July 23rd, 2015 •
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Dear Olive, I work for photography person who’s very successful at providing images for realtors and staging professionals. I love my work and appreciate working for my boss, who treats me with great respect. I’m writing to you, however, because I’m consistently pressed by clients to do “outside” jobs for them, sometimes with offers of “under the table” bonuses. Not only do these offers make me uncomfortable, but they put me in an impossible position. I don’t understand why some professionals don’t seem to understand how wrong these requests are or how compromised they make me feel. Am I overreacting [ Read More ]
May 21st, 2015 •
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The Inner Bottom Line ® A Column on Personal Choices & Ethical Dilemmas by Olive Gallagher Dear Olive, My wife & I have been trying to buy a home for a year. It took us five months to agree on an agent we liked and then, it became a daily grind of looking online, checking out listings our agent sent us, and spending every weekend driving around with her visiting houses that ended up looking nothing like the pictures posted. Finally, last month, we found our dream home. Within 24 hours, we made an offer. Our agent had prepared us [ Read More ]
May 13th, 2015 •
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Dear Olive, I like the columns you write, especially the recent one about how hard it is to get rid of stuff when selling a house. I’ve got the reverse problem. I’ve never been married and have been independent since college. I don’t collect stuff. I’ve done without a lot of things my friends take for granted, focused instead on saving my money with one goal in mind: to own my own place. A place just for me, on my own, door shut, away from the noisy world. I admit I missed a lot of fun including trips to Mexico [ Read More ]
April 20th, 2015 •
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Dear Olive, I was happy to meet you in person. I discovered your column last summer when it ran in The Oregonian and have followed it since on examiner.com but had no idea you were in real estate. That’s why I’m writing. Ted and I have been married for twenty-three years. I always thought our marriage was special and admit, especially when I read one of your columns about infidelity or a couple who couldn’t communicate, thinking, “that isn’t us.” Now I’m not feeling so smug. With the kids gone, we recently decided to sell our large home. That’s when [ Read More ]
