“Amazon recorded $35.75 billion in sales in last year’s final three months, up from $29.3 billion in the year-earlier period. Analysts, however, were expecting $36 billion in sales and net income of $754 million, or $1.56 a share. For the year, Amazon reported sales of $107 million, topping the $100 million mark for the first...Read More
Telegraphing Tepid Interest From Buyers Through the grapevine, I heard about a colleague who is currently representing a Buyer in a condo deal where almost half of the Seller’s Disclosure is either incomplete or filled out incorrectly. Besides slowing down the deal, the Seller is unwittingly telegraphing another message to Buyers — one that isn’t...Read More
Seller Christmas Present/Delayed Closing Gift If you’re a busy agent who’s been involved in lots of deals since last Summer, one of the biggest post-closing scares can be an email — like the one I received earlier this week — from a (selling) client who alerted me about an invoice they’d just gotten from Hennepin...Read More
Missing the Mark Broad Side of the Barn: 24% Appreciation the Last 3 Years vs. 7% “Housing prices rose 8% in 2012, 11% in 2013, and 5% in 2014, much as Barron’s had predicted they would in each of those years.” –“Nearing the Peak”; Barron’s (4/20/2015) Actually . . . I remember Barron’s making a...Read More
Pre-Closing Checklist Test your mastery of real estate minutiae, and answer the following multiple choice question: What’s the last (if not most important) pre-closing detail to get right? A. The client’s net number on the HUD-1. B. Still-needed signature(s) on any last-minute Purchase Agreement Amendments. C. The listing agent’s sign riders from the “For Sale” sign (once the...Read More
“Sloppy” Pricing — or Something Else? Even in a market with more “sloppy” pricing — properties listed either well below market value (occasionally) or well above (more often) — the new listing near Cedar Lake in Minneapolis stood out: an undersized ’50’s rambler on a level, huge 73′ x 135′ lot just waiting to be torn down and replaced with...Read More
