Melanie McLane's (themelaniegroup) Blog

Ready....or Not             The holidays are a time of preparation, and this year is no different. And, most of us see the end of one calendar year and the beginning of another as a time to take stock, make resolutions, look to the future, and hopefully do better next year.   An incident on Thank...

The other day, I was going into the local supermarket when I met Jane, an old friend and client.  She immediately asked me (as so many do!) "How is the real estate market?" There was genuine alarm in her voice. I said: "Fine."  She looked startled, and unsure. I elaborated: "In some parts of the ...

It's the height of summer produce season, and my garden is bursting. I walk smugly past the signs in the supermarket: "Green Beans-Special $1.29 a pound". The roadside stands have them for about $1.00 a quart, if you are lucky. My garden has them for FREE!  And, as I smugly remind my husband as w...

            I got a call the other day from an agent. She was angry, with cause, about something another agent had put into our local MLS. Now, for the faint of heart, I'm going to talk about the dirty little secrets of real estate here, and I'm going to call them as I see them. If you are thin s...

              "Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed, poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed."  I can't get the theme song from "The Beverly Hillbillies" out of my head these days.  What's putting it there is all the hoopla and activity in Lycoming County (and Tioga, as well) ov...

I just finished doing a day and a half of board orientation for my local association of REALTORS®, West Branch Valley. Our association is small (about 240 members) so we do this every six months. Despite our efforts to orient new members as soon as we can, there were some in the class who had bee...

I just returned from the annual Memorial Day Services at our local cemetery, in my little town of Jersey Shore PA (situated in north central Pennsylvania). This year's services were poignant. My favorite uncle, Jim Mercury, passed away this past March. Uncle Jim was a proud Navy reservist, and a ...

We are almost to Memorial Day weekend, one of the 'bookends' of summer. You wouldn't necessarily know it here in Northern Lycoming County, in the Pine Creek Valley--our temperatures have been unseasonably cold, with lots of rain. I'm thinking of filing a complaint to Al Gore about not getting our...

I recently received (as did many other agents, I'm sure) an email ‘offer' from a ‘referral agent' in California, who is billing herself as a ‘short sale expert'. She is seeking ‘fellow successful agents, brokers and colleagues' to assist as she has a ‘pre-qualified Short Sale Seller' in my area. ...

Yesterday was a political junkie's dream come true. We had massive chatter about what to do about Michigan and Florida's mishandled primaries; we had Eliot Spitzer get caught with his pants down (sorry, I couldn't resist), and Silda Spitzer singing "Stand By Your Man" (she must have taken lessons...