The Catalina Foothills

multiple offers in the Tucson Foothills

What with ongoing slow and slower sales in the real estate market, it might seem like a strange time to be talking about multiple offers.
Multiple offers don't happen at a time like this, they're a thing of the past, right. Wrong.
Multiple offers happen in all types of markets, but in slow markets with high inventories of homes for sale, multiple offers catch almost everyone by surprise. When a really good home gets listed for sale - good location, nice lot, desirable floorplan, updated and impeccable condition, and priced right - it's very common for that home to sell super quickly, often with multiple offers, even in a slow market.
But that's understandable, or it should be, because that's an outstanding house, and while buyers are pickier these days, savvy buyers realize that they've got to act quickly when the right one comes along - despite the slow market.
What's more confounding, and maddening - and it's happened to me when representing buyers in the Tucson Foothills - is when
a less than wonderful house, that's been sitting on the market for quite a while with no action, suddenly gets multiple offers on one particular day.
It's as if the fairy godmother of real estate suddenly waved her magic wand, spreading fairy dust and creating a magical allure, for that house, for that day.
If this sounds nuts, and I know it does, ask anyone who's been in the real estate business for a while. They'll confirm it, but they won't be able to explain it.
Elizabeth Weintraub, on About.com Home Buying / Selling
talks about these unexpected and inexplicable multiple offers,
and offers some advice to help get a leg-up in this situation,
in her recent article,
Competing With Other Home Buyers in Multiple Offer Situations

But she can't explain it either, so I'm sticking with the fairy godmother theory.

New listing, not yet in MLS

I just listed a wonderful house for sale in the Tucson Foothills and thought I'd pop it in here before it goes in the Tucson Association of Realtors MLS tomorrow.
Here are the details;
A southwest contemporary in District 16 schools, built in 1993,
3261 sq. ft., 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, very large kitchen with island wide-open to family room, separate living/dining room,
spacious master suite, large covered patio, pool and spa and a gigantic 3 car garage with a separate 16'X10' storage area. 
All on one level,(except some steps from garage) with tall ceilings, arched doorways, large windows looking north to the mountain views and south to the city lights. Freshly painted, impeccably maintained and move in ready. $845,000.  Call/email me;
520 271 4164, [email protected]

The Tucson public rates Tucson REALTORS

The Tucson Association of REALTORS® has released the results of a survey done this past April to determine the overall perception of REALTORS® in general, as well as how homebuyers and sellers perceived their own individual experience with a REALTOR®.
The topline results are as follows:
• 91.9% or homebuyers and sellers in Tucson are likely to use a
  REALTOR in their next transaction.
• 81.3% report that their most immediate experience (based on a   
  transaction) with a REALTOR was a positive one.
• 69% report that their general perception (not based on a
  transaction with a REALTOR) was positive.
• 68.6% felt their perception of real estate agents has remained
  unchanged in the past five years.
• 6.2% reported that their experience was neither negative or
   positive.
• 7.1% indicated that their experience was somewhat negative.
• 5.4% indicated that their experience was very negative.

Open ended responses to "what made it a negative experience for you" included: "I did all the leg work", "Lack of attention to details",
"Pushiness, trying to get me to buy a house I did not want", "The inability of the REALTOR® to follow through", "Very disorganized, didn't listen".
On the plus side, comments from respondents who had a positive experience were: "They did all the legwork for me. We told them what we wanted and they came up with six or seven places and we found one". "Everything went smoothly and we didn't have to worry about the details". "He was easy to work with and I felt like he had my best interests at heart". "She didn't push us at all. She gave us the options and let us choose and she was very low-pressure".
"They did some research for us that was above the call of duty".

This is the first time I've read the results of this type of survey about REALTORS®, and all-in-all I find the results encouraging.
The overall findings are very positive, but surprising too, in view of the fact that REALTORS® are so often the butt of so much criticism.
I read a lot of real estate articles online, from Tucson sources and sources all over the country. And if you scan the comments left by readers, the one thing that stands out consistently, regardless of the news source - newspaper, magazine, CNN, you name it - is that the majority of reader comments about real estate agents are negative. I'd say they're easily 65% negative, with the remaining 35% falling somewhere between mildly to wildly positive. Reading these comments, and reading between the lines, I've often felt that the person commenting was not speaking from personal experience, but just jumping on the bash the REALTOR® bandwagon. Nevertheless, aside from being very discouraging, reading all these negative comments, I've often wondered why people continue to use REALTORS® at all. 
Yet in this survey we have 81% reporting that their most recent experience with a REALTOR® was a positive one, with 50% of them responding very positive, and 91.9% indicating that they'll use a Realtor in their next transaction.
Somewhat, but only somewhat more in line with the number of negative reader comments are the survey findings of the general perception of REALTORS® - that is, not based on having worked with one - at only 69% positive, with just 22% of them reporting very positive. Why is that.
The study concludes; This is likely a due to a common phenomenon in which some like the person they deal with, but are less positive about the group as a whole (similar to “my Congressman” versus “Congress”).
I think the other thing that influences the discrepency between this surveys findings and the general perception of REALTORS, as indicated by reader comments, is that those who've received bad service are much more apt to write-in to complain, than those who've received good service. I know it's true for me. I expect good service, and when I get it, I don't usually write-in to tell all about the good service. But I often do when I get bad service. At a restaurant, at the bank, with an online business, at the auto dealer, the airline, the hotel. I think a lot of people do.
And by the way, the Tucson Association of REALTORS® has released the results of this survey to it's members only, to help them understand how the public perceives them, and to identify those areas where improvement is needed. Not so we can go round tooting our horn and pounding our chests. I'm the only one guilty of that.
Reader comments invited.

is FSBO for you

Last week in a post titled selling your home online I railed against an article that appeared in the Arizona Daily Star, Selling home online can net a hefty gain. My vehemence was directed at the glaring oversimplification and fairy tale nature of the Star article, which, to put it lightly, made light of what's involved in trying to sell your home on your own.
But in the course of deriding that article, I may have given the impression that I thought selling your home online, and on your own, is not feasible. That wasn't my intention. Selling your home online, and on your own, is feasible, because of the information and tools that are available on the internet. 
It's right for some, and not for others.
Are you internet savvy, are willing to do your homework, are you a good negotiator, do you have the time and patience, do you understand the pitfalls, and are you willing to hire a real estate attorney if necessary. If so, you may be a good candidate for putting your home up for sale on your own.
And if you sell it, although you'll surely save some money on commissions, you may or may not come out ahead in the end. 
And in the end - coming out of the deal with more money, while staying out of court - is what the whole debate is about.
San Francisco, usually on the leading edge of new trends, is one of the most liberal and tech savvy cities in the country, so when the San Francisco Chronicle publishes an article on the pros and cons of selling your home on your own, I brace myself for the inevitable beating that we real estate agents are about to take. 
As expected, these two articles from SFGATE.com, the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle, while not particularly flattering to real estate agents, they do offer a more thoughtful big-picture view of the pros and cons of selling your home, that others would have you believe is a no-brainer.
For Sale By Owner: Are real estate agents really necessary?  and
For Sale By Owner: How agentless transactions can turn into royal nightmares

a win-win deal for Tucson buyers & sellers

Long Realty (the company I work for in Tucson) has a great new promotion that's a win-win deal for both buyers and sellers in Arizona. It goes like this-
Save thousands! Use Long Mortgage when you purchase any Long Realty listing between now and September 15th, and save 1% on your interest rate for 1 year. On a $250,000 mortgage, you could save $160 per month – that’s $1,920 over a year!
It's a great deal for the buyer, they save a chunk of money for that first year in the house. And it's great for the seller that has their home listed with Long Realty, because it differentiates them,
and gives them a real competitive advantage in the marketplace.

is it turnaround time for Tucson

From an article in today's Arizona Daily Star
Home sales data raise turnaround hopes for Tucson
"...some indicators in the report — released Friday by the Tucson Association of Realtors — are pointing to a brighter future for the market", said Judy Lowe, president of the Tucson Multiple Listing Service.
here are those numbers for Tucson home sales
        June home sales (07 vs. 06)
• Homes sold: 1,226 Down 19.55 percent
• Pending sales: 2,053 Up 18.92 percent
• Median Price: $229,000, UP 1.78%
While the number of sales that closed in June was lower than at the same time a year ago, the number of pending contracts increased by about 19 percent, according to the report.
Judy Lowe said those signs mean the end is likely near for the slowdown in the Tucson market.
And there were fewer homes sitting on the market in June. The number of active listings dropped to 8,665 last month after reaching as high as 10,387 in April.
While I tend to agree with Judy Lowe that the end of the slowdown is near, I see the 19% increase in pending sales as an encouraging sign that will be a more convincing indicator if we see a similar increase next month and the month after that.
But the real reason that I agree is because of what I see happening out on the street between buyers and sellers. And Judy Lowe says it "Sellers are willing to give a little bit, and buyers are willing to not think they can steal the property" That's what I'm seeing.
After being far apart for a long time, sellers and buyers have gone a long way to bridging the gulf between them, and are now at, or very near agreement on where prices should be. Once that happens, homes sell.

selling your home online

Yesterday the Arizona Daily Star online had an article titled
Selling home online can net a hefty gain. The author, Marshall Loeb, tells us ' Despite the recent housing market slump, many Americans are still paying a walloping 6 percent commission to real estate brokers'. He gets it wrong right out of the gate. It's not despite the recent housing market slump that many Americans are paying a walloping 6 percent - if anything, the slump has caused people to continue to use proven methods to try and sell their home & not experiment with methods that have been much less reliable, even in the best of times.
When many thousands of homes are listed for sale on MLS's all across the country, and sitting on the market for months, most home sellers would not choose to drastically reduce the amount of exposure that their home is getting to potential buyers on the chance that they may save a couple of percent in commission.
He then states that Many homeowners are now opting to market their property directly to the consumer using online services like Yahoo Real Estate and Craigslist. And he ties that in with- 80% of those searching for a home use the internet. Leaving you with the impression that it's simple to sell your home on the internet by using Yahoo and Craigslist, because, 80% of the home searches are being conducted on the internet, on sites like Yahoo and Craigslist.
In fact the great majority of the searches of those 80% searching online are doing so on real estate brokerage web sites and MLS's, not on Yahoo or Craigslist. Because those real estate brokerages and MLS's have made all their listings available for people to search on the internet. Yahoo and Craigslist are great sites, but they contain just a teeny tiny fraction of the homes for sale. 
Then, ' Six percent may not sound like much, but consider: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average price of a home is $313,000, which means the average seller has to pony up nearly $19,000 in broker fees. This is a hefty penalty for not selling your own home, one that more and more Americans are unwilling to pay'.
Mr. Loeb consistently uses 6 percent as the amount of commission charged by real estate brokers, leading you to believe - intentionally it seems since I'm sure he knows otherwise- that it's 6 percent, like it or not, with no choice for the consumer. 
In fact there is a whole range of choices in the services offered by various real estate brokerages and the cost of those services, just like in every other industry and business in this country.
But it's a very convenient omission on Loeb's part, since it allows him to tell the story the way he wants, without being hindered by the facts. And again simplifying beyond belief, the $19,000 savings is offered as a given, with no mention of the possible trade-offs involved, or the fact that this $19,000 savings assumes that the buyers are also not represented by an agent, hence no commission.
A very unlikely scenario.
And whether the commission is 6, 5 or 4 percent, or whatever it is, it's not a penalty, it's a fee that's paid for services rendered.
And the fee is only paid if the home sells. No sale, no fee.
In that same vein of characterizing a fee for services as a penalty, would it be correct to consider the cost of an ad in the Arizona Daily Star (which you pay for whether or not it works), or, the cost of a subscription to the Star, to be a penalty.
We can choose, and increasingly many of us do, to sell our cars, used furniture and other stuff on the internet for free, and not put an ad in the Star. And we can read the news all day long on the internet for free. Why pay a penalty to the Star to subsidize these fairy tales.
Then Mr Loeb talks with Colby Sambrotto, chief operating officer of ForSaleByOwner.com, a leading online home marketplace, who says
(surprise-surprise) "Selling your home online is simpler than you might think", and then goes on to list the three simple steps to sell your home online and on your own, and how to accomplish each of them. (For the details read the article HERE)
1. Find out what your home is worth
2. Market your property
and, 3. Transfer the title
That's it, it's childs play, easy as 1,2,3.
This article would be laughable really and it's hard to believe that anyone would take it seriously, nevertheless, the glaring omissions and blatant oversimplification misinform and mislead on a subject that's important to me and to lots of other people.

something's happening here

It happens every year like clockwork. As summer arrives in Tucson, with temperatures hovering above 100, second home owners and winter visitors migrate back to their primary residences in cooler climes. And since we have a lot of second home owners and winter visitors, the roads, shops, restaurants and just about everything else in the Tucson Foothills are half-full, or half-empty, or less.
I never think about making a reservation for dinner in the summer at all but the most popular, or reservation required places.
You could walk into most restaurants without a reservation and get seated immediately, and sometimes they were so nearly-empty that you felt like an intruder. I wrote about this at the beginning of summer in 102 in the shade, and in hindsight, I wish I'd waited to write that piece. Because I've been out to dinner at quite a few restaurants since I wrote 102 in the shade, and this year for some reason, it's a whole different story. Every restaurant has been full or nearly full, and often we've had to wait for a table, sometimes as long as 45 minutes. These places have been jammed, with people waiting at the bar for tables and waiting outside in the heat. And I'm talking about week nights, Monday thru Thursday. I can't imagine what happens on the weekend.
I don't get it. And to add to the mystery, a lot of big new restaurants have opened in the Tucson Foothills in the last couple of years, a few of them in just the last few months - Big restaurants with many tables and big bars that seat lots of people. What's going on?
Are more second home owners staying here for the summer, are we suddenly getting an influx of summer visitors, have people given up cooking for the summer, are the new restaurants in the Tucson Foothills attracting a new crowd from all over Tucson, or, are people just eating out a lot more?
If you've found yourself waiting for a table on a Tuesday evening when it's 102, I'd like to hear your theory on what's happening.

Flip This House

The folks at Flip This House have asked me to post this casting notice for the upcoming season. If you haven't seen the show it might seem counter intuitive to be flipping houses in the current climate, but when you see what goes into these flips it'll all make sense. Web Site: www.aetv.com/flipthishouse/

        Now Casting the New Season of
              Flip This House on A&E!

Flip This House, A&E's #1 rated lifestyle show, has been to Charleston, Atlanta, San Antonio, and New Haven. Which city will be next?!!

813 Casting and Departure Films are conducting a nationwide search for the new cast of characters who will be featured on the upcoming season of Flip This House! Will it be your team?

We're looking for confident, charismatic, motivated and opinionated people who "flip" residential properties for a living. We want real-estate adrenaline junkies who love the high risk, high reward nature of their jobs and who are devoted to doing a great job!

If you would like your team to be featured on the upcoming season of Flip This House, send an email to [email protected]. Include your contact info, bios on you and your team, and some reasons why your team should be the next to be featured on Flip This House! Teams should consist of four or more people.
Web Site: www.aetv.com/flipthishouse/

the Foothills lifestyle

For a long time now I've said    '...the Foothills is pretty much built out, so that what you see is what will be, with few exceptions',
But now I find that I've got to back-pedal on that statement a bit.
On June 14th I wrote Last Big Development which talked about the 54 new homes that A.F.Sterling was building in the Foothills along Sunrise Dr by La Paloma, along with new commercial/retail space.
Then in New Concept for the Tucson Foothills I wrote about RiverWalk, a new development of 120 homes, plus restaurants and shops, that offer a style of housing and lifestyle that has not been available in the Foothills, 'til now. 
When I made the' pretty much built out' statement, I was thinking -traditional Foothills residential - an acre lot for one single family home. There are very few of those lots available.
But the developers, builders and investors, have found a way to utilize land that doesn't fit with that traditional concept of Foothills living, and in doing so, to broaden that concept and introduce new types of housing and lifestyle choices.
I never thought I'd be saying this, because I'm crazy about the traditional Foothills style of living, it's why I moved here, but I welcome these new concepts, and think they'll be very good for the Foothills. They're going to introduce the Foothills to people who are not interested in the traditional Foothills lifestyle, and probably wouldn't have considered living here, 'til now.
I think this all started -though maybe that wasn't the intention- with the explosion of new condos that have become available in the last couple of years in the Foothills. The new condos have made low maintenance, moderately priced housing in an upscale area, available to a lot more people.
You can buy a one bedroom condo in the Foothills in a great area for around $150K. While you could do the same thing a few years ago, there was a very limited supply of condos in the Tucson Foothills and they were mostly bought, sold and inhabited by second home-owner winter visitors. Today, with many more condos available in the Foothills, I see a lot of younger people interested in buying a condo as their primary residence in the Tucson Foothills.
Riverwalk, and to a lesser extent the A.F Sterling homes in Paloma Ridge, have begun to turn the definition of Tucson Foothills living on it's head. And that's a good thing, because it will add a new dimension to what it means to live in the Foothills, and in doing so broaden the appeal of the Tucson Foothills and help to diversify the population.

New concept for the Tucson Foothills

The other day I went to visit Riverwalk, a new subdivision of 120 homes along the Rillito River adjacent to Hacienda del Sol Rd in the lower Foothills.
The multi-colored buildings in the picture are the homes of Riverwalk.

These are new tri-level single family homes built close together in an urban street grid arrangement. The Riverwalk brochure bills it as "Southwest Charm with an Urban Attitude", and I think they've captured that. They're very charming, and once they're completed, along with the adjoining restaurants, shops and other amenities, I imagine that the area will have a kind of Tucson version of urban-ness. (I grew up in NYC, so I have a pretty hardcore definition of urban.) In any case, they're very different, there's nothing else like this in the Foothills, or any where else in Tucson, except perhaps for downtown.
Depending on how a buyer chooses to configure the space, which is about 2000 sf, you can have either 2 or 3 bedrooms & baths, and a 2 or 3 car garage, plus elevator. The model that I saw was beautifully finished with solid walnut floors, granite counters, stone tile in the bathrooms and high quality lighting and materials throughout.
Each unit also has a rooftop deck complete with outdoor kitchen - built-in grill, fridge, sink, granite counters and marine grade cabinets.
The sales person that I spoke with told me that the first phase of 40 homes was sold out, and they were taking reservations for phase 2, with a total of 120 homes planned.
This is a bold move for the Tucson Foothills, but one that is very well executed, and I expect will be very successful.
The web site for Riverwalk is www.ArizonaRiverWalk.com.

**There are some discrepencies between the info on the RiverWalk web site and the info I was given at the site,e.g., the web site indicates that these are townhomes, the agent at the site and the MLS indicate that these are single family homes.
Be sure to verify all info before proceeding.
I do not represent RiverWalk or properties in RiverWalk, or have any financial interest in RiverWalk.

Tucson Foothills Home Sales, January to June

Here's a comparison of single family homes SOLD in the Tucson Foothills for the period of January - June 2006 vs. January - June 2007. This is for homes sold through the Tucson Association of Realtors MLS. During this period there were an average of 330 homes for sale priced from $500,000 & UP.

Price Range	Jan-June 06 # Homes Sold	Jan-June 07 # Homes Sold	+/- %
$500 - $750K	119	117	-1.6
$750 - 1mil	61	46	-24
$1mil - $1.5mil	47	33	-29
$1.5 - $2.0mil	13	15	+15
$2.0mil & UP	14	8	-42
Total Homes SOLD	254	219	-13
*Avg List Price	$754,905	$739,429	-2
Avg SOLD Price	$726,231	$706,790	-2.6
Median List Price	$595,000	$579,250	-2.6
Median SOLD Price	$580,000	$550,978	-5
$$ Value of Homes SOLD	$299,933,490	$245,962,934	-18

*The Avg. & Median List and Sold prices, and the Total $$ Value figures, include the homes SOLD in ALL price ranges in the Tucson Foothills - not just those from $500K & UP.

Although sales are off 13% overall from last year, your expectations of the market should really depend on what price range you're in. $500K to $750K is barely feeling the pinch, while the upper-end with one exception, which had resisted the slowdown for so long, is down a bunch - though with some improvement in the last month or so. I don't have a good explanation, or theory, on why the $1.5 to $2.0 price range is holding it's own so well, while everything around it is off by 29% or more.
More interesting is that the average list and average sold prices, though down a bit from last year, have risen from their low point earlier this year. (For the first quarter of 07 the average list price was $715,320 and average sold was $682,334) 
But regardless of where the numbers fall, out on the street, buyers are much more wary, they're pickier and they're taking their time to shop very carefully. And sometimes they do this to their dismay, as the best homes are still selling very well.

Our Greek Odyssey

For about five months now, my daughters Jenna and Margot have been planning, putting together and looking forward to, completing their last year of college in a study abroad program in Greece.
They did all the leg work, the investigating, coordinating, planning and budgeting. They completed all the applications and registrations for admittance to the program, to the Greek University (Aristotle University, what else) and the required student visas. They also pow-wowed with the counselors at their US schools and the University in Greece to select the appropriate classes, made all the travel plans, and coordinated the arrangements to leave the US for a year to study abroad.
By early June, everything was in place and they were ready to go.
We were very proud of them and thrilled for the great experience they would have, though we would miss them terribly.
The last piece of the puzzle was getting their passports back from the Greek Consulate in New York, stamped with the student visas. They had mailed their passports to the Greek Consulate in early May with a pre-paid return overnight shipping envelope, having already completed the application and been assured they were approved for the student visa.
The head of the Greek study abroad program let them know that their passports stamped with the student visa would arrive four to five days prior to their departure. The reason for this is that visas are granted for a limited period of time with the clock beginning to tick from the moment they are stamped - therefore sending them just prior to departure provides the longest useful life for the visa.
They were scheduled to fly the red-eye from Phoenix to New York on Friday June 29th, arrive in New York on Saturday the 30th and depart for Greece later that day.
Their passports and visas did not arrive on Monday or Tuesday the 25th & 26th. They called the head of the study abroad program and were assured that everything was OK, and the passports would probably arrive Wednesday the 27th, or at the very latest on Thursday the 28th. Not to worry.
No passports on Wednesday and none on Thursday. They're leaving the next day, Friday the 29th, but only if they have passports. And they start school in Greece on Monday, July 1st. When the passports didn't arrive on Thursday, we all freaked out and started calling & emailing the Greek Consulate.
A little while later the head of the study abroad program called with the tracking number for the overnight package, which was to be delivered on Friday. We logged on and saw that the package was in the system and scheduled to be delivered to our house on Friday morning. That's cutting it a little close, but we calmed down, went out to dinner and figured that all was OK.
Friday morning at 7, Jenna and Margot were online tracking the package, which showed that it had arrived in Tucson.
OK we're homefree. I told them to go over to the post office a few minutes before it opened and see if they could pick up the package before it was given to our mail carrier. Margot called me at 9 o'clock hysterical. The package arrived, but with just one passport, Jenna's.
We spoke with the Greek Consulate and the head of the study abroad program many times in the next few hours as they searched and attempted to locate Margot's passport.
Meanwhile we searched the web for passport offices and called every one that was geographically feasible to see if there was any way Margot could get an emergency passport, immediately. There are only two passport offices that can issue passports on the spot. One is in San Francisco, the other in New York. We tried to call the one in New York but could only get a recording telling us to leave a message and letting us know that the office was closed on Saturdays.
At 1 o'clock the head of the study abroad program called to tell us that he was sorry, but the Consulate could not find the passport. The Greek Consulate offered no guidance,no help and no apology, no nothing. We were frantic. We were supposed to leave in 3 hours to drive them to Phoenix for their red-eye to New York. I logged on to Senator John McCain's web site http://mccain.senate.gov/ and got the phone number of his Tucson office. I told Margot to call there, get someone on the phone, explain the situation and be persuasive.
Within 3 rings a fellow named Eric answered, and Margot calmly explained what had happened and that she needed his help in finding a way, Please!, to get a passport on Saturday morning in New York. (As I'm listening to this, I'm thinking that we've all lost touch, it takes 6 weeks to get a passport) He took our phone number and said he'd call her back. We looked at each other, all of us silently thinking that this was impossible, but we hung in, and Margot didn't give up for a second, she said 'where there's a will, there's a way', 'I'm flying to Greece tomorrow'.
By now it was almost 4:30 in New York, that's 4:30 on a Friday afternoon in the summer. Can you think of a worse time to try and get something done. Ten minutes later Eric from Senator McCain's office called back to tell Margot that he had spoken to and apparently used his influence with the head of the emergency passport office in Washington DC, who had the authority to approve opening the New York office on Saturday to get her a passport.
He gave her this passport official's direct line and told her to call him immediately.
She did, and after a very brief conversation, he too told Margot he'd call her back shortly. And a few minutes later, he did. And this is amazing. He told her that someone would be at the New York passport office Saturday morning to process and issue her an immediate passport. We about fell over.
He then faxed us an official confirmation of the appointment on United States Department of State stationery, which had a bunch of official and unintelligible government code, but clearly stated -
Please Assist: Margot Schneider. Will be at agency at: Saturday, 6/30, morning. Traveling to: Greece.
I'm not making this up, this really happened.
When Margot and Jenna arrived in New York on Saturday morning, they jumped in a cab to the Federal Building on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. And 2 hours later Margot walked out with a new passport, and an unshakeable belief in what can be done if you just keep trying.
Of course we owe it all to Senator John McCain's staff.
To their willingness to listen, their kind understanding, and their
no-bull, Get-It-Done attitude. Hurrah!