FSBO Novel Preface

Preface

We are For Sale By Owners, "FSBOs." We spend our time trying to sell ourselves and others on what we are doing or what we want to believe. While knowledge is power, we are often victims of ignorance.

Most of us are outsiders. Outside of the narrow worlds that we occupy, we have only superficial understanding of the way most things really are. We fail to consider how people became like they are. What we see is not all that there is. Look at yourself. Why are you like this? Are you what other people think? Or, are you a lot more? Are you all good, or all bad? I doubt it! I believe we are all the products of the choices we have made. We can make new choices. We must gain knowledge with which we can make better decisions. It is my hope that you will enjoy a good read. In so doing, I pray you will glean some useful information, gain insider's awareness of elements that may affect you, and heed some of the warnings that are integrated in this book.

In FSBOs, evil gains entry when a housewife opens her door to strangers. Each has a personal interest at heart, derivative of individual experience and choices. We will visit some murky worlds that you may never have wanted to see, each owned or possessed by the character who has chosen to live there. While fictional, such lives do exist. The multiple storylines are tied together by a common plight, that of people who set out to sell either who they are or their homes by themselves. The villans are ignorance, greed, power, lust, self-service, and misguided belief systems. It is easy to say that, of such things, we are all victims.

Whether we like it or not, we are each owners of ourselves. Frequently, we are negatively affected by the consequences of our own poor choices. Sometimes, we are victims of the ruthless choices of others. Usually, there were warning signs which we ignored precipitating our tragedies. We went our own way, selling ourselves and others on what we wanted to believe, For Sale By Owners, "FSBOs".

If the proceeding "Preface" appeals to you, you might consider investing in a copy of the novel from which it was extracted.Or, you may read it free online at http://books.iuniverse.com/viewbooks.asp?isbn=0595287034&page=fm3

If you wish to comment, I encourage you to e-mail me.

Respectfully,
Russ

Russ Miles is author of the novel, For Sale By Owners:FSBO. A "Seasoned Real Estate NAR® Broker," disabled by Multiple Sclerosis, Russ writes books & articles on varied subjects, poetry and songs. Google russ miles. FOR SALE BY OWNERS:FSBO ISBN 0-595-28703-4,in trade paperback, is available by phone or Internet:1-800-Authors to order direct! Adobe e-book & hard cover editions also available at Amazon.com, at Barnes and Noble, and other fine booksellers. Comments: MilesRuss@Gmail.com.[Visit soulful-writer.com]

There is something emotionally charged about the buying and selling of New York high-end real estate. How else to explain the juggernaut of reality TV shows about high-end brokers?

After 30 years of marriage, Sharon and Michael Newman decided it was finally time to move from the Catskills to New York City.

On blocks near Kissena Park streets are quiet, houses are small, and the electricity that charges the atmosphere in downtown Flushing is nowhere to be found.

A five-story, seven-bedroom house in Brooklyn Heights has sweeping views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline.

Demand is so intense that there are waiting lists in some buildings, and a few landlords report that eager renters are even bidding up rents.

Sales at the very high end of the market barely missed a beat in the recession. But that prosperity hasn’t yet trickled down.

A Flatiron condo, a Midtown South co-op and a Brooklyn Heights carriage house.

A four-bedroom ranch in Montclair, N.J., and a four-bedroom colonial Cape in Babylon, N.Y.

For a century, Roosevelt Island housed a grim penitentiary. It was demolished in the 1930s.

More borrowers are opting for fixed-rate loans with terms other than the standard 30 or 15 years, especially when it comes to refinancings.

Two more glass skyscrapers are added to a group of towers on the waterfront of Long Island City.

Insurance coverage for a co-op unit; when a tenant is ‘blacklisted’; a co-op is smaller than estimated.

The market for $500,000-to-$600,000 houses in Westchester has become especially active.

A shaky real estate market means more sellers are providing buyer concessions, from gift cards to help with paying property taxes.

Houses of worship are adaptable to residential and other uses as congregations dwindle.

Nearly two million Americans could benefit from mortgage relief from the nation’s biggest banks, as part of a broad government settlement to be announced on Thursday.

A cold war-era satellite relay station is for sale in California after a Silicon Valley mogul gave up on plans to turn it into a weekend home.

How can I make my front porch more appealing to buyers?

Court hearings meant to protect New York homeowners from foreclosure are hopelessly slowed by endless paperwork and requests for additional information.

The Bay Area and Silicon Valley expect the windfall from the Facebook stock offering to make their in-demand region even hotter.

The house, designed by the architect Eric Fisher, looms over the street like a big industrial arm.

A town house in Dallas, a midcentury modern in Rhode Island and a Tudor in Denver.

Prices in some parts of the country are still off by as much as 25 percent from their 2007 peak.

Trinity Church is the largest landlord in Hudson Square and is part of the effort to rezone the area to residential from manufacturing.

Rising oil prices and a boom in shale exploration are leading companies to add office space in the Houston area, most notably Exxon Mobil.

Ms. de França is the president and chief executive of Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, which focuses on new residential developments.

Meet the real estate broker’s interns: an ambitious group willing to do anything, earn nothing and wake up early on a Sunday to fluff the couch cushions at open houses.

A Flatiron condo, a Midtown South co-op and a Brooklyn Heights carriage house.

A four-bedroom ranch in Montclair, N.J., and a four-bedroom colonial Cape in Babylon, N.Y.

Homes in Dallas, Rhode Island and Denver.

Compare the cost of renting and buying equivalent homes.

For recently divorced men, a new breed of decorators offers help navigating a strange new world.

Plants that light up the winter garden can be found at Broken Arrow Nursery in Connecticut, which has long been a favorite of gardening geeks.

A sister in need drew the painter Beverly McIver back home to North Carolina, unaware that a new beginning was in store for both of them.

A jewelry designer finds striking new objects for storage.

Timothy Sakamoto and Jochen Repolust are part of the small but growing niche making mobile apps focused on specific works of architecture.

To promote an auction of 20th- and 21st-century design, the interior designer Stephen Sills has created a preview exhibition in an apartment at the Apthorp.

Fishs Eddy now sells plates acquired from the archives of the now-defunct Syracuse China Corporation, many more than 100 years old.

The designer Russell Greenberg creates custom baby rattles with ends shaped like profiles of mom and dad.