As anyone who knows me will attest, I have had my struggles with Zillow. I have always tried to be fair, but at times Zillow has frustrated me, and at times I have had to give them credit. In the past year, the world of brokerage has become more polarized about Zillow, with factions of companies […]

In light of yesterday’s revelation of Ossining’s strange May, where median price dropped almost $60,000 but closings more than tripled compared to the prior May, I did a quick survey of other towns to see if the trend was anywhere else in the county. My thought about Ossining was that sales increased because prices dropped. […]

The New Normal continues to evolve in Westchester real estate, as prices and transaction totals go batty in different directions. Ossining’s May results are fine example. According to the Hudson Gateway MLS data for May 2012, Ossining had a spike in closed transactions, but a steep decline in price compared to the same time period […]

It might seem a tad out of place for a platform centered on Westchester County, NY to even mention municipalities in another state. However, a question about landlord-tenant issues in another forum, and perhaps the early hour of this writing (5:48am, although this won’t be published until later today) have wiped away a few cobwebs and caused […]

Today was one of those non-stop days from 9am until I got home at 9pm, and in retrospect I had damn few of these sorts of days in 2009. “Busy” in real estate is “good.” Not busy, as you might imagine, is the precursor to “not in real estate anymore.” I won’t bore you with […]

This past Friday evening, I was having my usual crazy start to the weekend, at my desk, nursing a Diet Coke, and figuring out the median price of homes in Chappaqua for the month of May, when the email came in. We would like to see the house you have listed at XX Rd Saturday […]

May continued the strong spring in the Westchester real estate market with the highest total of closings in 5 years. Overall, the data for single family home sales from the Hudson Gateway (formerly Westchester-Putnam) MLS saw not only an improvement in total closings from last year, but also an increase in median price. The improvement did […]

My home is assessed for $32,000. Last week, we closed on a listing where the buyer paid $364,000. The home’s assessed value was $11,400. I have a listing in Croton on the market for $599,000 with an assessed value of $10,350. All over Westchester County, municipalities have their properties assessed at numbers reflective of market […]

According to Gene Kranz in his book, Failure Is Not an Option, “When reporters asked (astronaut Alan) Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, ‘The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.'” I received a blank email this […]

One of the more stressful parts of the home sale process is the part where the seller and their agent “sweat it out” while the buyer completes their home inspection prior to contract signing. Often, this yields to a the buyer’s revisiting their “meeting of the minds” price and ask for a reduction in price […]

We recieved two voicemails from an agent who had called to show one of our listings. They were so over the top nasty that my Queens-native wife and I looked at each other stunned that a licensee would leave a permanent record of such hostility. I recorded the messages and sent them as an attachment […]

If I were not seeing it with my own eyes I would not believe it. But after witnessing bidding wars on 2 of my own listings, one in Ossining and another in West Harrison, I have to say that the Spring real estate market in Westchester is stronger than I expected. It might be the […]

<phone rings> ME: J. Philip Real Estate, this is Phil, how may I help you? Telemarketer: Is this Mr. Philips? ME: *sigh* Yes, this is Phil. Telemarketer: Hi, This is <Whatever> with <Company>, and I am calling to see if you’d like to do business with the 20,000 people who shop at the Briarcliff Manor […]

I have wagged my finger at both buyers and sellers on the current real estate market, and today it is once again the buyers’ turn. While we are indeed far from an overall recovery, all real estate is local and in Westchester we are in a busy spring sales cycle. In more than a few […]

The first quarter of 2012 for the Cold Spring and Philipstown area indicated a very slow quarter compared to the same period last year, according to the sales data from the Empire Access MLS. In the first quarter of 2012, there were 3 sales in Philipstown and Cold Spring at a median sale price of […]

In the fall of 2007, after the sub prime crisis hit but long before the real decline hit the country in the gut, the Bush administration signed a bill into law that allowed regular borrowers to avoid a massive tax bill for the forgiven debt resulting from a short sale. Prior to that time, people […]

25 years ago I was a proud member of the Villanova University rowing program. You might know it as Crew, and we reviled the redundancy of those who would say “Crew Team.” I was a coxswain all 4 years, and my job was not to row, but to be the one crew member who sat in the […]

The cyclical nature of the real estate market has always seen a peak in activity in the spring months. We are busy. This is causing a misconception that the market is “turning around” or that we are finally witnessing a recovery. I see many colleagues and sellers alike announcing that the market is back or […]

In all real estate transactions involving a mortgage-which is most of them-all details of the transaction are recorded on a government form known as a HUD-1. A purchase can have more than one mortgage- the bank can loan a second (subordinate) mortgage, or in some cases, the seller can hold a second mortgage as well. In Westchester […]

The illusion of the spring market is that of abundance here in Westchester and all over the country for that matter. In spite of the overall down market, April and May are when the buyers are out, looking, making offers, and mainly scooping the cream off the top. Upon occasion, we see a seller get […]