All information is from the Westchester Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 

Chances are that if you are selling a home that has been on the market any length of time, you’ve had your share of showings. If you haven’t sold yet, you might wonder what all those people who passed on your home eventually bought. I’ve got news for you: a huge percentage of them aren’t buying anything anytime soon. They are working with an agent, they may be pre approved, but they might be a months or a year away from actually acting. How can this be?

Right now, the buying public is in a war of attrition with sellers. The vast majority of prospective buyers are sitting this out. They aren’t indifferent, they just aren’t in any hurry. We have listings that have hundreds and even thousands of unique pages views on the Internet every week. Many of those views are the same people, but they are there. The same listings have had dozens of showings, yet there aren’t dozens of homes selling in that category. We get phone calls and emails inquiries, which we answer diligently, and believe me we are selling the value. But the mass inertia of the public will never be overcome by a persuasive phone pitch or email. 

Here is a quick breakdown of what I am observing. 

• Lurkers. The vast majority of the prospective buyers are silently lurking online. They watch houses online for weeks, months and more. If the one they really have their eye on reduces to a tantalizing number, they graduate to the next category:
• Callers. Callers are the ones who call the office asking about a listing or inquire via email, and then disappear unless the stars align. What floor is the apartment on? Oh, the first floor? Never mind. How close is the house to the school? One block? Oh, I was afraid of that. Too close. If the stars do align, callers become…
• Lookers. Ah, the looker. The mystery is revealed. The person I have been playing footsie with for 3 months has finally appeared in the flesh to see my listing. Lookers aren’t buyers. Lookers look. And question. And ponder. And figure. They want to see the utility bill. They want to bring their father in law to check it out. They go down to City Hall to make sure the shed/deck/basement/whatever is up to code. They seem to not understand that there is a time for that. Sometimes lookers are…
• Likers. Likers like. They want to keep looking, but they like it. That’s very nice. I like that. What? An offer? Whoa, there, don’t pressure me. What’s your hurry? This is a big decision. Are you hiding something? I want to keep looking. But that is very nice. Let me know if they get any offers. They say buyers are liars, but they are not. Likers are liars, because they game the agents with faux interest so they can keep seeing more houses. 

One of the neat things about the old river towns like Ossining is the pre war architecture, the likes of which we’ll never see replicated. Nothing demonstrates that more than the churches in the village, many of which are located downtown off Main Street on South Highland Avenue. It is a menagerie of steeples as you drive through. Many of the churches deserve their own postings, which I’ll do in the future. Here are a few highlights. 

Ossining Gospel Assembly is actually up Croton Avenue about a mile from downtown, but the impressive stone structure should be included. 

Trinity Episcopal is a beautiful Gothic building with a courtyard between the church and parish hall. 

First Baptist is at the corner of Main and South Highland. It dates, as I recall, from the Civil War era, and may be the oldest church downtown. There is often a pithy message on their sign. The bell tower framed against a blue sky is impressive. 

First Presbyterian is one of the highest steeples in the village. There are other more impressive angles of sight for the building, but I liked how First Baptist can be seen in background.

The inscription above the First Presbyterian main entrance reads “To The Triune God.” I remember, vividly, how Mrs. Rimm, a family friend, explained what that meant to me when I was about 5. 

Ossining United Methodist has striking stained glass and is the hardest to photograph. I chose the side of the whole building this time around. 

Saint Ann’s Catholic Church on Eastern Avenue. I was baptized, confirmed and married here. On the far right you can see the top of Trinity Episcopal. 

Saint Augustine’s had a gorgeous old building on North Highland Avenue for many years which was razed when the road was widened. They built this building in the mid 1980’s on the old Campus of Mary Immaculate Girls High School, which closed in 1976. The view of the Hudson is breathtaking. The whole campus is gorgeous and worthy of another posting. 

Ironic, isn’t it, that a town with Maryknoll Mission and such beautiful churches is also home to one of the most infamous prisons in the country-Sing Sing! 

Perhaps next Sunday I’ll pick one of the churches and do it justice. 

We just reduced the price of this bank-owned foreclosure  to $450,000. It is a different sort of home- built in 2006, it was never sold. The builder was the first and only owner prior to the bank taking it back. It was rented briefly, and is in near mint and new condition. The home is just under 3000 square feet, with a formal dining room, large living room, granite and stainless steel kitchen with an island, and a family room with fireplace and sliders to the rear deck. There are hardwoods throughout, central air, first floor laundry, and a very convenient location with shopping and the village close by. I’ll be holding 6 marble Place open today, Sunday from 12-2pm. More information on the home is at OssiningForeclosure.NET. 

This is for single family home activity in the Briarcliff Manor school district for June of 2010. All information is derived from the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 

Compared to June 2009, Briarcliff Manor sales volume is about even. Transactions are down one, but the median price is up almost $200,000. 15 Homes are under contract, which indicates more strong activity, albeit at a lower median price. 

In the Active section, you might notice that high listing of $10,500,000. That may be there for quite a while. That is the last Brooke Astor’s estate, Holly Hill, which has been on for a while now because there is not a big market for 60 acre compounds with 10,500 square foot mansions. That might become the new Casa de J Philip if I hit Mega Millions this week. 

There are 51 available home in inventory, which is a healthy selection and just under a year’s worth of inventory.

Previous posts on Briarcliff Manor.  

If you’d like to search for a home in Briarcliff, get yourself a free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 

This is for single family home activity in the Ossining school district for July of 2010. All information is derived from the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 

The numbers are mixed. The number of transactions is up slightly from July of 2009 but the dollar value is down considerably. This is not a source of concern, because the median asking price of the homes under contract is well over $400,000. All months are different, and this looks like an anomaly. 

Available inventory is high (146), with lots of choices on the market. 21 homes are under contract, which was the same as in June. 

Previous postings on Ossining.  

You can search for a home in Ossining by getting yourself a free Listingbook account. 

Given Westchester’s close proximity to Manhattan, we have many people moving up from New York City as well as a high number of folks who arrive due to a job change or transfer. Whether you are arriving from California, Manhattan, or Europe, there is a degree of culture shock. Consider the following: 

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      • In most southern Westchester towns, your yard may only be about a quarter acre or less. To a Manhattan expatriot, this is a farm. To a guy from Idaho, this is a postage stamp. 
      • Property taxes in Westchester are really high. I mean really high. While it is lower in some of the cities, you could be looking at 2.5-3% of your homes value. The taxes on my old 2000 square foot home are over $12,000. Why they are so high is another book, not a blog post. But it is a fact, and there is no getting around it. Buyers who pass on a house because “the taxes are too high” are dismissed as uninformed morons by some. I say welcome to Westchester- there is no escaping those high taxes. 
• There are three Metro-North train lines that serve the county and take you directly to Grand Central Terminal: the Hudson line along the river towns, the Harlem line through the middle area, and the New Haven line along the Long Island Sound shore communities. There is no “east-west” train line, as all lines lead to New York. 
• Most highways and parkways are north-south thoroughfares because all roads lead to New York. I-287 is one exception, and the other is the Cross County parkway. Both are in southern Westchester. There is NO east-west highway in north Westchester County, and this has been a source of consternation since north Westchester was discovered. Route 6 and route 35 at rush hour make Hell seem like Club Med. 
• No one, and I mean no one, calls Westchester “The 914” in regular conversation.
• No one, and I mean no one, calls Westchester “upstate” who lives here. My wife considered it upstate when she lived in Queens. She no longer does. 
• Have I mentioned that the property taxes are high?
• Westchester has 40 school districts with huge differences in size. Some high schools have fewer than 400 students from 9-12. Some have over 2000 students. The smaller one will never consolidate. If anything, we’ll see more fragmentation. 
• There are 45 municipalities in Westchester– 20 villages, 19 towns and 6 cities.
• We have close to 100 zip codes, which means that you can live in a town with a different name from your postal address, which can also differ from your school district. For example, you can live in Millwood, but actually be in the town of New Castle, and also be in the Ossining school district. Or, you could live in Eastchester but be in Tuckahoe schools, or live in Scarsdale but actually be in Eastchester schools. You could live in Yorktown, have an Ossining mailing address, and be in Croton schools. It is like this all over the county.   
• The six cities are Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, White Plains, Peekskill and Rye. I have sold homes in all six Westchester cities. I know of no other person who has. 

A local company here sends out a recruiting email upon occasion, which I typically delete, since I already work for the best boss in the world. The owner is a good guy and I respect his efforts to grow his enterprise. I can relate. I’m just not a candidate. Yesterday, I decided to unsubscribe to his emails (does that ever work?) and out of an idle moment of curiosity, I clicked on his company MLS profile. It was mostly a recruiting blurb about how busy they are and how they are swimming in leads with not enough agents to cover them all. Here’s the last bit of the profile word for word:

We have too many leads and not enough agents to handle them. We have many unfulfilled buyers and sellers.

I know what he means, but just a thought: it might be wise to rephrase that last sentence just a tad. 

I’m going to indulge in one of my real estate pet peeves. Thanks in advance for your patience. 

Imagine you are buying a car. You sit in the driver’s seat, smell that indelible new car smell, and the sales associate dangles the keys in front of you as you prepare for a test drive. Then, just before you put the key in the ignition, the salesperson begins a 5 minute soliloquy on the glove compartment. After enduring that little, strange episode, you start the car and roll 5 feet, just as you begin to pull out of the spot, the salesperson asks you to stop. Popping open the trunk, he then begins a tutorial of the rear storage as the car idles and you tap your feet awkwardly. You just want to get this thing on the road and see if it’s for you. 

Finally, getting back in the car, you roll toward the parking lot exit and he stops you again, this time to explain, with granular specificity, the storage compartment between the two front seats. How does this guy make a living selling cars? Short answer: he doesn’t make a living, because if he only talks about what is important to him, he’s not going to last. He doesn’t grasp that if you like how it drives, short of a dead guy in a bowling bag back there, you don’t care about the trunk.  

The same goes for homeowners who show their house to their prospective listing agent. I recently had this sort of person walk me through his modestly sized house, and it took nearly 20 minutes to walk through a home I could have walked through in less than 5 minutes. The cause of the delay was the guy’s insistence on giving me the historical abstract of every room, what he had or hadn’t done with it, why that was so, and what he’d do if he were to keep the house instead of selling. For an ADD guy like me, it was like watching paint dry while I listened to the wa wa wa of the grown-ups on a Peanuts cartoon. 

I’m a professional; I know what a closet is, and I know the pros and cons of a half-finished bathroom. How the bathroom came to be half finished or why you chose to take the hanging rod out of the bedroom closet and put up shelves instead is not terribly important, at least not for every..single…room…in..the..house. 

It all boils down to the stark fact that most homeowners are lousy salespeople and need to slowly step back from the person looking at the house. If it feels like home, they ask questions. If it doesn’t, they won’t buy if you showed them where you stored the dead sea scrolls in the attic. 

Leave out the closet story. Stop expecting the showing agent to put on a horse and pony show. Homes are bought, not sold. I never spoke to anyone and had them say “the agent” or “the owner” as the reason they chose their home. A good agent will assist you in presenting the home, staging it, marketing it to the right prospects, and dealing with the people carefully who walk through. We know when to question; we know when to shut up; we know when to let them soak in it; we know how to sell. You don’t, and if you did, you aren’t objective. People know what they are looking for. We help them find it. 

Have you ever known, perhaps when there is a death in the family, the kind of kind soul who steps up and generously gives of themselves? Dinner, picking people up at the airport, a shoulder to cry on, they just seem like an angel in a time of need. Those people have our gratitude.

Now…have you ever known someone who was like that every day? Selfless, kind, generous, supportive and good natured, just because they are? That sort of “angel” is rarer still. In my humble opinion, Joe Ferrara, who passed away last night at the young age of 55, was that kind of guy. 

If you don’t know who Joe was, you should. He was the author of the Sellsius real estate blog and was a real trailblazer on the cutting edge of technology, social media and real estate. I had the privilege of meeting Joe through our shared membership in the Lucky Striker Social Media club in New York City last year and he was a source of support and encouragement. I went to my first Lucky Striker meeting last summer at a time when my blogging efforts had begun to tail off. I felt that I didn’t have the time. Knowing Joe’s notoriety as a blogger, I spoke with him at some of the meetings and he encouraged me to have fun with it and break some rules. It was just a few brief conversations, but I appreciated his warmth, and by the time I saw him again in December of 2009 at Triple Play in Atlantic City, I had jumped back into blogging headfirst. He noticed, and that was gratifying. 

Triple Play was where I had the opportunity to spend the most time I have ever spent with him, and he was committed to raising the bar in the real estate industry. I loved his observations and insights, and I was proud that he was friendly with me. In the ensuing months, whenever he spoke at a local event, such as Westchester Real Estate professionals (which Joe co-founded with Scott Forcino), I was there. I still have notes on my Droid from the January Seminar in White Plains that was almost snowed out. He wasn’t charging any money. He wasn’t selling anything. He was sharing his knowledge. That was Joe. 

As recently as this past month, Joe was in the REALTOR magazine with a piece encouraging agents to take on pro-bono projects- this was something he spoke with passion about in Atlantic City. I wasn’t the only one who noticed what a happy enigma this man was (I can count on one hand the number of attorneys I actually like. Joe deserved to be counted twice at that). When he got sick earlier this year, there was an outpouring of support. 

And now that he has passed away, we should mourn his leaving us. I really hoped I could have been around him more. We are all- all of us- diminished without Joe Ferrara. 

UPDATE: For those of you who are curious about what sort of impact Joe had on people, read more at the Phoenix Real Estate Guy’s blog. 

Tomorrow is a closing on the purchase of a home for clients I first met in April of 2009. 16 months, dozens of homes, 2 offers, 2 homes inspections, 1 heartbreaking lost deal and about a hundred conversations later they will close on that perfect home, which I first blogged about this past Spring. 

It is almost surreal that we are finally closing after such a long process. We looked in earnest for over a year, and this past March we thought we had THE house until another higher bid came in right before we signed contracts. It was crushing to come so close and lose the house when we thought we had it. However, hokey as it sounds, we decided that these things happen for a reason and that better things awaited us. We were right. This home was also a multiple bid situation, but we came out on top, and the listing agent and I have kept in very close communication every step of the way. Nothing was left to chance. 

So, tomorrow morning I will leave the house, buy coffee and doughnuts, drive across the Tappan Zee bridge to Nyack, New York and meet my friends at 8am sharp for our walk through. We will then go to the closing, make it official, get the keys and share a good hug and maybe a few tears. I have become very good friends with my clients in this process, they were dreams to work with, and if I could hand pick a pair of people to endure a long drawn out home purchase with, it would be Kate and Theresa. 

It will be a little strange to deal with them in a context where we aren’t looking for a home, but I don’t care. I am keeping in touch with these two. 

I should be asleep, but I just read on Facebook that Zillow is holding a “Best Real Estate Blog” vote in a number of metropolitan areas. I originally read it on Jay Thompson’s (AKA The Phoenix Real Estate Guy’s) page, and I got intrigued to see if they were including any New York blogs; they are not.

There are 10 Metropolitan areas being surveyed:

• Baltimore, 
• Chicago, 
• Dallas, 
• Houston, 
• Jacksonville, 
• Oklahoma City,
• Philadelphia, 
• Phoenix, 
• San Diego, and 
• Seattle. 

The Somers team is a nominee in Philadelphia and they got my vote, and it isn’t because their outside blog has a header of a rowing shell. They are phenomenal at readable, engaging hyper local content as well as selling their area. Jay/Phoenix Real Estate Guy also got my vote and deservedly so. He’s a rock star and a good man. I started reading him when I saw that he frequented the Sellsius Real Estate Blog, which is on hiatus until Joe Ferrara gets in better health. To his credit, Jay has made a big effort to rally the community to help Joe get better. That alone beatifies him in my book. I’ll post more on that later, as I know Joe and he is ill. 

I would surf around to see if there are any other Active Rainers nominated in their respective markets but it is ridiculously late, and I just gave you the keys to the kingdom.

Next time they run this, my goal is to be on the list for the New York area. That is a lofty goal, because there are some great local real estate blogs around here, in NYC and around as well.

Regardless of what you may think of Zillow, this looks like fun and is worth checking out.  

 

One of the things we as licensees often take for granted is that people are like us when it comes to emails, voicemails, texts and cell phones. They aren’t. Most people, at the end of the day, don’t take work home. We are on call 24/7/365. Clients aren’t agents and don’t live in our world. However, if you are buying or selling a home, it would be wise to nudge over a smidge and take a few pages from our book for your own benefit. 

A house available right now may be gone tomorrow. A counter offer may be withdrawn if they don’t hear from you by 5pm. Anything can happen anytime, which is why agents live with a blue tooth in their ear and are always checking email on their phone. If we miss a call, counter offer or email, it could sink a deal. The same goes for clients, whom we are beholden to. If the client is on the same page with the agent, more can get done better.  

Here are a few things clients can do that agents should do when buying or selling a house to maximise opportunities in this industry where anything can happen anytime:

• Check your email 3 times per day or more. I’ve gotten calls from clients asking where a lease or addendum is they needed 2 days prior when it was in their inbox for 2 days. They just never checked their email. You have hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. You need to be on top of the information. 
• Identify yourself on your voice mail greeting. I get between 30-50 phone calls a day. If I call you to update you on negotiations and get one of those impersonal “You have reached 914-555-1212” you force me to do forensics.  I may have to take time from other clients to make sure I don’t leave sensitive details on the wrong voice mail.
• Unblock your phone number. Blocked numbers are the phone version of darkly tinted windows in driving. It helps no one, and gives the caller/driver anonymity. Caller ID can tell me if I need to put someone on hold and take a call, or ignore a telemarketer. 
• Clear your voice mail often. It is all about communication and being on top of updates. What f I never got your message because I didn’t clear my voice mail? 
• If you don’t own or have access to a fax machine, find a Kinko’s near you. When I started in real estate in 1996, faxes worked with long rolls of paper and were considered high tech. Now we scan and email documents. It shouldn’t be difficult to get a signature back from you for an addendum, price change or other time sensitive matter imperative to your file. 
• Check your text messages. Same principle as email and voicemail. 

It is culture shock when you are in the real estate market when compared to regular life. I have often had clients ask me “how I do it,” because they are exhausted with their own deal, let alone 40-plus listings. You get used to it. The fact is that agents are held to a high standard of follow up, responsiveness and being on top of updates, but we need our clients’ right there with us to leverage such a frantic pace. It is all worth it in the end. Be like your agent in the communication department (translation: adhere to the same standards you have for me) and you’ll be in a better position to make a deal work. 

This photo was taken at dusk on June 18, 2010 from a boat in New York Harbor. The soft light from the torch, crown and base set against the sunset in person was powerful. 

Did you know that sometimes, despite our best efforts, lenders in a short sale will want the borrower to pay some money back? For example, if you have a $300,000 house with $315,000 on the first mortgage and $75,000 on the second, that the second mortgage might only release in the lien in exchange for a promissory note, unsecured terms, or cash settlement? We’ve had this happen to clients before, and while it is unfortunate, sometimes we can’t get the lender to change their mind. They might feel there isn’t adequate hardship. They might play “hardball.” It doesn’t matter. Some lenders want more money. 

If you have an approved short sale on the table with terms that require cash or a payment plan of money after the closing, and you have an auction date set for 3 weeks away, and the numbers resemble the above example, you have to choose your poison. You can close and have payments of $180 per month for another 15 years, or you can play hardball yourself and get foreclosed on, with your rear end out the window for $315,000, all back payments and interest, and legal fees. 

Let’s see: A choice between a $30,000 unsecured loan (which you might be able to renegotiate) or a foreclosure for an estimated $350,000. What makes more sense? Hmmm. Which would you choose…

Westchester County is sought after because it is the suburbs of New York City. You have the best of both worlds- proximity to Manhattan and the Boroughs, and a suburban (and sometimes downright rural) lifestyle. It is for this reason that Manhattan Folk choose Westchester as their home. Goodbye apartment, goodbye storage rental space, goodbye subway. Hello yard, hello basement and attic, and hello driveway and garage. It is little wonder, then why city dwellers are so hung up on kitchens. After dealing with a tiny apartment kitchen with no pantry or counter space, they want a good kitchen. Kitchens matter in Westchester as much or more more than anyplace else in the USA. 

Does this mean that every Westchester home seller has to undertake a $30,000 renovation and install a Viking stove and subzero refrigerator with a Swedish storage system in the pantry? No, it doesn’t. But buyers do want to see the potential for better things when they do their own work. Remember that apartment dwellers might see your kitchen as appealing because it is bigger than theirs; so you must maximize its appeal even if it isn’t super modern. 

Ironically, while Westchester is a popular place to live, a gigantic percentage of homes are pre war homes and don’t have big kitchens. It is therefore imperative for home sellers to make do with what they have. One piece of self sabotage I often see in Westchester kitchens is  the preponderance of chotzkies, coffee makers, dish racks, and other  of what we New Yorkers call crap on an otherwise serviceable counter.You would not believe the difference it makes when a counter is cleaned off and freed of gnomes, knife racks, spices, gadgets, gizmos and other counter crap. 

This is especially the case in kitchens that are not super updated. The one thing they might have going for them is counter space, which buyers see as potential. This is to say nothing of the fact that your dishrags, choice of cuisine, dirty dishes, dish soap, and other paraphernalia aren’t exactly fulfilling the function of Vanna White as a sales aid. It might be inconvenient to have to open a cabinet to make coffee or get pepper, but if I offered you full price for your house would it be worth it? I’d stand on my head and yodel the Yankees theme song in downtown Boston dressed as Snow White if it sold a listing. So deal. 

It takes 5 minutes to clear a counter, and it will save you time and money. Clean off that counter and you’ll avoid putting anyone off and you might just make a sale. 

PS- It goes the same for bathrooms too, unless you think that your toothbrush is a selling point. 

In 2007, we moved our family about a mile, one neighborhood over. Even though it was a short move, it took us across the line from the Village of Ossining to the Village of Briarcliff Manor. When you’re me, you don’t really expect to have many experiences with the police, aside from civic or social events. You don’t expect them to be on the job on your property, but once not long after we moved here, they did. 

My home office has a window on the side and rear of my home. If someone jumps my fence, I can see it. A few months after we moved here, I saw a pair of legs walk by the side window. Strange. The fence was locked. Then, another pair. I only saw legs, which had my mind racing. Who was swarming my yard with my kids playing back there? I was outside in a heartbeat, and to my relief, it was not an interloper or kidnapper, it was a pair of police officers. They both had their hands on their hips, looking perplexed, as my 2 oldest children excitedly talked to them (real police officers right in our yard! exclaimed Luke, then 6). 

I was perplexed also. It got put together quickly Evidently, the department had received a call from someone out of state who had called my number by accident. Our 3 year old was screaming at the top of his lungs when the call came in, and somehow the party at the other end heard the screaming and called the police for fear that they had witnessed some sort of abuse over the phone. Since ringing the bell would have only given a criminal or kidnapper warning, they jumped the fence anticipating the worst. The screamer, Gregory, then ambled up to me and put his arms up to be picked up. 

Assured that it was all an innocent thing, they thanked me and left. 

I was struck by their professionalism. I appreciated their approach, because, even in this idyllic suburb, if there was foul play, they wanted to be ready. Three years later, that day sticks with me. They were ready for criminals, and they ended up patting my kids on the head. Briarcliff Manor has great police.