In my travels, I have run across a number of home sellers who price their home based on sentiment. Market activity, comparable sales and competing listings don’t influence their price as much as “their number.”

“Their number” is not justified by empirical fact, market data, or realism, and they believe that their buyer will be that one special person who loves the place the way they do. The challenge is that their bias is borne of years-sometimes decades- of living in the home, and buyers come in cold. One such client a few years ago were the original owners, so they always lived in what was a newer kitchen to their sensibilities. The only problem was that 23 years later, it wasn’t a new kitchen anymore. 

Still, they hold out a belief that they’ll catch lightning in a bottle. Someone will come along who is that one special buyer and pay a premium for their home. 

The problem is, this person doesn’t exist most of the time, and when they do, their lender won’t agree to the price either. 

That one special buyer is not a business plan. It isn’t a marketing strategy. It is hope packaged in a dream. Depending on that one special buyer to buy rather than having a sensible marketing plan that takes the reality on the ground into consideration is like having your retirement plan be a winning lottery ticket. It depends on odds-defying luck, and that is no way to do business. 

For some people, it is hard to admit to bias or to divorce themselves from sentiment. But bias and sentiment are personal; they aren’t business. This is as price-sensitive a market as we have seen since the depression. Westchester County buyers are self interested and skeptical, and typically avoid listings that don’t appear to have a motivated seller. They are also savvy and well informed. Moreover, sellers today are competing with foreclosures and short sales, which suppresses prices and offers a huge inventory to choose from.

A smart marketing plan can’t rely on chance, nor can it hope for unlikely events. A smart marketing plan is based on facts and real events, and the sooner a biased seller understands this the sooner they can start packing. Smart marketing is objective. Catching lightning in a bottle is great for finding a spouse, but in real estate it is a slow death. 

I got a call from a producer at CBS this afternoon asking if I had a client willing to go on the national news broadcast this evening and speak about the proposed QRM rules for home loans. I did. Evidently, the producer found my Active Rain profile in a Google search. Not bad.  

The piece ran on the CBS Evening News (the national broadcast) with Scott Pelley, and I embedded it below. The cool thing about it is that Michael was the company’s first closing back in December of 2005! I sold him and Robb their first home and we recently closed on their second- both homes were shown on the report! They were also featured in a NY Post story on real estate right after they closed on their new house. 

Michael is a good man- he is active in the community and started the Peekskill Dog Park not long after moving up from Manhattan. While I disagree with the editorial slant of the report (I believe QRM is a bad idea and overkill), I think Michael did a great job in the brief time he was on the air.

I can’t promise to make all of my clients TV personalities, but I do aspire to treat them all like stars. I love my agents, and I love past clients! 

This is a “driveway.” I call it a “lawn.”

The “garage.” I call it a “shed under a deck” or “a garage for a lawnmower.”

This is a “3-year-old furnace.” I call it a “furnace the agent never saw and took the owners word that the new reconditioned gizmo= new furnace.”

This is a Christmas creche that was in someone’s dining room in mid June. Must be the new thing. 

No comment is needed.

And this is clearly the best maintained commode with an open floor plan I have ever seen. It truly sparkles. And privacy is overrated.  

And every one of these pictures is from the past 7 days. 

I just got off the phone with the listing agent of a home I showed a buyer client this past weekend.

Wow. I feel like I got mugged. 

After the initial salutations and memory jogging of who the agent was and the address of the property in question, she went into this rapid fire, question-answer-rebuttal exchange with me where I was rendered speechless, a rarity for me. Apparently, no objection as to why the house does not feel like home for my buyer stopped her from batting back answers like a 1975 encyclopedia salesman. 

My client needs a yard for her dog, and the house was on a hill with a huge deck out back and almost no lawn. “He’ll take the deck down. He’ll plant a lawn.”

The kitchen needs updating for my buyer’s taste. “He’s a contractor, he’ll put in a new kitchen at his cost.” 

OH-Kay…..

Overall, it is just too much work for her… “He’s willing to update whatever she wants. Is this her price range?”

Of course it’s her price range, she – “Because I have one for <lots more$$>”

Well, that’s a little beyond what she wanted to- “She can make an offer, everything is negotiable.” 

Well come on. How desperate is this person to make a sale? Aside from making me bizzarely uncomfortable, she also throws the more expensive seller she represents under a bus! 

Feedback should not be a debate or a de-briefing. I have said before that the whole concept is overrated. Occasionally the showing agent will have a helpful insight, but not too often. The best feedback is an offer. If there is no offer coming, no snappy rhetorical comeback from an agent will make a house feel like a home. 

I hope all you dads out there had a great Father’s Day. Mine was, by design, uneventful, spending the morning watching Star Wars on the iPad with Luke and Catherine draped on me, then pretty much being a couch potato the rest of the day. Ann gave me a hall pass from lifting a finger, and I am grateful for it. I certainly reflect on my own father on days like today, and I wrote a fair amount about Joe Faranda last year at this time. This picture is from about 1968 or 1969. I believe it was taken at my uncle’s house in Brewster. We may look serious in it, but my older brother Tom has a photo taken moments later when we are both laughing. If I can scan it I’ll add it. 

You have to love those horn rimmed glasses. My father almost looks like he belongs on a Far Side cartoon.

We lost Dad in 1993 when I was only 25. I still miss him, and I often ask myself what he’d do when confronted by a difficult choice.

I hope my children think the same of me.  

I’ll be happy to show you the listing. 

I have seen some REALLY incredible kitchens in my time. 

Some of them were in foreclosed homes. The poor slob who spent $20,000-$30,000 on an amazing kitchen simply primed the pump for the next guy. Sad. 

And this leads me to the question: how many people who are pondering a new, renovated kitchen have a college fund for their kids? Or a fully funded IRA? Or 3 months of salary put away for a rainy day? Some do, but I’ll bet most don’t. As a matter of fact, I know that many people actually borrow more to redo their kitchens and baths. 

From a completely pragmatic, utilitarian point of view this is madness. We have a society that has been hypnotized by cable TV shows to believe that if we don’t have ceramic tiles and stainless steel we are less than. I’ll fill you in on a little secret: Ann’s lasagna tastes just as good prepared on formica as it does on granite. And when I flush the toilet or turn on the shower in my 1962 bathrooms, which looks like period pieces by the way, the desired outcome occurs as if they were 2011 bathrooms. 

Why do we need new everything when “new” is 98% aesthetics? I understand water savings and safe electric, but that should cost hundreds, not tens of thousands. Are we that insecure as a society that if the cabinets are not the latest cherrywood or if the floor is laminate instead of ceramic that we are missing something? 

When Ann and I bought our home it was from an estate and it was incredibly preserved. I told her that she’d want the baths and especially the kitchen updated eventually, but she said that her primary criteria for a counter was “flat.” With 4 kids to feed, clothe and educate and a business to run, we have other priorities. We’ll get a new kitchen someday, but it isn’t on the short list right now. What is on the short list are the kids and the company. 

I truly believe that if more people thought this way the country would be in far better shape. I’m not judging others, and Lord knows I love a nice kitchen as much as anyone, but what I really love is money in the bank, savings in the college fund and liquidity in the company operating account. I sleep better at night, because stainless steel appliances don’t mow the lawn or help with the bills.

Am I crazy? 

Excuse me while I delve a moment. Under politics is the land….

I do not live in Anthony Weiner’s congressional district, but as a New Yorker and a business owner I have a say in matters regarding my state’s delegation to Washington. And like the majority of Empire State folk (except, regrettably, the majority of voters in his own district), I wish Anthony Weiner would resign. My state’s government in Albany is on the cusp of legalizing gay marriage, an important step forward in liberty that will put New York ahead of the national curve for a change, and we don’t need the political distraction. But the real reasons lay with Mr Weiner himself. 

I’m no lawyer, but I know wrongdoing when I see it.  When he reversed his strategy and admitted his lies, the congressman stated that his tweet to the student in Bellingham, Washington was not his only dalliance. Vehement, arrogant denials aren’t something you can back away from in one press conference, no matter how many times your voice breaks. Contrasting Weiner’s week of repudiation with real events gives us a look into more disturbing matters about what we can and cannot have in a lawmakers.

He didn’t just deny, he fabricated.  When president Clinton disavowed his, um, inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky he didn’t make up some ruse about someone else in the White House enjoying M. Lewinsky’s services. He just tried awkwardly to parse words about what sex really was. Weiner made up a lame story which only raised more questions, some of which were no laughing matter for a member of the US Congress. 

He witness tampered. Among Weiner’s pursuits was adult actress Ginger Lee. Ms. Lee has reported that Weiner wanted her to lie about his sext messages to her. To her credit, she came forward anyway. And as Jennie Ketcham recently wrote, Weiner’s conduct with Ms. Lee wasn’t mischievous fun, it was disrespectful harassment. For those of us who think this is just about America’s needing to get over it about sex, manipulating or coercing a possible witness isn’t boys being boys, it is corrupt.  

He called in a false alarm. In his televised interviews with reporters in the immediate aftermath, the congressman’s denial’s took a strange tone when he distanced himself from using the word “hacked.” He had good reason, but the horse was already out of the barn. Hackers are now targeting government and financial financial institutions. A US representative’s online accounts being compromised are serious issues that could have repercussions on national security as well as damaging information to his own party’s legislative agenda. So Weiner instead tried to use the terms “pranked” and “hoaxed” because, in his damage control after he deleted the tweet, he forgot that a US congressman can’t just brush off a Internet account being hacked. Having to do damage control on his damage control is too much even for a fast thinking guy like Weiner. 

The question to whether he utilized government resources in his hobby is probably answered in the affirmative, but I would really prefer not to use government resources to confirm that. We’ve spent far too long with this thing hanging in the air, and it is clear that he can’t effectively govern. But I’ll add another piece of coal to the fire anyway. For a technophile like Anthony Weiner, waiting for his wife to come home is about as specious an excuse to discuss resignation as you can get. He is simply strategizing- gambling that this might die down by the time Huma returns stateside. Surely the congressman has heard of Skype, texting, email, telephone, and other media that allow for private communication. If his wife follows him there, he could privately message her on Twitter. But I don’t blame him for avoiding that one. Maybe Skype. 

When New York representatives Chris Lee and Vito Fossella were both exposed, they went quickly and quietly. Anthony Weiner should do the same. 

Update: At 10 am this morning, 2 hours after I posted this, the media reported that the congressman would indeed step down. #CalledIt!

Last week, I published a market report for Ossining which had the median price of a single family home in Ossining schools at $382,000. While Westchester is one of the more expensive counties in our state, Ossining is actually one of the more affordable places to buy from a price point of view. 

Today, Coldwell Banker has published a Home Listing Report which surveys 164 New York housing markets and has ranked Ossining (!) as the most expensive market in our state with an average price of almost $920,000. Being a native of Ossining and with an office in town, I was intrigued as to how they came to that conclusion, so I dug a little deeper.

There were quite a few characteristics of the data to consider to put the numbers in context: 

• The span of time measured was listings taken was from September, 2010 to March 2011.
• The only property type surveyed was 4 bedroom, 2 bath single family homes. 
• The only homes surveyed were homes listed with Coldwell Banker themselves.
• The prices measured were asking prices, not sale prices.