Charleston Real Estate Blog

It seems like an appropriate time to discuss a better way of finding and choosing a real estate agent which is probably just as important as finding the perfect home in light of this weekend's brouhaha in the REnet regarding syndicated listings and the battle for LEADS being waged by real estate agents trying to get you to contact ...

As I wrote in The Dirty Little Secret of Charleston Real Estate Search, you're being bought and sold as a LEAD when you search for homes on Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com and other syndicated websites. Late last year, Edina Realty, a large Midwestern brokerage announced they were no longer going to allow their listings to be displayed on ...

In a word, you're being bought and sold as a LEAD. A lot of people who search for Charleston real estate use what they consider to be impartial 3rd party sites like Zillow, Trulia and others to search homes for sale. That way, they don't have to deal with a real estate agent until they want to or have to. It's due in part to the ...

There are a lot of commission models in real estate today besides the traditional co - broker commission offered in the MLS. There are flat fees for menu services provided, commission rebates, retainers, service fees and others. But since some people might not know, here is a brief explanation of how real estate commissions work and who ...

What is dual agency anyway. The first thing to understand is that there are two sides to a real estate transaction, the seller side and the buyer side. What you have with dual agency are two parties with adverse interests and dual agency is created when a real estate agent agrees to represent both parties in a transaction. But in dual agency, a ...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be regulating bloggers and new social media users on Twitter and other sites beginning December 1, 2009. According to Carl Franzen writing in The Atlantic Wire, paid product endorsements and material connections to product sellers must be disclosed and anyone endorsing a product or service may be ...

Do you think of yourself as a real estate buyer or do you want to be sold as a commodity like perhaps cattle. Effectively, that is what becoming a lead is. Referral is only a fancy way of saying it. And now Redfin has rejoined the referral fray, having failed to make any money with their revolutionary real estate model of rebating a portion of the ...

... is probably the most often asked question in real estate. Well, maybe it's second to how much (little) can I offer but actually, the two questions go hand in hand. So, does Days On Market (DOM) really matter. And if so, how does it matter to buyers, sellers and real estate agents. If a home has been sitting on the market a long time, ...

... and a tale of 2 buyers. UPDATE: by the time I finish writing, it will be 4 buyers.  I've been very fortunate to work with many wonderful buyers (and sellers) during my career as a Charleston real estate agent. Of course, real estate agents work in order to earn money since the profession has not yet become a charitable ...

In my post last week, Denial is a river in Egypt, I wondered whether the National Association of Realtors (NAR) had any credibility with the public any more. “First we had the Laughable Lereah with his misguided pronouncements and now newly promoted Larry (the Yuckster) Yun seems to be in denial regarding the current ...