One of the risks a real estate broker like myself incurs when commenting on the market is the perception that we as licensees puff things up to make the climate seem better than it really is. Given that we are entitled to our own opinion but not our own facts, I’ll lead with the numbers on Croton’s 3rd quarter real estate market.  

For the 3rd quarter of 2010, the Croton-Harmon school district had 15 single family home closings at a median sale price of $425,000.

For the 3rd quarter of 2011 which just ended September 30th, Croton had 18 single family home closings at a median sale price of $492,500.

Transaction totals are up, and median sale price has improved by almost 16%. It is an improvement. However, before we all jump for joy, consider that in the 3rd quarter of 2005, Croton had 36 sales with a median price of $600,000. We are a long way from recovered. We can take some measure of encouragement that we are headed in the right direction. This is especially the case when you consider that the housing stimulus closing deadline was over at the end of September 2010.

Looking ahead, Croton has 13 homes under contract or pending sale at a median asking price of $375,000. 54 homes remain active and for sale at a median asking price of $587,450. What this says to me is that the higher cost properties are not selling at the rate that less expensive homes are. While this does not mean that everyone should necessarily lower their price, we should note that the average days on market statistic for the homes currently for sale is 164 days, or 5 1/2 months. 5 months is a long time, especially when you consider that some of these homes are not on the market with their first listing contract.

All real estate is local, and while we are fortunate in Westchester to be relatively insulated from the catastrophic declines in the sunbelt and mid west, we are still a price sensitive market with low consumer confidence. Therefore, some homes will have to reduce their price in order to sell in the next 90 days in Croton. Failing that, inventory will bloat this coming spring and oversupply could supress prices again.

To find a home in Croton, register for a free Listingbook account. 

Previous posts on Croton. 

Here are a few useful tips for all agents, both new and old, in the proper care and feeding of the guy who owns and runs the brokerage where you ply your trade. 

I will be quick to add that many of the things I suggest here are things my team already does well, and it is rare when I have to practice tough love. But I certainly talk with my share of fellow brokers, owners and managers, and premature gray or the odd eye twitch are certainly a problem for the ones who care. 

So consider this a  guideline for keeping your broker, be it myself or anyone else, a little happier, a little saner, and a lot less stressed. 

• When you are emailed a customer or client inquiry, acknowledge getting it. A quick email back that says “got it” or “thanks” or even “got it, thanks” will do. 
• Check your email. There may be an opportunity waiting. 
• Check your voicemail. There may be an opportunity waiting. 
• When you go out of town, get someone to cover for you. 
• We’re probably friends on Facebook. HINT HINT 
• When you screw up, tell me. It is better for me to hear it from you than another broker, another agent, or the nice folks at the board (which has never happened to my guys). 
• Learn the paperwork and fill it in completely. 
• When you need help, ask for it. 
• If there is an accounting issue, do your best to resolve it quickly. Never let that sort of thing hang in the air for days or weeks. 
• If another agent, customer or client mistreats you, tell me immediately so we can address the issue. Otherwise, it defines matters the rest of the time you deal with them. 
• Kidding us about what we did to earn our split is as gauche as members of the public who tease you about yours. Moreover, you might not get how hard we work behind the scenes. 
• Nothing happens automatically. You have to make it happen. And NEVER shrug your shoulders and say “let the lawyers work it out.” Lawyers don’t work things out. Their solution is to have the brokerages throw money at a problem.  

Our team is growing, which is good, but the quality of people we are adding to our family of producers is very high, and that is great.

Anton Gromov has joined our team, and he’s not your average story. Anton is from Russia, and is therefore fluent in Russian. He’s a new licensee, and when he was researching firms to join, came to conclude that he should talk to me about our brokerage. We clicked. Anton is a family man with two young ones, and cut his teeth in Manhattan property managment for the past decade. It is not surprising that he’d gravitate toward the investment property niche, an area that is near and dear to my own heart as well.

Husband, father with youngters, investment properties…yeah, I’d say we could relate to each other.

Anton will cover Westchester County residential real estate and is a great resource for anyone seeking a Russian speaking real estate agent. We look forward to watching him grow a book of happy buyers, sellers and investors.

To reach Anton, call him directly on his cell at (212) 300-5115 or email him at anton@jphilip.com.

 “How to succeed in the real estate business without even trying…”
How to succeed in the real estate business without even trying. Yeah. You let me know if there is a way to succeed in the real estate business without even trying and I’ll be your best friend. There is no easy way to succeed, you have to work hard and long to get big, especially if you want happy, satisfied clients who will refer more business your way. 

The numbers are in for September real estate closings in the Ossining School district, and they show a significant improvement over the prior September. All information is for single family homes and is sourced by the Empire Access MLS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors. 

In September 2011, 17 single family homes sold at a median sale price of $395,000. 

In the same period last year, 9 single family homes sold at a median sale price of $345,000. 

That is almost a 90% jump in transaction totals and a 14% rise in median sale price. It is also the best September transaction total enjoyed by the Ossining market since 2006. Median price is still down almost 20% off the peak of 2005, however, and we are a long way from a full recovery off the high water marks of the last decade. 

There are currently 19 homes under contract with a buyer at this point in time, at a median list price of $429,500. This is a good sign that the trend of improvement is contunuing into the Autumn market. 

136 homes remain on the market as active and available at a similar median list price of $425,000. Buyers still have ample choices from the available inventory, and the asking prices are not far from those that are making it to the closing table. 

As a broker, my interpretation of the data is that the sellers are adapting to the new reality of lower prices. If the median asking price were higher, perhaps $475,000, we would likely have far fewer homes under contract, and of course fewer closings. So long as home sellers continue to price their homes to reflect the sensiblities of the buying public, we are likely to see an organic, sustainable recovery going forward. 

Prior posts on Ossining.

Find a home in Ossining with the Listingbook Home Search!

Redfin has laid their Scouting Report program to rest after less than a week. CEO Glenn Kelman posted a poignant announcement today on why he pulled the plug on the program, and among his statements, which I agree with, was the following: 

But I still think the folks most violently opposed to Scouting Report didn’t hate it because it was wrong but because it was right. 

I was not among those who was opposed to scouting reports philosophically. I just wanted reliable data. Because I belong to multiple MLS systems, my own report was incomplete, and this presented a problem for me. Of the 40+ deals that I brokered in the past 12 months, Redfin’s report had only 2. I felt forced to post my own report just a day ago: Redfin Can’t Get my Full Scouting Report Right. So I’ll Give it to You Here.

We can argue all we want about whether or not a broker has the right to publish the production of another brokerage’s sales data. What we as licensees need to understand, and I have said this before, is that this was a long time coming, and it will not go away. With information technology progressing, consumers will soon know who did what where and when, and for how much. Why shouldn’t they? It would certainly weed out the obfuscators who mislead consumers with false claims about their production, which, in my view, is a collosal problem today. 

Unfortunately, the program was poorly executed. No broker can expect an IDX feed meant for a consumer home search to tell them, for example, when an agent with both sides of a transaction was a dual agent, or that 120 days on market in one MLS is worse than 90 days on market in another, when one counts days under contract and one doesn’t. Someone else is bound to pick up the ball. 

But at the end of the day, whoever does this has to get the data right, period. If you can’t, don’t do it. I learned a long time ago that the best thing a brokerage-any brokerage- can do is play its position. In 2007 I elected to never originate a loan again because the industry had changed too much for me to add value. And Redfin should stick to being a kickass home search site that gives consumers an option they didn’t have before. 

If Redfin is truly the *answer” to the real estate industry they claim is broken, then their model will gain traction and grow organically. My company never grew because I antagonized the competition. It grew because I worked hard and did the right thing. Redfin will grow or not depending on how well they broker real estate. 

Redfin is now offering scouting reports (“Complete performance metrics”) on 1 million real estate agents! This is causing quite a kerfuffle in the real estate world, but I have to say that I don’t mind my numbers being published by Redfin or anyone else. 

That is, so long as they are accurate. If you click on my scouting report, it is missing over 90% of my data, and a curious regular guy who searches for me will not find a top-10 producer in Westchester, but rather two lonely transactions in Queens and Nassau county. They’ll also see a banner ad for two Redfin agents, with curiously higher sales figures right next to their names, and a statement on the bottom of the page that says the following: 

So, a regular guy will conclude that my transactions for the MLS of Long Island (MLSLI) and my local Empire Access MLS (EAMLS, highlighted) are included, and that I have sold 2 houses in the last 12 months. That sure makes the Redfin agents in the banner ad look far better than I look. 

NOW…IF that regular guy were to log in to Redfin (I am not sure how many people register and log in every time), he’d see another disclaimer saying the following: 

This scouting report is missing some data.

IF you log in, you’ll see that. If you don’t, you’ll conclude from the first disclaimer that the statistics have my EAMLS sales. It does not. 

So, I’ll publish my EAMLS data right here, with my sales and rental statistics for the last 12 months. Here it is:

That paints a different picture, doesn’t it? I think that’s more than two sales. My broker code is JPHILI. My agent ID is 15689. Even this data is not complete, as several of the transactions only credit me with 50% of the dollar volume because I co-listed or co-sold the property with one of my company’s agents. For example, on the last transaction, 28 Waterview Drive, the actual sale price was $741,000. EAMLS credits me with half the dollar volume because Leslie Miller was my co-listing agent.  On 178 North Regent a few rows up, the sale was actually $375,000, and I co-sold the house with Stephanie Solano, also known as agent 26482.

This also does not include sales I made that were not on EAMLS that I sold in other MLS systems. If you were to account for the full dollar volume and deals outside the EAMLS, the dollar volume is probably closer to $15,000,000 and another half dozen transactions. I am no stranger to high dollar, 7 figure transactions, and I proudly broker rentals. I am all about putting a roof over your head regardless of your checking account balance. So are my 20+ agents. 

On at least 4 transactions, I am both the listing and selling/renting agent, but in none of those deals was I a dual agent, as Redfin’s metrics would claim. This is important to clarify. Redfin doesn’t have access to my confidential files, and even though they say they can report deals where I was supposedly a dual agent, they can’t unless they saw my files and signed agency disclosures. They have not. 

If Redfin wants to publish my data, I have no issue with that whatsoever. Like they like to say all the time, I am all for transparency. However, if they are going to publish the data, they ought to get it right, and it might even be wise to hold off on ill-advised tweets like CEO Glenn Kelman’s “Live by the sword, die by the sword” line from September 29 until they can publish credible data. That goes for dual agency as well. I have met Glenn and like him, but he’s wrong here. 

So there you have it. Redfin says they have my data, but they don’t. But I’ll give it to you anyway, because I have nothing to hide, and I stand by my numbers. 

The September edition of Real Estate In Depth, the official publication of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors, has an announcement that WPAR is in discussions with neighboring organizations on the possibility of a merger. The other associations are the Rockland County Board of Realtors and the Orange County Association of Realtors, and the idea also includes the WPAR-owned Empire Access MLS and the OCAR-owned Greater Hudson Valley MLS. A work group of the five entities has met a number of times to discuss how the possible merger might be achieved, what the advantages would be, and what potential issues might have to be addressed. As Vice President of the EAMLS, I am in that work group.

Given the economy and the recent trend of mergers of other associations around the country, there are some considerable advantages to a merger. For me, the eventual consolidation of the MLS systems is a big one, and one that I made a call for in the past. I have always worked both sides of the Hudson and belong to both MLS systems, and I have long wished that there would be just one MLS serving the region instead of the current fragmented (and expensive) arrangement. The MLS consolidation would not be instantaneous and would likely take effect a year or two after the merger of the Realtor associations, but the light at the end of the tunnel is encouraging. 

There are other advantages. smaller associations have fixed overhead and fewer resources to support their members. The idea of a strong 9000+ member association with a streamlined infrastructure and single set of overhead considerations is an attactive one. 

Of course, like any “marriage,” there are also questions that need answers. Three sets of governance, a new name, lockbox systems, the eventual MLS mergers and other necessary changes mean growing pains and possibly tough decisions. No binding decision has been made yet.

Is it a good idea? I think so– a great idea as a matter of fact. Membership will have to decide, but I can say with some confidence that with what I have seen thus far, this is a very good idea whose time has come. 

Realtor associations often say that they are the “voice of real estate” for their areas. This consolidation and pooling of strengths and resources will give our trade organization a voice that is stronger and more unified. That is good for members, and ultimately good for the public we serve. 

Stay tuned. 

Milky Way
        Earth                                                                               
             USA                                                                        
                 New York                                                     
                      Westchester                                      
                               Briacliff Manor
                                          Chilmark
                                                The Faranda House

Seoul, Korea, to Rego Park, Queens, to Ossining, NY to Briarcliff

Ossining to 7 other places in 4 other states to Ossining again to Briarcliff

10 years, 4 kids, one moderately sovent business, a dog, and a million bajillion gajillion dollars in debt later, we still smile. 

“Staging for the Average Homeowner” will be the theme for Marie Graham‘s workshop to be held Thursday, October 6th at 7pm at the John C Hart Memorial Library in Shrub Oak. The event will cover many of the more important underpinnings of home staging and how it can aid in the sale of the home, one of which is teaching you to see the home through the eyes of the buyer. 

Marie is the stager I use for my listings. She is ASP certified, and her work is nothing short of phenomenal. She can work with any home I bring her into and she is excellent with clients, many of whom have some stress and anxiety on changing anything in their home. When a stager makes your job easier as a broker, she is worth her weight in gold. Marie is 24 karat- I firmly believe that she is among the best home stagers in Westchester County. 

In addition to having a front row seat for her staging masterpieces in my own listings, I have attended her workshops before and they are very valuable for anyone who is selling or buying for that matter. The subject matter is well presented, myths are broken down, and the fundamentals are laid out in a very understandable way. 

I believe the right stager can make a huge difference in the sale and marketing of a home. Not all stagers are equal, so if you have an interest in learning more from an excellent professional, I strongly encourage you to attend the event. 

The Hart Memorial Library is located at 1130 E Main Street, Shrub Oak, NY 10588. It is just off the Taconic, and is within a half hour of Connecticut and southern Dutchess. It begins at 7pm. 

Recognizing that not all markets are the same and that we as brokers have an obligation to disclose material facts, my thoughts are centered on practices here in my home market of Westchester and the Hudson Valley. Simply put, I am not sure that marketing listings that are short sales as short sales first and foremost is the best approach. I have actually stopped the practice almost entirely, especially in cases where the home is still occupied. 

Our MLS has a Yes/No option for the disclosure of a short sale. We can say that the sale is subject to 3rd party approval. I think this suffices for disclosure. Most of my short payoff listings are the same as regular sales- owner occupied, cared for, warm and well-presented. Some have been downright upscale. I have found through experience that the more homey, attactive elements these homes have in common with equity sales is the best way to market them.

Phrases like short sale bargain, short sale opportunity, and in my opinion the worst, pre-foreclosure, all over the marketing can be counterproductive. There are several trends I have identified. 

• I get inundated by inquiries from these people who are “short sale investors.” 
• They attract more lowball offers from bargain hunters, bottom feeders and speculators.
• The buyers and buyer agents treat them more like REOs, with less notice for showings and, in some cases, insensitivity to the owner occupants. 
• Plastering “short sale” all over my listings began to brand me at one time as a less attractive option for prospective sellers who weren’t short sales and didn’t want to be lumped in with them. 

 

One of the somewhat unique things about Westchester County, especially south Westchester, is that it was almost completely developed after the 2nd World War. What this means is that there are very few newer homes, and the inventory that we have is older, often much older, than a typical home in other communities around the USA. The home I am living in now was built in 1962. A home I spent a chunk of my childhood in was built in 1890. We have terms here like “pre war” and “turn of the (20th) century” that describe some neighborhoods. 

This means that things wear out. Roofs need to be replaced, Plumbing needs to be upgraded, Electricity needs to be modernized, windows have to be replaced, and on it goes. Older homes, like older bodies, require more maintenance. 

The other side of matters is that Westchester is one of the highest cost places to live you can find. My own property taxes are over $16,000. The median price of a home is $635,000. 

When you mix “old” and “expensive” and a you aren’t talking about wine, then the purchase of the real estate requires due diligence. You have to do your homework, and you have to get a home inspection. A decent home inspection can be done for as little as $400. But the value of the $400 investment is priceless. It is more than a means of discovering possible defects and problems, it gives the purchaser peace of mind and serves as an instruction manual for home ownership. 

You just do it. To skip an inspection, or to rely on your friend the contractor to walk through and size it up is the ultimate in being penny wise and pound foolish. It can help you avoid a far more expensive mistake, and has almost always saved money for the buyer in my experience. Unless you know going in it is a gut renovation and nothing will be left after the work, you get the home inspected. It is the largest purchase of your life. Have a professional check it out before you go forward. 

Discovering Westchester County is like peeling an onion-anyone that views “the 914” as an amalgam of bedroom communities slumbering while all the action takes place south of us in Manhattan is missing out. For the last 37 years, Broadway has had an outpost right in Elmsford at the Westchester Broadway Theatre. Just last night, Ann and I celebrated our 10 anniversary at a fantastic performance of My Fair Lady starring Jennifer Babiak and Tom Galantich with a great ensemble cast. 

We love the arts. Ann is a Stuyvesant alum and plays three instruments, and I have it on good authority that my mention of Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews on our first date got me my second date. Before we got all tangled up in children and work we saw our share of shows, and as a matter of fact our first reception dance was from Rent. So, driving 10 minutes and parking for free to see an awesome musical with a great dinner is quite a luxury. 

The Westchester Broadway Theatre has been around for 37 years. It was originally called An Evening Dinner Theatre, and when I was younger my parents took me there twice (Fiddler on the Roof and South Pacific). In 1991, it became the Westchester Broadway Theatre, and for the better part of the last 4 decades it has been a source for more great productions that I could list- Evita, Chicago, 42nd Street, and dozens more. 

We had a wonderful experience last night. They start with a cocktail hour, dinner, and then the show. The place seats under 400, so it is intimate. We were in the 2nd row, with the stage centered with seats on three sides stadia style, so we could see the veins in their neck at the high notes. There is really nothing like a live performance, and this cast really brought it. You get chills.

Jennifer Babiak, a Long Island girl, was Eliza Doolittle and she was powerful. It is a tough role following Julie Andrews, Marni Nixon and Audrey Hepburn, but she was a good girl, she was! Just the right mix of vulnerability, passion, and what a voice. Tom Galantich, himself a Brooklyn product, was wonderful as Henry Higgins as well. It didn’t stop there, and if you are in the sound of my voice you should pick a date in October and enjoy yourself. 

10 minutes after we left the parking lot, we were home. As much as we love Manhattan, it is so nice that we have something so high caliber that is local for our own. The WBT is one of the great things about Westchester County, and as I have said many times, we feel blessed to live, work and raise our family here.

Put down roots here already!  

Something I read on Facebook earlier made me just a little sad. Chris Somers asked for opinions on the banks’ role in the downturn versus the borrowers, and one of the comments was just callous. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard it. I just wish it were the last. Rather than get into a flame war on Chris’s Facebook, I thought I’d take the classier safer route and preach from my own soap box. 

If you are fortunate enough to not be in financial difficulty, are current on your mortgage, and view the recession from the sidelines, it is incredibly unflattering to say things like “man up and admit you bit off more than you could chew” or “nobody held a gun to your head and made you sign for that mortgage.” I suppose that when the initial sub prime crisis hit in 2007, the majority of borrowers in default may have been irresponsible or naive. The loans were, after all, terrible products. 

But today? People I deal with today literally did nothing wrong except lose their job. They bought within their means, got fully documented legitimate conforming mortgages, and, in short, did everything people in this country have done for generations. 

Except lose their job. That wasn’t in the plans. And they didn’t lose their jobs because they were bad workers, they got downsized because of the recession. Oh, and the banks played more than a passive role in the recession, as we all know. If you’ve ever been called by a banking rep from overseas you’ll understand. 

Almost half of my company’s listings are short sales. Here is a partial list of the reasons for the short sale status:

• Unemployment. 
• Cancer and illness. 
• Sick relative forced relocation when they were  current on their payments but under water. 
• A few were victims of predatory lending. 

To the guy who thinks it is clever to inquire on one of my listings as if he were an interested buyer, only to pitch me  that he is an Internet search firm and can improve my search engine rankings:

I will never, ever do business with you. 

I really get pinched by the false alarm you cause when an entire admin staff puts what they are doing on hold, goes into service mode to answer an inquiry, determines which agent will take care of the potential buyer or seller, only to slide to the bottom of the pole and see your crass solicitation. That is SO not cool. Is is disruptive. 

I get solicited all the time. The Police Conference of New York called earlier, and the guy’s pitch was to stop child abuse, as if I wasn’t already against it. I’m the broker and owner of the company. I get approached by people selling leads, copy toner, advertising, web pages, payroll services (what regular agent deals with them?), business consulting,  and dozens of other offerings. 

But even the scam telemarketers promising me the sun moon and stars if I buy their product don’t have the temerity to masquerade as a phantom buyer to get my attention. Even the guy who knocks on my office door selling knock off perfume out of a cardboard box doesn’t pretend he’s a buyer for one of my listings. This wasn’t a blog comment. This was a consumer inquiry. 

Do you sell to cops by pretending there was a crime? 
Do you sell to EMS workers pretending that an octogenarian fell and broke a hip?
Do you walk up to rectories asking for a confession only to pull out your snake oil?

No, you just figure that I’ll pay more attention with the vague promise of a commission. You try and use my mission against me. 

For Pete’s sake, you are supposed to be good at getting found. If you have to resort to subterfuge, maybe the SEO business isn’t for you. 

I have written before on real estate investor mistakes, and one of them is worth expanding on. It is little discussed, but if an investor buys a property for rehab and resale, there is more than a simple margin to be focused on. The investor should also be guided by a realistic timetable. 

All too often, I see amateur investors holding out for a price no matter how long in takes. This is a huge mistake for 2 main reasons: the cost of carrying the property, and the opportunity cost of not turning the property over in a timely fashion. 

Carrying costs kill profit margin. The property taxes in Westchester are the highest in the nation. A medium home worth $500,000 can have property taxes of $15,000 or more. Holding that property for 6 months is $7500 in taxes. Holding that property for a year-far too long-can eat 3% of the value. Taxes aren’t the only incemental cost- utilities, maintenance and snow removal not only cost the checkbook, they can ad stress as well. 

Opportunity cost is by far the silent killer. There are two types of opportunity costs I see that neophytes seldom consider. They are the cost of money, and the cost of lost deals if you hold on too long. 

The cost of money is often simplified into the interest on borrowed money, but it can also be interest lost when the investor pays cash. If you put $400,000 cash into a house, you are taking it from an interest-bearing instrument like a money market or cash account and put it into real estate, which pays no interest. If that fund pays 3%, interest lost on a price of $400,000 over a year is $12,000. If you borrow $400,000, interest can be double or triple that amount, making that hour glass a real source of angst if you don’t move the property. 

The cost of a lost deal is another casualty of hubris. I recently interviewed an investor flipping their first house. When I told them what I thought the home would sell for, their emotion at the quote was palpable. I wasn’t hired. They still haven’t sold, and appear to now be chasing the market. Even if they get lucky and sell at the end of the year for an amount higher than I quoted them, they still lose. Why? Because the incremental amount they held out for is dwarfed by the money they’ll never make had they turned the property over in a timely fashion and parlayed it into another opportunity. 

All too often, newer investors make the fatal mistake of holding out  too long for a home run on every deal, when a good solid double in a shorter timeframe would keep them profitable and healthy. That can be disasterous. Remember, with the gigantic numbers we are throwing around in Westchester and the New York area, mistakes cost a king’s ransom. Tens of thousands, sometimes 6 figures. 

Time is money. You can make money back with prudent future transactional strategy if you don’t hit a home run on a deal. But you can never, ever get time back. 

I’ll never say never, but this evening I had to explain to a seller client why I was unwilling to take a listing for only 90 days. I fully understand the reason why sellers want to hold their agent’s feet to the fire and ensure that they aren’t stuck in a long term contract with a brokerage that isn’t working hard to get their home sold. However, even if I sold the house in less than 30 days, a 90 day listing is almost always too short. 

It often takes a good solid 60 days for deals to close in Westchester and the surrounding areas these days. That may seem like an eternity to those in other markets, but remember that we can lose a month just getting a home under contract. 

I never want to commit what I consider vast resources and tools, to say nothing of my own time, effort and cash, to a client that will wander after such a short time, especially if they don’t list at the price I recommend. Average time on market in Westchester is over 6 months, and even that is misleading because that doesn’t take prior broker contracts into account. 90 days is a bathroom break, and when you consider that we can’t do single property websites, google ad campaigns, professional photography, Youtube walking tours and pre list inspection all done in the first 48 hours, the time get s squeezed even more. It can take a good week to have all the marketing set up and the listing properly imported to all the 50 syndication sites we use.

This is, of course, inspired by events today where a seller had second thoughts about the 180 day agreement he already signed. It was actually an extension to a VERY short initial contract period at a higher price than I advised, and my agent who was working with the guy busted his tail for the client. The place was vacant, so he kept it clean himself, emptied the dehumidifier, and mother henned the heck out of the place. 

A DO understand a seller’s fear of being tied up with a firm that is just waiting for another firm to bring the buyer. I get it. I have seen listings horribly neglected that were tied up with a brokerage for a year.  But that is’t us. We are as aggressive as you can get, and if you doubt it, google the address of one of my listings and tell me what you find. I know you’ll find extraordinary exposure, and that should have our clients resting easy that they are in good hands, and that we are in it for the long haul. 

By the way, I never say never. I would take a listing for 90 days under the right circumstances. I once took a 30 day listing, and it closed 36 days later. But that is a blog for another time. The takeway for consumers is that you want a broker that is committed and eager, but not one who is deperate. Desperate doesn’t sell. 

Growing up in Ossining, even though I went to Catholic schools after 1st grade, I always got the connection between the local history and the high school mascot, the Ossining Indian. We were told of the Sint Sinck heritage, stone on stone, and how the high school teams were emblematic of that history. That changed in 2002, when social and political pressure convinced the district to retire the Indian mascot. OHS grad Dana Goldstein, quite an accomplished scholar herself, has written a complex commentary on the change and aftermath.

Of course, the community is now a decade into mascot limbo, and with all due respect for the folks with the Ossining Indians Forever bumper stickers, I see less of an issue with the loss of the Indian as the lack of a suitable replacement.  They have tried and trashed the fictitious “Riverhawk,” then simply “O,” and now I see tacit references in the press to the “Pride,” as if those ex -jocks among us don’t already know that the term is as common as “athletic supporter.” The only official announcement of Pride is on a student blog I found from a senior, Trevor Gill, who graduated last year.

I wouldn’t have a horse in this race if I did not still reside in the district. My alma mater, John F Kennedy Catholic in Somers, is represented by the Gaels, another ethnic character, only of the Irish variety. I won’t go past mentioning that Notre Dame’s mascot, the fighting Irish, is literally a drunk leprechaun. And I couldn’t root for the Washington Redskins. But the reason for retiring the Indian was not mere political correctness. Tomahawk chops, caricatured logos and costumed buffoons would be reason enough for me if the mist of genocide and suffering did not linger. And as much as I’d like to cross my heart and promise to go back to the Indian if we could do it respectfully and without chicanery and stereotypes, I don’t think we can unring the mascot bell.

What I would like to see is a mascot that the entire community can get behind that isn’t a vowel or part-time adjective. The reason the Indian still remains in our consciousness is because they haven’t devoted the effort to a suitable replacement that matched the campaign to retire the Indian. The world has changed. No one is changing their mascot from Wildcat or Bear to Indian. It is the other way around.  I think it is time for Ossining to adapt, because you cannot rewind. The best thing to do is for the district to put an earnest effort in finding a new identity that resonates with both sides of the argument once and for all.