Stop the presses!I’ve always wanted to send that message and finally had a chance to do so last week when, after reading on our MLS daily hot sheet of an astonishing sale for $7,400,000 on Thunder Mountain Road (off Riversville), I wrote all about it in a first draft of this column; I learned the [...]
Entries from November 2007
November 17, 2007
PricingWhen visiting houses on broker open house tours I’m often struck by the disparity between asking price and reality. I’m usually tempted to blame the seller for this ridiculous situation but, on reflection, I suspect we agents share some of the fault. In short, we tend to fall in love with our listings. Any good [...]
November 17, 2007
Randall M. Keleher!Regular readers of this column know that it exists primarily to tout the achievements of my little brother Gideon (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold, 869-0866) of whom I am proud. But, in mentioning Gideon’s latest coup of unloading $25,000,000 of Riverside waterfront, I neglected to mention Randy Keleher’s own success in that area earlier [...]
November 17, 2007
Appraisal Scandal?Andrew Cumo, New York’s Attorney General, has alleged that appraisal firms jacked up the estimated value of houses they surveyed in order to please their lending banks. We’ll see how the evidence turns out; certainly, I have heard stories of such fraud, but usually as a collusion between the appraiser and a mortgage broker, [...]
November 17, 2007
More Banking ScamsI know of two people who, having refinanced their homes, immediately began receiving a flood of junk mail from their new lenders. In both instances, buried in the tossed-away promotional material, was a demand that the lender be named as a beneficiary on the existing insurance policy. When this was ignored, the lenders [...]
