Are you in a house-hunting, email coma?

I am checking email. I am holding my breath. My heart rate goes up. My brain begins to whirl as I try to file the enormous amounts of email I have in my inbox: Who should I respond to now? Who can wait? Which should I delete? Another viagra email? Who should I call? How did I miss THIS email? Aargh.

I was talking with a client about this. Turns out she is the same way. Turns out there is a name for it.

Email Apnea.

Yes, you read it correctly.

So I googled it. And sure enough, it exists.

Email Apnea has been defined as "a temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doing email."

It seems there is this woman, Linda Stone, who has been researching this. She says that email apnea can lead to all sorts of health-related issues, such as obesity and diabetes. Huh? She coined the phrase "continuous partial attention." Linda says, "We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking."

Fascinating.

So this same client who I was talking with is constantly looking for the best house out there. She is twittering, craigslisting, googling, zillowing...all in an effort to find the best deal out there. The process has been grueling for her. She is so afraid of missing the opportunity that she has tuned into the search 24hour/day. She found a house and wanted to put in an offer, then backed out for fear of finding a better one. She filed this house under the "check back" folder. Huh?

You get my point.

Sounds like we all need a little breather.

Woah, Nelly. That is some growth.

Hold on, everyone. The headline in the paper this morning says "East Bay population continues to grow." 2.5 million. Yessiree, 2.5 million peeps living in the good ol' East Bay.

2007: 22,805 new people joined our culturally rich, food-savvy, have-you-changed-out-your-flourescent-lightbulbs-yet community. That is enough people to fill the city of El Cerrito alone.

This is an increase of 0.93% from 2006.

Here's the kicker: the growth didn't come from the kiddies. Last year there were 29,289 fewer East Bay kids between the ages of 5 and 13 than there were in 2002.

The median age in Alameda County rose to 37.1 in 2007, up from 36.8 in 2006, and in Contra Costa County, the median age was 37.9 last year, up from 37.8 in 2006 and 36.4 in 2000.

So what does this tell me? Looks like a few people are going to be needing homes this year.

Hello Red Oak

I had an extraordinarily busy July- which is why I haven't had much time to blog. Part of the reason is that I have some exciting news. I know, I know, you can barely contain yourself!

After an amazing 2-1/2 years with Windermere Real Estate I have decided to move on with a different brokerage.

On August 4th I joined Red Oak Realty in Berkeley. Red Oak is a full-service, boutique brokerage and has been ond of the leading independent brokerages for over 30 years.

Never fear, you will still get the same great service from me, I just have a new name attached to my business card! What hasn't changed? My cell and website.
Speaking of websites, check out Red Oak's website, www.redoakrealty.com Here you can search for houses, sign up for listing watch, and more.

Thank you for coming along with me.