Most of my postings on short sales have a happy ending. This is not one of those postings. In late 2008 my office brought in an offer on a distressed, vacant property I had listed as a short sale in Mount Vernon. We did yeoman's work. I listed it and one of my agents brought a string buyer. The
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06/30/2009
I was contacted by an Associated Press reporter who was writing a story on the housing market in the Northeast, and the story ran yesterday. This is the 2nd time in a month I have been contacted by a national news outlet with a subsequently appearance in their venue. Last month it was ABC World N
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06/24/2009
According REALIST, to the public data provider for the Westchester -Putnam Multiple Listing Service, the median price for a single family home in April of 2009 was $491,250. After peaking at over $700,000 in 2005, this is the first time in a long time the median price has fallen below half a mill
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06/24/2009
I was contacted by someone out of the blue asking me to show them a home for sale in Eastchester. They found it on Zillow, which isn't uncommon. I looked up the address on the MLS and it came back with "no properties found." Checking Zillow revealed that the home was for sale by owner. So I calle
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06/20/2009
I have blogged before about the difficulties Zillow has caused. Typically, their "Zestimate" has caused people to 2nd guess the more accurate evidence on the ground and either over or undervalue a home, killing a possible transaction. The galling thing about it is that the more compelling evidenc
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06/19/2009
According to Inman News, Wisconsin's largest real estate brokerage has adopted a policy of excluding the listings of non-traditional brokers from appearing on it's site in home searches. This is not good in my view, for several reasons. After a long battle with the Department of Justice is fin
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06/17/2009
The words jumped off the page: "It troubles me that I am not identified as the listing agent. The way this listing is displayed it looks like you are. I feel taken advantage of." This was an email sent to one of my agents from a competing agent in our MLS who googled the address of one of his li
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06/13/2009
As Westchester County area home sellers are finding out, there are more buyers out there; that doesn't equate to happy endings. Here is an unscientific example of the pattern I am seeing: The house is listed for a price the sellers feel good about. Not great, good. Shwings the first few weeks, th
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06/12/2009
For my 200th blog posting (!!) -I was prompted to write this after someone pointed out a mistake I made but did so without being nasty. This occurred early in my career when I worked in Rochester with my old college rommate Kevin and his father Paul at their company. Both trained me in the busine
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06/08/2009
Imagine you are selling something-anything-on the open market. If we broke down the walls of time and space and put everyone who might be interested in what you are selling into one big room, it is obvious that the more people there are in that room, the better chance you have of not just selling
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06/02/2009
