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This will take two blogs!  The number of new listings is very high.  I am sure people waited until it felt like spring and got summer instead. The first group belongs to the village.  Of the current 43 properties listed in the Skaneateles Village area of the multiple listing service, two new ones came on.  One is a smaller village home with a great yard for $269,000.  The other is my listing of 5 Palmer Place, an adorable home tucked away behind Leitch and Academy.  The price is $366,000. Five new waterfronts came on the market over the past 18 days.  There is one small one at the far end of the lake for under 200K.  Moving up the lake towards the village, but still fairly far down is a camp for $445,000.  Getting closer yet are two cottages right on the water for about $700,000.  Almost to the village - well, about 3 miles out - is another camp (a true camp, as the agent admits) for almost $800,000.  The final home is a multimilllion dollar (as in 3M) luxury home. That leaves ten more

I am sitting in the office in the Village watching the world go by.  I met with people this morning who took a careful look at a house for well over two hours.  We thought we would see more today, but they preferred to go out exploring on their own.  I wasn't sure what to do next - I had well over another hour until my next appointment - but then I got a call about a contract coming in.  So I am in the office, doing a goodly bit of work prior to leaving again. It's amazing how much can be accomplished in a short period of time if there are no interruptions.  I processed the contract, printed it, called the agent to ask questions, called the owners to tell them and request a time to meet, printed flyers and the disclosures for tomorrow's open house at 5 Palmer Place in Skaneateles - check it out on http://realtor.com/ or http://cnyrealtor.com/  - and still had time to write this blog! And no, I do not feel rushed at all.  I've left enough time to get to my next appointm

I am about to put on a new listing, just waiting for the paperwork.  It is such a lengthy project at times, and this is one of those times.  I can't remember when we first started talking about listing this home, easily months if not a year or so ago.  It's an estate, and because of that there are four children involved who all contributed to the process. The woman with whom I've dealt the most, one of the sisters, and I have corresponded for years since she and her family purchased a camp through me.  We rarely see each other, but when we do it's like Old Home Days.  As with so many of my clients, she has become a friend more than a client.  So this was a great opportunity for us to spend more time together on a mutual project. Since we started, the home has been vacated by its family tenant, the papers and belongings of her father have been removed I am sure quite tearfully.  It's always the hardest part of letting a home go because we all seem to be so involved w

I went out to the lake today to mow.  It's a new project this year to force me into some much-needed exercise and also to visit the lake.  I can get overwhelmed, and not make it out there, but this year I am determined not to miss summer.  So I mow with my electric mower, (I call it vacuuming the lawn) and get very hot and very sweaty....and stay current with the phone and e-mails thanks to my new iPhone. On the way back through the village I stopped at Doug's for salmon, 2 cole slaws and a fish sandwich for Bob.  I happened to get Mark Edwards, the owner, to write my order.  He took a moment to tell me how much he enjoyed this blog.  I felt so guilty, because, like the lake, there are times when I don't write for days at a time.  But hearing his praise - even though he didn't buy his beautiful new house with me - sent me to the computer.  (Salmon takes a while - and they know that I will be back to get it.) I forget sometimes that real estate is about people, too.  I f

Building companies going under, builders revealed as fakes, boomers without a clue and another end of the world prediction missed. Had those christian loons bothered to ask, I could have told them there's only one day the world can end - a Tuesday. More specifically, the first Tuesday of the month. The past few months has produced a constant stream of bad building news in Tasmania. The obvious - dwellings built per person and the doubling of an industry inside ten years - has been ignored. Ok by me, because something else has been revealed - shonks, fraudsters and weasels have been cashing in and now they're being exposed. If you've ever taken a cursory glance at Minsky & Kindleberger's bubble framework, you'll know the forth stage is the critical stage. Where financial distress begins to be revealed and this is also the stage where fraud begins to rear its head... NEW-HOME owners are being left with defective and incomplete houses after falling prey to shonky

This rock-biting mongoloid is back on the market yet again. Jesus, bro...give it up already. Despite the fresh "New Listing" classification, astute Long Beach Housing Blog readers will note that this joint has been around for more than 15 months, begging and pleading for some sucker to pay his ridiculous asking price. In case you were thinking this refreshed listing would be, well, refreshed , we're treated to the same two useless photos (one of which features the shittiest MS Paint job you've ever seen). The current listing price of $539,000 , while certainly more realistic than the original $610,000 2010 ask, is still clocking in at $610 per square. Yo, I didn't know they relocated the Shore all the way up to 3rd Street! I'll remind you that this is yet another in the growing contingent of buyers who got in "at the bottom" in Fall 2008 and refuse to believe that they are about to take it right in the devil's onion ring. Assuming he could

Price changed from $659,000 to $649,000 How's that market chasing workin' out for ya?

You might assume this job gets easier. The numbers of houses on the market continues to rise, buyers continue to get lost on their way to open homes and real estate interests continue to bleat and rattle the tin. And on the case of vested interests - my last post regarding Brockman Resources - I was a completely vested interest in that story, however there was one slight difference between myself and the real estate goons - I already knew the gig was up. Blind Freddy's deaf, dumb, blind and anosmia suffering cousin, Eddy, would have figured Wah Nam had the numbers for majority control. I just figured it made for an interesting story. Game over there, now back to regular business. Does this get any easier? Not really. When it's completely obvious that something is amiss in housing, smarter people than me start turning their attention to the subject which makes me look a bigger idiot. Never mind. Just like Charlie Sheen, I have loyal fans and can continue on in syndication foreve

This is the second half of the update for May 1st through the 13th or so.  I like the split - it makes it manageable.  The first half was the plethora of new listings, and now I will explore the contingent, under contract, pending and sold listings. There are currently 6 homes marked contingent under Skaneateles.  Three of these are new, and ALL of them were listed in the mid-$100,000 range.  Coincidence?  I think not!  I think this is the range in which people may be buying a first home and therefore have nothing to sell.   They are all on the periphery of Skaneateles and each one has a bit of land.  Two of them need a bit of work and those are the ones whose price was reduced from previous attempts at sales. The two that are under contract or pending (of the 7 altogether) are in the mid-$300,000.  Nothing remarkable here - the coincidence of price is just that. We now have 16 closed sales for the year.  Three of these occurred in the past two weeks.  One is a village home that was li

There is so much going on and I love every minute of it!  I heard from an old e-mail friend (never have laid eyes on him) about my listing down Firelane 21B, now that summer is almost here.  I told him I was "crazy busy" and he said that's a good thing.  I do agree! One of the crazy things this week was Tuesday, the day of the brokers' opens.  In Skaneateles alone, there were 11 houses, and a friend said he counted 12 actually.  I ran through 6 of them before going off to my dentist appointment with Dr. Swartwood (teeth are fine, for once!).  I kept thinking back to the winter, and how there were weeks without a single home open.  I heard from some people that other agents brought buyers with them.  The world is changing - things are moving. There are currently 134 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service.   Of these, 44 are in the village and 40 are published as waterfront.  Now here's a spoiler alert!   After I finish writing about

There’s an old adage about taxi drivers and share tips. When the talk of potential sharemarket gains overwhelms the stench of B.O. in a taxi, it’s a sign market madness has taken hold - every idiot thinking he’s certain to make bank, signals it’s time to run. That level of stupid isn’t readily apparent at the moment; well, unless you’re a local shareholder in Brockman Resources. Brockman is a Western Australian mining company subject to a hostile takeover, from, wait for it - a bunch of taxi drivers. For Brockman, the ignominy doesn’t end there, while their Hong Kong taxi-driving-suitors forget the lube and pound away, Brockman looks for help and finds no one in Australia gives a damn. It doesn’t take much to get shareholders in junior mining companies frothing at the mouth. A mention of “the Chinese” is usually the tonic that sends share market forums into overdrive. With fortunes made on the back of Chinese deals over the past decade, shareholders find themselves hoping “the Chinese”

After the events of this week, this photo of a pretty Skaneateles Village home sums it all up, I think.

Only a few days ago I was slagging sub-editors at The Mercury. One of them had dished up a bizarre headline suggesting million dollar properties were snubbing the real estate down turn, basically because some houses were listed for sale over a million dollars. Today, as the Tasmanian media responded to the REIT's continuing attempts at conditioning buyers to get sales flowing again, some sub-editor went a bit wild in the other direction, with the headline of... Housing market horrors While I'd say we're not there yet, one thing that was particularly horrible - bizarro excuses dished up by the REIT over the past few days . Adrian Kelly has been showing his bonce in newspaper and on TV, talking up overpriced homes, days on the market, bottom of cycles and how we'll be back in business, growing again in 12 months. Strangely, the guy is allowed to create his song and dance show with little analysis. He's almost becoming the Dennis Waterman, "write the theme tune,

I know it's supposed to be rainy days and Mondays that "always get me down," according to Karen Carpenter - but this is Tuesday and it's raining and raining.  I'm not really down, just want to share a few things that are on the edge. Bob made leek pesto on Sunday night and marinated the shrimp in it and then grilled them outside.  You remember Sunday - it was sunny and I got a bit of a tan.  Leeks are special to us because they were right under our noses on our hillside for years and we had no idea what we were seeing.  A friend, Mike, told us about them - to look for the leaves that are similar to tulips, then gently pull them out.  The bulb is like a garlic or onion with its own special flavor.  Since then - just last year - Bob has become a leek fiend.  This year we had to wait longer for them to be ready, but now there's a plastic container filled with them in the fridge.  The shrimp are lying on the leaves, just for presentation purposes, in the picture. 

The View from Glencove I went out there today to check our camp after the floods and the wind storms.  Patches, our neighbor's dog, greeted Boo and me on the road.  The place looked fit and fine - certainly ready to be opened up and aired out though.  I also went through my listing on Glencove, wanting to make sure that it was sound.  As I put the key in the lock I heard music playing.  No one was supposed to be there today and I was surprised, to say the least.  I opened up and tiptoed in, calling so I wouldn't take anyone unawares.  It was only the radio - sigh! Otisco Lake is about 6 or 7 miles long, depending on whether you count the south end beyond the old Causeway, or the north end in the narrows.  It's about a mile wide, and only 30 to 40 minutes southwest of Syracuse.  I can attest that Skaneateles is 15 minutes away from the west side.  And yet it is mostly a forgotten lake. When Alex was little he was upset that Otisco wasn't considered one of the Finger Lake

I spent today in a tale of two rental homes.  The first one hadn't been cleaned out when the new tenants arrived, so the owners and I worked to make it presentable.  And worked and worked.  The new tenants continued with us, bringing in furniture while the floors were being scrubbed with Murphy's oil soap.  After three hours I went to check on the next home that had been vacated yesterday - and actually was.  It was the proverbial "neat as a pin."  I found a few cobwebs in out of the way places, but that was about all.  I kept thinking that the owners of the first place would have cried.  Just another Sunday in the life of this Realtor! On to the update.  There are currently 124 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service.  Of these, 43 are in the village.  Seven "new" ones came on this past week.  I say quote-unquote because five of them were in the same subdivision on the edge of the village, and range in price from a low of the