Promoting Good Realtor Karma Why go to a home on tour that you don’t have a Buyer for, in a part of town you don’t normally work, on a day when you’ve got 17 other things to get to? (And no, there’s not a deluxe lunch waiting there, at least as far as I know)....Read More
Housing Market Equivalent to “Best Supporting Actor” (in a Non-Musical Production??) First, a caveat: while I do rely on colleagues to backstop me when I’m out-of-town or under-the-weather, I do NOT have a full-time assistant. That said, it seems like an oversight — in the spirit of the Tony’s, Oscars, etc. — not to explicitly identify and...Read More
Old Wine in New Bottles Thanks to a rising housing market, there are now far fewer underwater homeowners. However, they’ve hardly disappeared. In fact, something like 20% of all homeowners with a mortgage — about 5 million people nationally — still owe more on their homes than their home is worth (that’s down from closer to...Read More
Affordability’s Three “Ingredients”: Housing Prices, Mortgage Rates, & Employment Don’t rising home prices make homes less affordable? In general, yes. The exception is when interest rates are falling faster than home prices are rising — the case right now — and wages and employment are improving (also true). From 4.6% to ???? So, from a...Read More
Friend vs. . . Foe Not Friend In the Twin Cities, ten municipalities require home sellers to have their home inspected prior to sale (in some cases, prior to listing). Some of those cities (Bloomington, St. Louis Park) have their own city inspectors; others, like Minneapolis, outsource the job to an approved list of independent...Read More
“Better,” “Best,” “Very Best” Strategies With lots of formerly dry Twin Cities basements suddenly . . . not, I thought it was timely to review homeowners’ various “water prevention” options. Many homes don’t need drain tile and sump pumps: they sit on a (relatively) high piece of land and/or the grade slopes away from the...Read More
