued at $80,000, simply by clicking here and casting your vote for Chatham before August 15th at 11:59 a.m. Be sure to tell your friends and neighbors who live in New Jersey, as you can only vote once. The Great Barn Giveaway is sponsored by The American Farmland Trust, the Farmers Market Coalition and bark maker W.H. Silverstein Inc., as they celebrate local economic development and healthy living.
Paperless Paperwork for New Jersey Real Estate Transactions
Go GREEN, Go paperless!
Things have been hopping around here in New Jersey, lots of contracts being written. And, with every Real Estate transaction there is a lot of paperwork but, I’m learning, that doesn’t have to mean a lot of PAPER!
As part of our “GREEN-ing”, we have tried to implement paperless transactions where ever possible. Emailing, Faxing and Online listing databases and transaction management calendars, as well as shared online files have certainly paved the way to reducing the amount of paper used. Before the online MLS, each agent had an MLS book, full of all of the active listing for a given area (currently there are 457 homes available in: Maplewood, South Orange, Summit and Millburn alone). What a waste of paper!
When I schedule Buyer Appointments, I print out as few (if any) copies of the MLS listing sheets as possible. Instead, my clients and I review online listing and narrow down our home selections online. And, I have noticed that my clients no longer want to take every piece of paper that the Listing Agents leave out. Savvy buyer’s think: “I can pull up everything on my phone…why carry around a bunch of papers and kill more trees.” Love That! Read more
Bicycle, Bicycle…I want to ride my Bicycle. Ode to Freddie Mercury.
Week 3 of my “Greener Evolution”.
I was stopped at a light at the corner of Morris Tpke. and Millburn Ave. when four teenage girls, say 14 or 15 years old, nearly gave the “MOM”in me a heart attack. Two of the girls dangerously ignored the cross signal and road their bikes across the busy street narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic. The other two waited until it was slightly safer to ride across, but if any of their mothers had been there..OY!
It was a reminder to me, of how tough runners/walkers/bikers have it in parts of our town.Now, that particular intersection is definitely not a good place to bike (Morris Turnpike is infamous for lots of car to car accidents) but this incident begs the question: Where IS there a good place to ride in our downtowns?
In our area the number of residents who are thinking along the same lines seems to be hitting a critical mass. On July 21st a vote on this issue is scheduled at the Millburn Township Committee Meeting. If passed, it will provide bike lanes and safer bike travel around a portion of South Mountain Reservation from Brookside Drive to Ridgewood Road. The project is supposed to include striping along Glen Avenue, road markers with the bicycle symbol, and kiosks with information about the path and signs. In addition to running along Glen Avenue, the path would link to downtown Millburn on Lackawanna Place. Now this is something everyone (especially all of us Greenies) would love to see happen! Read more
Going Greener, a year long quest. (Look out Ed Begley Jr.)
This week I completed the first portion of my GREEN Designation Course for REALTORS. And it has made me think. Where do I fall on the “Greenie” spectrum, and can I do more. I think I am like most other people, I am neither a “True Believer” nor a “Skeptic”, nor am I eco-chic (unless I find something cool and GREEN at TJ Maxx). I am somewhere in the middle – a “lifestyle” environmentalist.
As a person, I think green in good. As a home owner, I think an energy efficienct home is good. As a mom, I think Sustainability is good. And, I thought I was contributing a decent amount to the green movement. I recycle a lot, I use reusable shopping bags religiously, I only give my children Organic Milk and I shop locally and organically whenever possible.
But, I don’t or didn’t ever stop to really look around my home and examine how green it is.
After two intense days under Mimi Weisinger’s “tutelage” my eyes are open (wider) and I want to do better. Following in the footsteps of the start of the green movement in commerical real estate. I am focusing on the bottom line and over the next 52 weeks vow to make my home more energy efficient and more GREEN.
I live in a 1920′s colonial in Maplewood NJ. So it’s not like I can start from scratch, say by finding a brownfield, remediating the contamination and building a LEED home. No, my steps will have to be more home specific to my existing home and more calculated to fit within our budget. Read more
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