Melanie McLane's (themelaniegroup) Blog

I was starting a class today when one of my students asked me: "Is it true that this market is the worst it's ever been? There are agents in my office who have been in the business 20, 25 years, and they are saying this is the worst they've ever seen the market."  I said, unequivocably: "NO! This...

Pricing real estate has never been a more important skill than it is today. Yet, when I stand in front of a room full of students, I can tell by their faces that I'm the first person presenting basic fundamentals of pricing and valuation to them.  In many states (including mine, PA), the day we g...

Well, it is almost the end of January, and so far, I've kept some resolutions (hooray!). One of my resolutions this year was to keep better records. This was precipitated by the fact that we had to file our federal taxes late (we got an extension) because my husband had an emergency appendectomy ...

My state legislature (Pennsylvania) is currently kicking around a number of ideas for property reform, including an amendment to the state constitution outlawing the use of real estate taxes to fund public schools. Apparently, the $1 billion dollars Governor Rendell promised we would get from slo...

It's the end of December, so it is resolution time. As I ponder my personal list, which includes finishing my book, doing more convention speaking, blogging more often, and reading at least one business book a month, I find myself wishing I was in charge of other people's resolutions. Call me cra...

It's early December, so we're back at Triple Play, the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania Convention, held the first week of December every year in Atlantic City. It's 'old home' week for trainers; even though many of us saw each other just before Thanksgiving in Las Vegas for the NAR conference. W...

I've been watching, bemused, as a consumer and a real estate agent dance to the same old steps of real estate, only without figuring out that the music has changed. The consumer is someone I know, who knows I'm a real estate educator. He is probably more candid than he should be with me. For inst...

Last week, the Department of Justice started their own web site for consumers. Among other things, consumers can click on a state (displayed in a map of the United States) and find out if the state offers choices for consumers, and if the real estate agent can rebate 'some or all' of the commissi...

As we all watch the sub-prime market crash and burn, we need to recognize that there is enough blame to go around. More than enough. The federal government is in the process of dreaming up ways to help solve this problem, but a big part of this problem is unadulterated greed, followed by stupidit...

That was the main question today, September 24th, at the meeting of the Keystone Council of CRBs (Certified Residential Brokerage Managers) at the PAR  (Pennsylvania Association of Realtors) meetings. A small but influential group, a very few of whom already blog, were asking why blog, when to bl...