Blog

In this month’s video, I continue to muse on what seems to be driving the market into higher sales volume.  The very short answer?  Pricing.  That’s it.  If prices look to be “in the zone,” people make bids.  If prices seem to be too high, no offers.  Tumbleweeds.  So the question is this, sellers:  DoRead more

I love this article. It covers so much of what interests me, at the intersection of culture and real estate. Where people want to live; urban vs suburban; how people want to live; experiences vs things; generational change; what stays the same; investing in the city vs the suburbs. I have a number of clientsRead more

I’ve written about how buyers have gotten a bit accustomed to TV shows, where every house in Waco, Texas looks like a West Elm catalog. In the case of New York City, buyers have started to see more, more, and more staged apartments. West Elm Goes to Texas The expectation then becomes that every apartmentRead more

I haven’t been writing as much on new development of late. In this case, I wanted to think through what buying in a particular new building would look like if you decided, from the building, that you would be buying as an investor. In this case, after five years, the math could work so thatRead more

I think WE all are watching the implosion of We(Work) with curiosity. Beyond their chief co-working offering, I found the educational experiment of WeGrow fairly interesting, and my limited experience with Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah, who were fellow parents at my school for a year, gave me some insight into what they wereRead more

Conventional Wisdom would see things this way: If the sales market is strong, the rental market should be weak. If the sales market is weak, the rental market should then be strong. Most of the time, it looks that way. And right now, it would appear, by most metrics, that the sales market is softer,Read more

The summer is a time to recharge the batteries. In the case of the Manhattan and Brooklyn markets, it may also be a time to get really amazing deals. I’m thinking about how mortgage rates are likely to come down, inventory is slightly up in most places, and prices are slightly down from a yearRead more

A big question. How has social media affected real estate purchases? Are there positive impacts? Negative ones? Both? On one hand, I hear stories about how Facebook is helping realtors do business, Instagram helping us promote what we’re up to, spreading the word, quite effectively, with very beautiful photographs. I do get to see absolutelyRead more

Sellers of cooperative apartments who are seeing their properties linger are wondering what they can do. You can take a look at our reports here and here for a bit more color about inventory and the market. I can point out a few trends which hurt the resale prospects of older, less renovated properties: BuyerRead more

Collusion There’s been a lot of arguing about collusion in the news. “No Collusion!” is what we hear from our President. Regardless of which side of that argument you come out on, you are probably disgusted and frustrated. At the very least, it’s a distracting mess. Don’t throw your hands up just yet. A littleRead more