Randy G Morley

Show 3 houses,.. 1.5 hours,.. go over a contract,.. 1 hour,... attend the Inspection,.. 2 hours,.. go to closing,.. 45 minutes,.. get a big check!!

5 hours, 15 minutes,.. $10,000 commission,... or $5,000 That's nearly $1000 an hour!!!

All of us are aware of the Real Estate Agent Boom that we have experienced,... Agents seem to be a dime a dozen,... the boom,.. is in no small way due to the great agents that do their job well.

As agents, our goal is to keep stress away from our clients, to provide them with a fun experience. We minimize what we do because we don't want them stressed out. The hours of time spent in contract and negotiations behind the scenes, the hours spent with lenders and working as the go between, the hours and the thousands of dollars spent in maintaining marketing that is not only top notch but is bleeding edge,.. along with the deals that we spend as much time on and sometimes more that never make it to the closing table.

For a time,.. Real Estate was very very lucerative,.. rewarding mediocre agents for mediocre work,...

Those times have past,.. The agents that will survive will be those same agents with the service mindset,.. that ackowledge that especially during this time,... professionalism and service is key.

Yes,.. we are paid well for what we do,.. and sometimes that means we need to give the benefits of our experience away,.. to start seeing ourselves as public servants helping everyone we can,.. however we can,.. regardless of the paycheck at the end,...

Because Real Estate is not only our living,.. it's our life.

If you value your freedom, thank the men and women who have sacrificed to make that freedom yours!! Let us also NOT forget the families left behind in times of war, or conflict,.. daughters who have sacrificed their Dad's or Mom's, Sons who may never get to know what fishing with Dad is Like, or having mom to kiss away the hurt.

Whether or not we agree with what is going on here, the War in Iraq, the Conflict in Afghanistan,.. each of us owe men and women such as these a debt of gratitude and a whelping,... HOOORAH!!

For those who do not value their freedom,... please feel free to leave,.. I am sure there are plenty of places that they can go where they might feel more at home,...

The marketing that I see other "Real Estate Professionals" do is amazing. How many times have you pulled a flyer out of a box, only to find the MLS listing in the box,.. or one photo,.. typically bad,.. included in the MLS.

Our system at the Pikes Peak Multiple Listing Service even allows all the disclosures to be placed in the listings that are needed to go with an offer,.. yet many agents never post them.

This is what I call Lazy Agents,.. We are paid well for the services that we provide,.. and if we are not,.. it is due to our own lack of negotiation ability or because we are riddled with low self esteem of our worth. It seems to me that our Sellers who pay these fees,.. deserve to have professional representation of their homes.

We include Virtual Tours on every property, not just a select few, 2 sided, 4-color flyers at the house, Showcased Realtor.com Listings, Broadcasting to every major Real Estate Portal we can get our hands on, and every listing is filled with as many photo's, disclosures and descriptions as we can muster.

I think that often,.. we see the home as a transaction,.. as business,.. but we forget that to our Seller's,.. it's not a business transaction,.. It's personal. If we expect to be in business next year,.. it would be wise for all of us to take it personally as well.

Doing My Best

I know that I am tempted at times to fall into "The Sky is Falling" type of mentality,.. after all,.. it is everywhere. One group of people seem to think that Obama is the great new hope,.. others are inundated with e-mails stating that he is the anti-christ himself. How will this new administration effect the Real Estate Market,.. The Buyers and the Sellers?

The truth is that the news we hear most often is of a national nature. Your area may be doing worse than that average, or it may be considerably better. It is important to note that "Bad News" buys ratings at a greater rate than "Good News". The networks are rewarded for skewing things negatively.

Unfortunately, this also effects the Buyers and the Sellers in Your area.

We are the professionals, and it is our job to look at the stats and educate our clients relating to our market. Real Estate is Local,.. and sometimes it is different even between the different neighborhoods in your area.

Don't be caught up in the hype,.. do your own homework,.. don't rely on the news, or your local paper even to supply the statistics you need. Our board has begun to track the averages, the medians, the actives and new listings vs the pending and solds and it is amazing that our numbers are far better than the local papers,..

But then again,.. we aren't trying to sell papers,..

Short Sales, Foreclosues at an all time high, The Bail Out, The Stock Market Plung,..

It seems that it doesn't matter where we turn,.. the sky is falling and Chicken Little is running around yelling at the top of his lungs,.. I Told You So!!

Sometimes the news can get te better of us,.. and we want to crawl up in a hole somewhere until the storm passes,.. We want to live in the past,.. during the days of plenty and wonder where they went.

The truth is that every storm also provides equal opportunity. Just think of how much money is being made by so called "Short Sale and Foreclosure Experts",.. draining our pockets as we hope for a nugget of truth that will give us the edge in this market.

I think that sometimes we can get so wrapped up in our own fears, that we forget that we are public servants,.. no we don't run for office,.. we are not elected,.. but what we offer,.. is a public service. We help people to attain their goals,.. and sometimes to avoid their fears.

When a Buyer calls you,.. is your first question,.. "what can yu do for me?" of course not,.. you want to know what their goals are, what their needs are, attempting to decipher how you can help them to obtain their goals of Home Ownership.

When a Seller calls you,.. the Seller will convey a need,.. to get out of their house. And in todays market that is often complicated by too high of mortgages, or mortgages that have adjusted beyond what you could possibly sell the property for.

It is important, I think, to look past the storm of this time and to focus on the opportunities at hand. An opportunity to be a Sellers Hero, saving them from foreclosure, a Buyers Hero helping them to build up their retirement or provide a future for their childrens college.

The opportunities have not evaporated, they have simply changed and we must change to meet them or find other lines of work.

Be Blessed and Have an Incredible Year