Location, Location, Location (Again) Normally, when a house has a major foundation issue, standard Realtor advice to Buyers is “run, don’t walk” (to something else). What’s the exception to that? If the home in question is on desirable lot in a hot neighborhood for tear-downs — and the foundation issue translates into a sufficiently hefty discount. Exit...Read More
How to Financially Qualify Home Buyers — and Home Builders One of the things you get pretty good at (hopefully) in the course of representing home Sellers for 12+ years is, how to qualify — that is, get comfortable with — the Buyer’s financing. To be sure, I have a preferred list of questions I like...Read More
“Two Strikes and You’re Out” I just heard through the grapevine that a certain Twin Cities builder is now working with their third Realtor in four years (note: builders sometimes engage Realtors — occasionally on an exclusive basis — to rep their new homes). I’ve worked with both previous Realtors on past deals, and found...Read More
Stuck in the Middle: the Plight of the “Near Tear-Down” While Twin Cites developers — and their clients — are once again on the prowl for tear-downs, unfortunately for would-be Sellers of such homes, not everything qualifies. In particular, a great many homes fall into a broad gray area, where they’re too expensive for many...Read More
Tear-Downs Spread to Less Expensive Neighborhoods, Busier Streets Literally one day after the Golden Valley home pictured above sold for $77,000 last month ($2k over ask), the new owner listed the to-be-built new construction on MLS (photo, below). Asking price: $449,900 for 5 BR/4 Baths and almost 2,900 finished square feet. Not a bad bump,...Read More
Advertising Arbitrage I couldn’t be happier with Google’s search software: type in “Twin Cities Real Estate Blog,” and this site consistently pops up as #1 (by the way, that’s also the result on Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL). On the other hand, I’m a less-than-happy user of Google’s advertising software, called “Adsense.” Google pays me something...Read More
