"Sometimes discount broker means discount service"

Last week, I took Jane Bryant Quinn at Newsweek to task over her column about cutting real estate commissions.  (You can read My Response to Newsweek below).  This week,  Newsweek published a letter from a recent home seller that pretty much sums up my position.   Here it is...

Selling Your House

Having just sold our home, I have to respond to "Cutting the Commissions" (July 18). We went with a discount broker to save money. What we got was a real-estate agent who basically just entered our information into the Multiple Listing Service. She got our lot dimensions and square footage wrong, used poor photos of our home in newspaper ads, had no open houses, gave nonspecific, if any, feedback from showings and offered absolutely no personal service. I should mention this was not for a low-end sale ($350,000). So sellers beware: sometimes "discount broker" means "discount service."
Sheila Tarter—Belleville, Ill.

Any questions?

Lance Armstrong & Real Estate

Like everyone around the world, we're toasting Lance Armstrong's amazing accomplishment in winning his 7th (and final) Tour de France.  And you may be wondering what the real estate angle is here.  And of course there is one...

The Lake Austin home that Lance had built and lived in from 1995 to 2000 is now on the market for $3.5 million.  Lance named the 4,950 square foot home Casa de Linda in honor of his mom.

Read all about it here.  (Did you even doubt that I could find a real estate connection to the Tour de France???)

Thanks For Visiting, LA Times!

There's an article about blogging in Sunday's LA Times real estate section, and they were kind enough to include us!  Check out the article here...and if you're visiting us for the first time after reading the article, welcome to the conversation!

Come On Over...Just Please Don't Light Up

  Consider this...an entire house and furnishings done in origami!  I was going to write something clever about affordable, fold-it-yourself housing until I realized that you'd still have to buy the land....