When my parents moved up to Ossining from Yonkers in 1957, they missed St Theresa’s, less than a mile away in Briarcliff, and somehow found St Ann’s. There, they met Monsignor Marino, who said that yes, they lived in the parish. And for 40 years, as my brothers and I attended St Ann school, my mother was active in the Parents Guild (she was the one who changed the name from the “mother’s guild,” liberated woman that she was) & choir while my father was a lector. My dad always laughed that the pastor was glad they never made that left turn that day. 

The baby boom prompted the parish to start a school in about 1960, and my oldest brother was in St Ann’s first graduating class of 1965. I graduated in 1981, and by my time arrived the school was suffering from the tough times of that period. The nuns who staffed almost the entire place were all but gone, replaced by 20-somethings (my dad said that if he had the teachers I had, he’d have stayed back a few years). My 8th grade year was perhaps the lowest ebb for the school. Enrollment was down to fewer than 120 children and the talk was that the days were numbered. The year after I graduated, they had to install a lay principal for the first time in the school’s history.

However, Mrs. Muccigrosso would oversee the school for two decades before taking a higher position for the Archdiocese, and under her stewardship the school prospered. Enrollment increased, and they even expanded the building for a pre school and large library. When I moved back home to Ossining in 2000 and attended a reunion, I was stunned at the progress. We had come so far from the talk of closure when I was 13. 

Sadly, the prosperity would not last. Many families, including my own, migrated from St Ann’s to St Augustine’s over the past 10 years. Our reason for moving was simple: in the decision to send our children to parochial school, we thought it best to go where my nephews already went. Switching parishes wasn’t easy, as I was baptized, confirmed and married there. Overall, we had been in the parish family 49 years. The numbers shift up North Highland Avenue took its toll, and the Archdiocese named St Ann’s to the list of 27 closures earlier this month. 

Closed Catholic schools never re-open; teachers and staff will have to find new jobs and typically over half the pupils are absorbed into the public school system. The remainder will transfer to another private school. Although we left, I always wished them well. The parish remains, but without a school. It is the end of an era that lasted half a century, and despite how long that seems, it was all too brief. 

The Town of Rye, which is mostly the villages of Rye Brook and Port Chester, has agreed to study the possibility of dissolving the town and allowing the villages to be their own municipalities as a means of cutting tax costs. I applaud the idea. I have blogged before about the layers of taxation in New York, which has become more than burdensome. 

The layers of taxation in New York has become unsustainable. Every municipality has their own police force, public works, and government, and the overlap of having a town overseeing village governments has duplicated costs to a level that has people leaving the area at a sad rate. I live in the village of Briarcliff, which is in the town of Ossining. There is also a village of Ossining and an unincorporated part of the town. All have their own police departments. Recently, the town agreed to merge their department with the county force. It was a wise idea, and it saves taxpayers money.

In the town of Rye (which is a separate entity from adjacent City of Rye), that overlap and lack of value added by the town government probably should be be done away with. The villages can handle things themselves. According to the article, they town collects $2.5 million in taxes that could be better used or even be given back to taxpayers. 

More towns should consider consolidation of governments, police departments, and, yes, even school districts. But that is for another posting. 

$568,000 buys a nice pre-war colonial with a big yard. This particular home dates to 1919 and has 4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a formal dining room, and both a rear and side porch. The character of the period has been preserved very well over the decades. 

Inside it has beautiful hardwoods, lots of period woodwork and crown molding, plenty of windows (bay windows in both the living and dining room) and a great fireplace mantle in the living room. 

Overall it is about 2000 square feet and has a yard of over half an acre. We just had a client close on it a few days ago, and we wish Jim every happiness in his new home. Since Pleasantville is close, we are also happy to welcome a new neighbor. 

If you’d like to find a nice home like this in Pleasantville or any other town in Westchester, get yourself a free Listingbook account and search the MLS like  pro. 

The Journal News has published a report on housing discrimination in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland Counties. The results are awful. A study conducted in 2010 found that in 17.5% of the instances of study conducted by Westchester Residential Opportunities that discrimination occurred. In 2005 a HUD-funded study found discrimination in a whopping 46.5% of the cases. While the report framed the numbers as an improvement, I view the numbers as relative in the context of awful. 

I remember the 2005 reports, which resulted in publicized complaints against some real estate firms published in the newspaper. I remember reading the piece online in a library in Binghamton, NY while waiting for my brother to complete dialysis after his 25th college reunion at Cornell. This was a few weeks before launching my firm, and I recall being perplexed at how such a thing could happen in 2005. 

The current report has resulted in complaints filed against 4 firms- three brokerages and one management company. They found numerous other firms to be engaging in “bad business” which may not rise to outright discrimination, but who wants bad business practices? 

The numbers in Putnam county showed discrimination in 14.3% of the cases. In Rockland, the number was a staggering 34.6%. Three of the four complaints, according to the story, were against Rockland based firms. 

I have read the report, which will be sent to every licensee in my firm. It is very thorough, the methodologies for the study were clear hard to refute. My conclusion is that huge amounts of fair housing education are in order for our entire industry. 

The point here is not to avoid getting caught, it is for our industry to be the guarantors of equal housing to those who hire us. 

Westchester Business Journal has published a story on the real estate market outlook from the point of view of agents, and I was among those quoted. 

I see quite a few parallels of the current market with the last crash in the late 80’s and early 1990’s. Back then we also had a banking crisis (the Savings and Loan Crisis, which saw the failure of over 700 thrifts and the end of the FSLIC), a housing crash, and a financial crisis which resulted in a severe recession. Locally, it took us until the mid 1990’s to regain home values to where they last peaked in 1987. 

Our current recession and market decline now is far more severe. Whether this takes longer to recover from is a big question, and, indeed, whether we are past the nadir is also unknown. When we do recover my sense is that it will be a long flat period, because too much damage has been done to consumer confidence for there to be any rush on the proportion of the early 2000s. 

Policy makers will be wise to avoid any rules which create a hot market again- it is clear to me that two huge crisis in less than 30 years prove that the consequences of irrational exuberance are all too easily forgotten when the money is “easy.” Frankly, we got spoiled. We should not allow ourselves to be fooled again. We need better monetary policy and far-FAR- better oversight of the financial industry to avoid a third meltdown. 

Years ago, I listed a home in a nearby town which was next door to the residence of a celebrity. It was, as you might imagine, a nice place, and some of the phone calls I got from area agents were bizarre. “What are you doing here?” “Where is your office?” “How did you get that listing in my town?” and so forth. It annoyed my wife more than it annoyed me (maybe because she was answering the phone at the time), but I still found it incredibly unflattering to those who asked. It was if I dared to step foot in their fiefdom. It closed, I had a fine experience with the buyer agent, and we moved on. 

Years later, I listed another home, this time a short sale, in another idyllic little village in Westchester, and very soon after listing it, we put it under contract. For reasons unimportant to this post, I had to re-activate the listing again a month or two later, and I got a phone call from “Marge.” 

“Marge” had been an agent in this area for quite a while, and she decided she would call me and have a…”professional” conversation with me about my listing. If I worked in Bananaburg like she did, my colleague said, I’d know that the home was overpriced for the square footage. And on she went, prefacing her remarks that if I knew her town I’d know better, I’d do things thus and so, basically making a boob out of herself. Marge was not being that subtle- she thought I was carpetbagging into her town and was letting me know before I got too comfortable. 

Aside from the condescension and pettiness, dear Marge was pushing the envelope with the law. New York Real Property law, known locally as “Article 12a” specifically prohibits Market Allocation, which is seen as a restraint of trade. It might seem superficial, but the mentality that one broker has “their territory” and I have mine is an anathema to free trade and very anti-consumer. In my case, the client didn’t need a neighborhood specialist (whatever that is) and needed an experienced short sale broker. 

Most people I know aren’t big fans of their utility company or cable provider, in large part because they have a monopoly on the commerce in that area in their industry. Do the math with that and the reputation of real estate agents. Am I worried that such a thing will happen? No, I am not losing sleep over it. But it does concern me that there are licensees out there who are dumb enough to go there. Smart agents don’t engage in this kind of talk for the very same reasons we don’t discuss commissions. Market allocation, like price fixing, never discussed between companies.  If the net effect is to intimidate a new entry into your locale, it doesn’t edify the profession and may be illegal at that. 

“Marge,” who may be grandfathered by Albany for continuing education at her advanced age, needs to go back to school. 

This story was relayed to me by one of my agents:

My agent accompanied a client on a rental showing which was being leased “by owner”. Prior to the showing, there was some discussion with the homeowner about using a broker, and she dismissed it with a blase’ remark that she could find her own properties, as if that’s all a broker does. 

At the showing, the owner showed the place herself, and in the ensuing discussion, asked my client a question. “Are you,” she asked “___________?” 

The “_________” is a protected class. Race, creed, status, is immaterial. You don’t ask. Ever. 

My agent and the client stood there in what I can only imagine to be a monumentally uncomfortable silence. As they both turned to her, the owner said, very matter of factly, “is it a problem that I asked?”.  The agent replied,”It is if you now turn him down”.

This is not a one-time thing. Even in cases where owners showed their own home listed with a broker (we advise to leave the agent and client alone), I have heard some outrageous questions asked of the client. If the client is a Visigoth, the dopey owner wants him to know that another Visigoth lives down the street, or that the president of the PTA is half Hun. Dumb, dumb stuff. 

Fair housing laws do not just apply to brokerage. They apply to anyone selling or renting a home. Anyone. And stupidity or ignorance are far more costly than my brokerage fee. 

A rental scenario:

One of my associate brokers helped a rental client find an apartment. They make an offer which is accepted, and then the fun begins. The landlord’s agent informs us that they require certified funds, and that laundry appliances advertised as part of the place won’t be installed right away. Moreover, they take their time getting us a lease to look over. 

The landlord is out of town, and the listing agent tells us that instead of a lease signing at the same time, that we should sign the lease first and give them certified funds for the first and last month’s rent plus a month’s security. The landlord, she says, will sign later. He’s out of town. 

No dice. 

No client of ours is essentially turning that amount of cash over without a fully executed lease document. The listing agent is aghast, because, what, we don’t trust her? 

Trust is for relationships. Business is business. If we had to go before a grievance comittee, I’d be raked over the coals for allowing my client to give certified funds with no landlord signature on the lease. Trust has nothing to do with this. 

Oh, and no, I don’t trust her. I’m not paid to trust, I am paid to protect my client. And I am leery of people who ask me to do things that compromise my client. If they don’t trust us to write a good check, I’m not going to take any risks on my side either. 

Once again: In business, you never give something for nothing. They don’t get certified funds until we get the landlord’s signature on the lease. 

In the almost 400 transactions I have brokered since first being licensed in the 1990s, anytime there was a problem with the mortgage and the buyer was asked how they chose their lender, I cannot think of one instance where they did not say some variation on the theme that the bank was chosen for quoting the best rate. 

In the almost 400 transactions I have brokered since first being licensed in the 1990s, anytime we noted that a mortgage loan officer did a great job and the borrower was asked how they chose their lender, I cannot think of one instance where they did not say a variation on the theme that the lender was a referral from a trusted source. 

Now, since I can point to dozens and dozens of transactions where the lender stunk and they were chosen for their rate, and there were also dozens of great jobs by lenders who were trusted referrals, the correlation strikes me as very strong that choosing a lender based on rate alone is inadvisable. Disclosure: I was a loan officer from 2001-2005. 

Sadly, the “best rate” is a myth. The factors that go into locking a mortgage rate include the down payment, credit rating,  debt to income ratio, length of the loan, and a variety of other matters which makes quoting a prospective borrower a rate on the first meeting without a full application irresponsible at best. Published rates are based on assumptions that are so ideal that most borrowers either don’t qualify or must pay higher costs to achieve. 

Moreover, rates vary on a daily and often an hourly basis based on the bond market and other financial indices, requiring extreme personal attention and knowledge of the transaction process to assist the borrower in “locking in” their rate at the correct time. 

Lastly and perhaps the most bitter irony of it all is that most consumers don’t understand that the lenders all operate in the same market for money. If you walk into the corner bank, Banana Funding Corp at the mall, or log onto Fancyrates.com and ask pricing on their 30 year fixed conventional rate for a conforming loan with 20% down payment, you may get different answers when you ask what rate you’ll qualify for. But here’s the truth: conventional loans have been bought on the secondary market by Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the same prevailing market rates since the Beatles dominated rock music. The only variations have ever been the profit margin. What’s that mean to you? Simple: within reason, you can negotiate your rate. 

With those factors in play, the smart consumer should therefore find the best, most trustworthy, service oriented lender they can find, who will work hand in hand with the real estate brokers, appraisers, title and attorneys, and who will be able to troubleshoot and navigate obstacles as they arise. This not only ensures a smooth transaction, it shields the borrower from bait and switch moves, junk fees, last minute changes, and the lack of accountability that we all too often see in web-based bargain lenders that raise screwing up deals to a high art. 

Imagine that. You choose you lender the same way you choose the agent, attorney, inspector and plumber: the best person for the job. The numbers take care of themselves because a true professional will always watch out for you. 

New York is an attorney state, and in our area they also prepare contracts. Having a good attorney is crucial, for many reasons, not the least of which is obvious: the other guys have one, and you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. Lawyers examine title, advocate, and draw up addenda, pre possession and rent back agreements, and in general partner with the brokers to shepherd the transaction to a closing. Like them or not, they are inextricable to the sale of a home. If I refer an attorney, I like and trust them. 

All too often, I’ll see people who shopped around for a good mortgage and hired the best agent suddenly decide that it is better to save $500 on their attorney and risk peril because they think they are being smart.

Famous last words: I’ll use my cousin the patent lawyer. What could go wrong?

Answer: Plenty.  

In Westchester County, the median sales price of a home in 2010 was $630,000. The mean? $827,900. A typical attorney fee is $1200. 

In my book, that is one of the best bargains going considering the copious work that closing a transaction in 2011 takes. Just today, a lawyer I know told me she preferred divorce work, because it is about the same amount of work for far better fees. Amazing, but she’s right. Making deals happen these days is hard! And buying a home being on par with a divorce would be unthinkable in years past. 

There was a time when real estate was far easier than divorces. But with the layers of caution from the lenders, the ever-increasing demands from buyers and the overall freaked out nature of many sellers, those days are gone. Yet the model of fees for New York lawyers is still based on an era when real estate closings were, relative to today, a rubber stamp. 

If I were buying or selling a house today with the gigantic money changing hands, I’d find the best lawyer I could and offer them TWICE their quoted rate, just to make sure I was given white glove treatment. If you think that’s crazy, consider the fact that $1200 is really just a speck of change with the enormity of home prices we pay in New York. Of course, you don’t have to be me, but you also have a choice about trading a few hundred dollars for inferior representation. 

At the very least, I would avoid a lawyer that came gratis through my union or advertised a cut rate, because I have never, in 14 years and 300+ transaction seen those lawyers be the zealous advocate that consumers need in this market. And oh, how I dislike working with inept or unresponsive attorneys! Yet there are people who trust the largest business transaction of their life to a guy who advertises a low rate, never returns calls or even addresses the crisis de jour. It is a big deal. There are no “do-overs” in real estate. Retain a specialist. 

I cannot believe I am saying it, but it’s true: real estate lawyers in New York are vastly underpaid. Quibbling over their fee in light of the high stakes is the epitome of being penny wise and pound foolish. 

Hamburger fees get you hamburger representation. I want my clients to get filet mignon advocacy, and I’ll be the first to say that it is worth every penny.