I like the house, but agree wih 8:09. Hard to see past the interior decorator. Did anyone notice that 2 of the photos have a colorful flower sweeping in from the upper left hand? Tricky.

Posted by: G Samsa at July 24, 2008 9:38 PM in response to House of the Day: 210 Prospect Place

OK, Xander - make that, use of the MLS in Brooklyn, and particularly in brownstone Brooklyn is much more limited than in other areas of the country. You'll notice that Corcoran, Brown Harris, etc. don't put their listings up on the MLS.

Posted by: G Samsa at July 18, 2008 4:22 PM in response to Who's Gonna Buy This Stuff Now?

Re Corcoran pricing -- what you need to keep in mind is that Brooklyn is highly atypical in terms of residential real estate. In particular: 1)there's no MLS; 2) very limited buyer's broker representation; and 3) largely exclusive listings. What Freakonomics demonstrates is that brokers get a higher price for their own homes than they do for their clients -- so normally, they do indeed want to push a sale forward at a slight underprice, because their 4-6% commission on the delta isn't usually a huge sum, particularly compared to the overall commission.

However --- because brokers in Brooklyn only represent the sell side, the criticality of getting the listing is much higher than in other parts of the country. As a broker, you have no opportunity to make money until you get the listing. Unlike other parts of the country, you can't try to work the buyer side. So now your incentive is to get the listing at any cost. One easy way to do this is to promise the seller that you'll get him a higher price than the other brokers around. This dramatically skews the self-serving incentives that Freakonomics describes. Put another way, Brooklyn brokers are every bit as self-serving as their national counterparts -- but the peculiar local rules make them self-serving in a different way.

Posted by: G Samsa at July 18, 2008 3:44 PM in response to Who's Gonna Buy This Stuff Now?