Nice Work Clothes! No, “Undercover Lifeguard” isn’t the name of a new TV pilot (hmm . . . not bad, though). It was the (professional) identity of the attractive young woman sitting next to me and my kids at the Edina public pool today. It turns out she works for a company that monitors lifeguards’ performance...Read More
“Has Your Housing Market Hit Bottom?” and Other Disingenuous Questions Making money in the stock market is easy: only buy stocks that go up. If they don’t go up, don’t buy ’em. –Mark Twain One of my biggest peeves as a Realtor is disingenuous articles that suggest that calling housing market tops and bottoms — and...Read More
More Zero’s, Same Principles Let’s say you were trying to re-start a stalled negotiation over a house where the Seller’s last asking price was $357,000, and the Buyer’s last offer was $340,000. Where would you expect the middle ground to be? Give or take, somewhere in the high $340’s. Compromise Number Add five zeroes, and that’s...Read More
Gas Price Chicken-or-the-Egg Once upon a time, I used to think that you forecasted oil stocks by watching prices at the pump: falling gas prices were bearish for the stocks; rising prices, bullish. Now, I think it’s the reverse, i.e., to forecast prices at the pump, you watch the action in oil company stocks. So, what...Read More
Reading yesterday’s New York Times piece on the Minnesota government shutdown, I didn’t learn anything new about the stand-off between state Republicans and Democrats. But I picked up a couple tidbits about Minnesota prisons: The state Department of Corrections said it was ending family and volunteers’ visits and yoga classes for prisoners and ” if...Read More
These days, “posting rules” automatically refer to blogs, tweets, etc. So, it was nice to see these old-fashioned posting rules for the bulletin board (analog version) in front of a Stinson Beach (CA) cafe this afternoon: No Staples No Tape No Politics No Whining No Stradamus Not bad rules to live by, either . . .Read More
