Selling New York or at least talking about it

It may not seem like it at first, but New York City and Bellingham, Washington have quite a bit in common. Both places are near their respective coasts and both have fine museums. Both cities have rich parks, excellent Italian restaurants and even lots of the same streets, with names like Madison, Park, Wall & 9^th. They both have prominent Villages. And the taxis are yellow. Neither city has experienced an actual zombie apocalypse…

Alright—they’re about as different as they can be, New York and Bellingham. The pace, scale, depth and real estate markets are

For Saken by Oven

 

The For-Sale-by-Owner: arch-nemesis and natural enemy of the real estate agent. With the money & effort the real estate industry has invested in squashing the FSBO, we could just have bought them all by now. That’s one way of erasing the ugliness of the handwritten FOR SALE sign—just buy it!

But it’s not exactly human nature to buy the things we fear, is it? It’s much more natural to kill them. No, I don’t see the National Association of Realtors buying up a bunch of FSBOs any time soon. Foreclosures? Maybe… But for the moment, FSBO is still Private Enemy #1.

And now that the real estate market is starting to fill back up with blood