Active Rain

Active Rain

What You MUST Know About Dual Agency if You Are Selling a New York Home

Pop quiz:In the State of New York, if I as the listing agent bring my own buyer to the closing table, does that automatically make me a dual agent? If you answered “yes” you’d be wrong. If a New York real estate agent sells their own listing to their own buyer they are NOT […]
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The One That Got Away- The Train Wreck I Never Should Have Allowed

Sometimes I regret asking a question because I hate the answer. Just this morning, I saw that it was the last day to submit an entry into The One That Got Away blogging contest, and I asked myself if I could recall a good story on the theme. Unfortunately, my answer came in an email […]
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Zillow Agent Reviews: A Request for Sanity

You might notice in the Sidebar of my blog that I have some excerpts to client reviews I have received with a link to my Zillow profile and ratings. When Zillow announced their agent ratings system, I voiced some understandable skepticism. However, Sara Bonert, whom I like and respect, gave me some rather convincing reassurances […]
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Cortlandt Market Report November 2011

The town of Cortlandt has many moving parts: The villages of Croton on Hudson and Buchanan, the Hamlet of Verplanck, Cortlandt Manor, and right in the middle, the separate municipality of the city of Peekskill. Croton and Peekskill have their own school districts, so the vast majority of Cortlandt is served by the Hendrick Hudson […]

Active Rain What You MUST Know About Dual Agency if You Are Selling a New York Home Pop quiz:In the State of New York, if I as the listing agent bring my own buyer to the closing table, does that automatically make me a dual agent? If you answered “yes” you’d be wrong. If a New York real estate agent sells their own listing to their own buyer they are NOT […]

Active Rain The One That Got Away- The Train Wreck I Never Should Have Allowed Sometimes I regret asking a question because I hate the answer. Just this morning, I saw that it was the last day to submit an entry into The One That Got Away blogging contest, and I asked myself if I could recall a good story on the theme. Unfortunately, my answer came in an email […]

Active Rain Zillow Agent Reviews: A Request for Sanity You might notice in the Sidebar of my blog that I have some excerpts to client reviews I have received with a link to my Zillow profile and ratings. When Zillow announced their agent ratings system, I voiced some understandable skepticism. However, Sara Bonert, whom I like and respect, gave me some rather convincing reassurances […]

Active Rain Cortlandt Market Report November 2011 The town of Cortlandt has many moving parts: The villages of Croton on Hudson and Buchanan, the Hamlet of Verplanck, Cortlandt Manor, and right in the middle, the separate municipality of the city of Peekskill. Croton and Peekskill have their own school districts, so the vast majority of Cortlandt is served by the Hendrick Hudson […]

Active Rain We’ll miss you Irene I knew Irene and met her a number of times at Blog and social media events. She was very warm friendly, and would have given you the shirt off her back. She also LOVED to kid around. There were some videos she used to do where she’d do a “commission check dance,” really her tongue […]

Active Rain Why Triple Play: Brain Food I don’t get to out of town conferences much. I eat up local stuff, like the New York City REBar camp, two Raincamps and those sorts of things, yes, but I have yet to go to NAR or other more far away events because it is hard to get away. One pilgrimage I am making […]

Active Rain Triple Play, December 6 2011. Active Rain Meetup Tues 6pm Toga Bar, Caesar’s Hi all, for those of you who are in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and are planning on going to Triple Play, I’d love to catch up in person. I blogged about it earlier, and I know it is pandemonium when you get there, but let’s carve out some time in the rain. NY, […]

Active Rain Ossining Real Estate Market Report November 2011 Prices are down, but volume is up according to the data for single family homes in the Ossining school district for November 1-30 2011. All information is taken from the Empire Access Multiple Listing Service. This past November, 11 homes closed at a median sale price of $332,000. In November of 2010, 8 homes closed at a […]

Active Rain I Owned 11 Cars. Does That Make me a Master Mechanic? Anyone who is in sales and management learns over the years how to manage the styles of personalities we encounter. I have dealt with all types and consider myself fairly adept at interacting with people smoothly. The one that still gives me trouble, however, and probably you too, is the Jekyll and Hyde type- they […]

Active Rain An Hour with Ilan Bracha You seldom get to rub elbows with a $200 million producer, but when Keller Williams Scarsdale Team Leader and friend Jen Maher invited me to see the great Ilan Bracha yesterday, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. If you have never heard of Ilan, he’s quite a story. An emigre from Israel, when he […]

Active Rain “Don’t Mind the Sheep” File this under “you can’t make this up.” Whilst confirming the home inspection with a seller client, he filled me in on garage access and then casually said ” oh- don’t mind any free roaming sheep if you see them on the property. The adjoining 98 acre farm is corralling them in.” Now, after 15 […]

Active Rain Why Contingent Offers Aren’t Market Value Is a contingent offer at market value? I have the same conversation over and over as I meet people in the same situation. Case in point: Today I interviewed a very nice couple in a small town just north of Westchester County who expired with their broker last month. I won’t bore you with the […]

Active Rain Want to Know Dedication? I’ll Show You I love my team. The stomach bug domino effect has hit the Faranda household, and I packed it in earlier today with one last thing on my “to do” list undone. A short sale we have listed in Putnam Valley is due to have the electricity turned on for inspections to take place (yes, we […]

Active Rain Notes From the Short Sale Trenches Athletes speak of a “good tired” and a “bad tired” after a game, good after a win and bad after a loss. Tonight I am the good kind of tired. 13 months ago I met with a very nice lady in White Plains who called me after a Realtor she was interviewing proposed that since […]

Active Rain Does the Real Estate Market Hibernate for the Holiday Season? With the weather in Westchester County (presumably) changing as Winter approaches, we in the real estate business have grown to expect a cyclical slowdown in our industry starting around the holidays and stretching into the colder weather. The arrival of autumn has caused anxiety for many a seller, fearing that they’ll sit unsold until the […]

Active Rain New Group: Small Business Spotlight Since so many of us wrote on a local enterprise yesterday for Small Business Saturday, I thought it would be a cool idea for us to put our posts on local small business in one place like so many other themes. Moreover, why blog on local small businesses once a year or once a week? […]

Active Rain Small Business Saturday: Briarcliff Classic and Imported Car Service When you hear a name like “Briarcliff Classic and Imported Car Service” you might envision a garage filled with Porches and Fiats with a temperamental guy in a beret acting more like a chef than a mechanic. With BCI, however, you’d be wrong. I remember Briarcliff Classic from when I was a kid in the […]

Active Rain Happy Thanksgiving from Briarcliff Manor, NY Today is one of those rare days where I can marinate in the begotten all day with no fear of neglecting chasing the buck. So we’ll have some fun. This is probably boring to most, but Mommy thought it was cute. I agree. Mark is our spokesman this year. Art Linkletter’s legacy is quite safe. […]

Active Rain Perhaps I’m Crazy to Ask, But… This has happened before, but I have never written about it. Today at my office, right after an appointment with a nice lady who listed her home in Yonkers with me, I was alone and catching up on returning phone calls. Line 2 rang while I was on line 1. Line 2 doesn’t have voice […]

Active Rain On the Closure of a Foreclosure Mill I seem to recall a Twighlight Zone episode where a bigot wakes up one morning and is transformed into the ethnicity that he has been persecuting. That was the first thing I thought of when I read that the law firm of Steven J Baum is closing and laying off 89 employees. The closure comes […]