Realtors’ Investment? Skill, Time, & Marketing $$$ How long should a listing contract be? The short answer: Long enough to sell the property being listed. How long that is — assuming that the home is well-priced, staged, and marketed — is typically a function of price. Under $200k in the Twin Cities today, you’d estimate...Read More
Establishing Credibility With Sellers I was on a (successful) listing appointment in Linden Hills last week, when the topic of neighborhood expertise came up (I had it to spare). It certainly helped that I had handled several recent transactions within a few blocks; used to live less than six blocks south, in the adjacent Fulton neighborhood;...Read More
That’s “Ugly Fruit,” not ugly fruit It’s turns out that “Ugly Fruit” is actually a proper name, not just descriptive. Discovery #2: it’s perfectly suited to staging. I count four reasons for that: One. It’s pleasingly colorful (vs. glaringly so or too muted). Two. Ugly Fruit is big. You only need a few to fill up...Read More
OK, so I didn’t really pay 22¢ a gallon when I filled up at Costco in St. Louis Park last night. The official, nominal price was $1.359 a gallon. But, what economists call the real price, adjusted for inflation, was 22¢. That’s because $1 today, adjusted for inflation, is the same as 16¢ in 1970....Read More
Risk of Unintended Consequences At least to economists, the question of whether the minimum wage should be increased — and by a lot, as many on the political left advocate — is tricky. In a perfect world, the higher the minimum wage — hell, all wages — the better: higher pay = more disposable income...Read More
“No, Really: Bring . . the . . Cake!” Thanks to popular culture, some perfectly innocuous phrases have been ruined. To pick just one example, my 13 year-old son and I were bringing his birthday cake, ice cream, etc. to the party room where we were hosting his friends the other weekend. My hands were...Read More
