January is Agent Appreciation Month, and with that in mind, it’s time to re-evaluate your safety protocol. A 28-year-old mother and real estate agent was found fatally shot in a Minneapolis alley, after being taken kidnapped by someone who was targeting her and her boyfriend. She was lured into showing a home and snatched. 

It is so important to meet your client for the first time at the office. 

Have a buyer consult in your office.. with other agents present.. Instead of just getting a random call and meeting in an empty house with no electricity. 

Most of the time these things are random, but I’d someone were targeting you, this would be the easiest way to do it. So treat every appointment the same way. Cautiously. 

Zillow’s drive to dominance in the greater New York City real estate market thru rental listings and its hyperlocal Hamptons portal — reveals the path to market power of real estate portals around the world.

All real estate portals follow a simple formula for national domination: acquire listings, build consumer traffic and monetize.  

Building a huge consumer audience and achieving traffic dominance, which takes a long time, is the critical step. After that step comes power: The power to monetize, the power to push out competition and the power to force adoption of your platform by recalcitrant customers.

Zillow’s new pay-per-listing subscription to a free model for agents is a step backward in its monetization journey. But its more of a tactical retreat designed to give the a a long-term, strategic advantage.. by allowing agents to post new listings directly — for free — Zillow will circumvent brokerages and handicap their portal.

Housing hasn't been a real focus for the Democratic contenders, but that hasn't stopped some candidates from releasing comprehensive housing plans.

President Donald Trump, who will be running for a second term in 2020, is in favor of fewer regulations, an easier permitting process for building and, at least verbally, lower property tax bills.

The Trump administration has also taken aim at reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and weakened tenant discrimination protections. 

Sanders unveiled a “housing for all plan,” to build 10 million permanently affordable housing units at a $2.5 trillion price tag. He also calls for national rent control, stricter tenant protections and a strengthening of the Fair Housing Act.

Sanders plans to impose a 25 percent tax – being called a ‘House Flipping Tax’ – on speculators who sell a non-owner-occupied property, if that property is sold for more than it was purchased within five years of purchase.

Warren introduced the American Housing and Mobility Act which aims to close the supply-demand imbalance by 2028, add 1.5 million new jobs to the market, and decrease rents for low-and-middle-income families by 10 percent — all without a long-term deficit impact.

Warren wants to institute a grant program to rebuild infrastructure, invest in bolstering affordable housing stock and help buyers still with negative equity from the housing crisis.

To cover the expected $500 billion cost of the bill, Warren would return the estate tax thresholds that were in place at the end of the George W. Bush administration and institute, “more progressive rates,” about those thresholds, which she says will only affect roughly 10,000 of the wealthiest families in the country.

Biden’s website mostly stays away from focusing on housing issues, but in the criminal justice reform section, Biden unveiled a plan to, “set a national goal of ensuring 100 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals have housing upon reentry.”

As part of his “Economic Agenda for American Families,” Buttigieg plans to invest $430 billion, to “unlock access to affordable housing.” Buttigieg said his plan would increase the supply of affordable housing, and work to address zoning laws to make it easier to build housing.

He also plans to introduce a Community Homestead Act – which would, “launch a public trust that would purchase abandoned properties and provide them to eligible residents in pilot cities while simultaneously investing in the revitalization of surrounding communities.”

Buttigieg also wants to expand tenant protections against evictions and harassment.

Klobuchar introduced a comprehensive housing plan based after the Saving for the Future Act. 

Klobuchar plans to undo the Trump administration’s changes to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and also plans to reinstate the Office of Fair Lending and Opportunity’s enforcement and oversight powers.

Kloubacher’s comprehensive housing plans also include strategies to address the rural housing crisis, help seniors age in place, increase access to affordable housing and encourage investment in distressed communities

Klobuchar plans to raise the capital gains rate to the income tax rate for households with an annual income of over $400,000 and raise the corporate tax rate to 25 percent.

Booker’s housing plan includes a renters credit to cap rental costs at 30 percent of income for certain Americans,  the construction of new affordable units, a reform to zoning laws and the introduction of “baby bonds,” or a $1,000 savings bond for every child.

Section 8 vouchers are meant to give low-income people the opportunity to live outside poor communities. But discriminatory landlords, exclusionary zoning and the federal government’s hands-off approach have left section 8 recipients with few places to live. 

Policymakers have lamented the program’s failure to achieve its key goal of giving families a chance at living in safer communities with better schools. Low-income people across the country struggle to use their vouchers outside of high-poverty neighborhoods. 

In Connecticut, the problem is especially acute. An analysis of federal voucher data by The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica found that 55% of the state’s nearly 35,000 voucher holders live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. That’s higher than the national average of 49% and the rates in 43 other states.

Dozens of voucher holders in Connecticut say this concentration has left them with few housing options. Local housing authorities often provide a booklet of properties that are section 8 friendly, but many listed are complexes that are rundown and in struggling communities or have long waitlists.

The government is very hands off on the topic.. as a matter of fact, federal law does not make it illegal for a landlord to turn down a prospective tenant if they plan to pay with a voucher, so HUD does not investigate complaints of landlords who won’t accept Section 8 vouchers.

Connecticut goes further. It is one of 14 states where it’s illegal to deny someone housing because they plan to use a Section 8 voucher.

What the heck is a 'Pittsburgh potty' and why is it in the basement?

Have you ever come across a toilet down in a basement? Not a bathroom, just a toilet out in the open. 

These are called a Pittsburgh potty, a mysterious amenity found in the basements of some older houses. There are no walls for privacy, no sinks for hand-washing — just a toilet in the middle of the room. 

To explain their purpose, many people point to Pittsburgh's history in the steel industry. Men would come home from work and use the potty in the basement so they didn’t track dirt in the house.. but, it turns out, the toilets, usually found in pre-World War II houses, were actually there to prevent sewage backups in the nice part of the home. If there was a sewage backup on your street, it would come into your home through the fixture that's lowest to the ground. You’d rather clean up a basement floor than your master bath.