Positioning a New Listing Five p.m. Friday, especially in the Summer, has very different meanings for the housing market, and the business world generally. Big companies that have to announce an unexpectedly big loss or other bad news wait till 5 p.m. Friday, because they figure that that’s when the fewest people are paying attention....Read More
Tear-Down? Never Mind about the Disclosures In my July 26 post, “Too Good to Be True,” I discussed (briefly) whether a Seller who overstates their home’s square feet can be sued by a Buyer. In addition to the “reliance” hurdle, there’s another possible “out”: a misrepresentation, if indeed there is one, may be moot. Case...Read More
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
