Qualifying Buyers #101 In the course of holding hundreds (thousands?) of Sunday open houses over the years, I can usually tell relatively quickly whether a given prospect is serious or not. See if you can guess which of the comments below indicate serious Buyer interest: A. “I LOVE this house. Why is it so cheap?!?” B. “What...Read More
Financing Contingency Pitfalls One of the surprises lurking in the standard Minnesota Financing Addendum is the weaker of the two clauses addressing the Buyer’s financing. In layman’s terms, it says that if the closing date arrives and the Buyer’s financing falls through: a) there’s no deal; and b) the Buyer gets their earnest money back. For...Read More
Soliciting Customer Feedback From the Math-Challenged Of course, the email solicitation didn’t say the airline would pay customers $1.50 to complete its survey. Instead, it offered “250 bonus miles.” But, do the math — I did — and that comes to a rather measly $1.50 (that’s what you get when you divide $300 by 50,000 points, then multiply by...Read More
Predicting Consequences New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed and on Wednesday signed legislation to make tuition free at New York public colleges for anybody coming from a family making no more than $100,000 a year, with the cap rising to $125,000 in 2019. —The New York Times (April 14, 2017). Will Gov. Cuomo’s initiative increase...Read More
How to Go From Two (or More) Buyers to None Multiple offers are such a fixture of the Twin Cities housing market these days that Buyers’ agents need to be on their “on their game” (and then some) if their clients are to have a shot of prevailing. Meanwhile, listing agents (representing Sellers) are almost...Read More
Two Minutes vs. Two Hours to Set Up Showings Here’s how a Buyer’s agent — at least in the Twin Cities — gets their client into an MLS-listed home: step #1: logon to MLS. step #2: enter the home’s address to find listing, then . . . . step #3: use online form to request showing (typically one...Read More
