Ed's Blog

This past Sunday, I held one of my colleague Pat Kennedy's listings open. It is a lovely and spacious 1300 sf 2-BR in Adams Morgan's Beverly Court, a classic 1915 building. It has some beautiful traditional details, yet a well-flowing, modern open plan.Plus some of the most beautiful honey pine f...

  When I was a young boy, I remember reading a poignant book titled “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith. It is the story of a young girl struggling against poverty in the early decades of the 20th Century. As a boy growing up in Brooklyn in a family of modest means myself, I felt a connecti...

Michelle Singletary's column in today's Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003013.html points out that the new $7,500 tax incentive in the new housing law is not really a credit, but is essentially a loan administered through the tax code. The...

A few Saturdays ago, I took a client to see half a dozen 1-BR condos. The remarks to agents on one of them read:PLS CALL OWNER/AGENT FOR STATUS, INQUIRES, SHOWINGS & OTHER CONCERNS. It had no virtual tour, just a photo of the exterior, but I'd seen apartments in that building before and knew it w...

Hate those automated voices giving directions to press some number only to find you’ll soon have to press another and never have any real sense you’ll wind up with an actual human? Me, too. Here are some tips from the website http://www.gethuman.com/tips.htm to try to get to a live person: 1.    ...

My wife, Rita, has long considered “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” to be the scariest movie ever made. For those who don’t remember it, it’s the 1954 horror film about a scientific expedition that encounters a dangerous humanoid amphibious fish-creature while traveling up the Amazon River. T...

A while back, I held a heavily attended open house at a fairly spectacular $500,000 condo. Lots of worthy-looking prospects wandered about, nodding approvingly, asking the right kinds of questions. A very promising turnout. But then there was this rather scruffy-looking teenager in jeans, t-shirt...

This was my first mistake: I volunteered to hold an open house for a fellow agent – my very first open. The property was a 5-BR three-story house with finished basement in a residential section of the city. It was almost Christmas and the temperature was well below freezing. ...