Help, advice and practical how-to-guides for home remodelling, maintenance and construction
A member of a local real estate professional standards committee says she is seeing widespread violations of buyer agency agreement requirements, with some agents showing properties to buyers without the legally required documentation, leaving them open to fines that can exceed $22,000. Susan Greenbaum, a Realtor Associate with Keller Williams Village Square Realty and a ...
The manual review of architectural requests — where volunteer board members painstakingly compare homeowner submissions to pages of covenant requirements — has long been one of the most time-consuming tasks in HOA governance. Now, this process is on track to become fully automated by AI, according to Clayton Thompson, CEO of HOA Start. The company ...
Real estate transactions in Litchfield County, Connecticut, are increasingly falling apart during the inspection phase, not due to serious structural problems but because buyers overreact to minor issues typical in older New England homes. According to LeeAnn Asklar, a realtor with E.J. Murphy Realty, buyers are abandoning deals over findings that experienced homeowners would expect ...
Rent-to-own arrangements have a mixed reputation in real estate, and Tamera Nielsen, CEO of Burson Home Advisors, says that skepticism is warranted. “Most rent-to-own programs were scammy,” Nielsen says. But she argues that dismissing all alternative ownership models overlooks a key difference between informal landlord deals and professionally managed programs. Nielsen cites a recent case ...
For decades, real estate sales training has focused on aggressive closing techniques. Hard-sell tactics, pressure-based scripts, and forceful approaches have been the industry standard since the 1950s. But Bill Crespo, a 40-year real estate veteran and CEO of Path2PRO Coaching, argues that this approach is not just outdated but also actively undermines most agents’ success, ...
The real estate industry often assumes that buyers can walk through vacant properties and imagine their future lives there. Fiorenza Bilak, Founder and CEO of Stage The Space, LLC, argues this assumption is fundamentally flawed. “Statistically, 83% of the entire world does not have imagination,” Bilak says. “When 83% of your potential buyers are walking ...
Real estate agents are increasingly stepping into the role of financial educator, routinely explaining basic mortgage concepts that many buyers lack before entering the market. Amy Marinello, principal broker at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Professional Realty in Northeast Ohio, says this gap in financial understanding has become a consistent feature of transactions rather than an occasional ...
In real estate, the standard response to a slowdown is to cut expenses as transaction volume falls. But according to Montreal-based team leader Joëlle Bitar, who manages over 100 active listings, this strategy keeps most brokers from ever reaching the top of the industry. Bitar, who leads a 25-person team and ranks among the top ...
A growing number of experienced multifamily operators are moving away from outsourcing property services to third-party vendors, instead building internal companies that manage everything from construction to insurance. Aaron Manoucheri, co-founder of Manoucheri Brothers, says this approach is a direct response to rising vendor costs and a belief that operational control is now a key ...
When Forty Two Plus LLC, led by founder Jay Olshonsky, acquired Sperry to join its existing Sea Glass franchise, the company faced a challenge familiar to multi-brand operators: how to operate two distinct real estate franchises without creating brand confusion, internal competition, or operational inefficiency. Olshonsky, who serves as CEO of both Sea Glass and ...
Home sellers may be losing thousands of dollars when real estate agents avoid discussing professional staging, according to Fiorenza Bilak, founder and CEO of Stage The Space, LLC. While staging is widely recognized as a tool that helps homes sell faster and for higher prices, Bilak says misunderstandings about cost, timing, and impact often prevent ...
With rapid appreciation no longer a given, investors are shifting their focus to dependable income and the equity gained through disciplined amortization. The era of effortless real estate appreciation, fueled by historically low interest rates and post-pandemic fervor, has definitively ended, forcing a painful but necessary philosophical reset among investors. For years, many sought wealth ...
Oversupply, rising costs, and tougher regulations have exposed how fragile the short-term rental model really was – and why so many investors are now facing losses, foreclosures, or a forced reset. Short-term rentals (STRs) were once the darling of residential investment, offering seemingly endless returns during the post-COVID boom. But that trend has shifted profoundly ...
When real estate deals fall apart, agents often blame the home inspection. MLS listings routinely cite “inspection issues” or claim “buyer did not perform” when properties return to the market. But Artur Tyszka, co-lead of the Tyszka Team at Keller Williams in Wayne, New Jersey, says this explanation misses the real problem. “Most deals fall ...
A growing management gap between corporate leadership and field agents is reshaping the real estate industry, according to Bill Crespo, CEO and founder of Path2PRO Coaching. Many brokerage organizations are led by executives with no direct experience in real estate sales or managing agents, creating a disconnect that is opening the door for institutional consolidators ...
