Preparing for Your 2009 Real Estate Transaction

I know the spring real estate market seems a world away for many in Connecticut and the Greater Hartford region. But I just finished up my business plan for 2009 and thought it might be helpful to provide some tips for Buyers and Sellers that are planning a real estate transaction in upcoming year. It never hurts to get an early start and planning ahead will typically put you in a better position, no matter

Negotiating Your Relocation Package- Sell Side

The end of the year is always busy with professionals relocating for work, as hiring managers rush to use the remainder of their budget or as they prepare for new budget funds that will be available with the coming of a new year. When you receive your job offer from an employer and you need to move a substantial distance away from your current location, you’ll typically be presented with a relocation package. This will

Greater Hartford Real Estate Market Statistics- November 2008

November and December are traditionally slow months for real estate sales. People would rather focus on the various holidays, rather than think about buying and selling houses. Well, this year things appear to have slowed a little bit earlier than usual. Based on the towns I’m tracking below, the number of closed sales for single family homes was down 31% overall when comparing November 2008 to November 2007. That’s fairly significant. Here are the monthly

Independent Events in Real Estate

If there’s one mantra that you’ll hear from the real estate community, it’s that “Real Estate is local.” We don’t want you looking at what’s going on in California and Arizona and extrapolating that the same behavior is happening in your market. Because most likely, it’s not. Each market reacts differently based on the local economy, housing stock, demographics, and a host of other factors. Unfortunately, I believe there is another equally important phenomenon that

Take Your Offer and Shove It

One of a real estate agent’s jobs is to act as an intermediary between buyers and sellers. This part of the job becomes particularly difficult when the buyers and sellers don’t appear to be on the same page. One timely example is with low ball offers. Low ball offers suck. It doesn’t really matter which side of the table you’re on. They just suck. As a buyer’s agent they suck because there needs to be