Checking Your Teeth — and Your Voicemail Messages In retrospect, it DID seem a little quiet yesterday, even though I wasn’t hosting an open house, doing showings, or otherwise involved in a deal. The explanation? My cellphone’s voicemail was full. I found out when a client sent me an email. In contrast to a few...Read More
Putting (Too) Good a Face on Things? It’s a fact of (real estate) life: sales fall through. Buyers change their minds. Inspection issues come up. Buyers can’t get financing* (the honest explanation at least 80% of the time). When any of those (or other) unhappy events occur, listing agents have the demoralizing task of switching...Read More
Why Homeowners Let the Competition Look (or Should) Wait a second! Don’t Buyers’ agents represent Buyers at a preview? (in contrast to a showing, a preview is when just the Realtor views the home). And exactly how does an agent represent the Seller of the home they’re previewing ” don’t they already have an agent? (called “the listing...Read More
“Program Trading Gone Wild,” the Sequel? What’s behind gyrating stocks the last three weeks or so? (I know, it seems much longer). Here are two theories: One. Age-old human emotion — fickle, fear-and-greed driven human psychology — is the culprit. In particular, less experienced “retail” investors who chased high-flying tech stocks, and are now freaking...Read More
Hitting Too Close to Home When you discover 1″ of standing water in much of your basement (as I did this morning), your first impulse — after uttering the obligatory “#$!%@!” — is to shut off the water to the house, then look for whatever pipe burst overnight. Nada. I then checked the main sewer...Read More
Guilty Until Proven Innocent? How do you know a would-be home seller has just suffered a rash of cancellations and no-shows? Their agent (known as the listing agent) grills the next couple Buyer’s agents trying to show the property. That can be by email, voicemail, text or even by requiring a “chaperoned showing”: that is,...Read More
