Welcome to the Trank Real Estate Blog!

Putting together an East Aurora listing is serious business. It has to be brief, to-the-point, and at the same time, engaging. The photos and language of a Western New York listing is the tip of the marketing spear: if it’s dull, and just a repetition of the specifics that are enumerated in the columns of numbers that follow, it’s less likely to get more than a glance from potential buyers.

At the same time, every Southtowns listing has to be fastidiously accurate. If it exaggerates or mischara...

If you are one of those East Aurora homeowners who has been gladdened to see property values continuing to rebound, you have also been pleased at the steady decline in the wave of foreclosures that were part of the global financial crisis. When the subprime mortgage crisis triggered widespread financial dislocation, many homeowners felt the repercussions. Every Western New York foreclosure that resulted weighed on neighborhood property values, which reflect the dollar amounts paid when nearby ho...

Elma home buying activity may be going great guns, but for some would-be buyers, credit score woes are still a stubborn obstacle. That’s why we have been keeping an eye on the new pilot project that was announced late last year. This was the one called the "Wealth Building Home Loan." It’s an experiment aimed at opening up home ownership options, particularly for first time home buyers. Bank of America and Citibank were first to sign up for the program, said to “take a fresh approach to affordab...

East Aurora residents don’t have to be pet owners to get a sense of just how nutty Americans are about our animals. Just a few minutes of watching TV will do it. After you’ve been bombarded with the images of happy/sad/exuberant/listless cats and dogs who are saved/rewarded by the pet products in the commercials, you won’t doubt that $60.59 billion is being spent on pets this year. It becomes clear how Fido and Kitty can afford to foot the bill for so much of today’s prime time television.

Anot...

“There’s No Place like Home” is one of those quaint sayings that somehow lasts forever, probably just because it’s so true. “Home is Where the Heart Is” is another one: corny, maybe, but undeniable.

There’s a strictly real estate saying that East Aurora residents will recognize at once, too. Less corny as well as a good deal more practical. It’s “Location! Location! Location!”—and it’s every bit as true as the other ones. It’s the where of real estate, and although it is usually thought of in i...

You want your approach to finding a new home in East Aurora to be at least somewhat hard-headed and businesslike. The financial stakes are certainly major, and to some extent, much of what your future lifestyle will be like will depend on making a good choice.

This is not to totally discount the emotional component that’s inevitably part of finding your new East Aurora home. You do want your family to feel good about the final choice—you’ll be moving to the dwelling that will become everybody’s...

When it comes to boosting your Elma home’s value, the question arises about which of the possible improvements that you might undertake would wind up paying for themselves. At first blush, you might think this should be a cut-and-dried analysis­—that is, any improvements that don’t at least add their own cost to the asking price should be disqualified.

But that would be to discount the fact that a property’s improved condition can speed its sale. When a few improvements might change the overall...