Here is a quick real estate market snapshot for the Ayer-Shirley MA market, data crunched from Trendgraphix.

The first graph shows the number of listings on the market, compared with the pendings and homes sold ending with June 2010:

Single Family Residences

The second graph shows the same statistics run for the condominium market in Ayer and Shirley:

Condominiums

There is 6.9 months on inventory on the market for single family residences (houses), and 5.7 months of condo inventory.

You can compare this with June 2005

Single Family Residences 2005

where there were nearly the same number of homes on the market as now, but there was more sales activity. There was 5 months of inventory at that point, meaning that if no other homes were to come onto the market, it would take about 5 months to sell what is already there. The more months of inventory, the more of a buyer’s market it is.

Even within zip codes, there are micro-markets. Some properties are selling faster than others. All need to be priced well and decluttered (staged if necessary) to sell quickly in this market. If you are wondering what the market looks like for your home, shoot me an email or contact me here:
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Good intentions...

I used to love working with investors. The ones that I worked with weren’t usually the larger investors; they were the ones who bought a property or two a year in tough real estate times, fixed them up, rented them, and in this way accumulated a tidy portfolio over years.

These atypical buyers had not set out to make a killing. They kept their eyes open and purchased good deals. For the most part, they had their ducks in a row when they found what they were looking for and were able to act quickly. They had either bank approval for loans against property that they already owned, or they had letters stating enough net worth to purchase so when they found that property, they were ready to make an offer.

In contrast, I can remember working with investors who had backing and were charging out into the market ready to make some fast cash. They found a likely property (actually a great investment in an area where property values had not dropped like they had in some areas). But because they were afraid of risk, it took them nearly two weeks from the time that they viewed the property to the time that they requested that I put the offer in.

And they lost it without even the chance to negotiate.

I had shown another property that I had listed – a bank-owned in a neighborhood where surrounding property values were much higher – to two sets of buyers. One buyer wanted me to provide him with information that I didn’t have about the septic system since it was a bank-owned property, and emailed me every week asking if I had any offers on the property. The second set factored in replacement of the septic system when they made the offer. They purchased the property, put maybe $30,000 into it, and flipped it in two months at a nice profit. I know this because they called me later asking if I had any other listings similar to that one.

If you think that a property is a good value, and your agent confirms it by running the numbers, chances are that someone else – or 5 someone elses – think the same thing. The bottom line is that if you don’t act quickly or as quickly as prudently possible you are going to lose the property.

How can you be ready? After you look at the information that you get via email or online and decide that you want to see the property, bring along the person who is going to do the work for you to give you a ballpark figure for work required from which to base your offer. Do as much legwork up front so that you can make a fast informed offer. Don’t stop looking for properties while your offer is being crafted and presented – this offer may not come together and you need to keep the momentum in place. Be prepared to present your offer with a prequal for mortgage, or proof of funds on bank letterhead. Keep in mind that it is more difficult to go FHA on many properties in lower price ranges because of the condition at time of sale.

Investing is about numbers – either they work or they don’t and that is what you base your decision to purchase on. Emotion should not factor into it. And remember that thinking about buying a property is different from actually investing in the property – you work for one, and the other works for you.

A listing slideshow with our homes and condos for sale in Central MA.

I was watching a show on HGTV the other day – I think it was “The Unsellables”- when they stated that for each box of stuff you get up and out of your home you will get an average of $800-1000 more when you go to close.

I went back and looked around my Massachusetts home. I am literally sitting on a gold mine.

It is incredible. When you are living in it, you don’t see what’s around you. I used to know (read: be mentored by) a broker who would prep potential seller clients by telephone before she even saw the home. She would say, “Are you prepared to declutter and do small repairs around your home, or are you going to sell it as-is, with a corresponding reduction in price?” She would tell the sellers that she knew they wouldn’t like her while their home was being sold, but they would love her afterward. She even would take the children aside and tell them that she would pay them $100 each at closing if they would pick up their rooms and keep them that way. She said it was the best investment she could make in helping to get a property sold.

Smart lady. I looked around my house, and while I am not selling right away, I am taking care of some projects that I have been putting off.

Paint: the living room was red; the rest of the rooms were dark. Very Early-Trading-Spaces. Off to Home Depot for a little paint (one can I picked up for $5 – only one, but it was enough to make the bathroom beautiful). Now the living room is a rich beige color, which will carry over to part of the dining area walls. I am also painting the trim white. Probably by the time I finish, I will spend about $200 on paint and brushes and stuff.

Tile backsplash: My kitchen is completely nondescript. It should be a happy, inviting place but it has a kind of bachelor-pad je ne sais quoi about it. The color should punch it up, and I have been reading about how to DIY a tile backsplash. The tile I’m looking at is similar to this:

Click on the picture to go to their site for DIY information. I am estimating that this will cost me about $150 unless I completely mess it up and have to call someone to fix it.

Kitchen flooring – needs replacement. We hadn’t even been there a year when it began wearing off in bits and shredding, and it looks really sad, now that we have been there 12 years. I think the cheapest route will cost about $300, although I love tile which would cost much more. But I can always go cheap and put the tile down later.

Get the carpets cleaned! - if you hunt around, this can be done for short money. The kids talked me into getting 2 dogs when they were little, and these puppies were ridiculously adorable when they were tiny.  I did not know that they were going to be huge when they grew up, and that they would consider their full time jobs to be a combination of barking and shedding. The carpets need attention.

I keep seeing the Stanley Steemer ads on TV and it looks like they would do 3 rooms for less than $200.

Bathroom-  Paint, a new light ($100), and matching accessories (toilet paper and cup holders, toothbrush holders about $50). Strip off the old wallpaper trim for an instant room heightener.

And I should get a dumpster. All of the kids are grown except one. So much stuff can go! This stuff isn’t even good stuff that can be recycled – it is stuff that no one in his right mind would want. So why do I have it?

When I finish I will post some “After” pictures. A picture really IS worth a thousand words – and a box of stuff is worth a thousand bucks- and here’s why in some links to some before-and-after staging projects.

Many types of rooms – before and after

From The Stagers

More rooms – the kitchen in slide 5 has my color choice for living room

Enjoy, get inspired, start painting and decluttering! The real point is, if you are selling in this market, these ideas will not only help you sell for the most money in the shortest period of time. They will help you sell… period. “Price gets you interest; staging gets you offers,” says Gary Keller:

Note: I do not agree with the advice for sellers to “Be There” – any other agents want to weigh in on this?

We love nothing better than a makeover. On a personal level, nothing beats it to make a person feel better.

On a community-wide level, it’s even better. Doing something to improve a community makes everyone happy. A fascinating summary about how little things affect crime rate can be found here.

It seems like magic that little things like trash and graffiti removal can make such a difference to a neighborhood. Fitchburg, MA is going to make a little magic on June 12 from 10-3 when they spearhead a community improvement project: SWIRL. Under the auspices of Neighborworks and the Twin Cities CDC, the community will work together to create painted plywood panels for boarding up vacant properties in the area. You can see the difference:

Come make a difference in the community!! We will be there helping out- come join us

I like this little listing map. Click on the house for more information about this listing at 63 Rindge State Rd Ashburnham MA. This price reduction has only been approved by the bank that owns the property through 5/31. Make an offer today!

If you are thinking about selling your home and would like to see your home on this Google Map, please contact me!

This headline floated by me on Facebook today and I just had to share it:
Real Estate’s New Problem: Not Enough Homes – CNN
The article goes on to state that nationally inventory has dropped, and in some places we are seeing bidding wars. We are seeing that in Central MA – not with every home, but with homes that are priced well and in the best condition for their size and price range. I have heard two agents in the past week saying that the buyers that they were taking out were already familiar with the inventory; they wanted to see something new.
Are buyers just being picky? That possibly has a little to do with it: from what I see in this area a buyer wants to move into a home and have it be just the way he or she wants it without flooring change or landscaping work to be done. “Sweat equity” is much less the buzzphrase of the day than “Off The Rack” is- no one has the time to devote to large projects in two-breadwinner families.
Check out these stats for Worcester County and Shirley:

The amount of inventory in Shirley right now indicates a nearly balanced market situation. Given that these numbers are coming right on the heels of the tax credit, it is anyone’s guess as to where they are going, but we are still seeing buyer activity in the office.  The Tax Credit was a big thing, but it is not the only motivating factor behind the decision to purchase a home.

Something to Sing About...

I was looking at the March 19 post about new listings, and noticed that two of the three have already gone under agreement. In fact, our office has sold or put under agreement 11 properties in the past 30 days, with more that I know of in the works.

Of course, part of this was due to the fact that the Homebuyers’ Tax Credit was due to expire on April 30. There were plenty of buyers out racing around trying to put a contract together under the wire.

But there are plenty of buyers out there who want to purchase without regard to the Tax Credit. A lot of economic indicators are pointing to a recovery (see post in Towne & Country blog here). I think the thing about these indicators that is impressive is that they are based on data as opposed to one person’s opinion.

Recovery, of course, will be slow. This has been a long recession, and there are fears about a huge wave of foreclosures hitting the market, depressing home prices further. Legislation has been proposed or passed that may delay or reduce the number of foreclosures on the horizon- check out this article about what is going on in Massachusetts. This is good news, I believe… foreclosures hurt everyone.

If you are considering selling? Go into the process with your eyes wide open. Look at the numbers yourself – not just comparable listed properties, which may or may not sell. Attend open houses of comparable listed properties to see how yours compares. Consider hiring a home stager to walk through your house and tell you how it looks through “buyers’ eyes”. And realize that it may take longer than 30 days to put under agreement.

We will be holding an Open House here at 41 Belgian Way U:41, Fitchburg MA in Bridle Cross Estates. From 1-3 on Saturday May 8 we will be opening up this beautiful condominium unit (one of the larger in the development) and hope to see you there!

Belgian is located off of Rollstone Rd in Fitchburg- I can’t seem to get Google to pick up the address, but if you keep following Rollstone you will find us!

What a great present for Mother’s Day! Bring her by and let her take a peek at this home; the condo fee includes exterior maintenance, landscaping and trash removal :)

originally printed in my other blog

A while back I wrote in my other blog about a grassroots initiative that has been started to improve the real estate industry. Since then, ideas have been flying back and forth on twitter and in blogs about ways that can help the industry improve.

home sweet home- working to improve the industry
I am borrowing heavily in this post from my own post and from the Towne & Country blog (with permission).

Without a doubt, industries that do not try to change and improve are dead in the water. Looking at the way our industry is structured, I think the most change is going to occur locally, on the brokerage level.
Our brokerage is already different, and we have many ideas in the wings that are directly intended to raise the bar for real estate.
But we need you. We can talk about improving the industry, but we can’t do it without the input of you, the consumer. What was your last real estate experience like? What would you have made better? What did you like the best- that you would keep just the same if you did it over again?

- Towne & Country
Gerry, our broker/owner, has a slightly different slant here than most of the conversation on twitter suggests. Change WILL need to be initiated by the consumer. Change also has to come at the agent level. The individual agent needs to be aware of what the consumer wants- what is important to the consumer- and be the one to provide it.
We are no longer the gatekeepers of information. Consumers get upset if the information that they want about a property is withheld in hopes that they will call- and with the number of listings available in most markets they will just move on to the next one.
The NAR article that I quoted in my last post sums it up:

Sellers largely want agents to price their home competitively, find a buyer, market the property and sell within a specific timeframe. Reputation was the most important factor in choosing an agent, cited by 36 percent of respondents, followed by trustworthiness at 21 percent.

Home buyers thought the most important services agents offer are helping find the right house, and negotiating sales terms and price. The most commonly cited benefits of using an agent are helping buyers understand the process, pointing out unnoticed features or faults, negotiating better contract terms, and providing a better list of service providers. Comparable to sellers, buyers chose agents based on a referral or had used them in a previous transaction, with trustworthiness and reputation being the biggest factors in selecting an agent.

Agents- pay attention! The consumers have spoken! You provide expertise, NOT information. Let’s work on raising the bar together.

I've got a secret

“Within the first six months, these [doctors] wrote six million prescriptions for more than fifty million of these happy blue pills, ” noted Alex Wipperfurth in Brand Hijack. Of  course, the happy blue pill that he was referring to was Viagra, which came out in 1998.

Shouldn’t this country be happier?

I had lunch with an agent from another office the other day. We had a nice time talking, and the sandwiches at the Longhorn were good. She said something that I thought was interesting, something I had thought about often myself. She asked if we all shouldn’t help each other out (she was referring to real estate agents) regardless of office affiliation.

Suppose your office has a recipe for success- a “secret sauce,” I guess. Should you share that with others? Will that make the entire industry stronger, or make your own (and your office’s) position weaker?

Suppose your office had a recipe for the Viagra that would counteract a flat market.

This is what I think. I think that we all need to help one another- those of us that are left.  I think when @RealtyMan presented about Facebook at REBarCamp Boston that he wasn’t giving anyone the skill sets to take him down.

So, like everyone else in RE.net, I will share my general knowledge. Specific application of that knowledge set has been promised to Towne & Country, Realtors- that is the promise that I have made to the company in regards to the Central MA area. But do I think you need a blog? YES! Where can you get one? You can set up a free one on WordPress.com or blogger, or you can get one of your very own using the WordPress platform (godaddy has an easy set-up).

Should you buy into every social media or new media thing that comes along? Gerry and I are kind of spread out everywhere but that is because we have to for Towne & Country, Realtors. In fact, Gerry does a lot of beta testing for real estate platforms, helping to evaluate them for the developers. As an agent, though, I think you want get involved in a few things that you can really dig deeply into and extend your personality. And I am cheap as all get out- if it is going to cost me something, I don’t do it. The cost to me is time: sweat-equity, if you prefer.

Bottom line: I want you all to succeed. I want the exceptional agents to stay in the business- you may end up sitting across the table from me as a cobroke, or in the same position with one of  the Towne & Country, Realtors team, or actually being a member of our team someday. Who knows?

And the agent I spoke with the other day is dead on- we all have to have each others’ backs. That makes the industry better for the consumer, and customer service is what it is all about.

Want to have lunch and bat ideas around? I promise not to mention Viagra. diane@realtyman.com

Another one to add...

Well, I am happy to be heading home, but we had a great time in Delaware. Ignite was very cool! Met a lot of people and saw some old friends. Thanks to Bill Lublin for coming to see us- he had to leave early for BlogWorld the next day, but was there to show support.

Our classes at DAR convention at Dover Downs went well too. We realized after the feedback the first day that we needed to simplify the content, so we revamped our class prior to the second go-around, and made it more relevant.

You know what I wish, though? Online relationships are great, but I wish that I lived closer to Lesley and Maya. I would never have met them had it not been for twitter- Lesley is outside of my service area, and Maya is so far away from me. But they are both brilliant, and I love being with them. We are very comfortable with one another.

So your scope enlarges with a social media presence, but there are more “good-byes” to deal with. Trying to figure out where to plan another TQCamp- Chicago? Florida? The face-to-face meetings are energizing and we are ready to do anything.

I got an unusual call today. It was from another Real Estate sales agent.

File not found

When I first started in the business, I got calls several times a month, particularly after I picked up a large listing (which never did sell). I used to get recruited often, as did many of the agents in my office. Even with signs of a problem with home sales, I still heard the old saws, “People have to live somewhere,” and “real estate doesn’t lose value,” and brokerages hadn’t begun the triage process.

This calling-to-recruit activity is much less prevalent now. Everyone is more concerned with mere survival, and I know it is on everyone’s mind, the question: “What is going to happen after this new buyer incentive is gone?” Sales are up, but right now we aren’t measuring apples to apples, and foreclosure activity is showing no sign of abating.  Offices are cutting non-producing agents- or thinking about it, anyway.

So the call- I was surprised. The agent said on my VM that he wanted to ask me a couple of questions. Fair enough; I called him back.

No recruiting. What he wanted to was if a particular REO site had ever been productive for me, as far as me getting any listings there. He was very nervous. He was out of my territory, and he had done his homework (I had seen his website and he had obviously done some research), so I pointed him down a couple of paths that had worked for me for listings. We chatted a while, and he told me that he planned on going to an REO conference next month. I knew that was the Five Star Conference, and had heard good things about it and told him so.

I didn’t hand him any closely guarded secrets or magic bullets, because I don’t know of any. I was just friendly. And when I said goodbye I could hear the emotion in his voice. I was apparently the only one who had answered his questions. Ever.

You know, I have been asked by agents about bank-owned property, and really- it’s a different animal than resale. You really need some kind of set-up to deal with it. And at least one of the companies that I had been working with has gone under, leaving me to eat the electric bills and unpaid cost of snow removal. I see ads sometimes that make bank-owned look like the easiest money in the world- no weekend hours- but that’s balderdash. You have 10 properties and they need a monthly status report on the same day, and you get a call for 4 BPOs at the same time, you get it done. If the people asking me are unprepared and looking for an easy 9-5 job, they should find something else.

But otherwise, we all have to help each other. That’s what I like about twitter and some of the other social media sites- you shoot out a question, and someone will answer you.

So, for the people who have answered my questions since I hae been in the space- today was for you. I tried to pay it forward. And the agent that I spoke to today will too.

It’s the difference between surviving and living.

Youtube disclaimers make me laugh. They always say things like, “This really sux, but I worked hard making it. No bad comments.”

So here is my first vlog. It really sux, but I worked hard making it. Say whatever you like about it. In the spirit of my last post, I am just doing it, and they will get better. Really.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PmHmrgAmMc]

One real estate agent, Judy Madonna Moriarty, said it very well. She felt that not using her photo didn’t dilute her branding. Photos, she pointed out, are often glamour shots or pictures that are hopelessly dated. If your license picture looks more like you than your business card photo does, think about a change. She also pointed out that nearly every other professional does not add a photo to their card- why should real estate agents?

There you go. There were as many ideas about how a card should look as there were people- and that’s great. A card, really, should be an extension of your personality- as much as is your blog, as much as are your facebook and twitter interactions. They are all the same little squares of stiff paper, but isn’t it better to make those cards work as a canvas for you? Think about it- the same canvas that supported Starry Night also gave us Nighthawks, and these paintings tell us less about the night than they tell us about the artist.

I am looking out the window of the plane during my second flight ever. It is beautiful- the sky is a perfect blue above, and we are flying over a solid mass of clouds that reminds me something of the way the sheets look on my bed. There, alas, is no heavenly aura emanating from where I sleep as there is from these clouds, but they look solid and rumpled like my sheets.

And THAT started me thinking about computerized dating services- you don’t have to be a Rorschach scholar to see how I made that leap of thought. After we were separated, I signed up for a bunch of them- out of spite, mostly- but never hit “enter”. Just couldn’t bring myself to do it, and have never really had that first date. The thing is, by taking all of those tests, I really learned something about myself and the men I am attracted to. I cherish kindness, I find intelligence to be the sexiest attribute, I am annoyed with people who will only date people who recycle, and he has to live a long way away, like Philadelphia (oh, just kidding).

I also have a nearly uncontrollable urge to skew the results. I guess we all have an archetype in mind, and don’t want that to be shaken because of a quiz. Maybe this explains why the men who show up as my matches are the types that I would likely ditch at the restaurant after an emergency call from one of the “kids”. Hey, I never said I was low maintenance. You wouldn’t like me if I were.

A while ago, I had read that being a real estate agent was akin to acting as a matchmaker. I disagree. I think the buyer is actually going to online matchmaking sites by herself and viewing the pictures and the video. By the time she gets to me, she has a pretty good idea of the two or three dates she is ready to commit to. This consumer has spent hours online choosing properties, exploring these homes and their communities, emailing links to family and friends, and possibly visiting a mortgage officer to get preapproved.

This tells me a couple of things. Real estate agents had better get ready for their new roles. I have already touched base briefly on where I feel I contribute most in the process as far as buyers are concerned. But sellers: you want your home bringing all it can to the dating table. You need good photos, and lots of them. You need imaginative video. You need your home to work that online room and exhibit all the charm that it is capable of. You won’t even get that first date, let alone be left by yourself at the movies.

Diane Guercio is on twitter as HeyAmaretto and still has not had that dreaded first date.

The full blog post for this is on Trulia, but before you read it, consider the above question. Write down the answers. Then read the contents of the post, and see if your answers are the same.

And please- comment!!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdrKK1LJggk&hl=en&fs=1]

Christina’s first vlogpost interviewing me. Should have gotten a little more sleep the night before!

[wpvideo m0yHIFEP]

Jann Taber interviews Tamara Dorris.

You are in control of your belief system, and this video reiterates how important that is.  I love the reminder that we need to “Pray while moving our feet.”

from http://therebelwoman.wordpress.com/

I have the greatest respect for people who choose not to be parents. There is incredible pressure all around them to conform to what is considered the norm, and for a variety of reasons they decide to be non-conformists. My daughter is one of these people, and I respect her decision. It’s intelligent to consider this prior to having the child.

And this made me think of something that I feel happens in real estate. Not everyone should be a homeowner, or not everyone is ready right now, regardless of interest rates and available inventory. I had three separate issues come up this week alone that reminded me of this.

The one which I will share was about a listing I have- a bank-owned property that had suffered from neglect and freeze damage. Some of the damage was repaired, but I wasn’t certain the extent of it. An interested buyer called me and requested placing an offer, and of course I disclosed this information. I had his mortgage person run me a preap, and it came back contingent on several items that I had told the buyer may be problems, among them being the heating system.

I told the mortgage officer this, and told him that this property was being sold as is. Apparently, this buyer had an issue with reserved funds. The mortgage officer asked me to “Please advice” (sic).

Fair enough. I have issues of my own with reserved funds from time to time. But selling this buyer the home would be plain irresponsible, to my way of thinking. Possibly everything would work out, but more likely I would get the listing back as another bank-owned property a year or two down the road.

My advice? Make sure you have enough money in the bank to cover a couple of months’ worth of mortgages. You don’t know what can happen, and at least you will have that roof over your head. Hard? Sure, but not as hard as trying to find that money if you are too sick to work, or get laid off, or need to take time off to care for a child.

Do a home inspection, even if it is for informational purposes only! I know you want the house, but if you start out over your head in unexpected repairs, you run the risk of becoming a statistic, and that’s a number I don’t want to see get any larger. Use the home inspection as a tool, even with an as-is property: highlight the big-ticket items and make sure you will be able to take care of them before they become bigger-ticket items.

Homeownership is similar, in my opinion, to being a parent. Most days it is great, and there is nothing like finally burning the mortgage paper when you pay it off, so they tell me- probably the same feeling you get watching a child graduate from college. But if you aren’t prepared- if you haven’t thought out who is going to watch the toddler when you have to go to work and she has croup, if you haven’t considered school vacations and broken arms and stomach bugs- you aren’t looking at the whole picture. Does this mean you shouldn’t be a parent, or a homeowner? Probably not, but education and a safety net can make things a hell of a lot easier.

In Massachusetts, education and information on lower-cost mortgage interest can be found at this site.

Federal First-Time Homebuyer Credit  click here (thanks to Patrick Harding)

I am getting a little headache today. Up early, did some paperwork stuff, then went out to one of my bank-owned listings to show it to a possible buyer. Good showing, but the property had no heat or electricity, so I am still feeling a little sluggish from the cold.

Got back to the office, submitted an offer for a buyer, and started wading through the list. Hopefully setting up 2 other deals- it’s great being busy.

Then I got a call from another buyer. Woo hoo! As I was speaking with this potential buyer, he had mentioned that he had seen this property already, so there would be no need to view it. He just wanted to make the offer. I said, “Then you are telling me you have an agent?” “No,” he said, “we haven’t signed any paper with anyone.” I wanted to make sure I got this straight. “But you were shown the property already by someone?”

Then he said that he had seen more than 35 properties in the area, and the agent had merely given him the lockbox code so that he could let himself in. “Excuse me?” The agent got the codes to the lockboxes, and the buyers went out by themselves.

So, okay, I can’t see how they would have signed an Exclusive Buyer’s Agency contract, let alone a MA Mandatory Agency Disclosure form. And handing out my lockbox codes to buyers doesn’t exactly constitute representation. Just thinking about the things that could happen made me really upset. Suppose the buyers had slipped on the ice, or had fallen down the cellar stairs, or SAID they had fallen down the cellar stairs? I am just getting over the headache that had started after I was handed this little nugget of information.

It reminds me of when the kids went off to college. When the first one went, I was really upset. REALLY upset. I was complaining with tears in my eyes to a friend who had been through it already. She said, “Look at it this way. Before my daughter went off, she constantly broke curfew and we knew she was drinking and doing god-knows-what-else. Now, 9:00 rolls around, and I can envision her brushing her teeth in the dorm and getting ready for bed because she has early classes. It’s a thing of beauty, really.”

And those blinders really are a thing of beauty. I knew agents SOMEWHERE were just giving out the combos to lockboxes, but I couldn’t imagine that anyone around here REALLY was. I imagined them trudging off through the snow, flashlight in hand, shivering in the cold while their buyers poked around drafty unheated attics and dark cellars, tape-measuring the bedrooms. 

Buyers: your buyer’s agent should at least walk you through the property, jot down your questions and try to be the best connection that you have for getting the answers. I know you want to get in to see the property quickly, but your agent is being compensated: make sure they represent you!

Agents: what are you thinking?

[viddler id=90536e4c&w=437&h=288]

As usual, we were running late this morning. I was in charge of motivating and driving the seventeen year old to school. We were doing okay until I asked him to help me bring down trash and recycles for pickup. I had been at the Inman Conference last week, and had left money for groceries with the 23 year old, and I think all they ate was pizza. I was handing out the stack of empty pizza boxes, not really paying attention. I assumed he would bring them down to the curb, but I came back out, and he was paused there looking at the stack, as if expecting the trash fairy to fly in and bring them down.

Guess what? No trash fairy, no housework fairy, no listings fairy. You can visualize the pizza boxes being down by the curb all you want, you can put a picture on your vision board of the pizza boxes being at the curb, but you have to be prepared to trot them down yourself, if that is the way the solution is given to you.

I do believe in the power of realigning your attitude, which will allow you to see solutions that you couldn’t before. It begins and ends in your mind. Maybe you have seen this basketball video. Try to observe and very carefully count the number of passes between the players in white.

I saw this video twice before I saw the gorilla walk across the floor, as did probably 2/3 of the people in the room with me. I have had gorillas stroll through my life before, but I was amazed that I was that oblivious to this one. So you have to ask yourself- where is the next gorilla coming from?

One big gorilla that not all real estate agents have accepted is the transition from a printed MLS book to information being readily available online. Believe it or not, there are still people who can’t make their way easily around the online MLS system, and who can’t appreciate the ramifications of this. Another gorilla is that the buyers and sellers themselves are so firmly planted online, and this isn’t appreciated by everyone, despite the often tossed-around figure of 85% of buyers starting their home search online.

Gorillas. Surprisingly, someone high up in our office came to me after Inman Connect and REBar Camp- which strongly focused on application of technology by real estate agents (in response to consumer use, no less!)- and said that he had read things about Facebook that implied that it was not worth the effort.  This person gave me the impression that he didn’t want me to be using this tool. Sorry, but I can see the gorilla coming, at least in this case, and personally, I find Twitter and Facebook an easy and pleasant way to make real connections.

So what’s the secret? Look around, be open. If your buyers are coming to you with printed-out MLS listings, you are not the magic portal for information. How can you be of value to them? If your sellers are more savvy about listings that have sold in the neighborhood than you are, what can you give to them? Better- what can you give to them than no one else can?

I may not believe in fairies, but there are gorillas everywhere.

How often are we new? Every day we wake up with chance to react differently to the world around us. The human body replaces itself on a regular basis, so you literally aren’t the person you were a year ago. Even the conditions around us shift daily, and we are forced to choose to react or not.

I feel so new today. My birthday was a couple of days ago, and I had a chance to reflect about what the last couple of years have sent to me. Or maybe more accurately- what I have sought out.

The first change I made was to dig myself out of the shallow grave of a bad marriage. This was the biggest change, and required the most bravery I have ever had to have in my life. Once you actually make that decision, you have to try to align the rest of your life to it, and it feels like making the wrong size shoe fit: painful. Now, nearly a year out of the gate on that one, things are better, but in addition to the pain of watching that relationship die there was the  inherent uncertainty that attached itself to me and that I forced upon my children.

Then the new career. Real estate at the time I entered it was like trying to ride the surf at Hampton with the tide going out. Not impossible, but difficult to build up momentum. There was a lot of work, but that was good because it kept my mind busy. And I found that I really loved the challenges and the busy-ness of this career.

I just came back from REBar Camp NYC and Inman Connect NYC 2009, which was like another little rebirth. I met a lot of like-minded people that have reinforced the direction that I have felt things are heading. You don’t want to get on a bus that’s running out of gas, and I am sure now that I am on the right bus. The fact that the vehicle is nearly empty doesn’t bother me.

So let me tell you, with all of this that has happened, I understand rebirth and reinvention. Probably more than that, I can empathize with the process, which is incredibly painful, and more difficult than the decision itself. But it’s sweet to be typing this as a new person inside and out, certainly more beautiful than I could have dreamed.