The corporation, or village of Ossining, will be 200 years old in 2013, and our fair municipality was the first village to incorporate in the State of New York. The bicentennial will rightly observe a long, rich history as well as cultural significance from being the cradle of the “up the river” line from old gangster movies to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and most recently, prominent mention in the hit TV series Mad Men. 

So have we outgrown the “village ” moniker? The dictionary defines a city as an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village. Indeed, according to the 2010 census, of Westchester County’s six cities, Ossining is larger than Rye and an eyelash smaller than Peekskill. Of the county’s 23 villages, only Port Chester is has a greater population. Moreover, if you go outside the county to many other cities in New York State, Ossining is larger and arguably more significant than a bunch of them. 

Would there be an advantage to acknowledging the facts on the ground and declaring ourselves a city officially? Would there be a revenue advantage in terms of federal or state aid for our infrastructure or school system? These questions might be worth exploring. If the answers are in the affirmative, it would make sense to approach the idea more earnestly. 

Perhaps the symbolism of the move would make a bigger impact on  our civic psyche then the mere utility. Our waterfront remains undeveloped outside of arguments over the on again, off again Harbor Square project. Downtown Ossining, blighted and derelict for decades, has nearly completed its turnaround and is reaching critical mass in terms of vitality. Westchester magazine loves us. Should we strike while the iron is hot? Would it be a smart move? Have we graduated? Is 200 years as a village long enough? 

I think the idea of an Active Rain meetup is a capital idea, and I would like to propose one for Westchester and surrounding RainFolk on Tuesday, September 6 at 7pm at the Brazen Fox in White Plains NY. If you can drive to White Plains from wherever you are, you are welcome. The full address is 175 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, NY 10601. Parking is best behind the building in the municipal lot on the corner of Maple and Waller. Brazen Fox does have a rear entrance from the lot.

This would be a natural for people in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and the Bronx. 1500 points for all attendees. Event will be sponsored by your wallet until we get a sponsor. Typically, we go dutch at the meetups I have attended. It should be fun to tilt a few with the folks we have rubbed cyber elbows with for so long.

Please RSVP in the comments or email me at jphilip@jphilip.com

It is hard to believe that it was almost a year ago that fellow blogger Elyse Berman referred a listing client to me here in New York. A terrific lady, the client had recently lost her husband and relocated to Florida. She had expired unsold with another broker, and I met her last September. There were circumstances around the file that made it no cookie cutter sale, but by December we had an interested buyer. Due to our lovely attorney state here in New York, fully executed contracts would not be completed until February. 

Like many other transactions, this was a short sale, so getting a buyer was just the beginning. The approval process took us every bit of the last 7 months- no picnic. It never helps to have a slow, unresponsive bank in a workout. But it does help to have a strong buyer agent and a motivated buyer on the other side and a skilled attorney on our side. Those assets we had in spades. Moreover, the seller was a person you like to fight for- decent, supportive, and cooperative. 

Finally, in late July the unconditional approval came through, and the closing was today. It was a long time coming.

That’s not the end of the story. There will be a part 2, as the client has listed her late mother’s home with me very recently as well. I can’t imagine dealing with the death of both a spouse and a parent in such a short period, and my heart goes out to this dear woman. 

When I met her to see the second house, I also met her nephew, who happens to be on the spectrum for autism. This hits very close to home for me- Gregory, our 6 year old, is also on the spectrum. My client didn’t know this, and we had a discussion about how autism had affected us personally.

She told me one thing that was remarkable: a Catholic school teacher by profession, she had dealt with students on the spectrum in her work. And once not too long ago, some students humiliated a student with autism (just hearing that makes my blood boil), making that poor kid very upset and distressed. My client, a meek woman in appearance and demeanor, then told me how she handled the bullies. 

And I still get chills. 

Her whole demeanor changed. She was Mama bear, and those boys were NEVER to harass that other student again, ever, and if she ever heard otherwise, GOD HELP THEM. Their job going forward was to watch out for him. Period. This was no grieving widow recounting the events- it was a mother, a teacher and an aunt looking out for the lost sheep. I wanted to hug her. 

It goes without saying that I won’t take the second listing for granted. And I will go to the mat for this lady, because I love people who fight for the right thing. I just eat that up. I really do. 

Anyone who says we just broker homes is nuts. We deal in humanity. We affect lives profoundly. That’s what we do. I am grateful to Elyse for the referral and support, and I look forward to hitting a home run for a great, great client. 

The Wall Street Journal has reported that ForSaleBYOwner.com founder Colby Sambrotto has sold his Manhattan condo with a broker after failing for 6 months as a For Sale by Owner. 

Here’s the best part: The broker got him $150,000 more than he was asking when he was selling on his own. So much for saving on commission- he netted more even after the commission! 

The story is that Sambrotto went for 6 months selling “By owner” on the Internet, online ads, and the rest of the FSBO gig at an asking price of $2 million for his Chelsea condominium. He then gave up (as 90% of FSBOs will) and listed with Jesse Buckler of Bond New York, who took the unusual strategy of advising Sambrotto to raise his price by $150,000. Clearly, this is a move that only works if you know your market. The home is now closed for $2.15 million after going under contract in May.  

Some have said that the brokers control the market in Manhattan so much that buyers seldom look online, and that is why FSBO failed and the broker succeeded.

Bull.

Manhattan buyers are as savvy as they get, and sites like StreetEasy, Trulia and ResidentialNYC get huge traffic for Manhattan. The truth is that a good broker knows how to sell real estate better, faster, for more money and with fewer headaches than a website developer. 

It all goes to the old story about the plumber who is called in to fix a furnace and after tapping a few times on a specific pipe and getting the thing humming again, mails the owner a bill for $1000. Aghast, the owner objects, saying that he only tapped a pipe. He then got an itemized bill, $1 for tapping the pipe, $999 for knowing what pipe to tap. We are paid for what we know- not just what we do. 

If you want a do it yourself project, build a go cart. For the largest transaction of your life, hire a good professional broker. 

I got a call from an agent today and the conversation turned to a deal one of my team members tried to make on her listing which never went together. It wasn’t that they didn’t like our price, she explained. It was the seller concession. While the net to seller was quite acceptable, their attorney “didn’t like” the proposed concession. 

My jaw dropped as she shared with me that the same thing happened twice before on that property. The seller and their attorney rebuffed what sounded like (certainly in our case) qualified, pre approved offers with good net to her seller over a seller concession. Instead of selling months ago, the house languishes on the market, no doubt having the price lowered as time passes. 

Such lost opportunties over a prefectly fine, if misunderstood, term of sale reminded me of the old joke where the guy throws out an old baseball because it was from 1927, had people’s names all over it, and one of them, Ruth, was a girl anyway. How tragic.

There is an unflattering ethic among some older practitioners of both law and real estate in Westchester County that money not delivered in a Tiffany case is not money. Seller concessions, to some attorneys, aren’t what we do in Westchester County. No matter that they are perfectly legitimate. No matter that they turn otherwise non prospects into able buyers. No matter that it is good for the seller client to achieve their objective, which is to sell for as much as possible in a timely way. No matter that 15 minutes away in Rockland County or the Bronx that they are done with no issue, skin rash, or damage to the esophagus.

No, here in Westchester the ground water is different. We rest on a different tectonic plate. The acidity of the soil does not allow buyers to finance part of their closing costs and get homes sold in this recession. It is more than an absurdity borne of ignorance of the current market, it is a tragedy that a client is so poorly represented. These people had their house sold three times. And they have nothing to show for it. 

Seller concessions, or givebacks as they are called in some places, are just fine and not uncommon in first time home buyers. Anyone who says otherwise has not done much in this market lately, and may in fact be incredibly out of touch with events of the last 3 years. I see them all over the place, and while we’d all love for buyers to plop 50% down or pay in cash, that isn’t possible. And of the deals I have seen not close, the concession was virtually never a cause.

Allowing buyers to essentially finance a tiny (3%) portion of the sale price to cover their closing costs is absolutely OK in almost every case I have ever seen. And in a slow market where able buyers are rare, it is unconscionable to rebuff an offer, essentially subordinating the well being of the client to a tired, snooty principle.  And it is intellectually dishonest to invoke the client’s best interest over rejecting an offer so structured when killing a deal is in fact contrary to the client’s best interests. I’ve seen this cost sellers big money over time as they reduced in price. 

Time on market is not the seller’s friend. 
Rejecting an offer over a seller concession legitimately arranged by their lender is foolish.
This market is not 2005 where buyers are waiting in line, and squandering an able buyer is nuts.

Seller’s concessions, my friends, are perfectly OK despite what this attorney thinks. I have closed hundreds of them. That is why I get the results I get, while this home sadly sits unsold after 3 viable offers. 

As Yogi Berra says, you can see an awful lot by watching. And as a broker who oversees 20+ agents, 50+ listings and who still works in the field with select buyers, I do see both sides of an issue that sellers often bring up in the discussion of listing and selling their house. 

Many of the people who list their home for sale with me already experienced failure with a prior broker. They often tell me in our preliminary interview that they were frustrated with the lack of “selling” they witnessed with the agents who showed their home when they came by. Why they were even home to see this in the first place is a post for another day-suffice to say the folks aren’t free to speak with the owner 2 feet away. The question itself speaks to the need consumers have for education and understanding as to how homes are chosen and bought. 

“The agents who show the home just walk through and hardly say anything about the house. Don’t they want to make a sale? Why aren’t they pushing for a sale?”

To understand the fallacious underpinnings of the question, you first have to understand the process a 2011 buyer goes through in the selection of a home. They don’t want to be “sold.” This isn’t a home-o-matic that comes with free steak knives if you act now. This is a six figure decision in an unreliable economy that will house their family. And owners or agents who follow them around the home tour peppering them with data about the storage under the stairs, an anecdote about the wall oven, and dozens of other well meaning tidbits are viewed as a distraction and nuisance. 

Buyer agents who are not talkative are not ignorant about the house. They aren’t talkative because they do know their buyer clients. Rather than seeing a home tour as a sales pitch, it is better to view it as a dressing room or a library. They are studying it. They are taking it in. They are soaking in it. They are seeing if it fits them. They are assessing how they look in it. And that’s hard to do with someone in your space the whole time.

If it feels like home, they’ll ask questions or gladly take a data sheet with a list of all those improvements and enhancements the owner wanted to ram down their throat in the first 15.8 seconds they walked in. If it doesn’t feel like home, no list will matter– it is off the list. Just imagine how little clothing a store would sell if the sales staff followed you into the dressing room and yapped about the pleats. How intrusive and unsettling would that be? 

A smart buyer agent therefore lets the buyer client go through the very personal process of understanding the house in as pressure free a manner as possible, selecting what to say carefully tailored to their clients needs as they see them apply through the home. They aren’t not trying to sell. Quite the contrary. They know that doing what a biased, emotional un-trained homeowner does will foil a sale. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Homeowners are wise to not be present for showings. And mandating that a listing agent accompany showings as their proxy is a bad idea in most cases also. Let the buyer agent do their job. If you are an owner and you have a pitch you feel works for the house, write it up and print it for the buyer to take with them so they can reference it quietly, at their own pace, and without pressure on their own terms. Homes are bought, not sold. If it doesn’t feel like home in the first place, you’ll never talk them into buying. 

Let the buyer try it on and see how it fits in peace. Let them study it without noise. Stay out of the way. My results say this is the way to go. 

Law Memorial Park in Briarcliff Manor is, to my eyes, one of the most attractive downtown parks of any municipality in Westchester County. It is literally walking distance from downtown (perhaps 2 city blocks) and has the village library, a huge swimming pool, a small wading pool, a huge clubhouse pavilion, clay tennis courts, a pond, tree lined paths, and gorgeous vegetation. Summer days see lots of people swimming and recreating here, walking the paths and relaxing, all in sight of beautiful, massive trees that, if they could talk, tell generations of history. In all it is 7 acres large and not a square foot needs help. 

The library was recently enlarged and the whole setting is peaceful, cared for, and uncommonly pretty. It is one of the things that make Briarcliff Manor a special community, and we are thankful we can live and raise our family here. But don’t take my word for it. Enjoy. And remember that what you see is 3 minutes on foot from downtown. 

To the best of my knowledge, only two things exist under stairs: little creatures who eat pens and underwear and poop lint, and storage.

I have never seen the little creatures.

Most people innately know that there is storage, or, in some cases, a full-blown closet under stairs because they have their own junk they need to hide or because they currently live somewhere with stairs. It is true. 

After getting my real estate license in 1996, I was first introduced to the phenomenon of homeowners who somehow felt that having storage under the stairs made their house the purple cow of the subdivision. I reflected on this strange manifestation of pride today when a homeowner showed a buyer client his own storage cubby beneath the stairs and then paused to behold it for a moment as if it were a sunset or piece of amazing art. It wasn’t a long pause, just long enough for me have a fleeting thought where the 19 year old in me in me wanted to burst out 

OH MY GOD YOU MEAN THERE IS TOTALLY SPACE BEHIND THAT LITTLE DOOR WHERE I COULD PUT MY STUFF? WHEN DID YOU FIND THIS OUT? I CAN PUT ANYTHING THAT WILL FIT? WHAT WILL THEY COME UP WITH NEXT? I need to sit down. 

It was just a fleeting thought, shorter than the owner’s pause, but I had to share it here. 

I have had people tell me in a walk through for a listing interview with a straight face “we love this house because there is storage under the stairs.” Then, they pause and wait for me to solemnly take the undertruss of the stairs in, and nod toward them like we just saw the house pull Excalibur from the rock. Trying to be polite, I might say how convenient it must be to put holiday decorations there instead of the attic, and they agree almost giddily, like they are the only people in the universe who have this special, amazing amenity. Call NASA. Alert the Smithsonian.

This is especially the case for owners of raised ranches, where the entry stairs curl around, giving the little cubby a second compartment, no doubt filled with the wonder of a new dimension in the space/time continuum.  These people seriously dig that little area. Do they talk about it when they are alone? Is some women knitting somewhere in the world, then looking up at her husband reading the paper and saying “thank goodness we have that storage under the stairs”? Do they hold hands and gaze at it? 

Of course, I don’t need to tell you that buyers have their own agenda, and while I have gotten plenty of requests to find something with a garage, fireplace or finished basement, I have never been asked to make sure that we only see houses with storage under the stairs. And no buyer has ever said to me “let’s make the offer on the house with the storage under the stairs.”  The fools. They must not get it.

If there is ever a call to give a Nobel Prize to the inventor of the storage under the stairs idea, I promise you that the guy pushing it just put his house on the market, and he’s got a plastic Christmas tree in a box in his cubby. And he keeps losing his pens. 

Right now, you could buy a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home in Ossining for less than $160,000. No, it isn’t a bombed out foreclosure behind a gas station, it is a co-op. Co -ops are one of the most affordable options for housing in all of Westchester county, and Ossining has almost 50 available priced under $200,000. Going further south in areas like White Plains, Scarsdale and Yonkers, hundreds more are available, often at very low price points. 

A co -op is one of the most misunderstood forms of home ownership. Simply put, co -op ownership differs from a condominium in that the owner is actually a shareholder in the corporation that runs the complex and get a proprietary lease to a unit instead of a deed. Because of this hybrid of real estate and stock ownership there is some extra paperwork for the lawyers in the purchase, and prospective buyers have to pass a board review before they can close. Reviews in this day and age are perfunctory, however, and mainly assess the strength of the buyer’s ability to pay their bills, not unlike their own mortgage bank. 

Co-op ownership has some advantages. There are no house or yard headaches such as cleaning gutters or mowing a lawn, and complexes typically have attractive amenities like gyms, pools and community rooms. But to me, by far the best advantage to co ops is that they are among the most affordable homes in Westchester. Indeed, they have been deemed the “starter home of Westchester County” for years now. In an area that seems to export people in droves to outlying areas like Dutchess and Orange Counties and out of state, they can mean the difference between staying and leaving home. 

If a housing budget is low, the option between renting and owning might mean living 2 hours or more north of Manhattan. Co-op ownership allows a person to live here in Westchester- affordably, without having to add 2 hours a day to their commute living in the “exurbs” of Orange or Dutchess counties. In real estate, it is all about location. To my way of thinking, it is better to live locally in something affordable, than to be add travel and commute time just to live under a roof that won’t break the bank. If you agree, you’ll have plenty of choices in co-ops right here in Westchester County. Perhaps if more people realized this we might not see so many younger adults migrating from Westchester to points far beyond. 

You can search co-ops all over Westchester with a free Listingbook account. 

Growth and the addition of a new team member is always a happy event for us, and I am pleased to introduce Linda Polay as the newest licensee on the J. Philip team. Linda has quite a stellar background, and I look forward to supporting her in serving her lucky clients. 

Linda comes to us with 6 years of real estate sales under her belt, most recently with Coldwell Banker, and almost 20 years of retail management and sales in the Garment District of New York City- no easy place to cut one’s teeth. She was also a buyer for Sterns, which is no job for the meek. She has sold multiple millions of residential real estate since getting her license, and a review of her transactions show some tremendous advocacy- one recent transaction where she represented a buyer closed at 9% below asking price, quite a steep discount, and one of her listings sold for $65,000 over asking– and the list price was below $200,000! When you get your sellers far more than asking and your buyers far less than asking you are good. 

The thing that sticks out for me early on in getting to know Linda was the thought and consideration she put into choosing her next company. We first interviewed over a month ago, and her line of questioning was not fluffy- it wasn’t about her, it was about how we could support her in serving her clients. Successful agents come from there. Linda’s clients will get excellent service and results because she not only truly cares, she is savvy and capable. 

A Jersey girl who is now a Westchester resident for 15 years, she resides in Cortlandt Manor with her husband and two sons. Linda serves all of Westchester and Putnam for residential buyers and sellers,and even has some experience with land. You can reach her at (914) 384-5596 or lindapolay@jphilip.com. Reach out to Linda and good things will happen. 

While I cannot be in attendance at Inman Connect San Francisco, I am following the Twitter stream on the event. I wish I could go, but I have to make hay while the sun shines. One tweet that caught my attention referenced a speaker by the name of Laura Roeder advising attendees to NOT blog daily, but to get out there and do business. Now, in fairness to Laura, there is no context to the sentiment, so I don’t have the full picture. I’ll offer my opinion with that caveat. 

In an of itself, I think that blogging is a smart thing to do daily so long as it is part of a plan that includes a full dose of other work. I do post 30-40 times a month on various sites, primarily right here, and were I to cut back, it would not help me do more business, it would set me back. Now I’ll be the first to say that if you are a new agent and all you do for business is blog, you have a problem. The same goes for agents who blog or hang out on Facebook to avoid other less comfortable work. That isn’t smart. But all things being equal, I believe that blogging daily, if you have the inclination, is better than not blogging daily. So long as you are taking care of everything you should and have a workable plan, I am all for it.  

I have never heard of Ms Roeder, but she has close to 15,000 followers in Twitter  and she has the feathers in her cap to be a speaker for Inman, so she must be quite credible. Her website says that she is a social media expert, and while her profile kind of makes me feel old, I respect her views. Her “about” page states that she has been quoted in the LA Times, CNet and been a contributor to a number of industry blogs.

Well, I outsell all but a few out of 7500 agents in my market, been in the NY Times, ABC World News, AP, AOL, and several other outlets, and I am on the board of a very forward thinking and large MLS. My blogging has played a large role in that stuff, and I say posting daily is good so long as it doesn’t undermine other work. As I said to a colleague on Twitter, that’s what the other 23 hours a day are for. So if you want to do it daily, just put out quality content, unless you live in New York. 🙂

I am going to follow Laura going forward because her blog and other writing strike me as quite on point, and disagreeing with her on this matter may be a non sequitor, as I was 2000 miles away when she made her presentation. I hope to catch her next time. In the meantime, I’ll go back to selling real estate and blog about things other than blogging. 

Today I came home to the usual flurry email requests for feedback for a full afternoon of showings homes to a great buyer client. I’m not the biggest fan of feedback for reasons posted before, but this afternoon I was more forthcoming. The following are my responses to feedback requests that I really did send. See if you can guess which house is the front runner, or if any of the feedback told the agent something they didn’t already know. 

1. Showed well, but there was some concern about the shower in the former bedroom closet, the illegal bathroom, and the price. 
2. There was doubt that the client would be able to fit her car in the altered garage without surgical precision and petroleum jelly. The vast brick facade (a school gym is directly across the street) dominating the front view was a deal killer. 
3. Client felt that house was considerably overpriced for the condition.
4. Thanks for the showing. 
5. Would have been far more comfortable if owner’s wife was out of the shower when he showed us the bathroom and asked her to keep curtain closed. 
6. Nice home, but the automat-styled kitchen was a bit too much to take on.
7. Not bad, just wondering if there was a way to gain access to rear yard? We couldn’t do much better than see from upstairs. Does the owner collect/make crucifixes? Client was wondering. 

There you have it folks. Most of this stuff was obvious, and much of the “revelations” were just poor client education. We don’t want to see the woner’s wife in the shower. It would be actually nice to walk in the back yard. I am sure tha agent knows that the school towers over the listing and that the “garage” was best used for a mini. 

Now I’ll count the hours from the calls from the listing agents to tell me why 20+ religious artifacts is a room in great staging, how 3/4 of a garage is good for hand/eye coordination drills, and an expensive kitchen renovation in 50’s diner style is really neat-o, which will move my client not a millimeter. The time to scramble is not after we see the home, it is before the showing. 

I could start a whole separate blog for the things I consciously decide not to write about, because it’s just too easy to express bemusement or incredulity at the stuff a small number of agents do with a straight face. For example, a few minutes ago an agent just asked me “what kind of person” my client was when I called about their listing. I responded that she has mastered walking on her hind legs. But that’s not the purpose of this article. 

Earlier today, after all week of no response, I finally got a return call from the buyer agent whose client was ostensibly about to sign the contract on my listing. The last we heard they were supposed to meet with their attorney Monday, and then nothing. 

“I’m on vacation,” my -ahem-colleague said, “but I’m calling you back as a courtesy.” 

Well gee. What a mensch. Calling me back from the beach or hotel. How nice of. Are vacations some new real estate agent union benefit we got from management? I never got the memo. I always thought that when you went on vacation, you, um, TOLD people, and you had a co worker COVER for you so your files didn’t crap out. 

But that’s just me. 

Anyway, my compadre had no update other than that the people “were supposed to sign sometime this week.”

WOW. It must be nice to just leave town, disappear for the week, and expect deals to close themselves. 

How would the buyer clients feel if we got a competing offer and I couldn’t reach the agent about it? 

What if my seller interpreted the disappearing act as disinterest and elected to engage someone else? 

Real estate is not a wage-earning job where the dishrag is waiting in the same place you left it when the shift ended. It requires care and maintenance of the shifting sands of a transaction, and if you can’t have your hands on the rudder, you absolutely have to make sure someone can cover for you. The cavalier attitude of this agent about basically deserting the file for the week makes me wonder what else was missed on the buyer’s behalf. 

Choose your agent wisely, folks. Real estate mistakes are expensive. 

I see an interesting trend on the blog dashboard this morning from colleagues across the US- poor conduct by agents, and understandable incredulity by the authors about it. I agree. If an agent won’t present an offer, return a call, or just behave, it is a problem with an unattracive domino effect. I myself have had many a problem, for example, with agents who won’t allow me to show their listings, typically by indifference, and it has strained my standing with my own buyer client. And when someone puts an unethical impediment between you and dinner, that is bad. 

There is no one size fits all solution, but one rather under-discussed move is to simply call the agent’s broker or manager. As a broker-owner myself, anything that is a red flag for liability is a huge concern and top priority. In many cases, a call or email to the branch manager or supervising broker will get that call returned or offer answered, and often quickly. While the response may be slower by a few hours, putting it in writing in for form of an email is pretty effective. 

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the manager may not be useful. I have had my share of shoulder shrugging, milquetoast losers without the backbone to handle the very people they were hired to handle. That is for another article. But if the manager has a half a clue, they’ll get a result. You may not like the result, as even managers will spin and talk fast to preserve an in house sale for example, but it also puts them on notice that you are no doormat, and that you won’t tolerate unprofessional conduct. 

It is a shame that we have to engage these sorts of discussions in our industry, but it is a fact of life until stndards are raised meaningfully. I can tell you this much: anyone that calls me on an issue with one of my team members can rest at night that I won’t stop drilling for answers on the matter until I hit water. Problems are training opportunities anyway, and brokers should be the go to people when their agents cause them.