Maureen Mengel Blog

British music legend Jimmy Page, founder of the legendary rock band Led Zepplin.  (Photo by Jörg Carstensen/picture alliance via Getty Images) Getty There are rock stars, and there are pop stars.  Jimmy Page is a rock star.  Robbie Williams, formerly of the boy band Take That, is a rather glitzier, and much less meaningful, pop star.   But that rank on the cool-ness meter doesn't mean that Mr. Williams doesn't also make money by the long ton.  The two Londoners, Page and Williams, are also, improbably, close neighbors in London's mansion-strewn Holland Park neighborhood of Kensington and Chelsea.  In fact, their mansions are next door to one another.  And therein lies the rub. To his credit, Page got there first, buying the iconic Tower House at 29 Melbury Road, a beautiful Grade 1 listed Victorian brick mansion by William Burges, an intellectual architect-luminary of the day who was friends with Oscar Wilde and William Whistler. He bui...

Destruction in the Coffey Park area of Santa Rosa (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS California’s wine country’s real estate market is slowly recovering from last year’s wildfires. Selma Hepp, vice president of business intelligence at Pacific Union International  in San Francisco, recently looked at the impact of the disasters from the deadly fires of October 2017. Hepp’s analysis of the wine country housing markets a year after the wildfires is eye-opening. “I guess the biggest surprise to me was how many people impacted by the fires left the state. I think it became a breaking point for some people and (the high) cost of living in those areas doesn’t help,” Hepp observes. “You just don’t know what you would do if you were in that situation.” The result, oddly enough, is an increase in sales of fire lots. Fire lots are where homes stood before the fire and now nothing remains but the land. According to Hepp, sales of residential lots in Sonoma ...

Co-living is more about creating lifestyle and less about providing shelter. Are real estate investors ready? (photo credit: Getty Images) Getty With a cooling housing market, it’s a good time to look at factors that may influence housing in the future and how these trends could impact residential real estate investors. Here are four things that real estate investors will want to keep tabs on, with a nod here to John Burns and Chris Porter, authors of “Big Shifts Ahead, Demographic Clarity for Businesses,” who address these four influencers in their book: Changing governmental policy Economic growth New technologies Shifts in societal acceptability Governmental policy: There could be a wide variety of policy changes at any time that could affect real estate investors, but tax policy is a key issue. No one has filed a tax return yet since the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA)  that went into effect January 1 but that will begin shortly. Like ...

Charlie Young believes there are several factors pushing the real estate industry to change more rapidly now than in years past. For starters, consumers who are entirely comfortable with technology in other parts of their lives are looking for those experiences in real estate. Coldwell Banker CEO predicts ‘storm of change’ in 2019 curated from Inman

Industry-wide, it was a wild year, thanks in no small part to the acceptance of iBuyer platforms and the viral growth of Compass. What I learned from a year of real estate technology reviews curated from Inman

Sylvana Ward-Durrett, CEO of Maisonette Courtesy of Maisonette Never mind The Devil Wears Prada gossip. Working with Vogue’s Anna Wintour is a fantastic training ground—long hours, fashion contacts, brand expertise, exceptional work. High-profile professional success typically comes at a high cost—less family time. To that, two ex- Vogue momtrepreneurs say B.S.! Well, they might if weren’t so professional, cosmopolitan and routinely working around kids. Former Wintour protégés Sylvana Ward-Durrett and Luisana Mendoza de Roccia are flipping the script on traditional office rules (and etiquette) as working mothers and founders of lifestyle e-tailer Maisonette, the premier digital marketplace for high-quality children’s brands and boutiques. At the company’s new family-first Brooklyn headquarters (conceived by interior design wizard Homepolish), any day is “Bring Your Child To Work Day.” Long hours are still routine, but only on the co-founders’ millennial-age terms. Syl...

Businessmen use a magnifying glass to analyze the company's data and statistics from the chart. Getty As my loyal readers know, I’m bargain shopper and that means I am constantly on the prowl for good buys. Sometimes spotting a bargain is easy, because the dividend yield is high or there’s an earnings miss. Alternatively, the bargain may not be so obvious, because the shares are thinly traded, or the stock has modest analyst coverage. If you ask me, the true secret to finding bargains is to be somewhat of a detective and find the inexpensive stock before someone else does. That means you have to act like Sherlock Holmes, “I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection". Today I will become the so-called chief detective officer on Forbes.com in which I will examine a bargain stock known as Hannon Armstrong (HASI). Source: HASI Investor Presentation This Is Not Your Typical REIT Hannon Armstrong listed shares in April 2013, just in time for the IRS...

All real estate agents have experienced the stress of making cold calls, organizing open houses, managing overly-demanding clients, conducting negotiations and clawing through closing day. All of these situations can bring even the most seasoned agents to the edge, so taking a little time to laugh (even if it’s just to keep from crying) is a surefire way to relieve stress and remind yourself that you’re not the only one struggling to keep the sellers away during the inspection. Take a look at the 20 best real estate memes we saw this year, and keep one or two on hand when your buyer asks if they can cut your commission.     Photo credit: @REprobz   What the luxury customer will demand in 2019 Prepare for the coming year in real estate with these tips from leading experts READ MORE   Photo credit: @rashelyadegari_loanofficer     Photo credit: @danshearealtor     Photo credit: @cbkg_realestate     Photo c...