Home Seller: July 17, 2026

ALL THINGS REAL ESTATE

Mediation, arbitration in purchase contracts

Q: Somebody told me you recommend people not agree to arbitra tion and mediation in the purchase contract. Unfortunately, this news came too late. We sold our home last year and have received a letter from an attorney demanding that we mediate with the buyers. We don’t remember what the difference is between media tion and arbitration. Do we need a lawyer? Should we not have agreed to mediate?

A: Well, it’s true that I’ve been harping on this subject for almost 30 years because of the vast misunderstanding of the mediation/arbitration system and I’m happy to try and clarify my position.

There’s nothing wrong with mediation. In fact, I’m one of mediation’s strongest supporters.

Mediation is simply a “can’t we all just get along” session. During the mediation, a neutral person, with absolutely no dog in the fight, serves as the mediator and tries to broker a settlement between the parties in kind of a “Let’s Make a Deal” fashion.

Considering the time, expense and risk of taking a lawsuit all the way to trial, trying to work things out first usually makes a ton of sense. Mediation is relatively cheap, relatively painless, and it can end the agonizing endless worrying that goes on when you’re involved in a lawsuit.

I would never advise someone not to agree to mediation unless both parties are bound and determined to make the lawsuit a “winner takes all” contest.

The purchase contracts most

Realtors use contain a mandatory mediation clause. While forcing someone to mediate is usually pointless, since the parties must be willing to compromise at the outset, the contracts provide that if the plaintiff doesn’t first attempt to mediate before filing suit they give up their right to get their attorney fees paid if they ulti-

Given the cost of litigation, that’s a big incentive for the plaintiff to at least try to mediate the problem before filing suit. Arbitration is an entirely different process designed for a

Unlike mediation, where the mediator has no power to decide anything for the parties, arbitrators make judgments that are final. They aren’t trying to work anything out. All parties will present their respective case to the arbitrator (a private judge by another name), and at the end of the arbitration (a trial by another name) the arbitrator will make a binding decision. Not all types of arbitration judgments are binding, but the type of arbitration referred to in real estate purchase contracts is.

Although the forum may not be as formal as a judicial trial, arbitration is a trial nonetheless. The biggest difference is there is no appeal if the arbitrator gets it wrong. Additionally, the parties give up their right to have the matter heard by a jury.

I have been characterized as being “anti-arbitration.” I’m not. In fact, I have served as the arbitrator in real estate matters.

What I am opposed to is someone agreeing to arbitration

See Jones, Page 6

O ered at $859,000

Leslie Blevins , DRE #01337516 530.304.6867

leslie.blevins@cbs electre.com

leslie-blevins.cbs electre.com

SOLANO

Moving from fair to very good credit could save you $54K over the lifetime of your mortgage

TED ROSSMAN BANKRATE.COM

LYet’s look at the difference for a first-time home buyer with a 3.5% down payment and a loan amount of $500,000. First of all, we all need to call our congressman, John Garamendi, and encourage him to lobby for HUD to revamp the government version of private mortgage insurance, called MIP (mortgage insurance premium).

All the private mortgage insurance companies in America are operating in the 21st century and have updated their pricing structure based on risk while HUD is selling MIP at the same price regardless of risk.

FHA charges a 1.75% upfront nonrefundable fee plus an annual cost of .55% for MIP, which is paid monthly. This cost is exactly the same for 620 FICO and 720 FICO score buyers. This is stupid and like charging the exact same auto insurance premium to a driver with three speeding tickets as someone with a spotless record.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I am not saying HUD should charge more MIP to low-income families with 620 FICO scores. As a matter

See Porter, Page 6

our credit score is one of the most important numbers in your financial life. It goes a long way toward determining whether you’re approved for loans, along with the interest rates you’re charged.

That impact is most significant for mortgages given that it costs a lot of money to buy a home and the loan stretches on for a long time (30 years, in most cases). The thing is, you can’t snap your fingers and improve your credit score when you suddenly decide you want to buy a home. You know all those months or even years you’ve been saving for your down payment? During that time, you should already be thinking about your credit score and how it can help – or hurt – you when it comes time to make that home purchase.

In other words, don’t focus so much on whether you can afford a home that you forget to focus on setting yourself up for mortgage success along the way.

Running the numbers

“OK, but homes are expensive no matter your credit score. It can’t matter that much if my score is a little lower than the next person’s, right?”

Consider this example: The median U.S. home sales price is $405,300. If you put 20% down, that means you need to borrow $324,240. The average 30-year mortgage rate ranges almost a full percentage point from fair credit to excellent credit, and that difference can really add up.

A 620 FICO score – solidly in the fair credit range – is the minimum standard to qualify for a conventional mortgage.

Experian says the average 30-year mortgage rate for someone with a 620 credit score is 7.14%. If you borrow $324,240 for 30 years at 7.14%, your monthly principal and interest payment is $2,188. If you’re able to bump your credit score up to 680 (good credit), the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.79%. Borrowing $324,240 for 30 years at 6.79% equates to a monthly payment of $2,112, a savings of $76 per month and $27,360 over the life of the loan.

Crossing into the “very good” credit score range with a 740 score, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate drops further, to 6.44%. Now you’re looking at a monthly principal and interest payment of $2,037. That’s $151 per month lower than our fair credit example and $75 per month less than the good credit scenario – savings of $54,360 and $27,000 over the full terms of those respective loans.

Even though the FICO credit scoring scale runs from 300 to 850, for most financial products, the mid-700s is good enough. For something like a credit card or auto loan, there’s not usually a practical benefit to scoring, say, 800 or 780 versus 740. For mortgages, though, the high-end cutoff is 780.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate for a borrower with an excellent credit score of 780 is 6.25%. That brings the monthly principal and interest payment down to $1,996 on our hypothetical $324,240 loan, $192 per month less than the

620 credit score example. Over 30 years, we’re talking about a whopping $69,120 in interest savings.

A lifetime of opportunity

It’s easy to brush off saving $1,000 or $2,000 a year as “not a big deal” and those 30-year term savings seem too distant to really matter. But consider

what investing that extra money over the years could do for you. Or consider that extra money paying for things like vacations or college or even going into a rainy day fund to help with unexpected expenses. The savings add up!

A guide to improving your credit score over time

Improving your score won’t happen overnight, but it can happen over the course of several months, or better yet, years. The steps are simple: Establish a baseline. Start by

ABOVE: Heart to Heart Dawn to Dusk is a Fancy Leaf caladium recommended for shade but in those brief moments when sun hits the leaf it is electrifying This photo of neighbors Dave and Cynthia’s flower border was taken at 9:30 a.m. when the sun was low.

The burnt orange, white and green leaves of Heart to Heart Dawn to Dusk pair well with white caladiums like this Heart to Heart, White Star that is showing a bloom spike.

Extraordinary beauty from Dawn to Dusk

The weather pattern going into early July was nothing short of brutal, and I hope that by the time you read this, it will have passed. But I am in Georgia and not counting on it. If you are wondering what plant can exist with such heat and humidity, think Heart to Heart Caladiums. Not only can they exist but they will beautify and lend a touch of the tropics to the landscape.

Caladiums have changed so much in recent years; you will be shocked at the colors and patterns you will find on the foliage. I am a graduate of Texas A&M and spent many years on the staff of Mississippi State University. I say that to help you understand I bleed maroon and white.

dium reaching 20 inches tall with an equal spread. It is also considered a shade caladium regarding light intensity. But believe me: When the sun hits the leaves either from low angles or perhaps penetrates through branches of the tree canopy above, you will see nature’s painting come to fruition in your landscape. I recently visited my neighbors, Dave and Cynthia, to see how their plants were handling this summer’s weather of extremes. I saw the most beautiful combination featuring Heart to Heart Dawn to Dusk. They created the partnership using Golden Delicious pineapple sage as the background for the burnt orange, white and green.

While I say that, there is a caladium that defies logic with its beauty, pattern and colors of burnt orange, white and green. It is called Heart to Heart Dawn to Dusk. It is a fancy-leafed cala-

Over the years I have grown Heart to Heart Dawn to Dusk with Soprano impatiens in orange, red and salmon and they too were beautiful. Some of my favorite companions have been

See Winter, Page 6

New for the backyard herb garden: CANNABIS

TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY

From her postage-stamp-sized backyard near the BART tracks, Penny Barthel is growing a revolution.

About 10 years ago, the longtime educator, gardener, author and foodie began to raise cannabis in her lush, colorful kitchen garden in Albany. A novice to cannabis, Barthel’s project was as extension of her love of “messing around with herbs” to formulate new recipes. She also wanted to help a friend grow the plant for a loved one with stage 4 cancer.

In mid-May, Barthel held up a roughly six-inch-tall “Blue Orchid” cannabis plant in a small pot that she’ll soon transplant into her garden, alongside her mint, thyme, blueberries, edible flowers and lemon trees. She expects this and the “Orange Cream Pop,” “Lemon Grass” and “Penny’s Pine” cannabis plants she’ll be growing this summer to shoot up as high as 6 or 7 feet during the season, which lasts until early October.

backyard gardens as tomatoes, beans or other popular annuals.

“I will say my real goal is pretty lofty. I want cannabis to be legalized and to be available and safe and legal for anyone who wants to grow it in their backyards,” said Barthel. “And the best way to do that is just to encourage people to grow it and see what happens.”

A participant looks at a cannabis flower brought by another participant during an introductory cannabis-growing class in San Francisco, May 14.

As part of her mission, Barthel published her 2021 book “The Cannabis Gardener” (Ten Speed Press), after her initial research into cannabis biology and its applications in medicine, food and even cosmetics prompted her to fall in love with it, she said. Four years ago, she began partnering with Emily Gogol, an Oregonbased grower and advocate for home cultivation, to give talks on cannabis at nurseries and garden clubs around the Bay Area, from Concord to Dublin to Cupertino.

“They really look like shaggy Christmas trees when mature,” she said.

Barthel wants everyone to be able to grow cannabis in their backyards – because it’s fun and because they can put the plant to use in a variety of ways, including therapeutically. Cannabis is used medically to help people sleep, reduce anxiety, alleviate minor aches and more.

Of course, Barthel’s mission would have put her on the wrong side of California law before 2016, when Proposition 64 made recreational use legal. Theoretically, her mission still puts her in the crosshairs of the U.S. government, because cannabis continues to be classified as a Schedule 1 drug with “no accepted medical use” by the feds.

But Barthel wants to challenge what she calls the “unexamined narratives” that cannabis is a dangerous gateway drug or can only be appreciated by stoners. She doesn’t see why cannabis can’t become as much a summer fixture in

The two women have booked an increasing number of speaking gigs over the past year, including at popular venues like Sloat Garden Centers and SummerWinds nurseries around the Bay Area, and even at the venerable Marin Art and Garden Center. To Barthel, who also serves on the board of the Berkeley Herbal Center, the uptick in speaking gigs signals a shift in public attitudes. So, too, does the fact that some nurseries have begun to stock and sell cannabis seeds themselves.

Barthel’s talks tend to unfold like any hourlong gardening class at your local nursery. She introduces people to the basics of raising the plant from seed to flower and offers tips on best soils to use and best practices for growing in a pot, raised bed or in ground. For novice growers, Barthel likes to emphasize that cannabis is hardy and fast-growing like a weed. At the same time, she warns that the plant is highly sensitive to light and needs lots of direct sunlight – six to eight hours a day. That means that cannabis thrives in certain micro-climates and won’t work as an indoor plant unless the grower invests in a

See Cannabis, Page 14

Cannabis

From Page 11

professional-level lighting set-up.

Barthel also discusses the advantage of using “feminized” seeds and how to harvest, dry, cure or store one’s grow. Her book, with its glossy color photographs, also offers recipes for turning dried buds into salves, tisanes and tinctures, and using home-made cannabutter to make treats such as CBD-infused vanilla gummies and cannabis chocolate sauce.

But because cannabis isn’t just any plant, Barthel also touches on topics outside the usual gardening class curriculum. That includes the legal complexities of outdoor growing. State law allows people over 21 to grow up to six plants for recreational use – and that’s per household, not per person. Barthel also advises growers to check their city or county regulations. Local municipalities, as well as landlords and HOAs, may impose further restrictions, such as requiring that outdoor plants be kept in a secure, fenced-off area. Or they may ban outdoor cultivation altogether.

Any talk about growing cannabis has to start with helping people understand THC and CBD and how these compounds make people feel. THC, the plant’s primary mind-altering, psychoactive compound, is associated with euphoria and getting high, while non-psychoactive CBD is good for anxiety and other maladies, according to Barthel. Different strains, or cultivars, come with different concentrations of either or both.

Following a May 14 class, Barthel suggested to Chris Michon, a first-time grower, that he try “Penny’s Pine,” a cultivar sold by Gogol’s Grow It From Home nursery and named for Barthel. She said: “It’s one-toone. Half THC and half CBD. It smells like pine, and it’s going to be uplifting. It will be a fun high.”

“I’ve been looking for that,” Michon said. “Not paranoid?”

“Not paranoid,” Barthel assured him.

During the May 14 talk, the audience included members of the Sloat Garden Center staff, all of whom showed excitement about learning to raise a new plant or expanding on knowledge they already have. Barthel also passed around jars of dried cannabis buds for audience members to sniff, as if they were breathing in the aroma of a wine to get a full sense of its flavor.

Every once in a while, Barthel meets someone who’s had very little experience with cannabis, but is dealing with a serious personal issue that has them wanting to explore cannabis.

“This one woman came in,” Barthel recalls. “She was curious because her husband had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and they had a 4-year-old. This caused her to do a lot of rethinking of her life and to think, ‘I need to go to herbal school,’ for her own use or maybe to help her husband endure treatment.”

At the May 14 talk, Michon’s friend Shawn Chan likewise said he had little experience with pot – “I don’t even smoke.” But Barthel’s talk convinced him to try growing a plant in his backyard.

“I consider myself a zero green thumb, but I started growing some cherry tomatoes as a hobby,” he said. “Now that (this is) legal, I’ll give it a try.”

The only thing that made Chan hesitant about the project was the location of his home, close to the ocean. He worried that summer coastal fog would keep his plant from getting enough sun. Other than that, he was OK with not knowing yet what he wanted to do with the harvest. “I’ll figure that out when the time comes,” he said.

Even among the curious, people in the gardening world remain “shy” about cannabis, Barthel said. One garden club consulted with their attorney to make sure it was legal to host Barthel. Some nurseries also won’t heavily promote her appearances. “They want to feel things out and see how customers will respond,” she said.

As Barthel and other canna-

Penny Barthel talks to participants during her introductory class on growing cannabis in San Francisco.

bis scholars say, the federal and state government crackdowns over the past century fueled the negative stereotypes and were always more grounded in culture wars than in evidence of medical harm. Starting in the 1910s and 1920s, anti-cannabis laws were introduced in the Midwest and Southwest to target Mexican Americans. Later, John Ehrlichman, one of Richard Nixon’s top aides, admitted that the the president launched the war on drugs in 1971 to have a reason to prosecute Black people and hippies.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been incarcerated on cannabis-related offenses, and the DEA’s Schedule 1 classifica tion effectively stalled medical research for decades. While medical use is now allowed in most states, adult recreational use remains illegal in nearly half of them. It’s also illegal to take cannabis across state lines or to possess it on federal lands, including national parks. Barthel laments that anti-cannabis laws encouraged growers to develop highly potent strains, just as Prohibition in the 1920s put potentially lethal moonshine into circulation.

“It turned cannabis into jet fuel,” Barthel said.

The lingering negative narratives are reflected in the way that California’s legal cannabis dispensaries can be intimidating places for first-time users, where they have to show their IDs and pay for purchases in cash because most major banks and credit cards won’t process transactions, Barthel said.

That’s another reason that people should be able to grow

RAY CHAVEZ/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP/TNS FILE

their own cannabis in their own backyards, said Barthel, who is excited about teaching more classes in the coming year and to even introduce cannabis cultivation at a major gardening show in 2027.

“I’m hoping,” she said, “that as more and more of us grow and enjoy this plant we will learn a new story about cannabis, allowing it to be what it truly is: a healing, helpful, easy to grow garden herb.”

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