Howard and Susan Meyers's Blog

We Can Lead a Horse To Water.....A few times in the past year or so, we have had North Shore listings that didn’t sell and eventually, the sellers withdrew them from the market.  In each of these situations, we had recommended a lower initial asking price or price reductions and the seller either...

I often think back to a Wall Street Journal article which I read more than 20 years ago.  It discussed the record keeping practices (for income tax purposes) of small businesses in France.  It stated that the typical French business had three sets of books. They are:   The books which you show go...

The Economy and The North Shore Housing Market... A Total Disconnect? Historically, the housing market has been driven by the economy.  It only makes sense.  When times are good, people are confident about their financial situation and are interested in buying a house...or a bigger house.  It’s t...

What is wrong with this picture? If you haven’t noticed, we are great admirers of market  statistics. The following chart gives some very interesting information about the supply/demand curve in the Winnetka real estate market: (any errors in statistics are purely unintentional)Let’s start with t...

Price Compellingly Only If You Want To Sell It took a while, but it seems that just about everyone in the North Shore real estate community now understands the concept that if a property is offered at a compelling price, it will sell quickly and relatively close to that price.  Many homeowners on...

Some Interesting Market Statistics for Winnetka     The fall and early winter is generally a slow period in the North Shore real estate market.  Inventories general dip due to the holidays and showings also drop as both buyers and sellers retrench with holiday shopping and decorating.  This year ...

Do Home Sale Contingencies Work For Anyone? While “Home Sale Contingencies” (HSC) were never a common practice in the North Shore market, we began to see a growing number of them during the first years that the market began to fall.  Typically, they would be in effect for 90 to 120 days after con...

We’d Like to “Add Value” in Certain Areas...But We Can’t The way that we try to differentiate ourselves from other agents to our buying clients is to provide “added value” to their total transaction process. We do this is many ways including but not limited to:   Our knowledge of the current inve...

The Statistic that Concerns us Most Yes, we’re numbers people.  We like to use statistics to tell a story.  Of course they’re open to interpretation and misrepresentation, but they sure beat “seat of the pants” analysis.  As real estate professionals on the North Shore, we try to pay close attent...

Will This Be The Last  Big Box “Black Friday”?As Thanksgiving approaches, the annual frenzy of anticipation for Black Friday is building.  Shoppers will be out in full force searching for bargains.  The major “big box”  stores have taken a cue from the states arranging their Republican Presidenti...