You Might be a REALTOR® if...

These are funny because they are TRUE! Ask my husband, friends, family and anyone who knows a REALTOR® personally!

Let's get started, and may I just say that I am guilty of many of these characteristics... tsk tsk tsk!

You Might be a REALTOR® if...

1) When you head down to the pub for happy hour you call it a  "networking lunch" and bring business cards.
(let's be real, my pockets are always stuffed with cards)

2) Your professional headshot is plastered all over your business cards, car, website, YouTube channel, Christmas cards, luggage tags, facebook profile, local grocery store, hardware store, 7-11, community hall, mall entrance and anywhere anyone shops.

3) When buying a printer you ask the salesperson if this will stand up to bouncing around in your "mobile office" i.e. the trunk of your car.

4) Your sales team includes your spouse, children, siblings, parents and the family pets.
(this one does not apply to my dog... he's a total jerk to strangers)

5) You are more lost without your phone than a teenage girl on a Saturday. You will return to retrieve it even if you are only going to Timmys for a coffee.
(the overwhelming, sinking feeling when you are out of cell range is very similar)

6) Your holiday cards are actually a giant ad campaign.
(happy holidays, have you seen my professional headshot?)

7) Your daily workspace includes your desk at the office, the passengers seat in your car, your dining room table, the top drawer of your bedside table... any flat surface will do!
(I am guilty of having scraps of paper EVERYWHERE, and if it doesn't get entered into my phone schedule, it doesn't happen.)

So here's the question, why is this particular profession so broadly sweeping with advertising?
I'll tell you why. Because everyone needs a place to live. And we all know that buying property is an excellent long term investment. It baffles me to no end that people spend a huge portion of their monthly income on rent, when that could be going towards equity in a home.
Here's where I come in. I am able to help you make the shift from paying someone else's mortgage to investing in yourself.
As a REALTOR® I am acutely aware of everything it takes to purchase property. There are piles of documents, with hard to understand legal jargon. There are inspections, mortgages, insurance clauses and tests to be done all within a strict timeline. This is my profession and a huge part of my life, helping all sorts of people invest in their future is truly amazing and I absolutely love it.

The final "You Might be a REALTOR® If..."

8) The most exciting and rewarding part of my job is to hand over a tiny key and welcome someone home.

Fun ways to keep warm at home this winter!

Let's face it, Canada is cold in the winter. Nobody relishes in the fact that some days, you could actually die if you get locked out of your home for too long. I have amassed a list of fun ways to ward off hypothermia and keep warm in your homes during the dark months.

1) First off dress appropriately!! What is wrong with you I wear shorts all year round guy?  It's WINTER. Wear pants, several pairs if you need to. You're making me shiver just looking at your bare legs fool.

2) Become a pyromaniac. Whether it be wood, gasoline, bridges, photos of ex boyfriends, bras... I don't care! Fire = heat so dig yourself a pit in the living room and light em up!*

3) Exercise. HAHAHAHhhahahahhahahaha.... no I'm kidding, that's crazy talk! More like perfect your interpretive dance or join a hardcore miming troupe.

4) Hibernate. Seriously, why can't we figure out how to do this? I would be totally fine with having a nap after my turkey dinner in December and waking up for the May long weekend.

5) Take up a cold weather hobby that you enjoy. May I suggest building couch forts and hiding under the blankets for a few months, perhaps buy a tanning bed and sleep in it like a hyperbaric chamber/frying pan. Take a page from Ron Burgundy snuggle up to his friend Scotchy Scotch Scotch (get in my belly!)

6) Shear your cat and knit long underwear, you may need to borrow a few felines from the crazy cat lady next door in order to complete the entire garment... actually I haven't a sweet clue how many cats you would need to shear to make a sweater, but please do post in the comments below if you know or find out!

7) Become a shut in. Let's face it, winter makes us grumpy so let's all stop pretending that we are ok with it and just shut 'er down for a couple months. Lock the door, layer up and make a hot toddy because the idea of staying home in front of a roaring fire (pit) is far more pleasing than sploshing through the salty, slushy, frigid darkness that is our dreadful Canadian winter.

 WHO'S WITH ME?!

I'll admit I spent too many winters as a snowbird in Florida, therefore I am no longer able to cope with the cold reality of the season here. Consider this... when we go out looking at properties in the high season, you can rest assured that I will always be the one scoping out a homes characteristics for things such as woodstoves, solar panels, fireplace inserts and heat pumps. The struggle is real here and I never overlook these critical details. Even when it's not on your mind, I'll never let you get stuck out in the cold.

*Please only LOL at this one rather than actually doing it.

 

Location, Location, Location

So what's up with the terrible real estate clichés?
You know the ones I mean. The ones that make you groan and skip to the next listing. The ones that, instead of really making you want the house, make you really want to give someone a slap.

I'll admit that in writing a listing description, even the best can sometimes get a bit off track and overly flowery. As a reminder to myself and my colleagues, let's try to avoid these doozies.

1) "Handymans Dream" - This one is my favorite. Really, dream? More like a handymans nightmare!! After seeing these places, buyers might wake up in a cold sweat and need a hug.

2) "Priced to Sell" - Who writes that? The the department of redundancy department? If it's not priced to sell than why the heck would I ever show it? Best of luck with your property that is priced to stay on the market for 2 years.

3) "and much, much more" - Alrighty then, did you run out of characters allowed with your rampant redundancy? Get to the point, the description is precisely where the "much, much more" stuff goes.

4) "To Die For" - Oh My! To heck with vagueness! I have yet to find a property that anyone was willing to ACTUALLY risk their life for. That is absurd.

5) "Defies Description" - Wowzers! For real? You actually don't have the vocabulary to describe the property? Perhaps you could just state how many outlets are in each room and which windows face the road. That would provide more information than a description that isn't descriptive.

6) "All Reasonable Offers Considered" - Indeed, but what if I sent you a completely unreasonable offer? You won't consider it? Ahhh, yes, thank you for pointing out how this process will play out for THIS particular property.

In this age of tech savvy buyers, we must be diligent about what is put out to the advertising world. Buyers are factual, well informed and able to critically compare properties.
With a significant number of properties on the market right now, you need a REALTOR® that is marketing your property in the absolutely best possible light.
Quick comparisons make for quick decisions and someone who makes your property fade into the rest of the pack isn't doing their job.

DID YOU KNOW? - Kentville

I did this vlog a while back with the pumpkin people of Kentville. If you are thinking of buying or selling around Kentville, there is a ton of information here!
This is posted on my YouTube channel, so have a look around there too, I have video tours of some of my listed properties.

Stilettos and Garbage

I often get asked about being a REALTOR® and what this job entails. There are good days, bad days and some days that make for great stories. Without going into too much detail, here are some of the stories of my life as a REALTOR®. I assure you, these stories are true and either are my own personal accounts or that of a situation that happened to one of my colleagues.

Rural showings are a way of life here and that can mean run-ins with animals. I often encounter yapping dogs, snarling cats, and occasionally unfortunate creatures that are no longer with us (taxidermy is cool, right?). I have yet to see any animals that I was overly fearful of… at least not face to face. I was showing a very large parcel of land in a rural area and my client wanted to “walk the land” to check out the 90 acres that came with the house. We began our trek (one of many) that led us through brambles, thick undergrowth and parts of Nova Scotia that I am confident had not seen human traffic in quite some time. We were ‘walking’ along (scrambling/dodging/scraping through the forest) when, as if by design we come across a recent deposit of fresh animal poop. It was full of berry seeds and quite a large pile. It was bear scat. By this time we are halfway to nowhere and decide the best idea was to make noise to frighten off whatever left this gift. I have never been known for my singing voice but it’s usually handy for scaring things away. So there in the silence of the forest in the centre of the province, I picked up a large stick and I sang. I see lyrics as a guideline and pride myself on my creative rhymes, making sure to incorporate the surroundings of my current situation. If I don’t know the words I make my own! My poor client who is very talented musically must have been as happy to get out of those woods as I was. I can’t speak for the bear, but I doubt he will be seeking out any human contact in the future.

This next story is an account from another REALTOR® that was showing a 2 unit rental property I had listed. The only tenant was out of town when I contacted him about the showing but assured me the house was ready to be viewed. I confirmed with the buyers agent and waited hopefully for the report on how the showing went. The agent called immediately following their appointment and was obviously shaken up, asking if the tenant was elderly and when was the last time he had been heard from. The tenant had forgotten to take out the garbage before going away for a few weeks. The entire house smelled so bad that the buyers agent was concerned that they may have been in an episode of a forensic investigation show! They promptly left before seeing the upper and lower levels of the home.

                                                          

My third and final story for this entry is a shining moment in my career for certain (and I have amassed quite an impressive list in very little time!)
This one feeds on two of my weaknesses, stilettos and garbage.
While I don’t usually show houses in heels, sometimes duty calls and my office attire gets called out into the field. On this particular day I was feeling snazzy in the morning so I thought a very smart (looking) outfit would be a snug high waisted pencil skirt a white blouse and a towering pair of my favorite heels from le Chateau. Oh YEAH! I got a call to show buyer clients a home and made the appointment for that afternoon. We looked all around the large home and were just finishing up in the garage when their energetic son got bored of the process and was ready to leave, NOW. They rounded him up before he took out anyone or anything and bolted from the garage… In my haste to exit after them I attempted some high stepping moves over a pile of trash but impaled my heel on a cardboard box. It folded up over my leg to knee level and I lost my balance crashing backwards into an impressive mountain of recyclables. There I was in a skirt too tight to move, feet in the air with an empty box on my leg, squawking loud enough to alert any authority (or scare off any bears). Luckily the buyers were old friends of mine so they hauled me out of the pile and we all had a great laugh at my expense.

 

Life in real estate is a roller coaster, sometimes the success lies in learning to pick ourselves up, grab a large stick and sing a song about garbage and stilettos.