If it came down to emotions over numbers my daughter would be my designer and all my hones would be pretty pink with sparkles....

I live in Pennsylvania, but talked to a prestigious broker over LinkedIn and enrolled in his school to be licensed under his firm afterwards. 

Area is upper middle class - has the best public schools in the St. louis metro area (many families rent here because they cant afford the homes and want to send kids to nice schools) Walking distance to Washington University - prestigious private university.

Thanks for your thoughts on "Sparkle City" as they call it, great info!

The 1 BR condo I rent is small, and even if my Tenants kept the place sparkling clean, they have a lot of "stuff", and having the place shown while they are still occupying it will just accentuate the lack of storage space.

I also give my housekeeper a small bonus every time a guest checks that the house was sparkling clean in their review.

Market rent is about $2,200 right now, and could go as high as $3,000 if I added some sparkle (or an additional bedroom).My wife and I wants to buy it from him, but we're trying to figure out the best way to do it to reduce taxes (property / assessment, income, excise) and puts us all in a better financial situation (short-term and long-term).If they were to sell it on the open market for $300k, they'd incur 10% selling costs (closing costs, realtor commissions, excise tax) of $30k and get $270k in cash before taxes. 

Eller is a very prestigious school I would love to be able to attend.

Now you see some schools offering online classes for free (which is diluting their brand, because it is now less prestigious to have a degree from a big time school when I can just take those courses online for free). 

Hi Jeff,That's a great theoretical question, and one I used to ask myself when I was 15 years younger and fresh out of undergrad with "efficient market theory" "optimal capital structure" "modern portfolio theory" "increased returns are correlated with increased risk" and other articles of faith that had been passed off as fact by the professors in the economics department at my very prestigious college.A decade and half later I no longer buy into the idea that markets are efficient - neither stock markets, nor real estate.There is a deep divide between people who buy the theory and those who don't.