About BestRealtyTips
Three people write for this site. They buy houses, sell houses, and own rental property. They are not licensed Realtors, mortgage brokers, CPAs, or financial advisors, and they don’t pretend to be. What they have is a combined fifteen-or-so real estate transactions between them, a willingness to talk about the parts nobody else does, and opinions earned the slow way.
They write under pen names. Claire, Dan, and Marcus are not their real names. If you’re wondering why: real estate writing sits next to people’s biggest financial decisions, and separating the writers’ professional lives from their published opinions lets them be more honest about what worked, what didn’t, and which conventional advice is marketing. The tradeoff is that you can’t Google them and find a LinkedIn profile. That’s the point.
The rules this site runs on
- No credentials that aren’t real. Nobody here is a licensed agent, broker, CPA, attorney, or financial advisor. We cite people who are, when it matters.
- No pretending to be experts. The writers are consumers and small-scale investors, not professionals.
- No guru courses, no coaching programs, no “masterminds” being sold anywhere on this site.
- Every specific claim gets a source. If an article says rates are at X percent or median price is at Y, the link goes to Freddie Mac, NAR, the CFPB, the IRS, or the Federal Reserve, not a blog or a YouTube channel.
- Nothing on this site is financial, legal, or tax advice. For your specific situation, talk to a professional.
Claire
Claire is a two-time home buyer who got her first purchase mostly wrong and her second purchase mostly right, and she writes the buyer’s guide she wishes someone had handed her the first time. Her first house came with a roof that cost $14,000 in year two, a sewer line nobody had checked, and a radon problem she learned about after closing. Her second purchase went differently, not because she’d become an expert, but because she’d learned to ask the question “what would the old version of me miss here?”
She writes about first-time buyer mistakes, the gap between pre-approval and loan commitment, mortgage shopping, inspection reports, appraisal gaps, closing disclosures, and how to tell when an agent is actually helping you versus steering you. She tends to hedge her advice with honest admissions about where she got lucky. She is allergic to articles that make first-time buyers feel dumb for asking questions.
Claire does not claim to know your market. She claims to know what the process feels like from the inside.
Dan
Dan has sold four houses over about fifteen years: one in a cold market with a full-service agent who earned every penny, one in a hot market with an agent who didn’t, one FSBO that worked, and one FSBO that he gave up on after three weeks and listed with a discount broker. He is neither pro-agent nor anti-agent. He is pro-doing-the-actual-math on any given transaction.
He writes about pricing strategy, agent selection, what FSBO actually costs and saves in 2026 (the math is different after the 2024 NAR commission settlement), staging priorities that matter versus ones that don’t, disclosures, buyer concessions, and the specific numbers that decide whether a sale goes well. He tends to put dollar figures on his claims instead of general advice. He has dry opinions about real estate stagers and their bowls of fake lemons.
Dan does not pretend that every seller’s situation is the same. He does pretend that every seller should run the numbers before making sentimental decisions, because he has watched sentiment cost people thousands of dollars more than once.
Marcus
Marcus is a small landlord who owns three rental doors (a single-family, a small multifamily, and one duplex that he calls his least-favorite property for reasons he’ll explain in an article someday). He has been a landlord for about seven years. He did one 1031 exchange when selling a heavily appreciated rental. He looked into REITs, understood them, and decided direct ownership suited his situation better. He is not a full-time investor and never has been.
He writes about rental property math (the version the beginner calculators skip), cap rate vs cash-on-cash vs “actual money in your account,” CapEx reserves that every first-time landlord underestimates, 1031 mechanics, REIT structures, DSCR loans for investors, and the long gap between a pro forma spreadsheet and three-year reality. He cites more primary sources than the other two writers because investing content has higher YMYL stakes and he is, by disposition, a footnote person.
Marcus does not tell you to buy rental property. He tells you what the math looks like when you run it honestly, and leaves the decision to you.
Which writer should you start with?
If you’re a first-time buyer figuring out where to begin, Claire’s articles are the place. If you’re thinking about listing a house, Dan. If you’re running the numbers on a rental or weighing your first investment property, Marcus. For topics that cross categories (mortgages for investment property, converting a primary residence to a rental, buying a fixer), the writer whose lane is closer to the primary reader intent takes it, so a “how to get a DSCR loan” article is Marcus, and “converting your first house to a rental when you move up” is usually Claire because it starts from the buyer’s perspective.
None of us is going to sell you a course, tell you our method is the one true method, or pretend real estate is simpler than it is. The rest of what we think about any of it is in the articles themselves.