Active Rain

If you are a fan of the AMC series Mad Men, you probably know by now that Don and Betty Draper live in Ossining, NY. I am from Ossining. I remember first hearing Betty mention Ossining and thinking how neat that was, but now each episode this season is almost surreal. The producers clearly have […]

I am a big proponent of taking a child to work to see how their mom or dad works. Sometimes, the child will even emulate their parents and become more task oriented afterward. Here, Mark clearly demonstrates how impressed he is with his Daddy. 

After walking through yet another foreclosed home with some high-end renovations that were about 75% finished, I can’t stress this enough: Renovations to your new home do you no good if they cause you to not be able to afford to stay.  I don’t give financial or legal advice but it doesn’t take a rocket […]

** Rant Advisory** Since my 4 year old has elected to forego sleep and erect a Thomas the Tank Engine memorial on the dining room table, the 2-year old has followed him in the project and my 70 pound German Shepherd feels the need to jam his schnozz in my armpit, slumber has not been […]

Most of my listings are homes that were not sold by another brokerage. I work the “expired” niche, and I speak with people who have been trying to sell their home for 3, 6 and sometimes 12 months or more with another broker before they decided to go in another direction at the end of […]

Here in the New York area, it is not uncommon for people who live in the suburbs and work in New York City to request showings on weeknights after 7pm. If you leave work at 5 or 5:30 and it takes an hour to get home and settled, 5:30 showings are a logistical impossibility. I […]

Feedback on home showings has gotten automated, which is a good thing. Centralized Showings sends out 2 feedback requests to agents who show my listings, and if they don’t reply I presume that they don’t have anything Earth-shattering to report. Seller clients get upset when they don’t get feedback sometimes, but they need to understand that […]

The $8,000 first-time home buyers tax credit is going to go away after December 1, 2009. This means that if you are in New York and want to take advantage, you don’t have much more than 60 days.  “How can that be?” you might ask, since December 1 is almost 120 days away.  Note that […]

I was caught up in the traffic jam resulting from that horrific wrong-direction accident on the Taconic Parkway that took the lives of 8 people last weekend. I was driving northbound myself, and I found it peculiar that northbound traffic would be so backed up at that time. When I saw that all the cars […]

Do you really need an attorney to buy or sell real estate in Westchester County? I was posed this very question by a first-time buyer recently. I asked Lisa Fantino, attorney, author, and friend, for her perspective. I cringe each time a realtor tells me the seller or buyer is going to represent themselves in the […]

Abbreviate! Abbrvte! This is especially useful when you have the room to write more in your remarks but you still feel the need to call a living room an LR and a master suite a mstr ste. It really makes for easy reading when each sntce has mltple abbrvtns.  “Buyer agent to verify.” Why should you […]

Most of my postings on short sales have a happy ending. This is not one of those postings.  In late 2008 my office brought in an offer on a distressed, vacant property I had listed as a short sale in Mount Vernon. We did yeoman’s work. I listed it and one of my agents brought […]

Jennifer Allan has written a blog post entitled Any Idiot Can Give Their House Away…If Price is All that Matters – What do they need us for?   Her point is that price alone isn’t the only thing we can do to get a listing sold, which is true enough, but it has inspired me to list […]

One of the lowest things an agent can do in this day and age is to blame the agent on the other side when he or she screws up. Here’s one recent event.  I listed a single family home for lease earlier this month. The date of availability was August 1 due to the current […]

 

I was contacted by an Associated Press reporter who was writing a story on the housing market in the Northeast, and the story ran yesterday. This is the 2nd time in a month I have been contacted by a national news outlet with a subsequently appearance in their venue. Last month it was ABC World […]

According REALIST, to the public data provider for the Westchester -Putnam Multiple Listing Service, the median price for a single family home in April of 2009 was $491,250. After peaking at over $700,000 in 2005, this is the first time in a long time the median price has fallen below half a million dollars.  Sales […]

I was contacted by someone out of the blue asking me to show them a home for sale in Eastchester. They found it on Zillow, which isn’t uncommon. I looked up the address on the MLS and it came back with “no properties found.” Checking Zillow revealed that the home was for sale by owner. […]

I have blogged before about the difficulties Zillow has caused. Typically, their “Zestimate” has caused people to 2nd guess the more accurate evidence on the ground and either over or undervalue a home, killing a possible transaction. The galling thing about it is that the more compelling evidence is right under their nose from the […]