Reason Not to Lie #37 Lying is hard, telling the truth is easy. By definition, every good Realtor juggles: multiple clients, dozens of showings, lots of parallel deals at varying stages. It’s hard enough keeping all the details straight and presenting them coherently to your client(s); not tripping yourself up in a web of lies...Read More
Upper Bracket Squeezed by Jumbo Bottleneck At a time when some mortgage products are showing signs of life, jumbo mortgages are hard to get and expensive, making it difficult for many would-be move-up buyers to take action. —Minneapolis Association of Realtors (6/22/09) Want a quick, simple handle on today’s housing market? Take $417,000, the limit...Read More
Where: Minneapolis’ Fulton neighborhood in SW Minneapolis (one block north of the Minnehaha Creek) What: 2 BR/1 BA; 1,080 FSF. Year built: 1924 When: on market yesterday (June 8) How much: $124,900 Who: listed with Coldwell Banker Burnet It’s never a good sign for prospective Buyers when you arrive at a showing to find several...Read More
Renting vs. Owning: Not-So-Perfect Substitutes Every article I’ve seen in the last few years trying to divine the direction of housing prices inevitably compares renting to owning. The underlying assumption: when the cost of home ownership is more expensive relative to renting, housing is (still) too expensive. By contrast, when owning a home is cheaper...Read More
Realtors & Buyer’s Markets: Feeling Sellers’ Pain It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.–Charles Dickens In a Buyer’s market, Sellers’ pain is Buyers’ gain. And the vast majority of Buyers today are represented by Realtors, too (acting as a Buyer’s Representative). So it seems fair to ask: Why isn’t a...Read More
Not So Recession-Proof, After AllNo, it’s still not cheap by Twin Cities-wide standards, but asking prices for Edina homes have come down dramatically in the last 2-3 years: from $350 to even $400 per finished square foot (“FSF”) in mid-2006, to around $200 per square foot today. Translated into bricks-and-mortar choices, that means that $600k...Read More
