$%#@?!! Ok, so 10¢ is only the wholesale price of a barrel of oil right now — specifically, something called “West Texas Intermediate crude” (“WTI”) — not the retail price (at the pump). And refining and transporting oil isn’t free. But, given that there are 31 recoverable gallons in a barrel, that translates to something...Read More
Subjective Tolerance Levels First, the good news: assuming the house is a couple of decades old (or older!), the settling is very likely historic. So, for a home that was built in say, 1925, the settling likely occurred (and stopped) by 1927. The bad news? It’s (very) hard to correct. It’s possible to use floor...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
Housing Market Misnomers One of the biggest misconceptions in residential real estate is that, to be a teardown, a home must first be falling down. Hardly. All “teardown” means is that the home is less valuable than the land underneath it. That can be the case for at least two reasons other than physical condition:...Read More
April 12, 2020: Record Easter Snowfall in Twin Cities Thanks to a record 4″ (and still falling) snow today, area “For Sale” homes that had embarrassingly unseasonal exterior photos . . . suddenly don’t. But here’s an educated guess: even when warmer weather returns — 60’s are forecast here next week — the (literally) frozen-in-time...Read More
“Sellers Who Don’t Have to Sell,” or Picking Up Their Marbles & Going Staying Home Would-be forecasters trying to divine the future of home prices, post-pandemic, would be wise to remember the aftermath of The 2008 Financial Crash (sorry, I never bought “The Great Recession” label). Namely, housing prices weakened much more slowly than stocks, employment, and...Read More
