Real estate on TV is giving us all a chance to see how much property costs in different parts of the country. My all time favorite is Selling New York, which to me is a lesson in real estate every time it's on. My second favorite is House Hunters International, only because it's so baffling! Why is everyone dying to get out of this country to buy in another country? And why do they all want it furnished? I have seen the furniture that goes with the purchases and it seems a bit, ahem, unsavory. So I watch this show to wonder how these buyers got enough money to burn on an international vacation home. The show Million Dollar Listing (Los Angeles version; the New York version starts in March and I will watch) sort of misses the point for me, since it focuses on the agents a bit more than the houses. All I need to see are the houses, thanks. I work in real estate and watching people "act" while they "sell real estate" at the same time is hard to take, especially when the agents warrant throttling. Does arrogance make good television? Apparently. My favorite San Diego houses for sale at the price point of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000 are below.  My original post was going to be...

New from San Diego, California: San Diego Association of REALTORS selects Kimberly Dotseth as its 2011 Broker of the Year. On Saturday, January 12, 2012, I was named the 2011 Broker of the Year by the San Diego Association of REALTORS, a tremendous honor considering our chapter of the National Association of REALTORS has over 11,000 members in San Diego County. We are also the largest branch of NAR in the state of California. If interested, the press release is here: And if I can help you when selling or buying your home, you know that I am right here for you ~ let's get to work on your behalf! ~Kimberly

Welcome to the latest list of my favorite San Diego County houses for sale under $500,000. You already know that's not the entire criteria.  It's rather tough to make the list and it's not just about price. Let me tell you what I did to get to 13 houses. First, I searched our San Diego (Sandicor) Multiple Listing Service for detached homes in San Diego County currently for sale at $500,000 and under. None can be a short sale or bank owned. Take out thousands right there! The reason I remove these is because in my humble opinion 1) short sales are not necessarily "truly" for sale, therefore a waste of time; and 2) bank owned homes (also known as REOs or "real estate owned" by the bank) are often in rough shape, look disgusting and banks won't work with buyers on repairs or won't offer repair credits. These types of properties are never on my list. The houses have to be vacant. Wow! Why, you might wonder. Because those are the fastest homes to sell because they have the most motivated sellers: a vacant property with no income coming in from tenants and potentially a mortgage being paid? Bring the offers, bring the negotiation! And they are always the easiest to...

They say you're supposed to blog weekly, then work got in the way. The majority of my deals for 2011 came in the second half of the year, then totally piled on in December. All but one are closed as of Thursday. So I missed a few weeks of writing, but for reasons that make me happy and feeling satisfied when it comes to my career. It's the end of the year now, about 2 PM on New Year's Eve Day, and I am home for the day until we go to dinner tonight. Kerry is taking me to Cafe Chloe, one of our all time favorite restaurants in San Diego. We'll finish the evening at home with a bottle of French Champagne, already chilling. There are so many things to be grateful for. Taking stock of the business: It's great. But in this new year you may see me change up my brokerage a bit. There will be some re-branding and so forth, but I will continue to sell houses every day of the year and come to you with posts via this blog.  But change is in the wind even though it takes time. There are so many things I think of when gratitude comes to mind but of course health, Kerry, family and a good business are all at the top. My cats are great, mostly too fat, except for one who is sick with...

This email arrived today from a client who recently closed escrow, completely unsolicited and unedited. I will protect the writer's identity so I took it out.  As you can imagine, it made my day. This career has made me endlessly happy and all the other things I did prior to selling residential real estate and owning a real estate brokerage lead me here.  I dreamed of moments like this.  Thanks to the writer of course, and all those who get us to the points in our lives where we are blessed with this kind of communication: Hi Kim, I feel so bad that it has taken me so long to sit down and write you a note, but I wanted to be sure I had the time to genuinely express how grateful we are for you and how thankful we are for everything you have done for us over the last few months. Kim, you are simply amazing!!  You put your heart and soul into helping us find the perfect house, and when we did find the perfect house, you did everything in your power to make that happen for us.  I have never met anyone quite like you – someone with such an incredible work ethic but have more heart than most people I know!  You were so patient with us and walked us through every step and no...

Several sites have popped up to help those like me who blog to gauge whether our posts, or our sites for that matter, have impact. Who judges? It seems algorithms within the blog grading sites do the judging, and that's fine with me. Like a lot of "social media" grading, I take it all very much with a grain of salt. But when you get a good grade, even if you don't understand HTML and I don't, it feels good! Arbitrary and random it's not, if it tells you why you got a low score. Two sites get routine check-ins from me so I can check the very blog you're reading, greenboxhomes.com. One is WebsiteGrader.com and the other is Blog.Grader.com. These sites are both managed by a company called HubSpot that also provides some blog automation and marketing services. While I haven't taken advantage of their fee services yet, I do enjoy the free grading systems. Today WebsiteGrader.com gave me a score of 82, and Blog.Grader.com gave me a score of 94. Both admirable scores I suppose, but both services offer suggestions to make the site even better. I am not a Wordpress designer so I can take these to the mega talented person who built my site and ask him to implement suggestions,...