After years of bad news in the housing market, a corner has been turned. The cooperative complex of Scarsdale Manor on Garth Road in the Scarsdale PO is an example of such a turn around. This popular pre-war cooperative complex suffered from the malaise with slow sales and decreasing prices. Things are now leveling and we appear to be well on our way to healthy price increases.
Its Passover and Holy Week and even though it is spring, it feels like winter still. We were supposed to have snow on Monday, but thankfully we were spared. In any case, Carlson’s Floral & Gift is ready with flowers, arrangements and all sorts of wonderful arrangements for your home and garden. Just a walk-through is enough to fill your mind with wonderful ideas for your home and garden….
And if you are thinking about selling your home, curb appeal is key and a few arrangements artfully placed can make all the difference in the world. Its an inexpensive way to spruce up ho-hum landscaping.
Happy Spring – even though winter still appears to be with us!
Carlson’s is located on Dobbs Ferry Road on Route 100B near the ramp for the Sprain Brook Parkway.
© 2013 – Ruthmarie G. Hicks – http://thewestchesterview.com – All rights reserved.
This is a topic that I have brought up in the past. In 2010 Redfin did a study that got a lot of people riled up. It was about the impact of professional photography on home sales. I think it riled up agents and brokers because at the height of the housing recession, the last thing they wanted to hear was that they needed to fork up precious marketing dollars for professional photography.
However, let’s be honest here: the study was pretty much stating the obvious. It was something that I had intuitively known for several years and had been preparing for. The internet changed everything. Eye candy was ruling the day and fine photography had become the centerpiece of any smart agent’s marketing plan. That agents were slow to respond is understandable. They had been doing Poleroid shots, followed by point-and-shoot for years. What they were underestimating was how much buyers were letting their fingers do the walking online. With thousands of listing photos online, buyers were eliminating inventory before even leaving the home or contacting an agent.
Agents argued the validity of the data. I personally have never been a big Redfin fan, but in this case they had really tried to find a way to measure something that was very difficult to quantify. The method was somewhat indirect. They had to quantify the use of professional photography by the use of camera type.
Back in a time, not so long ago, real estate agents had a thing called the MLS (Multiple Listing Service). It was privately owned and no one could peek inside unless they were a licensed agent. The listing books were stacked neatly arranged and updated in brokerage offices throughout Westchester – and throughout most of the country for that matter.
Back then, I wasn’t an agent. So I can only recall that time except from the perspective of a home buyer in the late 90s. But I can tell you that photography was not very important back then. In fact, I don’t recall seeing a single photo before viewing a home. Agents seemed to take one polaroid shot of each home they liste and that was that. The internet was around, but a clunky, awkward shadow of its present state. Search engines weren’t that good at searching and internet speed was…well it was dialup! Loading photos? I don’t think so….
Often when buyers start looking for White Plains NY condos for sale, they find themselves drawn to older complexes with old-world charm. Westchester coops comprise the largest share of pre-war buildings and many high-end Westchester coops end up being on the short list of buyers for White Plains NY condos. The Broadlawn of White Plains is just such a complex.
Note: This site is currently featuring a new listing for the Broadlawn! A totally renovated 2BR duplex with a granite kitchen an brand new bath. To learn more about The Broadlawn L-156 – Click Here!
The complex consists of garden style units surrounded by formal gardens that including Pergola and barbecue area. Built in 1928, the Broadlawn is know for its Old-World charm and architectural details. Most of the units at the Broadlawn have two bedrooms. Many include such wonderful amenities as fireplaces and balconies overlooking the formal gardens. Ground floor units often have private patios. Many units are duplexes. The ground floor units tend to be simplexes with patios while the upper floor units are generally duplexes. The Broadlawn was able to forgo raising its maintenance fees last year – which speaks well to its financial stability. The interior hallways have just been given a facelift and they are also in the process of creating a fitness room on the premises. All of these are positive steps for the owners and are signs of a thriving community.
My series on the listing agent minefield got sidelined courtesy of Hurricane Sandy, a presidential election a the Nor’easter that hit us a week after the hurricane. The weather changed a lot of our plans as the pattern of our lives was put on hold for an indefinite period.
Being sidelined so long forced me to engage in an unusually thoughtful reread of what I had written jus a few weeks prior. As I completed the process all I could do was be stunned in horror at what I had written. It wasn’t that what was written was inaccurate. What had me banging my head against the wall was that my posts were a response to what appears to be a massive amount of confusion out there on the part of the public. After all, the content was in response to questions and misinformation that seemed to have almost urban legend status among most sellers.
But – Why are home sellers so confused? Why is the real estate process STILL so opaque? Why are these blogs even necessary?
This is a common misconception. Its somewhat analogous to choosing the agent with the most listings but with some important differences.
If you choose an agent in this way, what you are doing is choosing a “brand”. There are many popular brands out there to pick from – Houlihan Lawrence, Julia B. Fee Sothebys, Better Homes and Gardens, Coldwell Banker and my own brokerage, Keller Williams are among the big players in lower Westchester. The big mistake here is that sellers think there is constancy between agents within each brand.
When you go to Starbucks, you expect the same service in New York that you get in California, Florida or the outback of Alaska. The same would hold true of a McDonald’s or a Cheesecake Factory. There is a consistency within these brands that just doesn’t happen in real estate brokerage brands and that can extends even within individual franchises.
Oh brother – Don’t even get me started. Well, I actually was the one that started this – so I will finish it and tell you what I really think. I have a profile on Zillow – barely – and I certainly post my listings there because my sellers deserve the exposure. But I won’t play the Zillow – or Trulia game.
What exactly is a “premier agent”? I think most buyers and sellers think that there is some nice person or department at Zillow headquarters that carefully culls the lists of agents and offers premier positions to agents that have strong track records in each particular location. I hate to burst your bubble on this, but nothing could be further from the truth. I get calls weekly from the likes of Zillow and Trulia asking me if I would like to buy a position as a premier agent in a given area. Now, sometimes they have called me for regions where I have no sales history whatsoever. They had an opening and was hoping I’d be gullible enough to pop for it. That’s right – these postions goe to those willing to cough up the cash.
The answer is “Not necessarily!” Most agents in Westchester County do not have a great number of listings…if any. There are a handful of agents that do and most trumpet that fact as a sign of great success. These are what I call “power agents”. They have a name and they collect them – sometimes just because they can. Unfortunately, having a name isn’t everything. It can be difficult for the consumer to differentiate between an agent or broker that is riding on the coattails of a name “earned” in c.1980 from an agent who truly has their head and business in the 21st century.
This goes back to the first post in this series where I addressed why agents are always crawling all over the consumer for their listing. Most agents do want to sell your home. But even if they know that they can’t due to overpricing or other issues, there are other reasons to take on. Listings are magnets for buyers and they also can attract local sellers. Having the sign in the ground is built-in publicity. All this attention may seem like an embarrassment of riches for the consumer, but this level of competition can make the seller feel as if they are under assault. It also makes it harder to separate value from hype.
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