Are you a bigot who wants to be steered toward towns with a certain demographic? I can’t help you out, but the New York Times seems very eager to pitch in. 

This past February, Elsa Brenner did a nice hatchet job on my neighboring village of Pleasantville, NY featuring this pearl of wisdom, where she referred to the “7,200 residents of this affluent and overwhelmingly white village.” One can only wonder if Elsa has ever referred to any other area as overwhelmingly Hispanic or overwhelmingly African American. The title of the article was the not very subtle “They’d Like to Keep it That Way.”

I guess the editors saw that suggestion too, so last week’s article on Mamaroneck was just titled “Mamaroneck, NY.” Too bad the editors didn’t read the rest of the article, where Elsa delivers the following gem:

Census figures depict a largely white population; but when compared with similar neighboring communities Mamaroneck has more variety: Of about 18,400 residents, 18 percent describe themselves as Hispanic and 4 percent as black, along with smaller percentages of Japanese, Chinese and South Asian.

Can you imagine the scandal if a licensee were to say that? Of course Elsa is working as a journalist, so she has a lower bar than a licensed agent. However, the outcome is the same, and that is a sad thing for us all. One would think that the equal housing laws which prohibit steering and ethnic/racial considerations for licensees are something the Times supports; too bad they don’t walk the talk. 

I made my feelings known in the Pleasantville article about Elsa’s underwhelming effort. I was not alone. Comments were disabled for the Mamaroneck article, despite the fact that both are in the “living in” series. 

I do not feel that I am being excessive or mean spirited in pointing this out. There is a finite amount of copy in any printed article, and for the NY Times to waste space on discussion of ethnicity in a real estate piece diminishes us all. 

This is a photo of a recent lunch I took clients to after we closed on their property in Astoria, New York. I sold the house myself. The clients are Bill and Sam Runyon, and I have known Bill since about 1990 when I lived in Philadelphia after college. Bill was the stepfather of my good friend Pam, and we have always seen each other at different events like holidays and visits from out of town. 

Sadly, the last time I saw Bill was at his late wife’s funeral in Philadelphia a few years ago, and he has since remarried Sam, who was actually born in the house I sold for them! As many transactions go in this day and age, we had some serious challenges to overcome to get this sale closed, so much so that it was almost surreal to finally sit at the closing table with buyer and seller meeting at long last. But close it did, and since Bill and Sam were up from Florida for only a short time, we scheduled lunch for later in the week. 

Astoria has some fantastic choices, but thanks to my Droid I found Trattoria L’Incontro on 31st Street and it was superlative. There is something wonderful about breaking bread with people after you’ve experienced such a significant chapter in their lives together.  There is a buttoning up feeling, a sense of completion and accomplishment in the space at events like this, and it feeds me to bask in that vibe. This is especially the case in this instance because I have known Bill for so long.

I don’t know when I’ll see Bill again, because he is now in Florida and remarried. I’m sure I’ll run into him again if we are visiting with his stepdaughters at the same time, but this will remain in my memory, along with many other happy recollections whenever you can do a good job for a friend. We do more than sell houses. Sometimes, we are master of ceremonies for the life passages of others. 

In two separate cases recently, I have had agents in my company attempt to list a home and lose the decision to another broker who promised a lower commission. In both cases, the homes were very expensive, and the homeowners justified their decisions based on how much they’d save if they paid 1% less in commission. 

Of course, in both cases, the listings were overpriced. 

By and large, the following is the summary of my coaching to these agents so that they get more listings to commit to them. 

Sub par brokers cannot sell on value or performance, so their only options are to cut their fees or promise an unrealistic sales price. This is sabotage. A lower commission is no savings whatsoever if the house does not sell. There is no savings. None.  

We charge our commission for selling the home successfully. If we don’t sell it, then the homeowner pays zero commission. None. So when we do sell it, we are worth every penny, because we brought in the most money the market would bear. 

If someone lists their home with a broker who does not have the revenue for a competitive cooperative commission to other MLS brokers or a strong marketing campaign, then the only way for the house to sell is to lower the price until the market is compelled to move. And that, my friends, can be a very, very low price. 

If on the other hand a home is listed with a broker with a comprehensive marketing plan with superior exposure and ability to attract the interest of multiple parties, the leverage on sales price is upward, not downward. If you have a $500,000 house and you pay 1% less in commission, that is $5000 “saved.” But if you have to reduce the price, it is probably at least $10,000, and probably going all the way to $475,000-or $25,000 lower- to get the job done. 

Therefore, a 1% “higher” commission is no issue whatsoever- if it doesn’t sell you don’t pay it. Moreover, if you are forced to rely only on price reduction after price reduction to sell, you are saving nothing- you are losing money, because I know of very few price reductions of 1% that make any difference. A price reduction that impacts is typically far higher than 1%, which not only nullifies a broker who cannot do anything other than discount, it makes the guy who charges more but gets the job done a bargain. 

Summary: Our fee is not an issue when we can show via our company track record that our listings sell for more, faster. That is savings. 

I have had a number of discussions with home owners lately where they make a reference to the “market value” of their home, as in “well, the market value of my home is $500,000, so I won’t take that $475,000 offer.”

This is faulty logic. The market value of a home is not some figure published somewhere. There is no blue book for houses. There is assessed value set by the municipality and there is appraised value done by lenders, but both are just educated guesses as to how the buying public will be have. 

Market value is what the buying public is willing to pay for your home. Appraised value and assessed value are educated guesses by 3rd parties. 

In two cases, I had clients learn this the hard way. In one example, I had sellers who were listed at an outlandish price by a previous broker and chased the market for over a year with me. When they adjusted their price with me, it always seemed to be too little too late. It took 2 competing bids at the same time, niether of which would offer more than 90% of asking, to have the sellers get it. I would estimate that the house sold for $30,000 less than they could have gotten had they taken my advice earlier. 

The second case was a cash buyer who took my advice and had the house appraised after their offer was accpted as part of their due diligence. When the appraisal came in low, they hesitated, and another buyer came in and offered $50,000 more than what our appraised value was. They got the house. We lost it. We found a better home later, but the lesson was learned. Markets are dynamic. 

“Market value” is an overused phrase, considering how often any particular property is sold (not often). However, if you are going to use the term, it is wise to understand that the buying public, the active, dynamic market, is the final arbiter of value. Everything else is just an opinion. 

I may have contributed to a small controversy yesterday when I suggested Alex Chang’s Placing all your online focus on Google SEO today…is like betting on Yahoo! 5 years ago for a feature. I’m probably not the only one who flagged the post, but it did start a “Google vs Facebook” debate which is probably the biggest non sequitor on the planet* right now. The point of the post was that like Google 5 years ago, Facebook is the next big thing for forward-thinking real estate professionals, and leveraging the tool is a worthwhile endeavor. That’s not just me talking- go to Raincamp. 

Facebook matters, and here’s why. At the end of the day, we as licensees, loan officers and etcetera, do business with either our sphere of influence (SOI, or people you know) or the targets of our marketing (Strangers). If you’ve ever had a friend, relative or associate list or buy with someone else and felt the sting of them not using you, you understand the power of your personal SOI. In my neck of the woods, with a $600,000+ median price, I don’t need to tell you how big a bite in the fanny it is when a friend or relative does business with someone who is not ME. One of the biggest reasons we lose SOI business is that they didn’t think of us. They just forgot, because another person asserted themselves somehow; a co worker, neighbor, friend from church, or (shudder) a Facebook friend.

When I graduated college in 1989, I thought I’d sell financial products like my older brother, who was successful at it. He discouraged me, because, as he aptly pointed out, I didn’t know anyone who had money to invest. He knew a slew of fellow pre-meds from college who were now physicians, and he was very networked in Rugby. I knew bar bouncers and fellow broke recent grads. I looked into financial sales, but they all advised me to do the same thing: make a list of 100 people you know, contact them, and inform them that you want to be their financial advisor.  It was that way with every sales job where the clientèle was SOI: make a list and solicit your friends. 

So I spent 7 years selling Catholic school principals, Franciscan nuns and Dominican Sisters programmed learning for their resource rooms and needy students because I was unwilling to call people I hadn’t bothered to reach out to since high school and sell them insurance. There was no Internet back then. Nobody licked stamps. You lost touch. 

Here is why Facebook is a game changer for business. Connecting with your entire SOI on Facebook is like walking into a virtual, massive college and high school reunion and discreetly passing out your business card without the posture of soliciting. You are on their mind again, even if you are complimenting them on pics of their children, and they know you sell houses. You aren’t chasing them down about it. It works. There are other applications also (Get thee to Raincamp), like business pages for clientèle, which is the application Alex makes, but in both cases, Facebook has what we want: the attention of our sphere of influence. It is not a competitor to search engine optimization, but it is another useful tool for expanding business. It is the best SOI tool I know. 

I’ll be applying the roost application to my Facebook business page for these reasons. It makes sense to me. I have actually been reticent to post on this because it might help my competition, but then it occurred to me that everyone has a different SOI.

*Sorry; the biggest non sequitor on the planet is that BP is run by jerks. So what if it is. Clean up the oil and then we can discuss whether or not they are worse than Exxon, Enron, B of A,or J. Philip Real Estate. 

Peekskill is one of the older River towns in Westchester County. I have blogged about Peekskill before, and I have done quite a bit of business there. It is by far the northernmost city in Westchester county, and in addition to being affordable, the quality of life there seems to improve by the week. This is the market data for May of 2010 for single family homes in Peekskill, and all information is sourced from the Westchester-Putnam MLS.

Prices are down quite a bit here, from a median price in May of 2009 of $440,500 to a mere $255,000. There were only 2 transaction in each month, which might not be considered a representative sample, but there are also 16 homes under contract and their median asking price is $297,000. 63 homes are actively for sale.

The last year that the median price in Peekskill was below $300,000 was 2003. Now is a god time to buy real estate in Peekskill. Get yourself a free Listingbook account and check out homes for sale in Peekskill. 

I like White Plains. It is the county seat of Westchester, has a great downtown, lots of pretty pre war buildings, and for some reason, even though I am over here in Briarcliff, I sell a lot of houses there. I have 2 deals going as I write this.  It has several sections, such as North White Plains, Downtown (which has those pretty apartments and a cool skyline), Battle Hill, Rosedale and Gedney Farms. It also has a big co-op and condo market which I’ll cover another time. All information is from the Westchester Putnam Multiple Listing Service for single family homes in White Plains.

Prices are down in 2010 from 2009 just a bit, with the median sales price slipping from $590,000 to $546,000 on 9 closings in each year respectively. However, while prices may be down, there is one really interesting blip about 2010 that is worth noting: the median asking price in May 2010 was $535,000. The median sales price was actually higher than the asking price. Are there competitive bids now? The answer is yes, and I know this firsthand.

More good news for White Plains is that there are 49 homes under contract, which is a hugely healthy figure, and at a median price of $610,000, home values are on the rise in White Plains.

There are 154 active listings, so even with all this activity buyer have plenty of options. If you want to check out a White Plains home for yourself, get a free Listingbook account and search White Plains homes for sale like an agent. 

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Croton on Hudson is a charming village located in northwest Westchester County in the town of Cortlandt.  This market report is for single family homes in the Croton-Harmon school district, which is not coterminous with the village but is close.  All information is from the Westchester Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 

Prices are up considerably in Croton, but there were only 3 closed sales in May compared to 6 in May 2009. The area tends to be in close harmony with the school year cycle, so I expect a busy June because school is out and the stimulus deadline is June 30.

11 homes are under contract or pending sale, and there are 68 homes listed actively for sale. Buyers have lots of options to choose from in Croton. 

To give some perspective, Croton had 1 closing in May of 2006 and 6 closings in May 2005, at the height of the market. 

While compiling the May 2010 market data for Briarcliff Manor and Pleasantville, two of my favorite places, I found an interesting thing. 

Nothing sold in May. In either place. Granted, neither is a teeming metropolis, but nothing is , well, nothing.

What does it mean? I’ll tell you. 

Nothing. It means nothing. Well, maybe something: June will be a heavy month. So, given the lack of results, I put the two neighboring villages together for the purposes of this update. 

May 2010 Sales: Zero      May 2009 Sales: 6 at a median price of $775,000

Pending/Under contract: 28. Median Price: $689,111

Active: 117. Median Price: $709,000

There is plenty of pending business, and the June 30 deadline may be a factor. 

May was an anomaly. There is plenty of activity in Briarcliff and Pleasantville. 

The town of Yorktown is located in northern Westchester County, and is primarily split into the Yorktown and Lakeland school districts, with small areas located in the Croton and Ossining districts. All information is from the Westchester Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 

Yorktown saw an increase in median price for May 2010 compared to May 2009 but the transaction total was smaller. However, the number of homes under contract is very healthy. 

Transaction totals fell from 13 to 8; Median price is up from $385,000 to $436,250; and a whopping 60 homes are under contract for sale at a median asking price of $427,450. That pending sale data is all good news. 

There are 217 homes actively for sale, and there is still plenty of warm weather left for those homes to move.