Montgomery College/Takoma Park campus has a brand new performing arts center and the great Aretha Franklin will open the place for business on September 11th. This center will only add to the luster of our community and provide a much needed venue for arts patrons who live in and around Silver Spring. Go here for ticket information.
With the coming of the coming of the planned Filmore "Live Nation" concert hall to the downtown area and the events currently going on at Strathmore, Montgomery County is no longer the "red headed stepchild" when it comes to great music and entertainment.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
FHA loans getting tougher
Over the past decade the time period it has taken to get a loan processed had dropped significantly. In the recent heady days of the real estate boom a good lender could process a loan in about two weeks or less.
Well, those days are over for two reasons. One is that most loans processed these days in the Silver Spring market are FHA, government loans. Traditionally these loans have taken a little longer than the conventional loans that we mostly saw during the recent boom. The other reason is that all loans are taking longer due to more restrictive guidelines and tougher appraisals.
Investors took a big hit from bad loans in the past few year and are watching loan applications more carefully. The FHA loan pipeline is clogging up a bit as a result. If you are selling or buying a home where an FHA insured loan is part of the contract then it is better if you plan on the loan taking up to six week to get approved. A lot of Realtors are still putting 30 days to settle in the contract that they are writing but I think this is overly optimistic these days. I am advising my clients to expect at least 45 days from ratification to closing.
Those of you who have been around long enough will remember a terrible period back in the late 1980s where it was taking FHA loans up to 120 days to close. We were caught in another boom market and the appraisal pipeline was so backed up that you just could not get one scheduled for at least 90 days. It is unlikely that we will experience that sort of delay this time around but do expect your loan to take a little longer to close.
Well, those days are over for two reasons. One is that most loans processed these days in the Silver Spring market are FHA, government loans. Traditionally these loans have taken a little longer than the conventional loans that we mostly saw during the recent boom. The other reason is that all loans are taking longer due to more restrictive guidelines and tougher appraisals.
Investors took a big hit from bad loans in the past few year and are watching loan applications more carefully. The FHA loan pipeline is clogging up a bit as a result. If you are selling or buying a home where an FHA insured loan is part of the contract then it is better if you plan on the loan taking up to six week to get approved. A lot of Realtors are still putting 30 days to settle in the contract that they are writing but I think this is overly optimistic these days. I am advising my clients to expect at least 45 days from ratification to closing.
Those of you who have been around long enough will remember a terrible period back in the late 1980s where it was taking FHA loans up to 120 days to close. We were caught in another boom market and the appraisal pipeline was so backed up that you just could not get one scheduled for at least 90 days. It is unlikely that we will experience that sort of delay this time around but do expect your loan to take a little longer to close.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Why I hate haircuts.
I can really drag my feet when it comes time to get a haircut. I don't generally like the experience and tend to let my hair grow way too long between cuts. I never really liked going to the barber and hated the idea of ever going to any place that calls itself a salon. Part of the problem is that I never like the way my hair looks after a cut. But that is not all. Most of the problem stems from the brutal treatment handed out to boys by barbers when I was a kid.
As a kid, my brother and I were dutifully dispatched off to the Wheaton Barber shop located on Georgia Ave next to the Baskin Robbins store. I think cuts were about $1.5o back then. No more than two bucks anyways. There was pretty much only one of two styles for a kid to choose from in those days. One, the "buzz" cut was reserved for Wheaton's core group of "greasers" who generally chose that style to compliment their black leather jackets and green "Max" work pants, or for those who were about to enter the army. For those of us kids who did not aspire to a career in Vietnam or as an auto mechanic, the only other choice for a haircut was the "regular boys" style which consisted of essentially a near buzz cut with a small tuft of hair left in the front for appearance sake. The custom was for the barber to generously lube up this surviving tuft with Vitalis hair ointment and them set it up in a nice, natty little flip. After allowing about ten minutes for the Vitalis to dry, depending on the humidity and wind conditions, you would have a perfect rock hard flip which was good until the next time your parents made you wash your hair. After that, it was bangs of some sort until your next date with the barber. The barbers of that era were not too gentle to kids. I remember the heavy hands on the top of my head to ensure that my pate was in just the right angle for the barber to remove the maximum amount of hair. It was a time when kids did not complain and if any adult figured that a stiff adjustment in head position was called for, there was little support from the public for our basic human rights. The authorities were not called in and the offending barber faced no jail time or public humiliation by having his name put on some sort of intenet list. No sir, you went to the barber, sat in the chair when called, got the cut the barber felt like given you, held still and kept you mouth shut and took it like a kid should. I do remember that all the barbers at the Wheaton shop were Italian but I only remember one name, Enzo, only because my brother and I found that name to be particularly hilarious. Otherwise they were all the same in that there was not going to be any deviation from the traditional "regular boys" cut or the rough treatment dealt out. Any of the three or four available barbers would do as apparently any sort of artistic expression in hairstyling was frowned upon in those days. After all, these were not liberal times. We all were afraid of the H bomb and there were commies everywhere. It was no time for barbers (a conservative lot anyways) to be fooling around with the heads of the nations kids. Any deviation from the norm might just earn them the "pink" label and get them blackballed from cutting hair in any decent establishment. Anyhow, the effect on me was mostly negative and this might explain why I care little for getting my haircut these days.
There was one bright moment. Call it sort of our own personal "Prague Spring" where for a brief moment in time there was light in our lives. We endured the tried and true ritual of the Wheaton shop until my brother Kinne came up with one of his most brilliant childhood schemes. He discovered through the kid grapevine that in Wheaton at this time there was a barber school where for only 60 cents you could go and get a haircut. The only drawback was that your hair was going to be cut by a barber trainee who depending on the stage of their training, might or might not be too good. However, it was well worth the risk as in those days parents did not accompany 11 year old boys to the barber shop. At least my dad did not. He decided when our hair was getting two long and then gave us the appropriate buck and a half and sent us off to walk to Wheaton with instructions to return home with less hair. Apparenlty he was not too concerned about any disrespect that might be shown to us by the barbers. Other than that we were left to our own devices. It was our good fortune that our dad did not know of the barber school. Being the sort of dad that he was, if he knew, he would have naturally opted to send us to the cheapest place he could. However with him ignorant to our recent discovery, we would collect the money from him for a full price haircut and then go to the barber school for the discount hair cut and pocket the difference. That is to say we pocketed it for about as long as it took us to get from the barber school to the "Wheaton News Stand" where we would blow it all on candy and comic books. Those were heady days when when a box of candy or candy bar cost about a nickle and comic books were no more than 20 cents. We were rolling in dough. Fifty cents was our standard weekly allowance so you can well imagine how this extra barber money suited us.
Of course it had to end. Somehow my father got wind of our scam and put a stop to it. He was a fair man and probably admired our entrepreneurial spirit, so there were no serious repercussions for our brief foray into fraud. However, once he became aware of the barber school, (Who told him? I blame my brother but the evidence is slim at best.) he just adjusted the amount of money that we got for our cuts to the discount rate and life went on. After all to an adult, a bad regular boys cut was really not too different looking from one of the higher quality. It certainly did not bother my dad too much to look at us.
So there you have it. For about a year or so in my sweet boyhood I actually looked forward to getting a haircut but not because I thought any higher of the barbers and the experience. It is just that the extra money made that particular medicine go down easier. Before and after that, it pretty much has been pure hell.
As a kid, my brother and I were dutifully dispatched off to the Wheaton Barber shop located on Georgia Ave next to the Baskin Robbins store. I think cuts were about $1.5o back then. No more than two bucks anyways. There was pretty much only one of two styles for a kid to choose from in those days. One, the "buzz" cut was reserved for Wheaton's core group of "greasers" who generally chose that style to compliment their black leather jackets and green "Max" work pants, or for those who were about to enter the army. For those of us kids who did not aspire to a career in Vietnam or as an auto mechanic, the only other choice for a haircut was the "regular boys" style which consisted of essentially a near buzz cut with a small tuft of hair left in the front for appearance sake. The custom was for the barber to generously lube up this surviving tuft with Vitalis hair ointment and them set it up in a nice, natty little flip. After allowing about ten minutes for the Vitalis to dry, depending on the humidity and wind conditions, you would have a perfect rock hard flip which was good until the next time your parents made you wash your hair. After that, it was bangs of some sort until your next date with the barber. The barbers of that era were not too gentle to kids. I remember the heavy hands on the top of my head to ensure that my pate was in just the right angle for the barber to remove the maximum amount of hair. It was a time when kids did not complain and if any adult figured that a stiff adjustment in head position was called for, there was little support from the public for our basic human rights. The authorities were not called in and the offending barber faced no jail time or public humiliation by having his name put on some sort of intenet list. No sir, you went to the barber, sat in the chair when called, got the cut the barber felt like given you, held still and kept you mouth shut and took it like a kid should. I do remember that all the barbers at the Wheaton shop were Italian but I only remember one name, Enzo, only because my brother and I found that name to be particularly hilarious. Otherwise they were all the same in that there was not going to be any deviation from the traditional "regular boys" cut or the rough treatment dealt out. Any of the three or four available barbers would do as apparently any sort of artistic expression in hairstyling was frowned upon in those days. After all, these were not liberal times. We all were afraid of the H bomb and there were commies everywhere. It was no time for barbers (a conservative lot anyways) to be fooling around with the heads of the nations kids. Any deviation from the norm might just earn them the "pink" label and get them blackballed from cutting hair in any decent establishment. Anyhow, the effect on me was mostly negative and this might explain why I care little for getting my haircut these days.
There was one bright moment. Call it sort of our own personal "Prague Spring" where for a brief moment in time there was light in our lives. We endured the tried and true ritual of the Wheaton shop until my brother Kinne came up with one of his most brilliant childhood schemes. He discovered through the kid grapevine that in Wheaton at this time there was a barber school where for only 60 cents you could go and get a haircut. The only drawback was that your hair was going to be cut by a barber trainee who depending on the stage of their training, might or might not be too good. However, it was well worth the risk as in those days parents did not accompany 11 year old boys to the barber shop. At least my dad did not. He decided when our hair was getting two long and then gave us the appropriate buck and a half and sent us off to walk to Wheaton with instructions to return home with less hair. Apparenlty he was not too concerned about any disrespect that might be shown to us by the barbers. Other than that we were left to our own devices. It was our good fortune that our dad did not know of the barber school. Being the sort of dad that he was, if he knew, he would have naturally opted to send us to the cheapest place he could. However with him ignorant to our recent discovery, we would collect the money from him for a full price haircut and then go to the barber school for the discount hair cut and pocket the difference. That is to say we pocketed it for about as long as it took us to get from the barber school to the "Wheaton News Stand" where we would blow it all on candy and comic books. Those were heady days when when a box of candy or candy bar cost about a nickle and comic books were no more than 20 cents. We were rolling in dough. Fifty cents was our standard weekly allowance so you can well imagine how this extra barber money suited us.
Of course it had to end. Somehow my father got wind of our scam and put a stop to it. He was a fair man and probably admired our entrepreneurial spirit, so there were no serious repercussions for our brief foray into fraud. However, once he became aware of the barber school, (Who told him? I blame my brother but the evidence is slim at best.) he just adjusted the amount of money that we got for our cuts to the discount rate and life went on. After all to an adult, a bad regular boys cut was really not too different looking from one of the higher quality. It certainly did not bother my dad too much to look at us.
So there you have it. For about a year or so in my sweet boyhood I actually looked forward to getting a haircut but not because I thought any higher of the barbers and the experience. It is just that the extra money made that particular medicine go down easier. Before and after that, it pretty much has been pure hell.
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