Bonnie Brenner, 1943 – 2012

Posted on May 15, 2012 by kateymcgrath

Bonnie Brenner is absolutely wonderful! Extremely professional but also very easy to work with.  It was an absolute pleasure!

Bonnie makes everything painless! She is awesome and an asset to your firm.

Loved working with Bonnie!  She was very patient with me through everything, willing to help me find exactly what I was looking for, and I’m so thankful.

One of the best parts of my job is compiling testimonials for our Realtors.  This morning, I pulled out Bonnie’s file and found some lovely responses from clients over the years.

Bonnie started with Elfant Wissahickon in 1999, after being a licensed real estate agent for almost 20 years.  Last week, Bonnie lost her battle with breast cancer and passed away peacefully at her home in Germantown.  The President of the Philadelphia City Council, Darrell Clarke, signed a proclamation recognizing Bonnie’s outstanding citizenship and service to her community:

Barbara (Bonnie) Brenner was a devoted public servant as a social worker in the DHS for 20 years, and a diligent Realtor for 17 years. She helped hundreds of people achieve home ownership through counseling, as a landlord and real estate agent, and was active in the revitalization of her hometown neighborhood, Germantown.

She graduated from Germantown HS in 1961, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. She lived in Sweden for several years before returning to Philadelphia and dedicating endless hours to pet rescue and responsible pet ownership. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 2000s, she became a vocal advocate for alternative therapies, joining many groups of cancer survivors questioning traditional treatment methods.

She was a free spirit, saw every Academy Award winning movie, loved dancing and swimming, spoke Spanish and Swedish, and loved her family, her friends, and above all, animals.

Bonnie will be missed by all of us at Elfant Wissahickon, and the entire northwest Philadelphia real estate community.  Our deepest condolences go out to her family and friends.

She will be remembered fondly.  Rest in peace, Bonnie.

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Weird Waste Day in Chestnut Hill this Saturday

Posted on April 19, 2012 by kateymcgrath

So many of us have basements or garages full of electronic equipment that we don’t know what to do with.  Good on you for not throwing it in the trash, and here’s your change to recycle it in a responsible way!  This Saturday, at the Norwood Academy campus parking lot, you can bring your old CPU’s, printers, cell phones, anything you wouldn’t want in a landfill, and Green in Chestnut Hill (GrinCH) will reuse, recycle or dismantle and dispose of in a sustainable way.

 

Green In Chestnut Hill: Weird Waste Day!!!.

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Philly Spring Clean Up

Posted on April 17, 2012 by paulswalsh

My partner, Bob Elfant, and two of our dedicated agents, Janice Smalley and Deb Stanitz, spent this past Saturday cleaning up the east and west blocks of Duval Street off of Germantown Avenue.  They volunteered with neighbors and the board of the Mt Airy Business Improvement District as part of the Philly Spring Clean Up event.

 

Mt. Airy residents tackle abandoned buildings during city-wide cleanup day — NewsWorks.

 

It was another event in our year-long Building Community initiative, bringing our total to almost $6000 contributed and over 350 service hours this year!

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Now and Then: Historical and Contemporary Photos of Philadelphia – Skookul.com

Posted on March 27, 2012 by kateymcgrath

Check out this very cool interactive Google Map that shows what your location looked like 50 years ago.  We found this great photo of 20th and Pine Streets in Rittenhouse Square:

 

Find anything cool?  Let us know the address in the comments!

 

Now and Then: Historical and Contemporary Photos of Philadelphia – Skookul.com.

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In the spotlight

Posted on March 26, 2012 by paulswalsh

This week, we’re featuring Deb Stanitz, one of our professional REALTORS:

As a real estate agent, Deb creates a smooth home buying and selling experience for her clients. From the very first step in the process, Deb establishes clear communications, helping her clients articulate their goals, enabling everyone to visualize the perfect results. Deb’s balance and enthusiasm create an environment of cooperation throughout the entire real estate process encouraging focused, calm completion of all her transactions. Deb’s unique gift of aligning her very positive energy with her client’s vision brings powerful results.

Deb is a residential specialist having received the designations Certified Residential Specialist (CRS), Accredited Buyers Representative (ABR), Accredited Sellers Representative (ASR) and is continually educating herself to provide the best possible realty service to her clients.

Deb’s mission is to be a catalyst for other peoples’ dreams, treating all people with respect and a positive attitude in solving problems and to create a win/win solution every time.

You can contact Deb at 215-247-3600 or deb at elfantwissahickon dot com.

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Building Community

Posted on February 27, 2012 by kateymcgrath

As seen on philly.com!

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The Neil Kugelman Team

Posted on February 8, 2012 by paulswalsh

“People are our business.  Real estate is our service.”  This is their mission statement.  They come to real estate from a variety of disciplines with a common theme: high standards of ethics in service to others.

Neil began his real estate career in 1984 and hired his first assistant in 1993.  Together with his team of licensed agents, Marilyn Silberstein, Melinda Coughlin and Chris Kinka, they serve the Philadelphia and Eastern Montgomery Counties with solid counsel and superior communication skills.  Both Melinda and Chris are former teachers, while Marilyn’s focus was social work.  Chris also brings his construction background to bear.  Melinda’s people skills were refined as she and her husband were the long-time owner/operators of Fairmount’s London Grill.  The empathy and communication skills Marilyn employ result from the variety of positions held as she climbed the ranks of medical social work.

Each team member benefits from the experience and knowledge of the team’s leader, Neil Kugelman.  Collectively they meet regularly to discuss, among other things, how best to serve their particular clients.  This different approach to real estate brings distinct advantages to both Buyers and Sellers – having a caring team behind you with expert and timely advice.  Their team approach first headlined the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Real Estate section February 11, 2007.

Neil has extensive experience in all aspects of residential housing, having done foreclosure work for Fannie Mae, Citibank and others.  He has been involved in over 100 renovations for REO companies.  He teaches “Buying a Fixer-Upper” at the Mt Airy Learning Tree.  He has been consistently top ranked by the Greater Philadelphia Association of REALTORS for annual production and has been specifically recognized with city-wide awards three times.  He has been the recipient for the past two years of Philadelphia Magazine’s annual Five-Star Professional Award.  He is a repeat winner of Elfant Wissahickon’s Top Agent annual award.  Neil has been a resident of Germantown, Wyndmoor and now lives in Mt. Airy.

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Great Day of Service!

Posted on January 23, 2012 by bobelfant

My partner Paul gave me homework this weekend:  write a blog post about my MLK experience at the Jenks Elementary School in Chestnut Hill. Well, the picture says it all.

I wonder sometimes who gets more reward for the things we do in reaching out to others.

You can tell by the smile on my face that this one felt pretty good for me. I spent an hour or so, reading books with Daisha.  The teacher instructed me to make her sound out the words, that she’s a much better reader than she thinks she is…. to push her to figure out the words on her own. We read about 7 or 8 books, one cuter than the next, and Daisha got more and more adept as time went on. We alternated choosing ones from the pile to read. It wasn’t fair for her to get all the choices. My favorite was the one where each animal kept eating the smaller animal until the biggest one burped ( or something like that…..I turned 60 a couple weeks ago…can’t remember the detail) and they all came back out, good as new. I love a happy ending.

So, business isn’t always just business. Reaching outside of one’s own self-interest to do for someone else feeds your soul. After 38 years in the real estate business and countless involvements with various charities and community activities, I’ve come to a conclusion. Wouldn’t it be good if everyone, at least once a day, committed to doing something for others. Kind of an MLK commitment 365 days a year. Small or big, doesn’t matter. An unsolicited act of kindness, a community meeting, a small donation, a dollar to someone on the street….something for other than you. Sorry….my homework wasn’t supposed to be a lecture but, it would be cool. I recommend you try it. It will feel pretty good!

Posted by Bob Elfant

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service

Posted on January 13, 2012 by paulswalsh

This year, we’re working with our neighbors, JS Jenks Elementary School on Germantown Avenue just two blocks from our office. The school actually does their MLK Day of Service projects on Tuesday the 17th when school is in session and the children are able to participate.  My partners, our agents and staff and I will work with teachers to clean up the school and playground, and help children collect for the needy.

We’re very excited to work with the students and teachers, and would like to ask our community to chip in!

The 2nd grade is collecting children’s books for an orphanage in Ghana.  The 3rd grade is collecting toiletries to donate to a local shelter.  Many classes are making Valentines for veterans and senior citizens.  If you have any books, toiletries, or art supplies, please drop them off at our office at 8039 Germantown Avenue and we’ll bring them with us to the school.

 

Thank you!

 

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Find out your credit score without any tricks

Posted on January 13, 2012 by kateymcgrath

At Credit Karma, you can sign up for a free account to check your Transunion Credit Score, and now have truly free monitoring of your credit report without signing up for an expensive service or listening to the “freecreditreport.com” song!  A great first step when you are thinking about buying a house.  One of my favorite features is the ability to see how different actions (paying down cards vs loans, etc) can impact your score to help you improve it the fastest and most efficient way.

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