This piece is about the "why" of double popping deals. Not whether it is legal in your state or what form to use.

Yes, "whether it is legal in your state" is correct. If it is not legal in your state you do not have an ethical quandary on your hands — dual agency is banned in many states. But for everyone else, read on.

Representing [...]

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FOR THE PIEDMONT POST JUNE 24, 2026 

Taxes, Anian Tunney and 43 years of Piedmont Real Estate… Oh and the fines too.

Remember Jan from The Brady Bunch? Taxes, Taxes, Taxes…

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. Piedmont is putting a real estate transfer tax increase on the November ballot. The proposed [...]

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FOR INMAN SELECT JUNE 2026 

I Google myself occasionally.

Recently, I found myself reading a column I had written for the San Francisco Bay Times in 2014. The Bay Times is a legendary LGBTQ+ publication with roots going back to 1982, one of the longest-running independent LGBTQ+ newspapers in the United States, and [...]

I love me some Quora; I like when people ask my advice about real estate and… cheating spouses. I got a question about adverse possession today, of real estate not spouses, and I have heard about adverse possession but haven’t experienced it in the wild; I know about it in theory but not [...]

Chattel, Emblements, Trade Fixtures... Oh my

The distinction between real property and personal property sounds simple until you're sitting in an escrow at the closing table and someone asks whether the chandelier stays or goes. That's when the line between what conveys (real and attachments) and what does not (personal and some fixtures) [...]

You bought your home for $1,400.000 in 2019. Under California's Proposition 13, your assessed value increased at 2% annually—so by 2026, you're being taxed on roughly $1,608,000. Meanwhile, the market dropped, and your home is now worth $1,000,000 but you’re still paying taxes on the sales [...]

Real Estate 101 Appraisals

One of the most important contingencies buyers have in an agreement is the appraisal contingency. Appraisals provide a third-party reality check on the value of (anything really) real estate. If a property doesn’t appraise at value, then a buyer can renegotiate the agreement—as long as the appraisal contingency [...]

Real Estate 101: Agency

Real estate is full of words people use every day without really knowing what they mean. Agency is one of them. Buyers hear it and assume it means “my agent is on my side.” Sellers hear it and assume it means “someone is handling this for me.” Agents hear it and sometimes assume everybody knows the rules [...]

Let me preface this by saying there will always be all cash $300k above asking price in two day offers to talk about, but those are now the exception and not the norm. Real estate is cyclical with each new market cycle bringing some fresh new hell for agents, buyers and sellers. And the fresh new hell for a lot of newer agents is the [...]

There is a lot of real estate topics agents don't talk about because, A) no one really knows anything about the topic, and B) it isn't "sexy." There are no glossy photos, no vanity videos, pod casts, bidding wars, and no closing day champagne. But basis is what keeps the tax man from taking a bigger slice of your pie than he's legally [...]