Ella: My money is on the two legged thieves. Possom and coon might make a clean grab, and I've caught both in my orchard, but hawks no way. Keep the people away next yr and, hopefully, grow more fruit. Disgusting isn't it!!!!! The Fruitnut

Jutes, what a cool address sign! Love the "Stars fell on" part at the top. On another note, not all states require one to turn in their plates or they aren't kept on the vehicle when it is sold. In Wisconsin, you can keep your plates and pretty much do what you want with them (except put them on a vehicle without paying the registration fee that is!).

I cant see the tomato plant very well but tomatoes, especially young ones are WAY sensitive to chemical anything. Just the drift of herbicide or in your case, perhaps pesticide can damage them. I have had my seedlings damaged when someone, some neighbor sprayed. If its a light dose, they will usually outgrow it. If heavy they will put out gnarly and/or spindly growth for a long time.

Good tips. Most of these are things ALL sellers SHOULD be doing (but many don't.) Taking active control is a good way to overcome a bad/incompetent seller's agent, too. (Although then it's frustrating because then you wonder why you're even paying a commission.) We did not go FSBO, but given the lack of guidance/advice/communication from our realtor, I feel like we did. I would add... possible in lieu of an appraisal, actively watch the MLS for a good period of time (preferably months, at least) prior to listing your house. Not all MLSs are the same, but ours has a public side which has sale prices, and of course there are a lot of other sites out there which can give you generally accurate information about days on market, etc.. And, if you're looking at listings on a near-daily basis, either on your local MLS or a good local aggregator, you'll likely become familiar with the properties and develop an encyclopedic knowledge of their features, when they were listed, when they went under contract, etc.... The aim is to become almost as familiar with the local market as a good realtor would be. Are homes almost always selling for under assessed value? Over? Are a lot of listings expiring? We found, for instance, that although there are a lot of higher-priced homes in our market, almost without exception the houses which are selling are selling for at least 10% under the tax assessment. This was true almost across the board... didn't matter if they were higher-end or lower-end homes. Most successful sales have started out at prices that low, or rapidly and decisively dropped their price to that level. So we aimed to start even lower than that, despite the higher price our realtor suggested. It's tough, especially because it meant a loss for us, but it got the job done, and done quickly. No languishing on the market with multiple price reductions. FSBO need to be as realistic about pricing, unless they don't really want to move. They need information in order to be realistic. Don't be led astray by all the houses asking high prices. Find out what things are actually selling for, and how many listings never sell at all. Also be conscious of the fact that as FSBO while you can probably gain access to sold prices, you won't have insight into seller concessions, so what looks like a high selling price may actually include closing costs rolled into the loan, etc.. This post was edited by lizzie_nh on Mon, Jul 7, 14 at 11:58