It's funny how often real estate agents try to use "well, you didn't ask" as a defense. "Oh, you didn't ask about whether the basement floods," a Realtor will say. Or "oh, you didn't ask about the traffic."

But still, there are many real estate agents who will answer...

Lenny Kravitz, who owns one of the coolest SoHo penthouses around, just put it on the market for $19.5 million.

Now, because he's Lenny Kravitz, he gets written about, allowing him to save some straight advertising expenses that a regular Joe homeseller might incur. But I thought it was...

So today I got asked a question buyers always ask: We are interested in buying a home, and we want to make a bid -- but the listing agent says that there's another bidder. Is she lying?

The answer is: you will never know. Despite what the Freakonomics guys say,...

Okay, I'm a fairly jaded Internet user but I still marvel that today's question is from China! From Guangzhou, the City of Five Rams, a potential investor asks: Can I buy U.S. real estate if I am a non-resident alien?

The answer is "Welcome, of course you can."

I have clients who are thinking of buying an apartment above a bar. "Does that make sense?" one of them asked me. "I mean, would we get a deal on it, only to find out we'd never be able to resell it again? Just how flawed is too flawed?"

Friday's Wall Street Journal article on crazy Manhattan rental prices was enough to make any potential newcomer to the city shudder. $1,000 a bedroom -- to live with a roommate -- is considered a deal? The average one-bedroom is over $2,600? Prices are up nearly 12%?

But what the...

For your first rental apartment, and probably your second, you don't think about it much: you just sign the lease.

Which usually works out, because a lease is pretty much a standard form that everybody in your state uses. It says when your tenancy will start, and when it...

This just in from the mailbag: "As a 26-year-old with loans from grad school, how am I ever going to be able to round up enough money to buy my own place in a few years?"

Good question, 26-year-old. First, look around and realize you're not alone -- check out...

Some time in the next two years, your adjustable-rate mortgage will reset, unleashing fire from the sky and a flood of wolves that will cause you to lose your home.

Okay, not really. In all the media hoopla about ARMs and foreclosures, it's interesting to me that nobody talks about...

Get your rotten tomatoes out: I'm one of America's million-strong army of real estate agents.

So of course a friend sent me a highly e-mailed business story of the NY Times: that real estate agents are dropping out.

Since Realtors' aggregate numbers are still rising, that's not the general...