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I had to put Discover Columbus on a diet. The blog was bloated with food and the searches were all food. I am not a food blogger, just obsessed by food.

Due to my food obsession the news about one of my favorite places, The Columbus Fish Markets being for sale caught my eye.

I ran into a website about Restaurant Chains…Chain Leader that had a feature story about Cameron Mitchell, the man and the restaurant empire a few weeks ago. I think I blogged about the article a tad on Discover Columbus pre-diet. There are some great Columbus food bloggers in my blogroll, read them, I do. Discover Columbus would never fit into it’s Ittsy Bittsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini if I was not making it diet.

Columbus has too many cats according to the Capital Area Humane Society. CAHS is overflowing with felines at their shelter. It’s kitten season.

Capital Area Humane Society has a kitten shower this weekend. Saturday noon to three o’clock. There’s a pdf with more details on the Capital Area Humane Society website. I am too impatient to wait for it to open. (I hate .pdf files… they are great for sending a contract, emailing an addendum but when I am reading the web I hate ‘em.. because they open slowly but I digress.)

Kitten shower? I’ve heard of dog baths…the Central Ohio group that does dog baths is starting their season shortly. I read about it online. Someplace.

Kitten’s shower? I have bathed a cat a time or two. Maybe it’s shower as in a baby shower? Open the .pdf if you have the patience.

Last night on Channel 10 News they talked about the Columbus cat population explosion, one unaltered cat (unspayed?) In seven years that cat will be responsible for the reproduction of over 400,000 furry feline offspring.

The kitty at the top is Caesar, a Capital Area Humane Society alumnus. Alumnus? singular… my dog is a CAHS adoptee too, together they are CAHS alumni?

We searched Cozy Cat Cottage in Powell, Cat Welfare in Clintonville; some special events done by some of the animal rescue groups but met Caesar at the Capital Area Humane Society and fell in love. He was an older kitten, it was not kitten season.

Visit the Columbus K9 page on my website for Central Ohio animal rescue groups and shelters. I was a cat person… then in 1990 or 1991 I was transformed into a dog person but since meeting Caesar I am torn… but the page on my website is still Columbus K9… it’s mostly dogs but a couple of the rescue groups do both. CAHS shelters cats, dogs, rabbits, pocket pets (?) and more.

Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

Say it is not so! It was staged. It was a con. At least part of Flip This House’s 2006 season was fake.

House Flipper Investigation

Columbus flippers? Very few of the homes I have shown that were bought to be fixed up and then resold in the last few years have been very nice. Too many people seemed to think it was easy and they had to do the bare minimum. We just have not had enough rapid appreciation in Central Ohio for it to be profitable. Many rehabbers seemed to splap on a coat of paint and try to resell houses at inflated pricing.

While I am not saying they were involved in fraud, they may have been inspired by Flip This House’s, Sam Leccima, a real estate investor.

According to the Yahoo story:

Leccima’s episodes of “Flip This House,” A&E’s most popular show, were elaborate hoaxes. His friends and family were presented as potential homebuyers and “sold” signs were slapped in front of unsold houses. They say the home repairs — the lynchpin of the show — were actually quick or temporary patch jobs designed to look good on camera.

Leccima says he never claimed to own the homes. While not acknowledging his televised renovations were staged, he didn’t deny it and suggested that A&E and Departure Films, the production company that makes the show, knew exactly what he was doing.

A&E and others involved say otherwise.

This is story set in Illinois. This is not in Ohio… much less Columbus.

Vicki Watzlawick in Algonquin Illinois wrote on ActiveRain of a buyer suing their agent over the feedback they’ve provided to the seller via the listing agent. The buyers thought the colors in the house were tacky.

Lawsuit

I guess it’s more a Showing Feedback Lawsuit….than a Tacky Colors Lawsuit. We do feedback in Columbus.

What’s feedback? I show a property (as a buyer’s agent) within 24 hours, a fax or an email linking to an online form and / or 4 phone calls from various people on the listing agent’s team wanting to know what the buyers thought of the home (that may be an exaggeration.. in some cases definitely not in others.)

Reciprocity, my listing is shown an email goes out to the buyer’s agent asking for feedback. The sellers wait with bated breath for what the buyers thought of the house.

I like the online email feedback. The phone calls from the teams where the right hand has no clue what the left hand is doing, have decreased recently I believe because they can look up the online form.

The point of showing feedback obviously is to provide feedback that can help the seller get the house sold.

In the Illinois lawsuit case the buyers agent in providing feedback said the buyers thought the colors were tacky in the house. When the buyers found nothing else to buy they wrote an offer on the house. The sellers would not negotiate so the buyers paid full price. Vicki wrote:

“The buyers are OK with the full price until they get to the closing table and they find out from apparently the Sellers attorney that the Sellers requested full price because they were really upset about the Tacky Color comment. The buyers are now suing their agent for disclosing information because they feel they could have gotten a better price if this information wasn’t passed on.”

That the buyers considered the colors in the house tacky was confidential info is what I assume the buyers are suing for.

It will be interesting to watch. I have to admit I wondered reading it if it is an urban legend. I know an agent in Naperville Illinois whose said for years providing feedback is a potential liability. I personally prefer a link to a published newspaper article, or something in a blog entry that gives this sort of story credibility. I tried Googling for it. No go.

I will be watching for it in the news.

It could change the way we do business. Maybe we will get permission slips from buyers about what we can disclose to the seller via their listing agent. I have mixed feelings about showing feedback from both sides.

Luckily we don’t have any homes on the market with tacky colors in Central Ohio

Someday maybe I will write about saying “burn the house down” in feedback. My client could have had a great Clintonville home that smelled like cat urine if not for my feedback. Or not.

I have a rabbit habit on my other blog, Discover Columbus. The first of each month I try to say “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit” first thing… for good luck.

Last month I posted something here on Columbus Best Blog from the Columbus Zoo’s Habitat Hollow… this morning I had a tough time finding it… but I persevered. Green Gardening Tips..

June’s Green Gardening Tips includng:

“Keep cats inside to protect wildlife”

but he likes going out… yes he is a hunter.

This is Adopt a Cat Month (or something like that) at the Capital Area Humane Society. I think the CAHS and most cat shelter / rescue people believe cats are safer inside too… but he likes to go out… and hunt birds and bunnies. And I am just his step-mother, I thought he should never go out.

elsewhere on the Columbus Zoo’s site about the visiting humongo snake… Kitty?

Diet: One or two pound rabbits each week On Display: April 7 to Nov. 1, 2007

I think the snake visting at the Columbus Zoo is named Fluffy. Yes I’d like to share a photo of my favorite kitty but I can’t make it small enough so as not to have humongo kitty on the blog.