yo yo yo

So, I should probably stop pointing out my posting irregularity as of late.  It is what it is, and it will change. :)

 

However, not sure what to write about the last week.  One of the two clients that submitted offers on the same property has had their offer accepted (and the other one still trusts me, which is good), and we are moving forward to an August 15th settlement.

 

Meanwhile, gotten a couple of more buyers/buyer leads.  One guy is real cool...looking to buy in Russett in Laurel.  Unfortunately, he co-signed a loan for his sister, which is killing his credit, but he will still be able to buy where he wants.  He contacted me off of some rental marketing that I do.

 

The other is a couple from church whose parents I talked to back in the day.  I am meeting with them at my place tonight.

 

Well, Chris (the lender dude I work with) is coming over in 30 minutes so we can go over the small pile of leads from the past 5 months and discuss follow-up, so I should probably get ready.

 

Peace,
Greg

back in the thick of it...

So, my trip away was great (for a complete report from a poker standpoint, click on the MD-Poker link on the side and look for Trip Reports), but not worth mentioning too much here.

Business-wise, things have been a little crazy. I get home to find a For Sale sign 4 doors down from me. I look up the price, and it looks like a solid investment opportunity in my neighborhood. With that, I call my three investors that are looking in the area on Sunday.

Yesterday, I show the property to investor #1, and they put in an offer. While we are finishing up, investor #2 arrives at my house. They sit on the couch while I finish up, and then we look at other properties in the area.

Investor #3 comes by today, and we look at the same property, plus another property on my block (a HUD home). He wants to put in an offer on the HUD home, as the owner-occupant priority period ended (basically, for most HUD homes, no one can submit an offer on a property except an owner-occupant for the first 10 days). However, we get to my place, the HUD home received several bids yesterday, and a "winner" has been awarded already. So, now, investor #3 wants to put in an offer on the other home.

So, I have two clients that both submit offers in on the same property...very weird situation. For my second client, it was hard because I couldn't tell him anything about the first offer. For my first client, they just need to trust that I didn't tell the second client anything. Neither of them fully listened to my advice, and both offers are good in their own way, so it's going to be interesting to see what happens...

Meanwhile, I met with a new buyer client today, so that was fun.

Okay...time to go.

Peace,
Greg

going away

So, the wifey and I have two trips away planned. First, three days in AC starting tomorrow. This way we get some quality time in before she gets sucked into the black hole that is med school.

Anyway, learned the hard way about HUD properties today...would be too tedious to go into here. Besides that, the sellers of our home hired a roofer to fix our roof, so that was finally done this morning. Now onto addressing the damage that is already done to the ceiling of our kitchen.

Well, lots to get done before heading out tomorrow morning!

Have a great weekend!

Peace,
Greg

moving in...moving in...moving in... :)

Man, it's harder to move into a house than an apartment, especially when your roof is leaking all the way down to your kitchen. :) So, the dining room was set up tonight, which is huge.  The kitchen's been set up.  The basement was organized a couple of days ago.  Got all the appliances up and running (the dryer vent installation was a long process).  Painted our address on our garbage cans.  Set up move of the living room.  However, despite some work done, my office, Sara's study, and the master bedroom are still badly in need of some "move in magic."

 

Professionally, fighting off the lack of motivation that comes from a disorganized office, and I'm in a little bit of a drought, but things are happening.  Home inspection for my 7/20 settlement today, and new leads are trickling in a little at a time, many of them buyers for the future.  The nice thing about this is that it should be setting up a windfall for Sara and me down the road...however, it can be a little stressful for right now.

 

Oh, I never told you.  So, my picture is up in my office three times: June 2006 Top Producer of the Month; June 2006 Sales Agent of the Month; and June 2006 Rookie of the Month.  It's pretty cool and a sign of how hard I worked to have the success that I had for the three months prior to this one.  At the same time, I was really surprised to see how unproductive my colleagues were.  I had a very good conversation with two of the top producers from our sister office (Ft. Meade and BWI are two offices that share the same office meetings and office manager) about how unimpressive most of the "competition" is.  I hope that doesn't sound overtly arrogant...it's really just a statement on the real estate industry.

 

Anyway, time to sleep...meeting with new clients in the morning!

 

Peace,
Greg

Today...

So, after catching up on e-mail until I posted late last night (um...this morning), I went to bed. I catch 5 hours of sleep and wake up at 9am to a couple of e-mails that I need to reply to.

I take a shower and get out the door by 10:10am, with my untied tie hanging around my neck. I get to Laurel for a 10:30am pre-settlement inspection. My buyer shows up just about on time (by my standards :)) with her mother, fresh in from California. The pre-settlement inspection went off without a hitch, and the sellers were seriously the sweetest people ever, which was great.

So, we left the property around 11am, and now we needed to get word from the title company with what the buyer had to bring the table (4th of July week was screwing everybody up...the condo association hadn't gotten documents to the lender, etc...). So, I call the title company and leave a message for the processor. At this point, the buyer had planned to go to a bank near the property, not one near the settlement, so a quick call to my beautiful "assistant" (a.k.a. "wifey") gets me a new location for the bank near the title office.

In the 30 minutes to the the bank, I make a few phonecalls, only to find out that another of my buyers (settlement date: July 20th) is way behind in getting things together in time for settlement (again, July 4th...argh), so I'm dealing with that, while my buyer and I perform a comedy routine in finding a bank because the numbers on Ritchie Highway stop and restart right where we were, and she, driving separately from me with a GPS in her car, forgot we had to go to the bank all together. Right.

So, we get to the office and the two previous settlements started late, so now we need to wait to get started. So, the 12:30pm settlement starts closer to 1pm. I get out of there at 2:20pm and (again with the help of my "assistant") get over to my Ft. Meade office around 2:40pm for a 2:30pm appt. Yikes.

Fortunately, my clients for this appt. were late, so we got out to see the one property they wanted to see, a rental in Severn. It's perfect for them, but their credit is real shaky, so who knows how that is going to work out. But, they are in touch with the property management company, so keeping fingers crossed. I really want to help this people, and it's frustrating that I have so few options for thier situation. :(

Anyway, so that wraps up around 3:45pm, and I get over to the BWI office for 4:00pm, pretty much figuring that my appt. wasn't going to show up (it was a potential new client that I set an appt. with on Monday, and she's been ducking my calls ever since), but I needed to drop off copies of the HUD-1 to the office assistant anyway, so it was worth a 10-minute trip.

Since then I've been catching up on e-mails and phone numbers and what not.

Alright...off to home...a couple of things to do at the home office and then calling it a week. :)

Peace,
Greg

P.S. Oh, and I found out today that somehow I am my office's "Top Producer of the Month," "Top Sales Agent of the Month," and "Rookie of the Month" for the month of June, so that's cool...

apologies to the faithful 2 :)

Moving has destroyed my ability to remember to post on this thing daily without a problem. :)

 

Well, that and two settlements in a week and 4th of July stuff and seeing friends in the area now that we live here and rain coming through the bathroom roof and other stuff needing attention around the house and and and...  Overall, things are good.  I definitely have to be careful, because I have reverted to college hours more than I have ever in this last couple of years.

 

Speaking of which, that's a good rant for today...  College hours.  Man, 4 years of college prepared me to succeed as a Realtor...despite my mom's occasional, "So, why did we pay for that college education?", the Hamilton education I received prepared me to be a communicator and a thinker in an industry that is overrun with agents that don't do either or both of those things well.  Okay...that's another rant for another time.

 

But, as I was getting at, college, while useful, also manages to train your body to be at its most productive between the hours of 11pm and 4am (which is just about what time it is now).  Crazy.  So, at your formative years of adulthood, you are trained to perform in ways that is never again going to be entirely satisfactory or ideal for the rest of your life.  Blah.

 

So, I guess that's just a mini-rant.  One day, I will grow up enough to learn how to surpass all the many distractions that exist during the day so I am not posting something like this at an ungodly hour such as this. :) But, seriously, when it gets late, and it's quiet inside and out, and nothing good's on tv, and no new e-mails are coming in, and the number of players on the poker sites has significantly decreased, and the cats are not being persistent in their quest to be pet, and there's no meals to prepare, etc...now, I can work effectively, efficiently, and attentively.

 

I'll get back to a more normal schedule over the upcoming weeks...

 

Peace,
Greg

HAPPY 4th OF JULY!!

Things to do, people to see...wifey's to make happy by doing the former of those two things... :)

 

Have a great day everyone!

 

Peace,
Greg

keeping busy

So, here's a pic of the house, complete with the welcoming graffiti on the side. :)

Alright, two settlements this week and stuff going on.

Peace,
Greg