Three Factors How much do you discount for a one-car garage? The short answer: “it depends.” Specifically, I think that the three most important variables are: One. What is the surrounding housing stock like? In close-in, older Minneapolis neighborhoods, many homes have one car garages (still). Detached, one car garages. When that’s the standard, the...Read More
Rules of Thumb Veteran Realtors know that $1 in deferred maintenance subtracts much more than that from a home’s sales price. The ratio can be 3:1, 4:1 or even higher. While the exact amount is house and buyer-specific, at least anecdotally, there seem to be two factors that widen the discount. One. Price Point. First-time...Read More
Key Variables: Which School? Which Buyer? Homes on busy streets typically fetch a discount. Is there an equivalent discount for homes located across from a school? (which, in a way, is really just a subset of “busy street” — call it, an “intermittently busy street”). I’ve never seen data on this, but I’d guess “yes.”...Read More
How Big a Premium for Higher Floors? If Eskimos supposedly have 38 words for snow, leave it to New Yorkers to coin the most and best words for anything relating to skyscrapers, views, and the like. Words like “view-break,” defined as: “The price-point at which views in a building clear the treetops or crest above...Read More
Issues That Do (and Don’t) Come Up on Inspection Want to know how much it costs to fix a cracked chimney cap? A veteran Realtor probably has at least a ballpark idea. Ditto for a new roof, boiler, electric service panel, or central a/c. However, it’s a good bet that the same agent doesn’t have...Read More
The Art of Comp Selection One of the trickier home features to account for in a Comparative Market Analysis (“CMA”) is a busy street. For a family with little kids, a busy street may very well be a deal breaker ” in which case the discount is theoretically infinite. At the other extreme, an investor looking...Read More
