Buyer's or Seller's Market

On a practical note, some of you may not care a great deal about the state of the market. One option for you is to simply give your real estate agent a set of criteria, rely on her to determine apartments worth seeing, listen to her for pricing advice and what features you can expect for the money you are paying. And this will be just fine for some of you.

Many of you, however, may have a different kind of home buying temperament. You may be quite willing to engage in a lot of web research yourself, and find the time to personally view a large number of apartments. You may just be curious as to what is on the market….as well as have a need to get your own feel for where the market is at, and what you can actually buy for your money.

Certainly you can visit some properties with your agent, and others by yourself – as when an open house is being held. We should note, however, that if you want your agent to get her commission (paid for, typically, by the seller), you need to enter, on the sign-in sheet at each apartment you visit, that you are represented by an agent, and give her name along with your own.

The number of apartments you may need to look at can be highly variable, of course. Some of you might find your dream home after visiting just 5 or 10 units, for others you may need to see 30 or more. Those of you that want to have a knowledge of the market that is roughly on a par with your agent’s will need to learn the material we present, as well as view dozens of properties. The Real Estate section of the New York Times is the starting point for property research. You might try such sites as www.realtor.com and www.homes.com, but they are of limited value in our judgment. It’s better to go to any of the local real estate brokerages in Manhattan for additional listings of apartments for sale.

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