Let me preface this by saying I have no beef with the folks at DocuSign. They have an excellent product. This may not even be their doing,  But it is now day III of “what are you thinking?” and I have yet to even get a response to an email I wrote them on the […]

The 3rd quarter of 2011 was better in volume for single family home sales than the 3rd quarter of 2010 from a volume perspective, according to the data I found on the Empire Access MLS. And in comparing the years to date,  2011 is still “catching up” to 2010 and may indeed do so by […]

Update: The Meetup is set for Tusday, December 6 at 6pm at Toga Bar, Caesar’s Atlantic City! For those of you in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the annual Triple Play convention will be held this December 6-8 in Atlantic City. I have gone to the last two and just registered for this year’s […]

What can you buy in Ardsley for $250,000? How about a nice condo at Ashford Court? The building was once a school that was converted to condominiums in the 80’s with splendid results- the old school yard is now a huge parking lot with 2 spaces per unit, and the structure has mad character and […]

Buyers in this real estate market enjoy many more liberties and advantages with sellers than I have ever seen since I was first licensed in 1996. Not only do they have the lowest rates in half a century, they have far more bargaining power, and in Westchester County, where a starter home can cost $500,000, […]

One of the risks a real estate broker like myself incurs when commenting on the market is the perception that we as licensees puff things up to make the climate seem better than it really is. Given that we are entitled to our own opinion but not our own facts, I’ll lead with the numbers […]

Here are a few useful tips for all agents, both new and old, in the proper care and feeding of the guy who owns and runs the brokerage where you ply your trade.  I will be quick to add that many of the things I suggest here are things my team already does well, and […]

Our team is growing, which is good, but the quality of people we are adding to our family of producers is very high, and that is great. Anton Gromov has joined our team, and he’s not your average story. Anton is from Russia, and is therefore fluent in Russian. He’s a new licensee, and when […]

                                   “How to succeed in the real estate business without even trying…” How to succeed in the real estate business without even trying. Yeah. You let me know if there is a way to succeed in the real estate […]

The numbers are in for September real estate closings in the Ossining School district, and they show a significant improvement over the prior September. All information is for single family homes and is sourced by the Empire Access MLS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors.  In September 2011, 17 single […]

Redfin has laid their Scouting Report program to rest after less than a week. CEO Glenn Kelman posted a poignant announcement today on why he pulled the plug on the program, and among his statements, which I agree with, was the following:  But I still think the folks most violently opposed to Scouting Report didn’t […]

Redfin is now offering scouting reports (“Complete performance metrics”) on 1 million real estate agents! This is causing quite a kerfuffle in the real estate world, but I have to say that I don’t mind my numbers being published by Redfin or anyone else.  That is, so long as they are accurate. If you click […]

The September edition of Real Estate In Depth, the official publication of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors, has an announcement that WPAR is in discussions with neighboring organizations on the possibility of a merger. The other associations are the Rockland County Board of Realtors and the Orange County Association of Realtors, and the idea […]

Milky Way        Earth                                                                                            USA         […]

“Staging for the Average Homeowner” will be the theme for Marie Graham‘s workshop to be held Thursday, October 6th at 7pm at the John C Hart Memorial Library in Shrub Oak. The event will cover many of the more important underpinnings of home staging and how it can aid in the sale of the home, […]

Recognizing that not all markets are the same and that we as brokers have an obligation to disclose material facts, my thoughts are centered on practices here in my home market of Westchester and the Hudson Valley. Simply put, I am not sure that marketing listings that are short sales as short sales first and […]

One of the somewhat unique things about Westchester County, especially south Westchester, is that it was almost completely developed after the 2nd World War. What this means is that there are very few newer homes, and the inventory that we have is older, often much older, than a typical home in other communities around the […]

Discovering Westchester County is like peeling an onion-anyone that views “the 914” as an amalgam of bedroom communities slumbering while all the action takes place south of us in Manhattan is missing out. For the last 37 years, Broadway has had an outpost right in Elmsford at the Westchester Broadway Theatre. Just last night, Ann […]