Active Rain A Clever Invention I Don’t Think Will Catch On Just because you can multi task doesn’t mean you should multi task!! The things we real estate brokers see out in the field. I don’t think an explanation is needed, the video tells it all. Suffice to say that I was showing clients a home in Westchester County, NY and we came upon this particular […]
Active Rain Down Payment Assistance Programs Coming to Westchester County Both state and county are getting the word out that downpayment assistance and grant money is being made available to Westchester and surrounding county home buyers. Some highlights of state programs include the following: Veterans assistance Remodeling purchase money mortgages Down payment assistance loans Construction incentives SONYMA low interest and low down payment programs These programs do have […]
Active Rain Do I Stink? Imagine a buyer looking online for a home. They examine the inventory, veto the ones they dislike, dutifully check off their favorites, and compile a list of homes they’d like to see. It has taken over an hour, but final choices are made and one of my listings made the cut. They like the photos, […]
Active Rain Why Your Westchester NY Home Expired Unsold While Westchester County has remained a sought after destination for home buyers and 450 single family homes closed in July, there were still an enormous number of homes that quietly came off the market this August, unsold. While it would be easy to dismiss the results on the poor market, even a casual examination of […]
Active Rain Speechless Sundays: White Plains, NY- Martin Luther King Jr Plaza
Active Rain Do It Yourself Hell I don’t have any issues with For Sale By Owners. It is a free market. I equally have no issue with FSBOs who pay a fee to enter their home on the MLS and then try and act as their own listing agent. What I do have a problem with is people who distrust agents […]
Active Rain “You Can’t Be Alone in the House With My Kids” “I can’t let you go inside my house with my kids home alone.”  Those were the words of a newer listing client when I asked to swing by the house to do something that would take under a minute. The kids were teenagers, a 13-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl.  Some background: When the home […]
Active Rain That Tiny Little Blog Tab: Get More Wet in the Rain Every so often, I have a nice comment or email from someone who read my blog. Sometimes they stick around and visit often, other times we are like two ships that passed in the rain. Sometimes, it is the other way around. When I first started on Active Rain, I would often “bookmark” a post […]
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Active Rain You Never Know Perhaps because we speak with so many people in the course of a day, the odds of something memorable happening are far higher for brokers and agents than someone stuck in a cubicle all week. For example, a few months ago in Manhattan I walked out of a deli and saw a guy being arrested.  […]
Active Rain Friday Funny- Sign of the Times Three real estate brokers were chatting after an association meeting about how slow business was. The subject of walk in business came up, and the first two expressed how long it had been since they last had a deal result from someone “walking in” off the street into their office.  The third broker however, said he just […]
Active Rain Large Associations and Large MLS Systems Inman had news yesterday of REALTOR association mergers, and posed the question of the value of such moves. Given my involvement in a large territory spanning half a dozen MLS systems and many more boards, I feel that I should weigh in on the matter.  I am a big fan of large MLS systems, but […]
Active Rain Wordless Wednesday- New Listing?
Active Rain Westchester County Bucks Downward Trend in July By now the whole country is talking about the over 25% drop in sales this past July in the wake of the stimulus. Here in the state of New York the sales were down 34.9% overall. Locally, Rockland County was down about 27% and Putnam was down 30.6%. But Westchester County was up, a surprisingly strong 8.7%, […]
Active Rain Yeah, We Were All Pretty Smart Back Then I just spoke to a prospective client who has a bit of a complicated situation with a house he owns. It is vacant, and I met him there today along with a gentleman who turned out to be an older brother.  Without going into detail, this is not an easy scenario, and the guy clearly needs help. […]
Active Rain Sign Prohibitions and the First Amendment The New York suburbs are often funny about real estate signs. One town won’t allow a sign with a company name, allowing only “For Sale By Broker” or “For Sale By Owner” on the panels. Another municipality prohibits anything bigger than 12″ x 12″. Some places ban signs altogether, while others have rules rendering them […]
Active Rain I Needed to Find a Stud Today. Badly. How I found a stud with help from Stanley.  I’ve never in my 43 years needed to find a stud.  However, life does throw curveballs, and you have to adapt. So, being an open minded fellow and willing to try new things, even things that are foreign to me, against my nature, and frankly not to […]
Active Rain Peekskill Real Estate Market July 2010 Peekskill is one of the older River towns in Westchester County. I have blogged about Peekskill before, and I have done quite a bit of business there. It is by far the northernmost city in Westchester county, and in addition to being affordable, the quality of life there seems to improve by the week. This is the […]
Active Rain Yorktown Real Estate Market July 2010 Yorktown is a larger town in north Westchester County between Cortlandt and Somers. It is is very suburban in character- think post-war/baby boom subdivisions with ranches, splits and raised ranches and with larger colonials in the newer developments. It is served primarily by the Yorktown and Lakeland school districts, and it has abundant shopping and parks. […]
Active Rain Speech Sundays: Bear Mountain Bridge
Active Rain Serving Westchester County Real Estate Investors I have posted before about my philosophy with real estate investor clients. I don’t dislike newbies or amateurs, but I sure do a good job of scaring them about the realities of how expensive a mistake in real estate can be. I know investors who spent $400,000 on properties before the sub prime crisis hit, expecting to sell […]