Hey, why is there a secret passage in the middle of the Bathroom mirror? With what looks like someone wearing a coal miner’s helmet? Oh, I get it! 🙂 P.S.: the amateur photos didn’t cost the home owner a sale — the home sold last August (I pulled the property in the course of looking...Read More
Plugging That OTHER Hole(the Regulatory One) Remember the SEC’s press conference last week announcing that it had isolated the cause of the “flash crash” May 6, and unveiling a sweeping set of financial reforms designed to prevent a recurrence? Me, neither. That thought comes to mind as I see that the Dow Jones is already...Read More
Low Interest Rates — Then & Now Three (four?) years into the housing market downturn, what conclusion is it possible to draw? In retrospect, it seems obvious (at least to me) that it was a liquidity-driven phenomenon. Add a tsunami of cash, subtract any vestige of underwriting standards, and real estate will go up. Subtract...Read More
The Wisdom of a Sump Pump With a Battery Backup Q: What’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm? A. Biting into an apple and finding half a worm. What’s worse than having water in your basement from one of the two(!) deluges that hit the Twin Cities last weekend? Having water...Read More
“Is it Live . . . or is it Memorex?” I just tripped across a new Fern Hill listing with the lead photo reproduced above. Is it just me, or is the grass too green, the sky too blue? (not to mention uniform). At the very least, this photo looks heavily doctored/colorized; at worst, it’s...Read More
The Financial Crisis for Beginners (or Grandmothers) Mystified by the financial crisis? Here’s one of the simplest — and most accurate — descriptions I’ve encountered yet: My mother is paying taxes to the government. The government is giving her money to the banks. The banks are gambling like they’re watching “Fast Money.’ But my mother...Read More
