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Wordless Wednesday: Spring Snow
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Forget About the Furniture

It all starts out innocently enough. The seller comes in at the tail end of the home inspection and meets the buyer. They press the flesh, exchange some small talk, and the conversation drifts around to the furniture. The seller might be willing to sell some. The buyer likes some of the pieces. Like many […]
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Buyers Want a Home, Not an Agent

For my fellow agents: Steve Loynd has written a post I relate to quite a bit- the experience of shelling out big bucks to a service that promises to deliver a pipeline of prospective buyer clients to your inbox, only to pull the plug after thousands of dollars down the drain with no return on […]
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What Does $825,000 Buy in Pelham, NY?

What Does $825,000 Buy in Pelham, NY? Here’s what you can get for $825,00: A 2300+ square foot 4 bedroom 3 bath 1920’s Lewis Bowman designed New England colonial on over a third of an acre in Pelham Manor. It has a rocking chair porch, patio, plenty of parking, and a manicured lawn. Inside is […]

Active Rain Wordless Wednesday: Spring Snow

Active Rain Forget About the Furniture It all starts out innocently enough. The seller comes in at the tail end of the home inspection and meets the buyer. They press the flesh, exchange some small talk, and the conversation drifts around to the furniture. The seller might be willing to sell some. The buyer likes some of the pieces. Like many […]

Active Rain Buyers Want a Home, Not an Agent For my fellow agents: Steve Loynd has written a post I relate to quite a bit- the experience of shelling out big bucks to a service that promises to deliver a pipeline of prospective buyer clients to your inbox, only to pull the plug after thousands of dollars down the drain with no return on […]

Active Rain What Does $825,000 Buy in Pelham, NY? What Does $825,000 Buy in Pelham, NY? Here’s what you can get for $825,00: A 2300+ square foot 4 bedroom 3 bath 1920’s Lewis Bowman designed New England colonial on over a third of an acre in Pelham Manor. It has a rocking chair porch, patio, plenty of parking, and a manicured lawn. Inside is […]

Active Rain Hail to my Son the Champion I’m going to indulge on a completely non-real estate topic because I am a proud dad. On Saturday, my son Luke won first place at his pack’s Pinewood Derby event. He is on cloud 9 and so am I. Luke is in 3rd grade and in his thid year of Cub Scouts. Our first two […]

Active Rain Honor Earlier this week, I called a For Sale by Owner to show their home to a buyer I am working with. We just put their home under contract and need to find that next move up home for their family. They are nice people, and while I do not work with buyers as often as […]

Active Rain My 3 Gold Star Bloggers Craig Daniels has challenged us to name 3 bloggers we love– the sort of folks that if a glitch in Active Rain were to erase our subscription list that we’d immediately seek them out again. I have more than three, but the limit is three, so I’ll refrain from mentioning bloggers I know are on […]

Active Rain Answering the Broker Haters in the New York Times The following is a comment I wrote this morning on this article on real estate brokers in the New York Times. The piece was on smaller brokers contrasted with larger ones, and as is common in Times articles on brokerage, the haters were out there in the comments telling us how bad brokers are. I […]

Active Rain How to Prepare Your Home for Sale How to get that Westchester County Home Staged to Sell! First, make sure the landscaping is appealing with decorative additions. A mere lawn won’t do. Next, consider the Feng Shui of the “regular guy.” If you think your home might appeal to a certain niche, leverage that fact. This home, for example, would be great […]

Active Rain Speechless Sundays: The First Step is a Doozy

Active Rain Yapping I was invited by the Larchmont Rotary Club to speak on real estate this past Friday. It was a cool experience. I was unaware of the Rotary and the good work they do, but that, along with lunch, was a cool fringe benefit. And they gave me a pen. Not long ago I blogged about […]

Active Rain Floods in Westchester County We had some massive flooding yesterday all over the county, closing most of the main highways, such as the Saw Mill Parkways and 9A. It was probably a mix of the thaw upstate along with torrential rtains the past few days. I snapped an amazing video of a parking lot in Hawthorne that looked more […]

Active Rain What Does $295,000 Buy in Ossining? $295,000 will get you a solid 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath colonial in the village. The one we just closed on yesterday was built in the 1980s at the end of a dead end street in the Sparta neighborhood, walking distance from the Arcadian Shoping Center and the Jug Tavern. It boasted a finished walkout basement with […]

Active Rain OK, It’s a Wrap: the 1400 Day Short Sale is CLOSED Last year I blogged about the 1,096 day short sale I had in Putnam County getting a “final approval.” The thought entered my mind that blogging about such a snake-bitten file prior to closing might jinx it, but with a final approval and a solid buyer I thought “what could go wrong?” Plenty. I won’t bore […]

Active Rain The Joys of Dewinterization It is a rare thing for me to have to reconnect and heat up a winterized home, especially as a listing agent, but I did just that today for a short sale scheduled to close Monday. The interior temperature when we started at around 1pm was 39 degrees, and it was cold and rainy today. […]

Active Rain Chestnut Mountain I’m not the biggest fan of attending appraisals, but sometimes I have to make the best of it when so conscripted. Today was one of those days, and prior to meeting the appraisor I ducked into the office of the listing brokerage to say hello to the broker and recharge my lockbox smart card. After […]

Active Rain 15 Minutes Can Save You From Heartbreak Quick one here. I am getting offers from agents who don’t have a pre approval for their buyers. This means that they are committing the real estate version of picking up hitchhikers- putting people in their car who have not been checked out, vetted, or qualified to buy a home, let alone be alone with […]

Active Rain Our Growing Family Ann is not pregnant. The company, however, is attracting some excellent people. So here are a few welcomes: We welcome Leslie Miller, buyer agent extraordinaire, who specializes in Westchester county, including but not limited to Ossining, Briarcliff, Chappaqua, Pleasantville, and even as far south as Scarsdale and White Plains. Leslie is a very conscientious and […]

Active Rain What Does $499,000 buy in Scarsdale, NY? Affordability is seldom a word associated with a beautiful renovated home in southern Westchester County, but one gem recently closed that was just that. It is a 1700 square foot colonial with a beautiful updated ceramic and stainless steel kitchen, two updated baths, three roomy bedrooms with gleaming hardwoods and fresh paint, crown molding, a […]

Active Rain What Does $162,000 Buy in White Plains? For years, co ops have been considered the starter home of Westchester, with plenty of inventory in great areas for under $200,000. This 1 bedroom apartment is no exception. It is in a pet friendly building with an updated itchen, huge living room, lots of closet space, hardwoods, and 1 block away from Mamaroneck Avenue […]