Blog

It’s Hard Enough To Find a Home That You Love.  Want to Avoid Buyer PTSD? Even if you weren’t the market last year, maybe you just heard how crazy it was. Bidding wars left and right… People paying over asking price… Deals falling apart last minute… Your Mind Starts Playing Tricks On You You askRead more

What if mortgage rates aren’t as bad as you think they are? What if rates went down last week?  What if you can borrow at rates far lower than what you’re hearing about in the news? What if the newspapers have it all wrong? Well, the trend is up, but the fears may be overblown. Read more

It’s Always Nice To Get on Good Morning America I can’t say that every week.  I couldn’t say that ever before!  So I’ll say again: It’s nice to get on GMA (I show up around 1:26 on the piece, fyi)!  Last week, I was speaking to the GMA Crew, including Erielle Reshef, about what canRead more

Buyers and Sellers are Misreading the Signs of Today’s Market As mortgage rates rise and the stock market wobbles, you cannot blame buyers and investors for getting excited.  After all, the last 18 months have been extraordinary for sales volume in Manhattan and across the rest of the United States.  I can imagine that buyersRead more

Friends are complaining that they can’t find a home in any suburbs, that traffic is horrible in lots of different quaint towns, that the post-COVID real estate boom has ruined many sleepy upstate burgs.  Even Brooklyn is at all-time highs…. Not here!! Manhattan is one of the only markets in the United States that isRead more

New Feature!! Let’s celebrate a recent win for our buyers and sellers.  This month?  Buyers! We go to a couple who started their Upper East Side search before COVID.  Deal One Our first deal thankfully didn’t take flight.  Why thankfully?  Had they not been outbid, they would have been stuck in the middle of aRead more

“If the mortgage rates go up, won’t prices go down?” This is the comment that I’m hearing more and more.  In theory, it makes complete sense.  But in practice, it’s more complicated than that.  I’ve been looking for a simple way to communicate what feels like a difficult concept to grasp- that is, what is theRead more

We’re hearing it all over, so I’ll ask you, too: Are you worried that there some scary things are creeping around the corner? I’ll spell it out: Rising mortgage rates, Recession, Russia, a pandemic that won’t go away…   We’ve had a really great run of about 18 months of enthusiasm, when it was easyRead more

The Resurgence Not of COVID-19, but of Midtown It seems like a million years ago, but it was last September.  I had been thinking about Midtown and some of the different ways in which it had been more dramatically impacted by COVID-19- and why it would be a boon to the recovery.  Nine months later,Read more

We’re All Crazy. It happens with nearly every introduction.  The person that wants me to meet their prospective buyer or seller says, “Scott, I want to warn you, my (friend, colleague, sister, acquaintence) is crazy.”  Let’s face it- Crazy is par for the course in New York.  You have to be a little delusional orRead more