Home Guru

When he said it, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. In just a few minutes while meeting with a new customer, he managed to insult my national heritage while identifying himself as a racist

If your house is on sewer, you may think septic systems have no application to you. But as I understand it, as many as one-third of us within the reach of this newspaper are on septic. And if you’re not,

Imagine my surprise last week when I read a real estate piece in The New York Times about the home of my old friend and working associate Bill Houlton, whom I hadn’t seen or heard of in more than 30

When I was an aspiring actor doing summer stock, I appeared in the musical “Where’s Charley?” a funny farce by Frank Loesser and George Abbott set at the turn of the last century. One of the cute numbers sung by

Just recently I listed a raised ranch in Yorktown Heights that is set up perfectly as a multigenerational house, with independent living space for relatives or a separate family on each level. Thinking about the prospects who might be interested

Outgassing. If you don’t know what it is, as I didn’t until recently, it might sound like one of those little slips that all humans occasionally have–only outside. But it’s more serious than that. With its unfortunate name, outgassing, sometimes

Ah, the ways of nature and how we roll with them on our own properties can be challenging indeed. I recently read an article online warning of nine plants we should never have on our properties because of their invasive

Just as my wife and I were congratulating ourselves for having created the most beautiful kitchen ever, eschewing white appliances for brushed steel and polished black, complemented by warm wood and state-of-the-art surfaces, we heard the bad news. The new

You’ve not likely seen a real estate column like this where a realtor acknowledges being in a quandary about why a house hasn’t sold when it should have long ago, and ponders why, generally, some houses get snapped up right

A note from Bill:  From time to time, I pick out snippets from my columns that readers tell me they enjoyed. These little absurdities are included in my upcoming book, “Musings of The Home Guru: Observations and Advice about Buying,