I grew up in a suburb of Little Rock. It was a mid-sized city, and it might have been one of many other towns in the South or Midwest -- "the flyover states," I think we're supposed to call them now, those of us who moved away and got snotty.

One of the magical things about Little Rock is that it was easy to find the rich people. We had us some Rockefellers, and two banking brothers who kept close to politics (one would back the Republican, one the Democrat) and a couple of heart surgeons and superlawyers.  more...

I thought I'd never say it, but: I am so sick of learning new things.

When I started out, everyone said one thing: specialize. New York is a big place; you'll want to get identified with one particular area.

Well, that sounded good. I went with Chelsea, a midtown Manhattan neighborhood, because I wanted to work for a particular sponsoring broker, and he specializes in it, and I'd lived there before, so I felt a connection to it. But honestly, I have no idea how to grab clients who are interested in my particular neighborhood.  more...

I have worked in media long enough that I think I'm pretty immune to it: I know that the difference between who appears in a newspaper and who doesn't is a matter of connections and timing. Sometimes it's sheer luck that a story appears at the same time as a news hole.  more...

When I edited a newspaper real estate section on a weekly basis, I spent a lot of time doing stories about renovations: "How to Survive Your Renovation! Renovations That Make You Money! Cheap Fixes that Work!" "Floor Profit!"

And now that I am looking at properties as an agent, I realize I forgot a category: "Don't Try This at Home."

There I was, busy instructing readers about what to do, when I realize that I should have been spending much more time telling them what NOT to do.

For example, I love vibrant color.  more...

Even my darling husband points out I have my flaws. Most of them involve my desire to throw away all his stuff, but one or two actually spill over into real estate.

One of my larger flaws as an agent is that I don't understand that not everyone wants what I want -- specifically, to live in Manhattan.

Like so many kids from flyover states, I fought and clawed my way here, and I can't imagine living anywhere else.  more...

Six months ago, I didn't have any income. Now I have advanced to a magical plateau: I don't have any cash.

I realized this today when I had a long conversation with a marketing exec. Six months ago I would have been begging her for work; today, she was offering me some, and I wasn't all that eager to grab it.

"You owe me four thousand dollars," is what I said.

There's another $4,000 due for writing jobs I've already performed, plus $500 from a small publication that I'll have to take to small claims court, plus $5,000 in advance on another job.  more...

When Jeff and I saw the $495,000 alcove studio, he thought the alcove was too small -- "all I want is a queen bed, a lamp and a dresser," he said. 

Then we saw the $509,000 alcove studio, and at 11 feet, the living room really was too small, due to the way the windows broke.

We went up in price and the next place was gorgeous -- a little on the edge of civilization, but a brand-spanking-new granite/marble condo. One bedroom, gigantic kitchen, smoking balcony. $615,000. Not quite right. And I don't think it was the edge-of-civilization part that bothered him.  more...

There are around 1.2 million Realtors in the U.S., and three-fourths of them are on vacation.

August is like this in many fields; on Wall Street, where I used to work, it was dead. My shrink goes off to Tuscany or wherever he goes, and my husband threatens to follow. My sponsoring broker spends his time at the beach, but I actually like that, because it gives me the opportunity to show his listings.

And you figure the customers who are going to drag themselves to an open house on a sunny Sunday afternoon are pretty serious customers.  more...

Dear Apartment Owner:

My apologies if you couldn't find your Calvin Kleins this morning. Here's what happened:

I'm a fairly newly minted real estate agent, and to gain customers I've been showing apartments. I had been showing studios, one apartment per Sunday, and apparently I was good at it. So my boss asked me to show in his building.

Now this is the building he lives in, and is to all intents and purposes the mayor of.  more...

One of the things that makes New York different from the rest of the country is that co-op boards, with their need to approve new tenants, slow down every transaction. For example, I listed a property in April, went to contract in July, and will be lucky to close in September.

This long cycle has a number of consequences; I think one of them is that it's tougher for a seller to detach from the property because no one is ripping off the Band-Aid.

I didn't think about this until I went to clean out my seller's property.  more...

As information becomes more and more widely available, real estate becomes more and more a game of great customer service. And great customer service can be learned, but it cannot be faked.

This insight came to me this morning as I stood in my local Starbucks -- dripping with the remains of a tall coffee the counter girl had just spilled on me.  more...

I closed my first deal last week, a rental. In New York City, rentals are for newbies, since you can make so much more doing sales, but they are also prized for their quick payout. A typical rental fee is 15 percent of a year's rental, split between the listing agent and the agent who brings in the tenant.  more...

The past couple of weeks have been so exciting, with a buyer, a seller and a renter. It looks like I've gone from zero deals to possibly two. But let's not jinx things just yet by focusing on outcome. Let's take a look at process:

6/23, Friday, note in Filofax: "Do everything from Thursday."

7/5, Wednesday, I head to a listing appointment where I know two competing brokers have pitched the seller to list at $700K. I am convinced the property should be listed at $675K, at best.  more...

It's what I like to call the bachelor's dilemma: Have I seen everything yet?

Sure, I saw some stuff that I liked. Hey, I even saw some stuff that was great. There was that one, last weekend, I fell in love with that. And could have lived with it forever, and been blissfully happy.

But I don't want to bid on it because maybe there's something I haven't seen yet.

I bet clients have always been this way, but I'm willing to venture that today the reluctance is worse than ever.  more...

Once I went to hear Jon Krakauer, the mountain climber/writer, speak about his book "Into Thin Air." The book is about a terrible mountaineering accident, and the thing I remember Krakauer saying is that mountaineering is so dangerous because there are so many different ways to die -- you can fall, or you can freeze to death, or you can have an aneurysm, or you can get hit by an avalanche, or your oxygen fails and you simply run out of breath.  more...