Melanie McLane's (themelaniegroup) Blog

Within the past week, the Wall Street has given REALTORS® two merging trends to build a marketing strategy on. The first article, about a week ago, was on rental rate increases. [Click here for the full article: rental rates increase] Basically, the rental market is being overrun with former owne...

Have you bought gasoline lately? I'm sure you have, and you are beginning to feel "pain at the pump". What about groceries? If you haven't noticed an increase yet, you will. Gas is up because oil is up which makes diesel and all kinds of transportation costs go up. Couple that with some crop resu...

Have you bought gasoline lately? I'm sure you have, and you are beginning to feel "pain at the pump". What about groceries? If you haven't noticed an increase yet, you will. Gas is up because oil is up which makes diesel and all kinds of transportation costs go up. Couple that with some crop resu...

This time of year tends to bring soul-searching to REALTORS®. In addition to being the month when many boards assess the annual dues, it is January; those in climates with cold weather are facing heating bills; most are facing post-Christmas bills; and many markets are slower in the first quarter...

My friend, Matt Ferrrara, posted an article on Facebook, which contained among other things, the following quote: "The real estate bust has had a significant impact on how generation Y's 83 million Americans view homeownership. As they watch millions of Americans lose their homes to foreclosure, ...

Enough Blame to Go Around Redux   Way back at least to 2006, I wrote a blog called: "Enough Blame to Go Around". In it, I stated that it was not just Wall Street, not just dishonest mortgage originators, not just target hitting appraisers, not just commission driven agents, and not just stupid an...

            This blog was inspired, of course, by actual events.  If this were fiction, I'd add: "She said with a sigh!"  However, it's not fiction, it is reality, which is even worse. A new listing just came on the market in my small community. It's a highly visible house, located along one of t...

I got a call today from a former student, great REALTOR® and good friend. She was frustrated beyond belief; a pending sale of a lake front property had just been torpedoed by an appraiser. The lake in question is Lake Wallenpaupach, in the Poconos. The property has what is called "technical lake ...

If you watched TV in the 1980's, you probably caught "Hill Street Blues", which was a pioneer in the gritty reality cop show. It opened the same way every week, with the officer in charge of assignments sending the cops out to various crime scenes and investigations. He always ended it with: "And...

Last week, Fannie Mae released one of their periodic letter announcements concerning their loan requirements. These are available (for free) by simply subscribing at www.efanniemae.com This particular announcement is SEL-2010-09. Many of these announcements affect real estate agents, which I will...