"What is it with business people trying to sound big? The stiff language… the artificial friendliness…the legalese. You read this stuff, and it sounds like a robot wrote it."
"This mask of professionalism is a joke. We all know this. Yet small businesses try to emulate it."
Quotes from Rework by Jason Fried and Davis Heinemeier Hanson. CrownBusiness@RandomHousse.com
I wondered about this, too, when my daughter and I decided to start a Real Estate Brokerage. (My daughter has kept her Real Estate Agent license long enough to qualify as a Principal Broker; thus, she can create her own agency. I'm an agent. She's the boss.) I wondered if people go for the big guys and ignore us.
Yet how did Avis, the car rental company, take on Budget? With their slogan, "We try harder."
Years ago, looking for a Realtor, I thought I ought to find the top seller and go with them. They know more, I thought. They have more experience. Now, I think, "How hard is it to write up an offer?"
When we were planning to move from California to Oregon. I looked up a Real Estate Agency that was a top seller. We bought a plot of land found by an agent who presented it to us. Not the big guy. The second Realtor found the property, showed it to us, wrote up the offer, and that was it. It was a simple transaction. It was raw land at a reasonable price, just what we wanted. (We built a house on it.) I felt guilty for not going with the agent who showed us a half-dozen houses—however, she was showing us top-dollar homes for what we could afford.
Years later, I again enlisted a top seller. (I'm a slow learner.) They simply took pictures of the house, placed it on MLS, and waited for someone to find and buy it. They didn't have a bevy of buyers looking for what we had to offer. However, this was in 2009, the worse time to sell a house.
We rented it. And moved to Hawaii--and back. (See The Frog's Song by Joyce Davis) The renter knew about a Land Sale where the renter takes over the payments. The mortgage company kept quiet for they were getting paid at a time people were defaulting on their loans. The renter was delighted, for he had a house without a down payment. We were overjoyed that we weren't making house payments on a place that was too expensive for the market, plus we owed too much on it to pay a Realtor.
The renter paid the mortgage until he could obtain a loan and bought the house.
All's well that ends well.
Now I'm a new Realtor--passed my test, got my license, and have been working on a website. I keep shaking my head if I go into the Home Search engine we placed on our site. That process took a learning curve. They say our search engine, firmly attached to MLS, is better than Zillow, for it keeps homes for sale up to date. Zillow, being a national company, takes a while longer. Sometimes when going to Zillow, you find the home of your dreams pending or sold. I'm shaking my head, though in wonder. How can people afford a house these days.
The market will level out. It's inevitable.
If interested, here's a peek at our site:
Something to whet your appetite:
Something to whet your appetite:
https://vibrancerealestate.com --Home of Pink, the Pink Flamingo. If people have a For- Sale-Sign in their yard, shouldn't it have a Pink Flamingo on it--not my big fat face?
Our business card:
