Out of the 19 seasons that Yogi Berra played professional baseball, he was in 15 All-Star Games and competed in 14 World Series–winning the championship 10 times. With stats like that, is it any wonder that he is praised as one of the greatest players of all time? One of my favorite sayings attributed to him is “you can observe a lot by watching”. It resonates because that’s all I do to produce this column every morning; I watch and read until something interesting pops up and then I attempt to turn it into useful entertainment. We do the same thing in our professional practices: listening to the client and asking key questions to better ascertain how we can help them accomplish their goals, while keeping them interested in using our services.
Speaking of stats, Weiss Residential Research reported that the number of appreciating homes has declined more than 12% over the last year. They also said that there are three times as many homes losing value every month than there were the year prior. Pretty sure that I saw this on my eighth grader’s homework last night: (x-0.12=3x)? No word on what type of homes these are, where they are located, nor the cause of the depreciation. Given the price appreciation of housing calculated by every other publication this year, a possible explanation for their conclusions could be that the exploited sampling is very small and the reasons could be fire, flooding, or possibly anywhere around Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia where the Phillies’ winning percentage is only 37%.
