ChitownLiving | Chicago Real Estate + Life

As of January 1, 2008 Radon Disclosures and informational documentation are now a requirement to list a home for sale. From Mary Umberger’s article…
Effective Jan. 1, every such contract must be accompanied by two documents pertaining to radon, an odorless, colorless gas linked to lung cancer. The first item is a pamphlet from the [...]

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This is my monthly rant. Buyer clients and I were viewing townhomes in Lincoln Park, Lake View, and Old Town.  We arrived at one of our appointments, the listing agent met us on time, and we began the tour.  All good so far.  Here is how it went…
This is the downstairs bathroom.  And this is the family room.  This is [...]

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Ardell at Rain City Guide writes a superb post on pricing homes in the internet age.  A must read for all home sellers.  While surfing listings today for a client, it was amazing to see how many listings are not priced to take advantage of the property search sites such as Realtor.com. Take a home valued [...]

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The other day I headed over to show a listing of mine in Lincoln Park.  I arrived early as I always do to turn on lights and straighten up to ensure the property shows it’s best.  On this occasion, I found a bedroom closet pocket door had come off the hinges.  The door could not be rehung as the [...]

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Came across this article at South Florida Real Estate Voice that I think has some great tips.  Not sure if they are the top 10 tips, but nonetheless, some great advice for home buyers and sellers.  I won’t rehash the entire article but my brief comments on each point are listed below.

Appearance:  Decluttering a home should [...]

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Oooohhhhh, the drama.  The latest home sale pricing trend is termed “Drama Pricing”, best explained in a Boston Globe article this morning.
Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Massachusetts’ largest real estate firm with more than 3,500 agents, is coaching agents on how to persuade clients to list their homes at an asking price that undercuts those of comparable [...]

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I was out with one of my buyer clients over the past two weeks and in the area we were house hunting, the custom is to have sellers show their own property, all owners, not just for sale by owners or those represented by limited service brokerages.  Two situations struck me and prompted this post [...]

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While I wait for the “final bell” to be rung on the submission of closing data  in order to publish my October Northeast Chicago market statistics, I ran across a cool site courtesy of UrbanDigs. HousingTracker provides real estate maket statistics for major metropolitan areas.  The data is pulled from Realtor.com so it only covers active listings.  Check [...]

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Dual agency is one of those terms that is thrown around quite often and can tie all involved up in knots unless fully understood. In many cases, the pitfalls of dual agency are never truly understood by clients and inexperienced agents alike, until fully immersed in a dual agency situation. The sterile definition of dual [...]

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