There's an old saying in sales: "The best way to achieve your dreams is to help others achieve theirs". I wasn't able to run it down to the original attribution, but it is as true a saying as can...
Hard as it may be to believe, I've never done an article comparing asking price to sales price. It's way past time. Asking price is quite simply, a written representation of an offer the seller would be willing to...
I was looking through some real estate listings and saw one property described as: "Contractor's special, first time buyers and investors. House needs TLC." Does contractor's special mean u better be a contractor if you wanna buy this place? It...
Whenever I go scouting in public forums, somebody is always asking, "What's the secret? How do you get rich in real estate?" The alternate to this question is "What do you know that I don't?" These people are sure there's...
The phrasing in parallel with Animal Farm is intentional. Sellers need to understand this, and so do buyers, especially in a hot real estate market. Some offers are more equal than others, and knowing how to choose between competing...
I am seeing a very disturbing trend these past few months. Rather than do the work they should be doing, listing agents are treating the entire short sale process as a kind of "Black Box", delegating the negotiations with the...
I just got off the phone with an agent who claims to have three offers on the property, but he doesn't want to counter the offer. He just wants my client to voluntarily throw more money (or more something)...
The stock market has a phenomenon where a company's stock is "Priced for perfection." It may sound nice, but "priced for perfection" is emphatically not a good thing. It's where the stock price of a company has been bid...
Over the last couple of decades, there's been a rising movement, mostly on the part of those who want a piece of real estate agents business, to sell agents as a toll booth. Tollbooths sit there, guarding the entry to...
I recently got an email from a reader that was coming into a property as I left. I dropped my card and we did the lockbox shuffle thing, then there was an email when I got back to the...
Some fathers, sad to say, are not involved in their children's life beyond conception. Maybe it was just a one night stand and they have no idea they even have a child, maybe they were involved with the mother on...
Legally, immediately. This also applies to refinance loans. With that said, there are economic reasons why it may not be a good idea for you to refinance. If you have a prepayment penalty, you're going to have to save a...
A while ago I dealt with a very disturbing phone call from a would be client. He was very happy with the way I found bargain properties, and wanted me to find him such a property. All very well and...
The first thing to consider is that maybe you shouldn't. You never want to get involved in a bidding war. There's a classic riddle I ask every single one of my buyer clients at least once. "How often does...
A couple years ago, I took a look at a lender owned property a few miles from my office. It was ugly. I mean ugly. The yard was a mess, there was a deck that was rotting. The facade looked...
I have been asked by more than one person how to measure desirability of real estate objectively. Fortunately, the Phoenicians did all the hard work for me three thousand years ago when they invented money. Precisely what that measurement unit...
And I don't know why people expect it to be. Cancel that. I do know why. Popular media. It's not all that common in popular media, but on those occasions I see someone buying a house in the movies...
I have to admit I'm uncomfortable with it and don't like it. As a buyer's agent, here I am getting paid by someone who not only is not my client, but whose interests are aligned, in most issues, opposite to...
This is a warning to those who purchase restricted sale property. I've gotten a couple of calls for refinancing these in the past couple months, and I've never covered this subject. A restricted sale property is one where the...
A lot of advice gets given to choose a "top producing" agent. These highly corporate offices may have the name of an individual agent attached to them, but they are in fact transaction mills. They have done pretty well for...
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