OK, so here goes my first blog post ever.
Why am I writing this? Aren't there enough real estate sites to troll through late at night? What could I possibly add?

First, let me introduce myself....after 15 years of a very successful career in the movie business as a literary scout and a development executive, I decided to switch gears and started selling real estate. I joined forces with my long time close friend, Marty Krasnoff, who had owned a small firm for several years. He and I talked real estate every day, and he knew my obsession with listings and floor plans.

And when I say obsession, I'm not over stating the case. Way before Street Easy made it casually fun, I was addicted to the New York Times real estate section. My mom tells me that as a little girl I would take the Sunday Magazine section and flip to the back to look at the glossy home ads.

Marty had always told me that he'd take me on as his partner when I was ready. But the movie business was never bad, and it had a certain...allure. I was making a decent living and from time to time I still loved it. I love story telling. When I realized that real estate is also story telling, I decided to jump in.

3 years later, we have a thriving business and a solid reputation. We are still a small firm, but we get lots of exclusives that the big firms are bidding on, we have had enormous success, and we still manage to maintain our dignity. No small feat in this industry. I went from the movie business where everyone is a lying, self promoting shark to an industry that's...well...let's just say it was a very small learning curve.

As I go, I'll elaborate on how I got here and why I love it. But I wanted to get to the main point which is why I would bother to blog.

First of all, i love to write, so blogging is a perfect past time. But that's not the primary reason. Real estate brokers get such a bad rap on other blogs that it's starting to make me feel bad. I can't even post on Street Easy without a snarky comment (usually made by someone who will NEVER buy an apartment, who probably still lives with their mother or far too many cats. I digress). I'm not looking for revenge (although revenge is sometimes good), I'm looking for a little clarity and transparency in a business which has always been maligned and I think misunderstood.

What Marty and I do well (and what others do well too) is to make people enormously happy by telling them the story of how they can live in a certain place. We set the stage, we match the people and the property. I have been called the house whisperer. I can tell what apt will work for the buyer (they don't always listen), but when they do, they are thrilled.

We make people happy by selling their homes in a way that doesn't diminish them or the place that they love. We try not to make their children anxious, or their pets angry. We minimize their stress and more often than not, they are extremely grateful.

Their gratitude and admiration is what often gets me through long boring days or 6 showings of disinterested parties. There is no joy in an open house with 1 person coming through, but there is a huge satisfaction in knowing that a couple will raise their family in a home that I found for them.

I thought that the public might benefit from my perspective on the market, my totally biased and absolutely partisan take on the real estate market in general, and through empirical evidence I can provide, the nature of the market. Very often there are apts that I love that are not my listings. I'll talk about them, why I love them, and why someone out there should buy them.

I tried to do this in other places, and felt like I should wear a scarlet R on my chest. Posters seems angry, and wary, and distrustful, so I moved my show away from the crazy channel to someplace more home-y (pardon the pun).

I'll never trash another broker (OK, not by name anyway) and I'll never deride another listing. But I will give my bossy opinionated thoughts on all things Manhattan real estate. here goes...