Can’t Decide About that Shiny New Condo? Take it for a Test Drive In a trend noted in The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, some creative Sellers and their realtors are resorting to “sleepovers” to entice fence-sitting Buyers. The idea is that once they really to get know the property, they’ll be so...Read More
Top Three Home-Buying Tips NowMark Twain famously said that the reason land was such a good investment is that “they’re not making any more of it.” In the Midwest, that’s never really been true: there’s always another cornfield, just beyond the last one, that can be leveled and developed. Even before gas prices exploded, that’s...Read More
4,000 FSF by Cedar Lake for $380k? Not So Fast Even in a soft market, the brand new listing — first on MLS this Thursday — jumped out: a 1930’s Cape Cod with over 3,900 finished square feet (“FSF”), less than a mile from Cedar Lake and Lake Calhoun, for $380k — with great curb...Read More
The Housing Market – Wall Street “Two-Step” The dynamic now playing out between the housing market and Wall Street reminds me of one of those classic, Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier title fights. For those too young to remember, the fights were the ultimate, knock-down, drag-out affairs. By the late rounds, the two combatants, barely able to...Read More
Earnest Money Tug-of-War?When is it really a “done deal?” I tell my Sellers, “at closing, once you have the cashier’s check in hand.”* And when is the Buyer’s loan really good-to-go, in a national real estate market characterized by shrinking credit, tightening loan standards, and, in many places, steadily falling prices? My answer is, “when...Read More
Competing Housing Market Predictions (Surprise!) Well, that didn’t take long. No sooner did Barron’s jump into the housing market debate with a bullish call over the weekend, then another pundit weighed in with this rebuttal: “Why Barron’s Housing Cover is So Terribly Wrong,” on a blog called “The Big Picture.” Here’s the link: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/07/barrons-cover-g.html The...Read More
