Buyers and Sellers Talking

As an agent, part of my job is to be an intermediary. My client communicates through me, I then relay a message to the other agent involved and they then communicate that information to their client. Buyers and sellers typically don’t talk to each other directly and, honestly, I prefer it that way. But how would a buyer and seller communicate directly if there are agents involved? And what can go wrong if they do

Sounding the Alarm

Last week we received a notice from the City of Hartford. It is time to renew our house alarm registration with the City’s Department of Emergency Services and Telecommunications. Residents of Hartford are required to register their alarm with the municipality. We pay $15 per year, which not only gets us into the systems, but also buys us free emergency responses for the first two false alarms within a 12 month period. There is no

Interest in Landlording

Landlords are required to follow rules while handling the money of their tenants. One of them relates to the security deposits that they collect when someone first moves in. Tenants are supposed to earn interest on their deposits at a rate defined by the state. For many years (since 2002) the state held the required security deposit interest rate at 1.5%. This page on the CT Department of Banking site shows the historical interest rates

Gardening in Greater Hartford

The snowless winter has made sledding nearly impossible this season. We got a few runs in after the Halloween storm, and a few more after a modest snowfall in January, but since then the sleds have been idle. Instead we’ve been thinking about spring and the upcoming gardening season. And it seems like others are on the same page. Last week we learned about an updated plant hardiness map from the USDA. The map for

News from West Hartford

At the end of last week there were two news stories in which we had the opportunity to contribute. First was a piece in the West Hartford News about the market conditions in West Hartford. The 2011 revaluation and associated grand list are almost complete, just waiting on the final appeals by individual property owners. That process has not seemed to be a big concern to home buyers as sales activity is up over last