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Louise Bolger

Louise Bolger

August 17, 2017
Louise Bolger is The Sun’s Real Estate columnist.
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January 8, 2025
By Louise Bolger

Mortgage interest rate future ‘uncertain’

Happy New Year, although this year may not be so happy for homeowners and worse for potential homeowners. Both groups are getting hit with increasing costs they never assumed would come. More next we…
January 1, 2025
By Louise Bolger

All real estate is local

If you want to know the value of your property, just go around the corner and see what recently sold. This was one of the first tenets of determining real estate value I learned more years ago than I…
December 24, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Did FEMA leave a gift under the tree?

It’s Christmas, and I hope you and your loved ones are enjoying some peace of the season after the harrowing few months we all have experienced. Unfortunately, for many, we’re not done with the resto…
December 9, 2024
By Louise Bolger

New flood disclosure requirements in effect

Just what everyone wants right now is a new flood disclosure requirement when selling property. It’s not as if we aren’t aware that Anna Maria Island and the coastal areas of Manatee County could flo…
December 2, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Home sales in the time of storms

There is nothing normal about Manatee County’s sales statistics for September and October. The sales reporting, of course, includes Anna Maria Island, the coastal communities and even homes and commu…
November 21, 2024
By Louise Bolger

A country of renters

The United States has been living the American dream of home ownership since roughly the end of World War II. Obviously, there were homeowners before then, but the end of the war brought a surge of h…
November 5, 2024
By Louise Bolger

One month and we’re still standing

It’s been a month since Milton disturbed our idyllic lifestyle. The hurricane came in as a strong Category 3 storm, fortunately weakening before making landfall due to an increasing wind shear as it…
October 30, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Title insurance and storms

Hopefully, Debby with her rain, Helene with her surge and Milton with his wind are in our rearview mirrors by now, not forgotten, but we survived. Next, we can look forward to more mundane real estat…
October 23, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Sheetrock rocks

There are a lot of things about Hurricane Milton and its aftermath that are new to me and, unfortunately, so many people. I never thought much about sheetrock except what color to paint it, but I’ve…
October 7, 2024
By Louise Bolger

The epic storm that crept up on us

Hurricane Helene was the second deadliest storm in 55 years, Katrina being the first. Did we expect it? I didn’t, and I think most Florida coastal residents did not fully understand the danger of suc…
September 23, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Fondly remembering the 80s

If you loved shoulder pads, Cabbage Patch Kids and the Rubik’s Cube, you probably loved the 80s. But one thing not to love about the 80s was the home buying affordable rate, which has just been outdo…
September 17, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Vintage, or just old?

My mother had a favorite expression regarding fashion. “You need to shop where you won’t see yourself coming and going,” meaning, seek out stores with a unique selection of goods. The same can be sa…
September 10, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Condominium deconversion

Remember The Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida? Probably haven’t heard that name in a while, but it was the very shocking collapse of the tower with loss of the building and los…
September 3, 2024
By Louise Bolger

Will declining mortgage rates fix the market?

It may take more than the Federal Reserve throwing us a lower interest rate bone this month to make everyone happy. Nevertheless, when it comes to lower rates, we’ll take what we can get, but will it…
August 27, 2024
By Louise Bolger

The day has arrived

Starting this month, the rules have changed for governing real estate commissions. We’ve been talking about this since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) voted on this change to the commissio…