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Where the Heart Is

You unlock the door and walk into the empty house. After turning on the lights and opening a few windows, you head into the kitchen where you lay out some freshly-baked cookies. As the air fills with their aroma, you light a few candles, put on...

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Architecturally Speaking

An architect stopped by my Sunday open house yesterday. The open was at a traditional home in Beverly Hills I had just listed and the architect (whose name I recognized) had done several impressive projects in the area, including a contempor...

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Neighborly Advice

Yesterday my wife and I were taking a walk on our street when we ran into a friendly neighbor who has been thinking of selling her house. For the past year, this woman has been renovating another home she owns in Laguna Beach, a beautiful se...

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Buyers are Liars

I received an interesting phone call after hosting an open house for one of my new listings. The call came from a real estate agent I didn’t know who tersely rattled off the names of three people. “These are my clients,” the agent said...

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Mending Fences

In tough negotiations, an unexpected gift can often disarm and defrost the other side. But it’s also a wonderful tool, when delivered with sincerity, for repairing just about any uncomfortable situation. Recently I sent out a flyer to one ...

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Urgency

First I got an email. Then a text. Then a phone call. All were from an agent who was working with clients who were here for the weekend from Philadelphia. “They want this building,” said the messages. “And they have to buy something be...

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Blind Date

Many years ago I went on a disastrous blind date. While I didn’t realize it at the time, the experience taught me a secret about people that I have found invaluable in my real estate career. My date was the beautiful cousin of a friend who...

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Discloure

According to California’s Civil Code, a seller of real property has a duty to disclose any facts that materially affect the value or desirability of the property. The most obvious example of this would be anything related to the physical cond...

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The Future of Real Estate

Remember shopping before Amazon? Banking before ATM machines? If you are a dinosaur like me, you may even recall a time when gas station attendants happily cleaned the windshield of every car that pulled in. For better or worse, those days a...

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Hats

I went on a listing appointment yesterday. The homeowners, a friendly business litigation attorney and his wife, asked lots of questions about the selling process. Eventually the subject of price came up. I showed them the comps which clearly i...

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