Viewing MLS Listings Personally

After finding what might become your next home in the MLS listings, one of the next steps will be to go and see it for yourself.

Viewing a house though isn't a matter of only using your eyes. If it were, you could just send a surveyor with a camera and check his photographs afterwards. While the condition of the house is of course important, with problems like damp or hairline cracks a big red flag, viewing a house also requires you to use your ears, nose, and a certain intuition that is hard to describe.

When viewing a property from the MLS listings or anywhere else, you need to ask yourself, "Could my family and I actually live here?"

Cast Iron Living - The Repurposed Gated Community

Everyone has their preference and vision of their ideal abode which changes during one's lifetime. The residential progression may begin as a small studio, then a one bedroom, and finally a co-cop/condo in the city or house on its fringes or in the suburbs. However there are those intrepid types who know exactly what they want from the get-go and go for the jugular - like myself.

I was always enamored by those bygone urban Americana industrial warehouses and cast iron buildings and further enhanced by those countless glossy fashion ads with models posing in cavernous, raw industrial spaces. Or those pioneer artists living (often squatting) in those same venues during the 1970s. Solidifying my visions were my personal 'Constitutionals' through the historic areas of Soho NYC with its amazing clusters of architecturally gorgeous cast iron buildings before the area gentrified and became unaffordable for the average working stiff.

Neuroeconomics: The Brains Behind the Investment

One area where the growth of neuroscience has been particularly notable in recent years is economics.

It may, at first, seem a strange relationship, but neuroscience has allowed us to better understand how the brain works and how decisions are made. This is key to understanding investment decisions, so, when viewed in this light, it is a perfectly natural connection to make.

Studies on risk: the investing brain

A recent U.S. study looked at the effect of different levels of monetary risk on the human brain. 61 participants were asked a variety of questions such as "Would you prefer a 50 percent chance of receiving $5 or would you rather take a 13 percent chance of winning $50?" and "Would you prefer $10 for sure or a 50 percent chance of receiving $50?"