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" If you&amp;#039;re interested in either buying or selling a home, you should know the name Barbara Corcoran, who I think is almost certainly the smartest residential real estate expert in the country. For many years she had her own firm in New York, famously having started it with a $1,000 loan from a then-boyfriend. She&amp;#039;s since sold it and reinvented herself as a media personality\u2014she&amp;#039;s a regular on the Today Show, and I just had the honor of interviewing her for today&amp;#039;s Radio WD segment.   To cut to the chase: Yes, now is a great time to buy, she says. You&amp;#039;ll have lots of inventory from which to select, mortgage rates are low and, if you&amp;#039;re a first-time buyer, there&amp;#039;s that nice little incentive. Don&amp;#039;t worry about trying to time the bottom of the market, either. She&amp;#039;s a professional, she reminds us, and even she can&amp;#039;t do that.   What mistakes do people make when looking for a new home? They&amp;#039;ll fall in love with a house, she said, but won&amp;#039;t consider things like taxes, the school district, city services and so on. Or they&amp;#039;ll minimize the amount of money and aggravation required to make that house their home. &amp;quot;Oh, we&amp;#039;ll just tear down that wall,&amp;quot; they&amp;#039;ll say\u2014to which Barbara replies, it&amp;#039;s not always quite that easy.   For those on the other end of the market, trying to sell a house, Barbara recommends doing a lot of tossing away (or at least storing) of excess possessions before you open the door to potential buyers. Get rid of half of your stuff, she told me; home buyers need to be able to see themselves in your house, and they can&amp;#039;t if your stuff is all over the place. (This advice hit home, you might say. By coincidence, when I spoke to Barbara a friend had just returned from a round of house-hunting appalled by how much junk people had in their houses. She was so turned off that she wouldn&amp;#039;t consider any of them.)   You might even consider having your house staged. Barbara&amp;#039;s a big fan of the process and, in her usual direct manner, promises that you&amp;#039;ll get the fee back. That&amp;#039;s because good stagers know what colors and types of furniture people respond to, she says.   During our radio interview, Barbara and I also spoke about her newest gig, as one of the participants in Fox&amp;#039;s new Shark Tank program, which is now airing on Sundays at 9 P.M. EDT. Here&amp;#039;s the basic idea: Potential entrepreneurs with ideas but no money present their concepts to the panel, which includes Barbara; panel members then decide whether or not to invest.   &amp;quot;Is that your own real money that you&amp;#039;re putting up?&amp;quot; I asked. &amp;quot;Oh, yes,&amp;quot; came the answer. She&amp;#039;s clearly a braver (and much richer) woman than I am.   For more of Barbara&amp;#039;s advice, you can go to her website, barbaracorcoran.com, and sign up for her regular newsletter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/home/interviews/a4054/the-editors-corner-barbara-corcoran-83112/>