Sacramento Real Estate Blog

I wanted to take a minute to talk about how grateful I am to have such a great team of agents.

One of the things I didn’t expect when I became a broker was how many times someone somewhere would try to slip something by someone.  Perhaps I just hadn’t done enough transactions in my career to that point, or perhaps the declining market in the last couple of years has brought out the worst in some people, but it often amazes me the types of things people try to get away with.

Less amazing, but still very, very gratifying, is how often and how well my agents have caught the smell of something that just doesn’t seem right, told me about it, and worked with me to make sure our clients’ interest are protected. 

It’s not that we’re do-gooders, who are setting out to revolutionize a systematically corrupt industry.  There are many fine agents out there who don’t work for Elite Properties.  And of course as a businessman I think it would be great if everyone chose to work with us, since then I’d be wildly successful and have to hire zillions of people and have more money than I can spend.  But failing that, let me just express my wish that even if you don’t have an Elite Properties agent, may you get an agent who’s good and ethical and careful enough to be one.  Being around folks who do such a great job makes being in the real estate business worthwhile.

Internet Mogul.  Sacramento Real Estate Gal.   Sacramento-Home.com co-author.  And now mother to be!

Given how nice this child looks already, we expect a full photo shoot when the happy day comes.

Elite Properties agent Mike Keleshian just listed this beautiful 3 bedroom, 2 bath home in Folsom’s Broadstone subdivision. For additional information, call Elite Properties at (877) 735-5657, or call Mike directly at (916) 997-4086!

Beautiful Folsom Home

Location: Broadstone

This beautiful home in Folsom’s desirable Broadstone subdivision features a low maintenance yard. Fresh paint, granite slab counters in kitchen. Home is close to shopping and Freeway.

Features

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 2

Year Built: 1998

Subdivision: Broadstone

Lot Size: 5500sf

Garage Size: 2 car

School District: Folsom-Cordova

Square Footage: 1454

Agent Name: Mike Keleshian

Broker: Elite Properties

MLS #: 80017104

Information

Contact Information

Mike Keleshian

(916) 997-4086

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Pricing

Asking Price: $374,500

Property Location

1308 Tippens Way
Folsom, CA 95630
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Attributes

Appliances

Range/Oven

Interior Amenities

Fireplace

Photo Gallery

View as SlideshowView Photo Gallery (7 Photos)

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Equal Housing Opportunity

VFLYER ID: 1529053

I am very pleased to announce that Realtor® Mike Keleshian has joined Elite Properties.  Mike has several years of residential real estate experience, both as a real estate agent and as a loan officer.  Being familiar with both aspects of the transaction means that as a buyer he can provide valuable lending insight — and as a seller, you can count on Mike to have a much better than most agents of whether that offer you received comes from a qualified buyer or someone who’s risky at best.

Back when I was at RE/MAX, Mike was one of the agents who I could count on to pitch in and help me when I got busy.  He was very warmly received by the folks I entrusted to his care, and had a high percentage of repeat customers.

A long term resident of El Dorado Hills with his wife, Lucy and young children, Mike knows about some of our better school districts first hand, and like all our Elite agents he is also very familiar with neighborhoods throughout Sacramento, Placer, and El Dorado County.

Mike can be reached directly at (916) 977-4086.

I recently came across a copy of an article I wrote here that someone had stolen and posted to another blog (on Blogger).

I submitted an Infringement notification to Google within about twenty minutes of discovering this.  Total time from infringement to notification was less than twelve hours.

Please note that all work on this site is copyright(c) 2003-2007 John Lockwood and Associates.  Certain materials may also appear under license or with permission of their copyright holders. 

The company will vigorously defend against infringements of its copyrighted work.

Wow, look at that, it’s December already.  No wonder the sun isn’t out.

With the end of the year upon is, it’s time for holiday parties and closing out the accounting season, and Elite Properties is no exception.   At the end of the week we’re getting together for our Christmas Party dinner at the home of the agent who’s arguably our company’s best cook, Vicki Agregado-Babcock. 

Since it’s also time for closing out the accounting season, today I learned that our company’s best cook is also the company’s top producing agent for the year, so congratulations to Vicki for being ahead of the curve! 

I was somewhat chagrined to learn that I came in only in second place for total sales volume.  But I don’t mind too much because as the broker I can make up whatever awards I want, so I think there’s a good chance I’m a shoe-in for broker of the year.

If all else fails, I’m also the tallest.

See, kids, listen to your mom.  Eating your vegetables really works.

Are you a real estate agent in El Dorado, Amador, Placer, or El Dorado County with one or more years of experience, or more than four closed transactions? Do you believe in doing a great job for your clients, and not giving up a lot of money to your broker? Are you interested in working for a company who can really help you grow your online business, not just pay lip service to it by giving you an Internet lead once every fifteen months or so?

If so, Elite Properties would very much like the opportunity to talk with you. For the past five years, John Lockwood, Elite Properties’ broker, has been steadily building up our Internet market share. As a result, we currently get lots of inquiries from buyers and sellers from the more than 3,000 unique visitors who visit our web sites every day.

We need help working with these clients, and we also need independent producers who bring their own strong prospecting skills or who want to grow their Internet marketing skills in cooperation with a broker who is very strong in this area. If you’re paying too much for online marketing, we can probably help in that area as well. We welcome individuals as well as teams.

We offer extremely competitive splits, and colleagues who are high on integrity and work ethic, and low on maintenance.

Remember:

• If the Internet wasn’t where the transactions are, you’d be reading a newspaper right now, not a web site.
• If your broker had better online marketing than me, you’d be reading him right now, not me.

For a confidential interview, please call John Lockwood at (530) 672-9160.

Buying a house for the college-bound student has become a growing trend lately. In fact, we at Elite Properties handle quite a few calls from parents that are looking to buy their children a house or a condo to live in while they go to college at Sacramento. Just this year, we sold a home to a client from Florida who bought a home blocks away from American River College.

So, based on this story that appeared in the SacBee and Bankrate, what should be some things you should do when considering a residence for your college-bound?

1. Try to find a multi-unit that you can rent out to other students.

2. Make sure to have all leases in writing. (Great opportunity to teach your college-bound the value in investing in real estate!)

3. Pick a property with potential. Make sure it’s close to campus.

4. Have a plan - this is one that most people ignore. Have a plan about what you will do with it before you go out looking. Do prelimnary research and decide.

And oh yeah, if you’re considering Sacramento:
5. Call Elite Properties (very important!)

I will be participating in the El Dorado County Food Bank’s  Walk For Hunger, scheduled for Saturday, November 10, 2007.

I am proud to announce that the way I found out about this event was a legacy of the blogathon for hunger that Bridget and I did last year on another blog.  Hence the nice letter from The Food Bank that I got over on the right.

I’d like to ask for your ideas and input about how to make this a more effective event.  For example, I signed up as a team, and I could sponsor a “virtual walker” or two and raffle off their tee shirts to the subscribers of the blog. 

I should have some kind of matching contributions set up and a way to sponsor me officially online in a day or two.

Meantime, if you just can’t wait to help out, that’s a good thing.  If so just click here to make a donation via PayPal.

Or if you prefer to donate at a national level instead of supporting some county you may or may not have heard of or care about, click the America’s Second Harvest banner below.

Here is that link I promised:

Click Here To Sponsor Me

As you can see when you follow that link, Elite Properties will match your contributions up to the first $100.00.

One statistic that you may be interested in is that for every dollar you contribute, the  El Dorado County Food Bank distributes $9.00 worth of food.  With the matching contributions, that means that $10.00 from you provides $180.00 in much needed food to hungry families.

Again, if there are other ways you can think of to make the event more successful or if you would like to walk with me as part of the Elite Properties team, let me know.

Ever since Elite Properties fell out of favor with a certain search engine we all love, John has been having sleepless nights and in general been very negative. So imagine my surprise when he came up with the most positive thing he has said in a long time with the fortune cookie.

It’s like I don’t know him at all.

But I think some people are like that. They need a challenge to show their true colors. No, I’m not rambling. This is related to real estate, I promise. Because see, those are the people that are selling real estate today. We like challenges. We also like our first time buyers, and we like this not rushed phase where our clients can actually feel like they’re shopping and we have enough time to devote to our very best clients.

Those of us are making very strategic moves. Slowly but surely. And we’re here to stay.

Remember that when the market turns around and you want to hire a discount broker who will list your home for $1,000 because he just got his license yesterday. (Sorry to be bitchy, but now that John’s the optimist, we need some balance around here.)

And oh yeah, we’re back at the number one (and number two) spot!

Congratulations and thanks to Donald and Jeanne D., buyers who get their keys today for a home they purchased for their children to use while they attend college.  Thank you again for your business, and if you have any questions or issues, please let us know!

And congratulations and as well to Jamie Boling-Puebla, their agent, whose execution on the disclosures and the rest of the file was so good that our transaction coordinator even made note of it.

Our transaction coordinator is one of those fussy, detail oriented people who’s not happy unless the file is perfect.   That’s WHY she’s our transaction coordinator!

I decided to write this post as a response to John’s comment (and disclaimer) - I was going to write something different, but I know our clients like to read about the other side of our business as well, so here goes!

Many brokerages have weekly meetings that are mandatory. I believe some meetings are important so that everyone in the real estate office knows the other agents and so that we may learn from one another what we’re doing right and what we could improve upon. Sometimes however these meetings - especially in larger offices - tend to get a bit tedious. What those get reduced to is advertising other businesses which we could use while conducting our business. They become shameless plugs for title companies, lenders, home warranty companies and so on. The worst part is that this is all done under the guise of “getting market updates” and “helping Realtors market themselves.”

Here’s the thing I absolutely believe - the people are successful at this are that way because they do something very authentic to themselves and very different. Even if you learned the obvious strategies, you have to personalize them to your own self. That’s what clients are attracted to. And meetings - especially training meetings - tend to leave out the individual aspect. Company meetings focus on standardizing the service, which works well for the company but not so well for the individual Realtor.

Which is what I love about being at Elite. We’re all very different and our clients appreciate our authenticity and differences. And that is my disclaimer.

Brian Buffini and several other lesser known real estate sales trainers preach a gospel known as “by referral only”.  The idea is that you someday provide such incredible service that your past clients will beat a path to your door in droves, and you’ll no longer have to advertise.

No, wait, that’s not really the idea.  That’s the idea behind the title.  If you search for “By Referral Only” on Google, you’ll find four or five companies doing pay per click advertising on that keyword, as well as a host of websites.  So the idea is “by referral only”, except when it’s not.

My own business philosophy is that referrals are the icing on the cake of doing a good job, not that I should be sending out some expensive drivel to everyone every month reminding them about daylight savings time and when they should prune their dinkleberries, meantime begging for referrals every time.  (Of course, if I were selling the expensive drivel, I’d probably tell you how important it is, too, but I’m not).

So I suppose that given that my marketing is successful, and given that the “by referral only” crowd clearly indulge in the same sort of not-by-referral-marketing that I do, I’ve historically taken a bit of a dim view of the whole by referral only movement (if that’s what it is). 

Lately, however, my marketing-friendly business model notwithstanding, I’ve been very fortunate in that my own personal business has been comprised almost exclusively of referrals from past clients, friends and other folks I know wanting to do business with me. 

The other night I got a call from a past client who bought a home in El Dorado Hills earlier this year referring his brother-in-law, who’s looking for an investment in the greater Sacramento area. 

Vicki and I were also very gratified recently that our real estate transaction coordinator, who — because of the business she’s in — knows a lot of different agents (including some that I would consider to be real “heavy hitters”), chose us to list her home for her.

In addition to those two that I’m working on now, my last two closed escrows are from folks I know personally.

Of course, marketing is the art of getting people you don’t know to like you, but it’s gratifying to know that the people who do know me think well enough to use me, too!

We had lunch during which I got a chance to meet the other members of the Elite Properties team and heard some interesting stories about some of the unknown perils we as Realtors encounter in our profession of selling real estate, some of which are: a biting dog, sellers who sleep during the day and work at night, people enjoying their spas in the middle of the day! This is by no means a comprehensive list, of course.

And speaking of perils, read this (not very) concealed threat I received about my real estate advertising on my car.

But I digress. The meeting was thankfully not like all other sales meetings I’ve attended. And we didn’t do the “needs and wants.” Blech! I just think if you provide a comfortable enough environment for Realtors, they are eventually going to talk about their listings and buyers. We do it naturally. I haven’t met a single Realtor yet who didn’t want to talk about their listings.

Well, unless it’s in that forced office meeting “Wants and Needs.”

We did however get an ultimatum on keeping our paperwork updated. And John went a step ahead and created a checklist. Yay, John! I’ve been wanting one of these at every company I worked with - and you’re the only one that’s taken the time to put it all down on paper!

We have a sales meeting tomorrow.  This is something of a big event at Elite Properties, because we don’t have sales meetings very often.

Let me put it this way:  if we started having them once per month, we’d be moving in the direction of getting more corporate.

Being the pointy haired boss, in the last couple of days I’ve been putting together some good pointy haired boss stuff, to make sure we do our paperwork flawlessly. 

The joke in real estate is this:  if it weren’t for paperwork, we’d have no work at all.  I’m a pretty good pointy haired boss about the paperwork, because I come from a background in software, which is a similar “devil is in the details” sort of operation.

Real Estate at the Broker level is genuine nerd work.  I’m right at home.

Fortunately for me (and for our clients), I also seem to have one non-nerd quality that has been really helpful:  I almost invariably pick really good people to work for me — or they pick me.  Our transaction coordinator, Becky Nagel, has been tremendously helpful on the detail side of things, and our agents have also been very patient with me as I relentlessly pursue getting our transactions done flawlessly.

I should probably ask Purva Brown to come over and join me here at the Sacramento Real Estate Blog. 

I need air support.  I am pinned down by enemy entropy.

(You can see:  I’ve been watching too much of the Military Channel, and taking my daughter out to see Transformers last night didn’t help at all).

The thing that has me pinned down and semi-literate is the new real estate listings site.  The reason it has rendered me semi-literate is that there’s a large body of work in front of me, and even though an intrepid early adopter (can I get an intrepid early adopter?) could start blogging right now, I’m trying to get the site to the point where I’m not embarrassed to even be calling for intrepid early adopters.

The usual dynamic on software projects goes something like this:

CEO:  “Ship it.”

Programmer: “It’s not ready.”

CEO:  “I need something to show people.”

Programmer: “It’s not ready to show anyone.  If I get a demo ready the whole project will take longer.”

CEO:  “Ship it.”

Programmer: “It’s not ready.”

The problem with a one man software project is that I’m both sides of that argument. 

I wonder which one of me will win?

Meantime, in order to get the work done at all, the programmer needs to be sitting at the keyboard thinking about nothing else but the project, period, and every twenty minutes the CEO comes along and says:  “Did you blog something today?  You know we need to keep up on our existing stuff while we’re doing new development, right?”

I really hate that guy.

Thanks and congratulations to Susan S., a good friend of mine from back in my software days .  Susan closed escrow this week on a fabulous home in East Sacramento, one which was offered at approximately 13% off of comparable sales value. 

Susan was fortunate inasmuch as when we previewed it, it was actually pending sale with another buyer.  However this buyer — who was a first time buyer — had a concern because of some slight irregularities in the carpeting, so they cancelled their transaction.  The irregularities were no big deal to Susan even if they’d been let stand — and it turned out they were corrected in escrow in any case.

Susan is shown here having a good time at her new home with several of her friends (some of whom helped informally with her inspections, though she was very dilligent with her formal inspections as well) and her dog, Sage.

We’re hearing good news from Bridget Felmley-Gay about her beautiful listing on Boondock (see the full details or slide show) — looks like there are a couple of offers coming in on this listing.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that one of these buyers will soon be enjoying one of the most picturesque settings we’ve seen in some time.

The home I co-listed with Vicki Agregado on 4032 Birchgrove Way in Rosemont closed escrow last week while I was on vacation.

Hooray!

This listing took longer than we expected to sell, and we faced extensive competition from foreclosures, short sales, and other distressed properties selling in the neighborhood.

This is true in spite of the fact that along the way the list price of this home was what we considered reasonable — toward the end the winning combination was a deeply discounted list price and an above market commission.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Purva Brown has joined Elite Properties as a Realtor®, after several years of experience in that capacity at REMAX Gold and Prudential real estate.

I first contacted Purva several months ago when I was looking through the statistics for local agents, trying to find those that were doing a great job for their clients (which is a good thing), but doing it at other companies (which I actively discourage, since agents who do a great job for their clients are elite agents by definition, and therefore need to work at Elite Properties  — Q.E.D.).

A short time after that, I bumped into Purva again and found out she was the author of a local real estate blog, Sacramento Real Estate Gal, which had just recently launched.  But beyond that, it turned out that Purva’s a genuine writer-type writer — you know, the kind that people pay to put in print, even if there’s not a picture of a house attached.  So we had something in common, because I knew something about getting paid to write things that did have houses attached, and Purva was enough of a writer to get paid to do it even if there wasn’t a house attached.  Yet she still worked with houses and did a great job, not only for her clients, but also for herself and her husband, who are active real estate investors.

I am quite confident that those of you who will call or email us will enjoy working with Purva, because it’s clear in getting to know her she has the friendliness, low key approach, and breadth of experience that my clients tell me they enjoy in our other agents.  I hope my readers will join me in welcoming as I do a new voice and a new perspective on this and on other company blogs.  (I know, some of you may miss the sheer relentlessness of the Lockwood drivel, but please try to bear up as best you can.)

Welcome, Purva!

Here’s an ad you may see if you’re in the market for an agent to list your home in the greater Sacramento area.  I don’t mean to pick on anyone in particular with this.  It turns out there are about eleven local web sites with the same ad:

How I [We] Market Your Home

Technology is a powerful tool in today’s real estate market. Our presence on the World Wide Web gives your home maximum exposure to potential buyers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Worldwide access to information about your home is available on:

National Association of Realtors® website www.Realtor.com
MetroList MLS website
www.MetrolistMLS.com
The Sacramento Bee website
www.SacBee.com
And my own site
[something-something.com]”

Marketing:  Getting a Silk Purse from a Sow’s Ear

The ad above sounds pretty good (except for the Middle English reference to something called the “World Wide Web”.  Beowulf used to call that the “Information Superhighway”.).  But here’s how the ad above boils down in terms of the work the agent actually does:

How I [We] Market Your Home

I put it in the MLS.

That doesn’t sound as good, does it?  But the truth is, I can have your home show up on www.Realtor.com, www.MetrolistMLS.com (that IS the MLS’s web site — duh), www.SacBee.com and “my own site” (actually “my own eight sites” in my case), and I’m going to tell you the awesome secret of my hitherto unknown marketing powers:  I’m a member of the Multiple Listing Service. 

You see, just by entering your home in the MLS, it will be listed on all the web sites that other agents advertise as their “marketing campaign” automatically.  It’s kind of like bragging “I will do actual breathing during your listing.”

“Wow, really?  Inhaling AND exhaling?  Clearly you’re a top producer, young man.  Where do I sign?”

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know I have been working on a service offering called the ultimate online listing, and already it includes featuring your ad on over five hundred pages of web content (granted some of that is automatic now, but I did have to set it up once).  It includes featuring your home on Craigslist, Trulia, Googlebase, and the classified ad section of Sacramento News and Review.  It includes putting your fliers on multiple real estate web logs, both with a local readership and with a national readership. 

That’s just what it includes now.  I’m not done yet. 

And yes, in case you’re wondering, it also includes Realtor.com, Metrolistmls.com, SacBee.com, and my own (eight) web site(s). 

So yes, I’ll breathe during your listing, too, I’m just not going to brag about it.

When the sheer scope of it takes your breath away, then maybe I’ll brag.

To give our sellers yet another edge in getting their home to stand out among all the other homes that show up online, I recently installed a listing slide show feature on my ActiveRain blog, where all of our Elite Properties listings are featured.

ActiveRain is a popular social networking web site that has a huge readership not only among real estate buyers and sellers, but also among real estate professionals who actively work with buyers who may want your home.

Creating an overwhelming marketing advantage for your home is the goal behind this new category we’re writing about, Elite Properties’  Ultimate Online Listing. The idea is that if a single print ad is good, a hundred online listing ads is better.  (We’re still developing this category, so come back again).

I’m Missing Something Fundamental:  Should We Be Selling Homes or Not?

Believe it or not, much of the discussion in the real estate blogging community revolves around why listings should not be posted on blogs. One recent discussion of the issue on a blog maintained by a popular and successful real estate blogging coach maintained that Realtors® should not post their listings to their blogs.

There are a zillion sites out there with listings on them. Blogs with posts about listings look like real estate web sites. Distinguish your blog from the tens of thousands of real estate web sites by making it unique and different. A real estate blog can be used for marketing and will help generate business without listings on it.

Huh?

Let me ask that question a bit differently: WHAT????

Don’t you as a seller pay your agent a big tasty 6% commission to complete the concrete task of selling your home, rather than the generic task of “generating business”. And speaking of business, what was the listing on your home, chopped liver? Didn’t you just generate some business for your blogoholic agent when you agreed to trust them for ninety days or more to sell your house for them? I think an important question at this juncture is “Who’s giving whom the business”?

Nor is this an isolated opinion.

I recently confirmed that ActiveRain, which awards bloggers “points” for their contributions to their non-trivial real estate network, does not award points for posting listings. Now that’s all well and good in a general sense: a webmaster doesn’t have to even let me type on their site, let alone give me points for typing on their web site.

But look, if I had a web site with the by line “Real Estate Network”, what would I put on there, and what would I not try to exclude from it?  Let’s see, “Real Estate Network”. What should go there?  [Scratches head rhetorically]

I may get in a heap of trouble for missing some key philosophical point here, but I’m going to lug my massive 300 lb frame all the way out to the skinny end of the limb and try this answer:

Maybe, oh, I don’t know . . . real estate?

Hi there. John Lockwood. Broker of Elite Properties. My company would like the job of listing your home. We’re not especially philosophical, but we do get it about what you’re paying us for. If you listed with us, your listing appears here, on almost a dozen web sites that we maintain, on ActiveRain, on a special site on vFlyer.com, and elsewhere.

We’re just getting warmed up.

I’m hoping to have good news about a Realtor® I’ve been recruiting for some time now.  Last I heard she’s leaning toward Elite from her current position at (Mumbledee-Mumbledee), so I hope it comes together.  The story behind this agent is rather interesting, inasmuch as I began talking to her last year while I was doing some general recruiting, because her production numbers looked quite good.  What I found out later from an email from her is that she’d started blogging in the meantime but felt a little intimidated because I had done everything she’d thought of doing.

I wasn’t in fishing for compliments mode at that point, but had I been, that would have been a nice catch.   I took her comments instead as an opportunity to make some progress on an idea I’d had stewing for some time, about beginning to grow the company not only as a team of outstanding agents, but also as a community of outstanding players in the Internet market space.

I’m a firm believer in doing what you know, over and over again, better and better.  That may be because I’m in my late forties and I’m starting to act like the proverbial old dog who can’t learn a new trick.  Then again, maybe it’s because it works.

I’m really hopeful that this will come together.  I have a lot of projects that I need tons of writing help on, and would like to really start putting together some great new information that will benefit all Sacramento area buyers and sellers but also help more of my agents have more opportunities to work with the same great Internet-savvy people we’ve had the joy of working with in the past.  Quite frankly, I need someone with a little bit of technical focus to help me think strategically about the whole business, too, because lately I’ve been stretched a bit thin and I’m becoming a bit of a Zombie typing machine.

I’ve publised our second photo tour, this time highlighting Vicki’s beautiful listing on San Jacinto in Citrus Heights.

Kaila’s recording of her rendition of Spanish Dance music appears courtesy of Kaila’s Piano Music Web Page.

Recently I had the pleasure to chat with a fellow parent of a student where my daughter goes to school about her intention to get a real estate license. I always find it fun to talk to people who are new in the business, as it reminds me of that time in my own career, and it gives me a chance to clarify for myself what I think is important about this business. She asked me about the hours, as many people do, because they’re so likely to see us working on weekends. And yes, there’s a lot of that. If you want to make any money in this business, you pretty much have a choice between working a lot of weekends and/or managing others who do. On the flip side of that, no other job is as lenient about you taking a nap at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon if there are no clients to meet at that time and you feel you need one.

We discussed the car issue. She needs to get a better car soon and wanted to know how important it was to have the fancy wheels that Realtors® are infamous for. I don’t have fancy wheels — I have a Honda Accord. So I told her that I’ve sold quite a few houses in a Honda Accord. That seemed to help.

We discussed what the most important traits of a Realtor® are. I said the one I care most about as a broker is honesty. Then I moved on to include optimism — whether innate or learned. Also patience. As a software developer, I had pretty complete control over outcomes — through careful work, testing, and the like. As a Realtor®, I have very little or no control over outcomes. Much of this job (all of it?) involves being able to extend oneself for another human being with no certainty of success. This is not always easy — and it certainly wasn’t natural for me early on. I had to learn it.

Then we got into some of the more everyday skills like knowing about the local market, qualifying buyers, objection handling, and the like.

None of the newcomers I’ve ever talked to has invented the time / space warp device that incorporates my biggest suggestion of all: if you can find a way to skip over your first year, do that. The first year has too much failure and uncertainty in it for my taste. Not for everyone, perhaps, but certainly for a lot of people.

One final thing occurred to me several days later — just today in fact, after a past client informed me that another agent had just bought his listing. You need to know enough basic Google skills to be able to locate the Queen Video when you need it.

Next!

I’ve found some software that does a pretty good job of putting together a slide show for our listings, and I’ve done our first one for Bridget’s beautiful listing in Fairplay.

Don’t forget to put your speakers on so you can listen to Beethoven.

Sellers, yes we’d be happy to do one for you home as just part of our marketing campaign.

I’ve been making some good strides in the last few days in working toward adding some additional online service offerings. Over the next few weeks and months, we should have two of these new services rolling out.

• Our transaction coordinator, Becky, has begun SettlementRoom training and our agents should all have attended within the next week or two. For an idea of what we’ll be able to offer once this goes live, see our PDF flier. Short version: both buyers and sellers will be able to track the progress of their transaction online at any time. Sellers can also view the progress on their listing, and can request (or have their agent request) feedback from other agents online, and view the responses to these requests when they become available.
• We should soon be replacing our online loan prequalification form with a system that will allow you to get an online preapproval for your loan from a partner company, GoLoans.com. Though we’ll still have links and relationships to our third party lenders, our relationship with GoLoans will allow us to offer you the convenience of “one stop shopping”, so you can deal with your Realtor® on both the loan details and the real estate details. Though naturally we and our preferred lenders will also be happy to help you directly by phone or in person, we think many of our visitors will enjoy having the convenience of being able to get a loan approval and precise rate quote online, and to have a single point of contact for all their questions as they come up. As always, however, we fully cooperate with whatever other settlement providers you choose, so you should feel free to use us on the loan side only, the real estate side only, or even just to check out our registration free MLS listings. Like our SettlementRoom system, GoLoans.com will allow you to view the progress of your loan online via a secure connection, so you always know how we’re doing and what documents we will be needing from you.

In addition to these two services, we’re also pleased to be working directly with the management team over at Docusign.com on a set of templates we can use for our clients who would like the convenience of signing their real estate paperwork online. We find that for many of our clients, working online and via email is much more convenient than having to fax paperwork back and forth. (We’ve already taken a step in this direction with our eFax systems that allow us to email you anything we’d otherwise have to fax).

All of these services are optional, but we think many buyers and sellers will want to take advantage of the convenience and hands-on control they offer.

Here are still more possible Elite Properties signs that a graphic artist did for us, that illustrate pretty plainly why she’s a graphic artist and I’m not. She did several. Here are the two front-runners:

We’re pleased to announce a winner in the great pick our sign contest. One of our preferred lenders, Linda Spafford, takes home first prize of a $10 Starbucks Gift Card.

This is especially fortunate because of all the zillions (seven) people who participated, I think the contestant who really most wanted to end up swigging down mochas was Linda. But she won it fair and square anyway, when my lovely wife picked her card out of the deck.

I love contests. Maybe I should write for a real estate carnival.

It turns out lots of people liked #1, and there I was all ready to order signs based on a variation on #1, when Susan’s graphic artist friend said she’d ship us a late entry in our draw a sign competition.

She’s a graphic artist, so she’d better beat me without breaking a sweat, because I’m just a hack with a copy of Fireworks.