Real Estate
Local MLS | My Listings | Buyers | Sellers | Investors
Under this Real Estate heading, I have compiled a truly in-depth and comprehensive guide to real estate to help you get a better understanding of how real estate works.
Real Estate encompasses a lot of things. It really touches everyones’ lives because ultimately, wherever we are, the land beneath us is real estate. For many, the term real estate is about a house, a place to call home. But what about the mall where you shop? the schools where your kids are educated? the office building where you work? the park where you jog?
It’s all real estate. Residential or Commercial, Public or Private, real estate has a profound impact on us, our communities and our nation.
Then you have to consider all the related industries that rely on the business of real estate. I’m not just talking about the real estate brokers. Consider all the people involved just in the transaction itself… closing attorneys, title searchers, home inspectors, pest control companies, contractors and sub-contractors, moving companies, etc. Those seem a little obvious, yes? Well, then consider that when people buy homes, they also tend to: buy new appliances; install new flooring; hang new window treatments; buy new furniture; buy home dec knick-knacks; paint interior and/or exterior walls; plant new landscaping; buy all those pesky little things you need around the house from the local home improvement center; send out moving notices (yes, the postal service gets a cut of this too!), throw a housewarming party, and the list goes on and on. (I know whenever I’ve moved, I’ve spent a fortune just re-stocking my fridge of basic condiments and the broom closet with cleaning supplies.)
Therefore, as real estate professionals, we know the community, the people, the businesses, the neighborhoods. We are connected with these things not just as real estate professionals but as people and members of the community with the same concerns, issues and interests as everyone else. Many people think that real estate agents’ collectively work towards destroying communities by developing all available land. That’s not true. As REALTORS® we work towards protecting private property rights, to ensure that everyone has the right enjoy their ownership with minimal interference from others, including the government.
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As a background, when I was a first-time homebuyer, more than finding a house, I wanted to find information. Being a GenX’r, I went on-line to research the process and well, the average real estate sites were rather lacking. They were all generally the same: sites asking me ‘what type of house are you looking for?’ and offering little in the way of any real information. It didn’t take much to figure out that these sites were mere fishing lines with hooks on the end trying to reel me into calling this agent or that. That was the last thing I wanted.
And neither was I looking for a house on-line. I was looking for answers to questions. I was looking for some idea as to how the home buying process worked. What could I expect? What are the steps involved? What could I do to best prepare myself? What did some of these terms and expressions I had heard mean? I simply wanted to arm myself with as much information as I could before I started down the path.
So, when I became a real estate agent, I set off to create the real estate website I had been looking for, one full of information and answers. My first site launched in 2003, a sort of testing ground for my skills as a web designer, I suppose. I re-tooled it in 2004 and now, the latest version. It took a long time and lot of writing… and with this new version of my site, I’ve tweaked things even more. My Buyers and Sellers Guides feature valuable information in and of themselves, but the most popular part has been the Buying 101 and Selling 101 feature where I walk Buyers and Sellers through a typical transaction and explain step-by-step what happens, why it happens, what the principals obligations/choices/liabilities may be, and so on.
Understanding that not everyone is local, I have expanded my Local Area Guide with more information to give the Golden Isles novice a better lay of the land and understand the areas that make up our communities be it St Simons Island, Brunswick, Jekyll Island, Sea Island, or the outer counties of Camden, McIntosh, Brantley and beyond. My Neighborhood Guide has been a valuable tool for folks over the years to help them narrow down the places where they might want to call home.
And of course, my site cannot be based on education and information without a FAQ and an extensive Glossary (I teach pre-license, remember… I have to know this… my students have to know this… I just thought I’d pass it on.)
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