Day 9 of self quarantine
No travel, No School, new normal. Come listen and relax for a little while. Listen to George and Lisa as they talk about life under quarantine, how homeschooling is going. Lisa will give us her view on Real Estate as the Corona Virus puts everything on hold.
Welcome to RView podcast where we talk about life travel and real estate join George and Lisa Hernandez each week as they share insights and parenting tips about their life as a blended family with four teens their crazy travel and adventures and get Lisa’s pro input about real estate as she juggles it all while still managing her top-producing real estate brokerage view properties.
Lisa: I’m Lisa Richart-Hernandez
George: And I’m George Hernandez
Lisa: We’re here at day 962 000 of the quarantine coronavirus of 2020 or maybe it’s just day nine not really sure I’ve gotten to the point where I’m so bored that I actually talked to a telemarketer today just for some social interaction you know it’s getting bad when you actually speak to Telemarketers. How about you babe?
George: were you that bored seriously that you talked to Telemarketer?
Lisa: yeah yeah I was as a matter of fact I was talking to the kids today and he was like you know I just don’t get it and I was like yeah me either unfortunately you just go to a really shitty school right now [Music]!
George: oh my god here we go!
Lisa: it’s you know like day four of the quarantine I was uh stuck up a conversation with a spider and um he seems really nice he’s uh a web designer [Music] [Laughter]
George: oh boy! Welcome to my world people
Lisa: oh yeah it only gets better yep oh yep apparently we need to watch this new show with the tiger on it and that’s what we’re gonna do tonight after this podcast because everybody’s talking about it yeah what is that thing talking about it’s like a crackhead has a tiger or something.
George: he’s got a bunch of tigers.
Lisa: I don’t know they’ve got a captive audience right now and people are running out of stuff to watch on Netflix so my hopes aren’t too high but hey what the heck you know we’re done with all the star wars I mean I don’t even know what we have left to watch.
George: I don’t know I think we’ve pretty much gone through everything.
Lisa: yeah so hey message us some good uh ideas for Netflix binge-watching yeah we need some new things to binge-watch with the rest of the world and I mean even some of the ones that we’ve already watched maybe we need to go back I’m not sure it’s getting rough out there I mean when it takes you 45 minutes to find something to watch on Netflix then you know life is sad.
George: well I think we’ve pretty much been what binge-watched everything that we could I don’t know what else we could watch.
Lisa: yeah well I’m excited to say that I got out of the house today, uh I got a second listing I got two listings this week and lost one listing o the coronavirus so um you know things are slowly going
along but uh highlight of my day today was droved through Starbucks that was exciting I got out of the house dropped off a lockbox to a vacant house it was the most exciting thing I did today besides making this podcast and get our new intro which I love.
George: yes and it’s fantastic I took uh Tyler to get his license today that was pretty cool for me
Lisa: oh yeah so now he can drive himself around without us having to take him places that are awesome!
George: so DMV here had everybody stand outside kept telling everybody to keep their distance and they would let one person in at a time into the DMV I should have taken a picture because it was probably the only time in my life that I will be the only person inside of DMV getting something done.
Lisa: Yeah that’s well at least they’re open you know?
George: yeah no they were open and they got it knocked out and we were out of there and ironically they really want you out of there fast now I don’t know why?
Lisa: because there’s only one person at a time and they’re trying to get everybody out.
George: oh and they set up chairs in front of the counter they taped all these chairs together in front of the counter so you cannot get within three feet of the people I mean I had to…
Lisa: practically throw your papers across paper airplane them to them
George: I literally reach as far as I could to get this paper to her and she still wouldn’t grab it out of my hand she’s like you put it right there
because I ain’t touching that thing.
Lisa: well when I went to go pick up the keys for my listening today like like it says the keys are under the mat and I said oh okay she said yeah the painter left him there I’m sorry so I went to the condo that I’m listing and I got to the condo and I said there’s no mat here and she’s like oh they’re under the mat at my house why didn’t you tell me you were home and you had him at home she goes well you can just get him out from underneath the mat so sure enough I said all right well I’m on my way to your house.
Like go to her house and she still won’t get them for me she’s standing in her garage with the garage door when I’m like where’s the key she’s like they’re under the map so I go get them and they were in an envelope and I go to handle the envelope she’s like oh no I don’t want to touch that envelope you can just take them. So it was really socially distancing for me and um I mean it’s you know I’m glad everybody’s being safe and I’m being safe too but it’s just so funny how life has changed so much I guess.
George: what I get a kick out of is um like, for instance, one of the rugby coaches came into the DMV while we were in there and you know the first thing you go to do is extend your hand to shake hands and everybody else whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa high five and then they go no no no no high five fake high five.
Lisa: yeah yeah one of my uh referral agents Dennis came by today to pick up some business cards and he had his gloves on like his rubber gloves and he’s like hey sorry but I’m just being really safe and I’m like yeah it’s fine you know like just don’t touch your face with those gloves because you know that’s what’s gonna get them so really scary thing though.
One of my very very good friends I was just tested for um coronavirus and she’s really really sick and uh so that you know kind of makes it kind of it’s it’s closer to home yeah it’s close to home so that that sucks I hope she’s gonna be okay I keep checking in on her she’s quarantined in her bedroom she’s like hi I have a great attitude I got to open the window today and at least get some fresh air in I’m like wow yeah so at least we got our results back no it takes several days so I’m waiting she had to go to the drive-through testing thing but she said she can barely breathe she’s in a lot of like like her whole body aches so bad she’s like I feel like I’m gonna die not legitimately die but like you know how we say we feel like we’re gonna die that she feels horrible so um.
George: Wow that’s crazy
Lisa: yeah yeah I checked in on my mom was down in clearwater I checked in on her today and uh you know she’s in her 80s and a lot of elderly people live in her complex and she said a lot of people have headed home so she’s kind of down there by herself which I guess is good and bad I’ve debated whether I should bring her home here so she can teach my kids uh how to read although the problem is she doesn’t know how to use a computer so I don’t know to catch 22. yeah right and have to train her on that it might be defeating the purpose I know you’re going to listen to this mom so I hope you’re laughing at that I love you [Laughter]. oh god!
George: everybody’s doing their part
Lisa: that’s right so life as a homeschooler has actually gotten a little bit better to kind of get it it was actually officially the end of the semester today so we’ll see how the kid’s grades did, to be honest, I think they went up because it was probably a little bit easier to know what was turned in and their assignments probably got a little bit easier over the last couple of weeks.
So we now know that we’re going to be homeschooling it till at least the end of April in my mind I doubt we’ll go back to school this year.
George: I don’t think so either I think school is done they’re going to continue with the uh homeschooling and computers because I mean so far it seems to be working.
Lisa:well we’ll see I just saw that um a lot of cable companies are giving free internet to kids um a lot of businesses are really kind of stepping up people, uh I can’t remember which if it was Verizon or one of the mobile carriers is taking their limits off of download speeds and and and capping uh data usage and stuff like that so people have access to the internet and that’s what we really really need right now.
George: we need all the help we can get from everybody and a lot of the big companies are stepping up the electric companies Verizon like you said what was the other one that said they weren’t um electric’s not going to shut off water’s not going to shut off.
Lisa: yeah like Berkeley electric and dominion energy they also wouldn’t be doing shutoffs so that’s good news for people I mean.
George:hey I’m just glad they’re picking up the garbage 9:18
Lisa: yeah oh I know we’re making so much garbage even though we have a trash compactor we are making so much garbage because we have so many people at home um I’m not gonna lie well like okay so last week they didn’t take the bags like our one then was so full they wouldn’t take the bags that were on the side they just left them on the road which is so so this week we made the kids sneak out at 10 o’clock at night and put the bags in anybody of our neighbor’s yards that if their trash can wasn’t full they stuck them in there so they would take our trash.
George: Those are all allegations there’s no video there’s no evidence yes we heard I don’t think there’s a law against using other people’s we heard that that’s what man.
Clearly, they weren’t gonna need to put any more in them because it was later if mine was empty I’d be more than happy if anybody wanted to use it so right it’s just a neighborly thing to do yeah that’s right that’s great it’s not like we’re taking our dog’s poop and putting it on their yard.
Lisa: No well the raccoons would have gotten it so it would have been a mess if we didn’t get in in somebody else’s bins.
George: yeah but I’m like really surprised at how much garbage we are producing and even with the trash company with the compactor I mean that thing for those of you that are out there if uh if you don’t have a trash compactor they’re awesome ours probably reduces our garbage by.
Lisa: I would say what would normally be three bags down to one bag
George: yeah and one small bag and now even with that thing we are just burning through it.
Lisa: yeah yeah what else has made it crazy not much more to talk about on the home front seeing as how we’ve been quarantined in this uh house for so long that’s kind of the only updates I’m really looking forward to Lauren she went back up to school uh for the week she’s the dorms are closed but she’s staying at friends and uh they’re doing their online school I’m looking forward to getting her home this weekend and she’s got all these tick-tocks lined up for the family to do she wants us to go into the production of TikTok
George: well that’s one that’s definitely been one nice thing about the quarantine we’ve had all the kids quite a bit of family interaction last night we played Uno we did we started a puzzle 600 piece puzzle which is two-sided.
Lisa: yeah yeah I enjoy puzzles so
George: it was fun for the first five minutes
Lisa: whatever it was fun what else I’m going to finish that thing up tonight not in real estate uh just had a big uh meeting yesterday. I say meeting there’s a virtual meeting with uh the south Carolina our local malta association of realtors had a there are almost 700 people on the google uh go-to-meeting about you know how to handle this virus epidemic and how we should proceed and they suggested that we just make our dates really far out in our due diligence periods really far out.
So you know we have plenty of time to do title searches and things that are necessary. But then you know the governor did the stay-at-home order after that so everyone’s like okay do I stay home are they also made us like essential but not essential so is it just things that are under contract and so there’s still a lot of questions out there. Because it keeps changing every day but the people that are under contract already we are going to be able to close those deals assuming that people keep their jobs and things like that which is good news.
And I did like I said I got two new listings this week and what we’re doing is virtual tours on all of them one of them is vacant thankfully so we can just say go it and show it and we’ll put hand sanitizers and stuff inside of our listings and make sure there’s soap and things like that in there just to be safe. But a lot of people are going to just say listen you’ve got to look at this virtual tour you have to have seen all the photos of the virtual tours and all of that and if you want a showing you can go at this time or this time you know don’t touch anything that’s basically it and you know very minimal access to sell real estate. But we’re trying to still make things happen.
George:being a pain in the butt if you’re trying to sell your house and you know people are constantly walking through.
Lisa: oh yeah I mean there are still people that need to sell their house so you know at the same time you don’t want a bunch of people trumps through your house that have been all over the place you know and touching things and sneezing or whatever they do you know so there’s a fine line and it just really depends on each individual person one of my listings you know like I said pulled from the market this week and it’s no problem.
You know I’m not gonna fight with somebody overtaking their listing off the market in this situation I don’t blame them at all and we’ll get it sold because they didn’t have a necessary need right now to sell it was more of a want to than a need to. But there’s a lot of people that are in the position where they need to and so we’re going to do whatever we can to help those people.
George: did you tell me this morning that they had put a ban on showing houses or something like that
Lisa: no they well they just stay at home so where are you supposed to go to your houses
George: no I know I get that but I thought they like specifically put something out along those lines
Lisa: well they’re not recommending um general open houses I mean very very fine line of what how to proceed so I’m just taking everything sort of case by case but there’s I’m not getting a lot of uh requests for showings right now anyways.
George: Yeah I think everybody’s staying home and doing the right thing
Lisa: yeah I get this email from the stats guy and uh showings were down like 35 but he’s keeping an eye on it and I’m I’ve just been monitoring it and like I said we’re just going to do the best we can with what we’ve got and try to get through it and so
George: well that’s all we can do right now and hopefully as soon as this thing passes everybody will be ready to go and buy and get out and go to restaurants and oh my god I know we’re not the only ones with cabin fever so
Lisa:yeah yeah everybody is I’m sure it’s kind of like reminds us of hurricane uh times you know but the problem with this is we know when a hurricane is coming so we waste a week you know I say waste it but people just sit around and watch the weather channel for a week and decide whether or not they’re gonna leave and then if they do leave then nothing happens then it takes days to get back and then everybody’s playing catch up from all the time that we had off.
But the difference with this is we don’t know when there’s no end when the hurricane is gonna hit and we’re gonna be done with it and what we’re gonna have to do to recover from it so the good news is charleston is great at helping each other out and uh there’s a lot of really good stories so on Facebook there was a group that was started last week and I just looked at it today and he has 11,000 followers now. It’s called good news during the coronavirus there’s just all it’s allowed to be on this on this website or on the group page on Facebook is positive news about things you know there are people’s kids tap dancing and just good stories of you know people treating each other good and I’ve been in tears just watching some of the great stories that you hear come out of there.
And it got so much following and so much publicity I guess that the news channel picked it up about the website about the group and said you know this is good news you know people are making the best of it and you’re only allowed to post good news here which is awesome because I needed a break from all of the politics and all the other crap that’s going on right now I spent a couple of days this week reading political bills because I feel really strongly that like you need to read and understand things before you comment on stuff most people don’t do that they keep spreading information that isn’t true or partially true its gossip and its rumors.
but until you have the facts or read it firsthand and read the whole article then you really
George: speaking of facts can you tell us I was just you blew my mind when you told me this but in the in this bill, they obviously snuck in a few things and one of them was can you read that for us please directly from the bill
Lisa: oh are you talking about Pelosi’s bill yes well that was fun
George: and I don’t know if it got through or not but it was written in the bill that they were bickering about
Lisa: well it was yeah and that I mean it’s on page 134 of Pelosi’s bill about the house of representatives salaries and expenses for in lines 9 through 14 for an additional amount for quote salaries and expenses 25 million dollars to remain available until September 30th, 2021 except that 5 million shall remain available until expended for necessary expenses of the house of representatives to prevent prepare for and respond to the coronavirus.
so that’s just what it says and the miscellaneous items for the sergeant-at-arms and this is on page 133 um lines 14 through 20 of the legislative branch of the senate contingent expenses of the Senate sergeant-at-arms and doorkeeper of the senate for an additional amount for sergeant-at-arms and the doorkeeper of the senate 1 million dollars to remain available until expended to prevent prepare for and respond to the coronavirus. So I don’t know why you know that’s it’s just it hasn’t been approved clearly um
George: but just that just blows my mind one million dollars for the sergeant-at-arms and the doorman I’m not really the door yet well I mean that’s pretty much to me that’s what it sounds like I’m sure they have way more responsibilities but their main job damn it I knew I should have studied more
Lisa: yes then you would have got an extra 500,000 bonus this year
George: all these years opening doors for women and opening doors for the elderly for free and I didn’t know that that was a million-dollar job
Lisa: yeah well Pelosi’s uh bill was about 1447 pages I think somewhere around there I only got through about 255 of them I did read the democratic bill I mean the republicans bill the day before and so it was only 242 pages I read that the night before it’s all very difficult reading because it’s all in legal ease and it refers to a bunch of other different um acts and amendments and that kind of thing so the little bill was really hard to get through.
But then when you get this 1400 page thing you’re just like really are you kidding me that’s longer than warren b’s and how do you get you to know the thing of it is nobody agrees on anything right now we this is a time for us to come together as a country and it really just is disappointing to me I mean like all right I’m the vice president of our HOA we only have 95 homeowners and it’s hard to get all of them to agree so I get what it’s like to try to please everyone I would never in a million years try to pass a bill saying that we’re going to change like 62 different things in our neighborhood all at once.
You know it’s like we want to add a dog park yes or no not we want to add a dog park we want to put up a fence we also want to drain the pond and we want to build a bigger pool we want to also give you extra money for this you just you don’t do that because nothing will ever get done that way and so I think I can understand the republicans anger I was angry when I read the first 15 pages of Pelosi’s bill because I was like what does any of this have to do with helping the American people there’s a bunch of money in there for every single government entity has millions of dollars being thrown at it and polony Pelosi’s Pelosi’s proposal proposed bill and that’s why the Republicans were so angry I read it.
My thing is if you’re not going to read it shut your mouth and don’t forward don’t comment say anything if you’re going to waste your time reading the bills because that is the truth and that is where you can then make your own judgment as an intelligent person who’s actually read it and even when I posted on Facebook that I was reading it people were like yeah I’m not going to be reading that but just let me know what you find out like because I trust you.
And to be quite honest like I don’t trust either side of the media whether it’s republican or democrat right now everything is so skewed it’s just okay this other bill is tough on small businesses well I see that they’re giving a lot of opportunities for loans for small businesses that are basically are saying as long as you keep your people working will be forgiven I mean that was the way I read it and I’m not an accountant so maybe I’m wrong and immediate tax relief for people like me that would be paying things where Pelosi’s was everybody will get two weeks paid vacation home leave no matter what down to one employee so that would include me I have one employee I’d be required to pay my my my people for two weeks.
I’m doing my best to pay my employees but I’m you know I’m a small business. I don’t have an unlimited number of amount of money coming in I’m not and big businesses people are like oh you’re giving all the money to big business well you know what big business are the ones that get employ a ton of people and they’re those people are the ones that keep small businesses n business.
George: right big business trickles down to small business right it trickles down to local business which trickles down to everybody’s economy.
Lisa: Yeah! so i just don’t think that people clearly 100 percent look at it from that perspective.
George: and they never will
Lisa: and if they’re working for somebody that’s already big business you know it’s kind of like well who cares if you steal something from Walmart because they’ve got plenty of money anyway. But if you walk into a small mom-and-pop shop and you steal something from them hen you’re stealing from a person well it’s not really true I mean stealing is stealing right like it doesn’t matter if you stole it from a mom-and-pop shop or if you stole it from Walmart you still stole something that wasn’t yours.
George: it’s that crazy mentality
Lisa: right you know and that’s why you know big business is not the evil enemy here like and there are a lot of big businesses that cannot make it when people cannot I mean the airline industry, for example, I mean aside from having a couple of planes crashed before this happened. That’s what’s put Boeing brought um tons and tons of business and jobs to our city I don’t I really, to be honest, I haven’t been able to even get out and talk to my friends about how they feel about airlines being bailed out but that would really destroy Charleston if it would take a huge hit if going out of business because we’ve built an economy around these big companies that employ thousands of people and then it’s all the small businesses that feed those businesses also.
George: that would be hurt right if a being appears from Charleston there goes a lot of tax money
Lisa: there’s lots more to be thought about um don’t want to get into a huge political debate definitely not we’ve probably gone way too far about it anyways but uh my the moral of that story is just do your reading and understand things don’t pass along information that isn’t true also consider the source.
I’ve been called out on Facebook first or you know I read the article and it’s sure and then someone said oh this isn’t you know the new york times or this isn’t the this isn’t uh legitimate reporting. Okay that’s where I’m like I don’t even trust the reporters anymore so
George: you don’t even know who to listen to anymore because sometimes I get caught up in that too. I’ll read an article and I’m like man that sounds so messed up and then I’ll look at you know where it comes from and it’s not a major news affiliate.
Lisa: Well it’s hard to know who even is a major news affiliate
George: right because exactly there’s so much stuff out there
Lisa: everything is like
George: here’s a little public service announcement for everybody, not everything on the internet is real or every story is real you’ve got to use your head people, and like Lisa did you want to educate yourself read it read the bill read what’s in it and then when somebody calls you out like Lisa just did it’s paragraph 3 line 17-19 read it yourself there it is black and white you can’t argue with me.
Lisa: Yeah I actually there was an argument on Facebook that I just scrolling across and someone said you know this was said in this bill and no it wasn’t and yes it was and I just screenshotted the picture of the bill on the page. Because I had actually read that page and said well this is exactly what it says it’s on page 37 lines you know seven through four or whatever and um so you know it’s just this is frustrating but
George: well we’re living in frustrating times right now but this too shall pass and we’ll all get through it
Lisa: Well on a positive note I just want you to know that I’m super excited because our neighbors have a collection of tiny cars and we’re in raven’s run neighborhood and they are going to take three laps around the neighborhood and all of their cars just to get them driving they’re taking their antique cars out and they’re gonna do it every day so I’m kind of excited maybe we’ll get to see all their antique cars.
George: Well yeah I thought they will need a driver?
Lisa: he said um my son and I have been taking our antique cars for some laps while my daughter and the boring brown SUV is practicing her driving or trying to pay special attention to kids on bikes we tend to take only three laps so we don’t become a nuisance they’re teaching their 18-year-old how to drive a stick.
George: that’s so cool
Lisa: I think that’s awesome yeah and with Tyler getting his license today so I’m like oh I want to see it. so hopefully they’ll tell us when that is and they’ll give us something to look forward to I was thinking about a way to bring the neighborhood together I love um I’ve seen a lot of people doing like neighborhood social media or neighborhood social distancing happy hours and everyone’s like sitting like 10 feet away from each other in their chairs and just outside and it’s just nice to see other people’s faces.
George: here’s an idea and this is a little copycat from Italy because we live our neighborhood has a lake and we surround the lake maybe we can get everybody to tune in to one radio
station one night and just play music all around the lake and we can all hang out in our own backyards but all hang out together you know what I’m saying?
Lisa: mm-hmm it’ll be I don’t know if we can get everyone to do that
George: nobody will agree on a radio station
Lisa: talk about politics you know don’t try to get the whole neighborhood to listen to the same music.
George: right tell them that I’m gonna go out there now I’m gonna DJ
Lisa: you could do some like low country shagging music or something like that that like pleases everyone
George: I’ll hook up my DJ equipment and we’ll blast it and they can all dance in their own backyard
Lisa: Because it’s not gonna need that newfangled rap music
George: no I’ll do some beach shagging music
Lisa: yeah yes because we all are missing the beaches that are closed right? well that is all for today with our uh life travel and real estate life uh it is actually day nine of the quarantine so we’ll tune in next week when we’re uh I don’t know what’s next week it’ll be day 17 by then if we’re still alive.
George: we will be
Lisa: yes
George: one way or another and on a side note, we’re actually doing very well at eating all the food that’s in the house.
Lisa: yes that’s good yeah I’ve actually I really enjoy cooking anyway so I’ve been also I think in my opinion doing a great great job of using all the leftovers
George: yes your leftover platters have been phenomenal
Lisa: yeah so we had leftover tater tots and we had leftover sloppy joes so I took the tater tots and put them on the bottom of a casserole dish and then I put the sloppy joe mix on top of the tater tots then I covered it with cheese and baked it and it was like a new potato sloppy joe cheese bake everybody ate it all yay! Yes all right I love your sound effects we’re getting so high-tech here
George: we’re getting bored!
Lisa: Yeah that’s right we’re going to be professionals by the end of this so do us a favor share this with your friends oh and what was I going to ask them to
send me ideas on
George: I don’t know that’s why I tell you to write it down all right well next week we’ll tell you what our idea was it but if you have any ideas send them to us because we are running
Lisa: we need ideas to talk about ask us about a place that we’ve been to. Send us a message and tell us how you like our new intro and outro.
George: and if we haven’t been there we’ll make it up
Lisa: yeah or do research on it
George: and then we’ll make it up
Lisa: maybe we should make travel plans and pretend like we’re going on vacation.
George: why don’t we pretend that we’re doing a podcast from vacation [laugh] that might take our minds away from it.
Lisa: yeah
George: talk about the girl bringing us the cocktails with the little umbrellas look here she comes yeah fantastic yes
Lisa: oh let’s go to the swim-up bar
George: all right can you tell we’re getting the delusional
Lisa: did you bring the sunscreen? all right have a good one see you next week.
George: bye
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