Susan Mangigian, Chester County Realtor

Last week's word was Local and I detailed a lot of my favorite local places.  You can read about them here.A lot of folks in the Philadelphia suburbs refer to Philadelphia as going "downtown".  Philadelphia, the place where I was born raised is a wonderful town, truly up and coming nowadays.  Gro...

One of the definitions of local, according to Merriam-Webster is: of or belong to or characteristic of a particular locality or neighborhood.  When I think local, I think about the West Chester area.  Where do you go for dinner locally?  Living in the West Chester area, one of my favorite local s...

If a picture paints a thousand words, then why does this listing only have one photo on the MLS?In today's real estate world, our MLS allows up to 25 photos.  Quantity does not trump quality, however, and there's actually a pretty funny Facebook page devoted to bad MLS photos.  As an agent for ov...

I realize now that's it's Friday, January 5, but between the holiday this week and the fact that yesterday the entire area shut down due to a snowstorm,  I keep thinking it's Saturday!  I have a book called the Daily Stoic and today's (turns out it's tomorrow's)  meditation spoke to me and I post...

There's a Jerry Seinfeld quote that goes like this:"To me, if life boils down to one thing, it's movement.  To live is to keep moving".To follow that along to a logical conclusion, if you are moving, you are going to be packing.  If you are packing for a move, you're going to need boxes!  Dependi...

I'm not sure how old I was when I started reading Sue Grafton novels.  I'm guessing I was younger than Kinsey Millhone, the private investigator in all of the lettered mystery novels.  A is for Alibi was written in 1982, making me about 23.  I can't say I've read every single book written by Ms. ...

When I started selling real estate more than half my life ago, the word staging was never used.  As the seller's agent, I  would simply give the seller some suggestions on how to prepare the house for showing and that would be that.  Some of my suggestions would fall on deaf ears.  People seemed ...

What happens when a group of real estate agents across North America (I do not say the United States because one of us is in Montreal) agree to hold each other accountable to work out 150 times in one year?What happens is you get it done!  Some of us are overachievers (looking toward Montreal at ...

What are the two words for Wednesday?  Curb Appeal, or the visual attractiveness of a house as seen from the street.  All Stagers and Real Estate agents know that curb appeal is the second most important factor of selling a home.  The first factor will always be location.  After that, curb appeal...

When I think of the word porch, I think porch swings, fans moving the summer breeze, frosty glasses of iced tea and my dog beside me while I read a good book.  I've always wanted a porch, and a porch swing to go with it.     Photo by James Garcia on Unsplash Some of the loveliest porches I've eve...