Pursuing the American Dream changed my life!
Throughout my adult life, 50 years give or take a few, I have personally “experienced” 17 real estate transactions in six states! I say that because each one, beyond being a real estate transaction with a typical process associated with it, has been a unique life changing experience!
Those real estate transactions spanned the spectrum — renting, leasing, sub-leasing, purchasing and selling, and involved apartments, townhomes, small and large single-family homes, and ranch properties.
From the lease I signed on my first rental home to the sales contract I signed on my forever home, and all the signatures on leases and sales contracts in between, I have experienced the best and worst real estate has to offer!
The good and bad experiences and life lessons associated with them are a story in themselves and were a major reason I decided to leave a successful career in IT to become a full-service Real Estate Advisor | REALTOR®. Those experiences transformed my passion for helping others improve their personal and business processes into one of helping others pursuing the American Dream of homeownership to experience the best and avoid the worst!
Since making the career change over seven years ago, I have been involved in many real estate transactions as a buyer’s agent and as a seller’s agent and have represented clients through their home buying and home selling experiences. Each one has been a life changing experience for them and for me!
Along with the many life lessons I have learned along the way are two very important things that stand out to me through my personal and professional experiences:
Real risk in life is what we don’t know about what we don’t know, and usually don’t find out about until we are into an experience, when in many cases it is too late to influence the outcome in our favor. If we only knew what we need to know before getting into the experience we could be proactive and at least have contingency plans through which to somewhat influence the outcomes in our favor. Having said that, there are undoubtedly life changing experiences that we can find ourselves in that there is no way to influence or change the outcomes.
Being that real estate transactions are often the largest financial transactions we make in our lifetimes, they are often the proving ground for significant life changing experiences and can have profound repercussions if the bad aspects outweigh the good aspects.
Because real estate transactions involve negotiating with multiple parties, have lots of important considerations, legal requirements, and implications they are often filled with emotion and cause undo stress. That stress and emotion can impact our judgement and threaten our ego, both of which can lead to less than optimal decisions and results.
Having as a foundation a career focused on process improvement and value-added services, I brought that mindset to real estate and to my interactions with clients. To help my clients achieve their real estate goals while minimizing stress AND maximizing return-on-investment, I approach real estate transactions from a process perspective, understanding the client’s goals and situation, communicating the steps in the process, the strategies associated with them, and the communication required around them.
This approach empowers us as a team to know what we need to know and to have a strategy and plan in place to achieve the desired results and for dealing with knowns and unknowns, including contingencies for surprises that may pop up along the way.
Sharing the ups and downs of the real estate transaction journey is rewarding and challenging! My motivation: building life-long relationships through reducing and eliminating the unknowns and experiencing these life changing experiences, theirs and mine! If you are thinking about buying or selling a home I would be honored to assist you!
