I tend to go overboard on statistics some times.  This is partly because it’s nice to be able to tell buyers and sellers that there are just over ten months of inventory in Sacramento County, or other quotable quotes.  It’s also partly just rhetorical laziness.  Ask any real estate writer and they’ll tell you that one of the easier articles to write is the market statistics article.  All you need is access to the MLS, an Excel spreadsheet, and half a brain.  (Anyone who knows me can vouch for the fact that I have half a brain).

My half a brain and I don’t always reflect on the numbers much, though.

One of the sadder things I’ve read in recent memory was a colleague of mine on real estate forum exhorting us all to say the market is “Great” whenever anyone asks us.  Clearly someone with that much forced optimism is feeling pretty beat up.  As for me, when people ask, I tell them it’s not as active as it was three years ago, but I’m still doing well.

Since I had enough wherewithal in this business to have a goal, my goal has been to reach more Sacramento area buyers via the Internet than any other agent, team, or company.  Because that’s worked out well for me, I still have more business than I can do personally, so I suppose that’s doing well.  If you have to share your business with others, that’s a good thing.  Does that mean there are still as many homes selling this year as there were in 2004?  No, of course not — the numbers are clearly off.  I guess for me the important thing is to be successful enough in reality that I don’t have to create a perception of success.  I just do my job, work with the transactions in front of me, and try to create more for me and for my people.

The same feeling that I am responsible for the results is actually making us pretty successful lately on the listing side of things as well.  We’re beginning to not just have a story to tell about Elite’s Ultimate Online Listing — I’m starting to see buyer prospects come through from these marketing efforts, including a lot of prospects for one home that one of my agent now has an offer on.  So if you’re a seller and you want to work with someone with real success instead of just the perception of success, give us a call.  The market’s not gr-r-r-reat (as Tony the Tiger would say), but it’s OK, and we don’t believe in taking it lying down.

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