Judy's Blog

MARKET RECAP Yesterday's housing bill is today's housing law. Among the highlights, first-time home buyers will receive a tax credit of 10% of the purchase price of their home, up to $7,500. If you are wondering how Congress defines a first-time home buyer, it's someone who hasn't owned a house i...

Without a doubt, the most fascinating aspect of a career in real estate is watching how people handle stress. How sellers deal with a soft market. How buyers cope with the loss of a property that they love, to a higher bidder.  Some clients seem to subscribe to the philosophy that we should love ...

When you hear people talking about Internet security on the news or around the office, do you find yourself nodding along as people throw out words you've never heard of? Do you ever ask yourself, "What is a botnet, anyway?" Here's a quick-and-dirty, plain-English rundown on some key cyber securi...

Feeling Special I was talking recently with a friend of mine and we both agreed that what we really wanted in life was to feel special.  We wanted someone in our world to look at us and tell us how important we were to them, how we had impacted their life, how they couldn't imagine life without ...

Housing MarketNational average mortgage rates increased slightly to 6.37% in the latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey released weekly by Freddie Mac on July 10th.  Rates have now posted weekly increases in six out of the past seven weeks.  In the week ending July 4th, the MBA's seasonally-adjust...

  While there have been concerns for months about the size of losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac due to the credit crisis, the troubles at the two firms increased significantly during the week. Monday, a report from an investment bank suggested that the two firms would have to raise enormous am...

 How to deal with natural disastersBy: Tim Sullivan, Club Member Imagine that your home was ravaged by a hurricane or tornado, that floodwaters from a nearby river poured into your finished basement, or that a giant tree crashed through your roof during an ice storm. You scan the destruction and ...

 Without question, the vast majority of new leads come from the Internet.  And given today's challenging market conditions, you want to treat these inquiries like they were precious new-born babes.  Here are the online communication "Best Practices" you can easily implement to make sure each has...

Is it just me, or do we spend more time worrying about the safety of our computers these days than the safety of our own homes? You've got firewalls and virus protection for your CPU, but have you changed your door locks since you moved into your house? Do you have ladders, tools, and other thing...

"The Internet doesn't work for me." That odious phrase is all too common among agents and brokers. NAR echoed those sentiments for 90+% of all agents when they stated that less than 10% of agents with websites were pleased with the production from them. On the other hand, NAR also tells us that ...