Seller Information

Breaking News! Fannie and Freddie are changing the rules on how payments on existing primary homes are treated when a buyer is purchasing a new home and plans to rent out the old house. In the past, we have been able to offset the payment on their existing home by showing a lease for the [...]

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Dogs are people too, right? Not when it comes to selling a house. As hard as it may be to accept and implement, when a property is on the market all traces of your beloved pets should be out of sight. This includes the food dishes, toys, cages, pet beds, litter and yes, the pet [...]

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I hesitate to write this post because I hate to put ideas in anyone’s head about how to commit fraud. The perpetrators are always one step ahead of the banks and “the system” and, just like with mortgage fraud, the rest of us will all end up paying the bill for the latest trend in [...]

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Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Oakland County (and farther afield) mothers out there. Gloomy as our weather here may be, I hope it is a special day for all. We’ll now return to our regularly scheduled real estate discussions. There is a Mother’s Day tie-in since today is Sunday, open house day across [...]

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Yes, that headline is correct. Sales are up over last year for the fourth month in a row, according to our MLS, Realcomp II. We’ve told you, we are seeing a lot of activity, and we are busier than ever. Spring has sprung! Here is Realcomp’s report . Yesterday I tried to show 4 Birmingham [...]

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Dmitry and I have had our busiest Spring in real estate in years in 2008.  We are working with more clients than ever before.  Last week we had a couple of closings and we asked the other Realtors and mortgage brokers if they were seeing what we are seeing: a lot more buying activity in [...]

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After an excruciatingly long winter, I hereby declare… gratefully and optimistically… that spring is finally here! The birds are chirping, the trees are budding and the baseball season has begun. In the real estate world, this means the time has come to kick curb appeal up a notch. In a buyer’s mind, the home’s exterior [...]

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I am clipping an interesting portion of an email just received from the Michigan Association of Realtors, witha bit of good news for those home sellers who are carrying two homes in Michigan. Yesterday, Governor Granholm signed 3 significant pieces of REALTOR® supported legislation. First, legislation enabling home sellers to retain 2 principal resident exemptions [...]

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The following is a reprint of an email we received tonight from the Michigan Association of Realtors. It’s actually the first I have heard of this exemption, and it is exciting. I am going to have to do a bit more digging to see what this actually looks like when it is applied. Attorney General [...]

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I’ve just finished up a whirlwind two days with clients in from Miami who were looking at luxury homes in Birmingham and Bloomfield. Their comments gave me a fresh perspective about our area and about our housing market. It was good to hear how we look from the eyes of those seeing the area for [...]

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Sure, the Southeast Michigan real estate market has hit a rough patch. There are lots of homes on the market longer than the owners want them to be. But right now, Dmitry and I barely have time to eat dinner together. We are both running in different directions taking care of clients’ needs. In the [...]

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