The MD Suburbs of DC

Will the fun never stop? Day two and I was continuing down the path of my continuing ed.  One of the workshops was an hour and a half presentation by Anirban Basu of the Sage Policy Group (MAR's economist) on the economic outlook for both the country and, more specifically, the housing market in ...

I'm not an economist and I don't play one on TV.  I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs or the pro and cons of the recent take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the Federal Government.  However, I am reading and hearing from people who should have a finger on the pulse of real estate t...

Long day for me.  Early class for Legislative and Legal Update (3 hours of continuing ed), the annual CRS luncheon with and interesting speaker who talked about real estate auctions (and where I was also surprised to sit by fellow Active Rainer Rich Mielke), then 3 hours of Ethics followed by the...

A lot of Realtors pooh-pooh the Annual Conference of the Maryland Association of Realtors.  I'll be one of the first to say that it could probably be beefed up both in the content of the workshops and the quality and variety of the exhiboitors.  Yet, I have never missed one since I becam a Realto...

Listening to my morning fix of NPR  and reading through the Washington Post, I see that the Federal Government is about to propose a way to take over complete control and management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac., according to this article in the Wall Street Journal. I guess this is a good thing....

There are times when I list a home I'll reach an agreement with the Seller - a kind of middle ground - where the price isn't too high and it might just get some people through the door. I also make recommendations about de-cluttering and repairing and replacing where necessary but I don't really ...

The owner of this lovely three bedroom Colonial style home recently installed all new carpeting and vinyl flooring in the two and a half baths and kitchen and foyer areas. It's been cleaned up, spruced up and - best of all - the price has been lowered to what a lot of townhouses might cost. Check...

I've been writing recently about a townhouse I had listed in Laurel that had run into a few, er, challenges along the way. There was the friend of the Sellers who had agreed to do some contracting work on the Sellers house to get it ready for sale.  It involved tearing up the old (really old) car...

In a recent post about Counting Chickens Before They're Hatched, I mentioned that I feeling pretty good about things until the inspection came along and had a lot of stuff on there that the Seller really hadn't expected. Of course, the Seller had all their money tied up in the house and, to make ...

In this post, I was doing a little bragging about how if a house is priced right and in decent condition it'll receive multiple offers...even in this market!  I was feeling pretty proud of myself (and the Seller) for getting the house into decent showing condition and pricing it so aggressively t...