Realty Bites

Regardless of how high or low you think home prices are going, one thing is certain: prices will reverse direction. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could predict the top and bottom? Here’s a foolproof method. I call it “The Home Price Hype Cycle.” My thesis is that you can tell exactly where prices are headed by reading the headlines in The New York Times. (Oh, all right — substitute your favorite newspaper.) Don’t confuse this method with the hype cycle concept developed by Gartner Group, a great piece of work if you want to understand the marketing of innovation. MORE →

Which way are home prices headed? The answer is: nobody knows. Really. Nobody knows. Not even the experts. For one thing, prices aren’t an amorphous blob that all move in one direction, like an electorate. (Wait, no!) Just because a co-op on Central Park in Manhattan fetched a record price doesn’t mean a coop in Wheeling, West Virginia will sell for $10MM. And vice versa. The fact is, prices are very specific, right down to the precise location of your home.

So get an appraiser. In the meantime, the best we can do is look at large trends to get a general sense of where things are going. MORE →

Why am I doing this? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times over the last 40 years. But this time it takes on a special resonance, as I contemplate starting a blog about my unconventional experiences in the very conventional real estate business. Do I really want to lay it all on the line? Share my innermost thoughts? Perhaps. I’ll start with my outermost ones, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

It started when I began my real estate career in 1989. I went to work for some of the well-know brands, beginning with Coldwell Banker. But this being 1989, a major downturn in the real estate market was just getting underway. Within a year, it was decided Coldwell Banker no longer needed a Baltimore office. I moved to Better Homes and Gardens, which couldn’t survive either. Within a year, the company was sold to Prudential. After a year, that company, too, pulled out of Baltimore.

I swear none of this was entirely my fault.

Now, I know you don’t start a company looking for job security, but that’s exactly what I did. In 1992, I founded The Kupritz Group, Real Estate Professionals, Inc. It’s been in business ever since. MORE →