Home-buying advice for lonely hearts
A week’s worth of odd lots from the housing marketplace:
• Where the boys are: Attention, ladies who are in search of husbands: Get thee to Michigan City, Ind.
That’s the advice of Barbara Corcoran, one of the nation’s best-known real estate experts, who regularly weighs in on homes for sale around the country on NBC’s “Today” show.
In a recent appearance on the program, the New Yorker apparently added matchmaking advice to her resume when describing a house in a wooded area near the northwest Indiana town.
“Let me tell you something about Michigan City,” she said. “It’s one of the best cities in the U.S. to find a husband. There are more men than women. The average age [of those guys is] 35, and I say that’s the perfect time to get married.”
“Perfect age” aside, that male-female ratio would be right if she were looking at the census data from 2000, which showed Michigan City to be 50.3% male and 49.7% female. But the census’ recent American Community Survey calculated an updated, average population between 2006 and the end of 2008, an estimate that suggests the male dominance in Michigan City has reversed, to 49.6% men to 50.4% women.
Either way, if you’re inspired to dial for an Indiana real estate agent right about now, the average listing price for a single-family home in the town in early September was about $270,000, according to Trulia.com.
• Peek-a-boo: Real estate agents seem to either love or hate open houses. Those who would rather do without them tend to think they’re time-wasters that just attract nosy neighbors, not buyers.
A recent study of New York City open houses by a Connecticut title insurance company found that 41% of visitors weren’t looking to buy a home (I would have expected that number to be even higher). Right on the mark, probably, was the “nosy” factor: In the study, 57% of people who go to open houses said they check out the owners’ personal property while they’re there — they look in their closets, eyeball their shoes and read the notes on the refrigerator, the survey said.
• Phone first: A London real estate agent and prospective buyers toured a $1.2-million home, tiptoeing around the whole time because the homeowner appeared to be asleep on the couch, according to London media reports.
The owner, however, was dead. In an official inquiry into the death, the agent said that during the showing he noticed the woman wasn’t moving and “was a yellowish color.” After he bid adieu to the would-be buyers, he went back into the house to wake her. When he couldn’t, he called paramedics.
• The accidental agent: An insurance industry study found last year that real estate agent is the fourth-most-likely occupation to be involved in a car crash. Insure.com and Quality Planning Corp., an insurance data company, found an average 102 accidents and 39 speeding tickets per 1,000 agents on an annual basis. (For the record, students topped the list, followed by doctors and lawyers.)
In response, a Plainview, N.Y., real estate brokerage this month is underwriting part of the cost of a two-day defensive-driving course open to all area real estate agents. The owner of the brokerage theorized in a news release that agents may be relatively accident-prone because they’re so concerned about being late for appointments.
Umberger writes for the Chicago Tribune.
