Surfing on Active Rain this morning has yielded a neat discovery: There is a baseball junkies group here. I happen to be a huge baseball guy. When I was in Brooklyn, I took photos of the apartment complex that sits where Ebbets Field once was. I have been to an apartment in  Harlem that is […]

Buyers buy the sizzle

Rob Hahn has written an extremely thought provoking piece on the role that broker commissions play in the pricing of real estate. It isn’t what I originally thought when I read the title- I was expecting a “commission is just a markup” but it wasn’t about that at all. It did get me to wonder […]

The company has grown over the years and in the first quarter of 2011 we’ll pass 20 salespersons and associate brokers. I am not an overt recruiter; our growth has been organic, but in looking at the good folks we’ve attracted I do see some patterns. Chiefly, we have drawn 2 types of people: new […]

It is a well deserved fact that one of the knocks on real estate agents is that they don’t return phone calls. I have been there, & bought the picture they took of me walking in. Really, I have.  It is a little discussed fact that some members of the public don’t have the same […]

I am no fan of open houses. I haven’t made a sale at one in a dog’s age (1998 if you really care), they are typically poorly attended, and I can think of better places to catch up on email and reading. Today, however, I hosted a really busy open, with 6 very friendly and […]

Two quick things in the past 24 hours that made me feel just a tad old. One cute, one not so cute.  Not so cute: One of my agents fired a client today (yes, we do that in some cases) because, frankly, they were too immature. Newlyweds, lots of good reasons to have hope for […]

Just in case you’re up late and licking your chops about the market change toward equilibrium I just blogged about, I did a comparision of the first 6 weeks of 2010 compared to the first 6 weeks this year.  In 2010, the first 6 weeks had 377 closings for single family homes at a median […]

Upon occasion, I meet an agent for the first time and they look nothing like their picture on their website or card. Let’s face it…real estate agents are notorious for having absurdly old photos of themselves for way too long. It’s hard to tell someone that they look like the grandmother of the person on […]

I used to joke that if you needed my advice or to borrow money from me that you were doomed. That may still be so; we’ll have to see. One place to look on the advice side is Keller Williams Realty Group in Scarsdale, NY where team leader and Active Rainer Jennifer Maher took a […]

“Please remove shoes.” These are reasonable instructions, especially in New York, where we have folks of many cultures who don’t wear street shoes in the house. My own home is a shoes off house by and large, as Ann is of Korean descent and the kids are heavily into the rug rat years. My kids’ rolling around […]

About three weeks ago I wrote a rather forgettable blog post about what $335,000 will buy you in Peekskill, New York. I really like to post these sorts of pieces because they are informative and sneakily self promotional (and I kind of lack any shame about promoting myself), but I have to admit that they aren’t exactly cutting edge […]

Tonight, the Ossining school board will vote on putting a $69,000,000 bond for school expansions and renovations up for referendum.  $69,000,000.00. The issue the district is facing is how to house the growing population of students they serve, which is a good thing. The solution, to spend almost $70 million, strikes me as not such a good […]

 

When was this: Every week you’d hear about a bank failing. Real estate crashed. Wall Street crashed. We had a doozy of a recession follow. 2007-2009?  No. 1987-1989. History repeats itself.  The last time we had a three-headed economic monster of a recession, housing collapse, and financial crisis was the late 80s. The parallels with […]

One of the things that can make a closing a nightmare (or not occur) is finding out that the house is not in compliance with municipal code. It could be a deck, finished basement, extra bathroom, or any other improvement that the current owners have done or that they inherited from a previous owner. With […]

We have just listed a very rare short sale in Chappaqua, NY. It is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath townhome in Old Farm Lake with a fireplace, formal dining room, hardwood floors, sliding doors to deck, and a renovated granite kitchen. It has a great master bedroom with a walk in closet and master bath. […]

I seldom discuss inspection matters, but this is an important issue that is especially common in Westchester, where we have so many older homes. There is a problem with this circuit panel. It isn’t the age or amperage. But it is a problem and it will need to be replaced. Can you see what it […]