My Saab story has a happy ending. My last car was a beige 1996 Saab 900 that I drove for many, many miles. It was a 5 speed with a huge trunk and groovy windows. I loved that car. I was driving on route 6 to a showing in Orange County midway between Bear Mountain […]

OK, perhaps I’m being a tad dramatic, but this is a plea to all you anxious home sellers out there: Stop declining showings. I have been on both sides of this today, and in both cases the cost of the declined showing outweighed any benefit the seller might have perceived in passing on the appointment.   […]

Name: James XXXXX Email Address: unclejim@XXXX.com Subject: I am a cash buyer of short sales IP: XX.XX.XX Message: I am a cash buyer of short sale properties. I must deal with the listing agent and also be able to communicate directly with the property owner. If you are between me and the listing agent it will […]

CNNMoney has published a piece entitled It Doesn’t Pay to Remodel Your Home. Overall, I couldn’t agree more, and I have banged this drum for a while. Am I against home remodeling? Of course not. I am against the expectation that you’ll cash out handsomely in the current economy. One of the toughest jobs I have had […]

Making an offer in New York is different from most parts of the country because purchase and sale contracts are not prepared by agents, but by attorneys after agreement and inspections. Therefore, offers vary from nice clean memos with clear terms on company letterhead to a phone call. Memos are great. Emails are OK. Phone […]

I read the events in the local paper and my jaw keeps dropping.  Two 13 year old boys in Chappaqua had their bake sale stand shut down for not having a permit. The police officers who had to stop the little venture were very polite, but the parents were incensed, and eventually the local paper filed a Freedom of […]

What Can You Buy in Hartsdale for $150,000?  $150,000 will get you a very cute 1 bedroom co op apartment in a pre war building like one we just closed on last week.  with hardwood floors, a huge living room, a dining room, and a kitchen with a…wait for it…dishwasher. It is a junior 4 […]

After two similar discussions the past week, it would be wise to address how a short sale should be priced. After all, if the offer submitted to the lender is subject to approval and therefore not a certainty, all the more that the asking price is also a hypothesis. It is. But, as educated guesses […]

I was out with buyers recently and we toured a home that was owned by architects who had done a complete renovation. Essentially, they took an 80’s era ranch and gutted the entire inside, improving it to 2000’s standards. The kitchen was ultra modern, there was now a den, and the master suite was to […]

This article in on foreclosure fraud today’s Journal News features two things, one that is incredibly disheartening and another that gives me some hope.  Disheartening: The incredible incongruities and obvious sham filings just to shunt repossessions through are chillingly obvious. For example, one of the bank officials signing on behalf of Washington Mutual is dated after Wamu […]

How dumb are the politicians we are  ostensibly sending to Washington to clean up the economy? Well, try this dumb: There is now talk of ending the mortgage interest deduction in order to rein in the deficit. It goes without saying that such a move would throw millions in the USA’s middle class into a tailspin (like we […]

Open Sunday, November 14, 2-4pm: 8 Harwood Ave, White Plains, NY 10603 Extremely charming pre-war 2 bedroom, 2 bath Tudor with exquisite period woodwork on a quiet street. Beautifully maintained and landscaped. Lovely flat rear yard with deck. Stately fireplace accented by gorgeous built-in cabinets. Hardwood floors, original chair rail in dining room. Full walkout […]

There are people that have a perception of my car that is in fact quite different from how it really is. It is a nice automobile if I say so myself. I drive a 2008 BMW 528XI that I bought in the summer of 2007. I was 40, and given the amount of time I […]

I have blogged before about Facebook business pages and how they differ from your personal profile. Now, new applications are coming into prominence that can make your Facebook business page even more robust and appealing, such as the Roost application now used by almost 20,000 agents already. What the application does is add a “Home […]

Follr.com is a social business card you can get that is like an online directory of everywhere you can be found, from AIM to Zillow and everything in between: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google profile, Foursquare,Wordpress, you name it. It is developed by Active Rainer Stephen Fells and is the true one-stop shop for those of us who either […]

Price and Terms.  Price. Terms.  I will bet you a 6-pack of Old Milwaukee that if you ask first-time buyers what the term “terms” is that a bunch of them would screw it up, maybe because their buyer agent is a glorified door unlocker who is a payment behind on his car. But that’s another post.  Right […]

In a county where the median sales prices of a single family home hovers around $700,000, affordable home ownership often seems far away. Dutchess or Orange County, perhaps. However, unless you absolutely must have a yard, a cooperative apartment could be you ticket to home ownership without sacrificing proximity to Manhattan. Westchester county has over […]

This past August, Teresa Boardman published a piece on Inman News on how the real estate blog was dead. Her point was more intricate than the tag line. In my view, she was decrying how all the noisy bad content was crowding out the small proportion of quality content. It got a fair bit of […]

This Market Report is for the Yorktown school district and all data is taken from the Empire Access (formerly Westchester-Putnam Multiple) Listing Service. It compares the sales of single family homes from October of 2010 to October of 2009. Prices of Active and pending listings are list price only, as contract prices are not disclosed until closing.  Very […]