This weather is beautiful!! It has been 70′s and mostly sunny the last couple of days here in Richmond. I am taking mental photos of these gorgeous fall days when the sun is shining, the trees are captivating, and you don’t need a jacket to help remind later when it gets cold. The yucky cold of winter is around the corner so then I can take out my mentally saved pictures of this week’s beautiful weather, maybe that plus a cup of hot coffee will ward off the chill of winter. What the weather in your neck of the woods?

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Every time I hear someone talk about making a casserole I think “they must be very busy”. I think of a casserole as a one stop, one hit wonder created for the busy mom on the go. It is designed to combine everything from a well-rounded dinner into one dish, quick and easy. You don’t have to worry about individual recipes or side dishes, just throw it all into one and there you have it. A five course dinner in just one bite! I always feel like casseroles are a cheap easy alternative and often associate them with older people or church pot lucks. Maybe I have a slightly negative connotation with casseroles. But since we are on the topic of food all I can think about is the Thanksgiving menu.

                Just a week away and I’m already conjuring up images of the feast. I see creamy mashed potatoes, golden brown turkey breast, yummy sweet potato casserole… wait did I just drool a little over the thought of a casserole? I’m not sure if I can picture a thanksgiving meal without two or three casseroles. Ok, ok, so I have to admit sometimes things are better mixed together and thrown into a dish. There are moments when its better when time is taken to separate the ingredients and work on them individually. But casseroles have their place and I really do enjoy them.

Real estate can sometimes feel like a thrown together five step process in one huge bite, deliciously rushed. While other times you are required to take your time, go over every detail to create an individualized 4 course meal for your clients. It’s never about eliminating things from your life or from your menu, rather knowing their place and when to break them out!

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Under Contract in 7 Days!! Its beautiful and its going fast!

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We are under contract in just 14 days!!

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First time home buyers Lindsay and Patrick found a place and we are under contract. The house has a lot of charm and we are excited for them!

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Congratulations Sandra Harvey on her new home and to the Pauley’s for selling it. We are happy on all sides. It’s been a bit of a long road but we finally made it!

All too often people get so focused on the business of making money that they forget about the relationship to the people making you that money. We are living in an area where everything is based on fast one stop appeal to the masses idea of business. You go to the doctors and they get you in, get you seen, and get you out. Individualized costumer service is becoming a luxury not everyone can afford. Years ago people had their own family doctor who came to Christmas parties and knew the family history. People felt cared for and secure in the people they invested their money into. They understood individual need and even knew their milk man’s name. Today I’m not even sure if I can pay for a milk man or where to find such a service. People are attracted to businesses that are interested in their individuality.  This type of customer service is a high commodity in a modern age of mass general appeal.  As a real estate agent you have to understand individual needs to meet costumers’ expectation. You should never limit yourself as an agent to a price bracket when selecting clients.  It should be more about the person, the relationship. If you are not going to take on a client I hope the reasons are because of personality flaws not because of their budget. You never know what windows and doors will open up for you through a new client.

My grandmother worked in retail selling high end makeup in department stores all her life. She talked about how she always made the best sales with customers that everyone overlooked. There was one instance where no one would help this woman because she wasn’t carrying a purse. People assumed if she wasn’t carrying a purse she did not have money to buy makeup. My grandmother decided this woman deserved good customer service just like anyone else. The women with no purse ended up carrying her cash in her bra (eccentric as she was) and my grandmother made a huge profit off her sales.  Clients who come in with a budget of $100,000 may turn you off, but you never know if their friends and family, who have $600,000 budgets, are just waiting to hear a good referral for a real estate agent. The moment you start to limit your clientele because of price, is the moment it becomes more about the bottom line rather than the relationship.  When you lose sight of the relationship you lose something important in customer service that this world needs. People talk, regardless of a good experience or bad, wouldn’t you want the talk about you to be positive?

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It’s Monday again and I am met with the sluggish morning whoas that Monday always brings me. I am filled with the longing to have my weekend back and fantasizing about sleeping in while someone else makes me coffee. But instead of these nice things, I stumble out of bed into the cold of my room, after hitting my snooze several times, to find that I have run out of coffee and that it is indeed Monday. I hurry back to my room to throw on my best “this makes me happy” outfit and I’m off to find the closet coffee shop. Driving to work I realize I’m looking for things to be grumpy about. The only problem is I am having trouble finding things to fuss over. I woke up (good start), I have a house (keeps me warm), a coffee maker (just no coffee to put in it), a nearby coffee shop with hot beverages (someone actually did make me coffee), I am off to a job that I love, and it is a beautiful sunny crisp fall day (my favorite time of the year). Oh and I forgot to mention it was daylight savings this weekend so I got in an extra hour of sleep (got to sleep in while someone else made me coffee, isn’t that exactly what I was fantasizing about?). It’s interesting how our brains function; I woke up looking to complain and was given so much to be thankful for.

Sometimes our mindset can control how we interact with our environment. People may go into buying a home with negative connotations and their mindset shades their experience negatively. Our attitude as agents often times provides a temperature gage for our clients. In this beautiful fall season of chilly windy weather I am reminded to be warm and engaging. Tis the season to be grateful and what a wonderful time of year it is! I can say with all honestly I am grateful for Mondays and all the charm they bring me.

Beautiful Homes to see in this Beautiful Weather

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Put it into storage!

I was reading someone’s post today about the importance of staging your home to sell. This being a concept many home owners do not understand. Individual taste is a wonderful thing but when it comes to selling your home it is imperative that your individual taste take the back seat, or better yet go hang out in the back shed. Buyers want to enter a home feel out the space and envision living there. When they come into a home and are met with purple stripes on the wall and your 25 year collection of spotted cows they are immediately turned off.

After Before

I once heard someone say, the best advice to selling your home is to take 80% of their household belongings and put it into storage.  Less is definitely more in this situation. The less of you displayed in your home, the more the buyer can envision themselves living there, creating a greater probability of getting an offer.  The visual you provide for the buyer establishes a motivating operation for them. Once the buyer mentally moves in, it will be hard for them to walk away without making an offer. As a seller you want to give potential buyers more reasons to pursue your home, not the other way around.  I wish more sellers would understand this concept. It should be a rule when signing a listing agreement that the home owners put 80% of their household belongings into storage. I would love to do an experiment to see the different offers between two similar homes, one cluttered, and one with 80% of the stuff taken out.  Well here is hoping your listings are cow spotted collection free! Happy Friday everyone.

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Three weeks till Turkey Day and I find myself thinking about all that wonderful food. This year I will be spending my Thanksgiving out at my in-laws out at their farm in Goochland.  My mother in law is very organic and she tells me this year she will be ordering a Polyface turkey. My hippie parents raised me in eastern Pennsylvania. My dad had a huge garden and my mother grinded her own wheat, made her own bread, and peanut butter. I literally have no memory of going to any grocery store as a kid. So needless to say I like eating organically. When my mother in law said we were having a Polyface thanksgiving I had to do some research.  Polyface is a farming method in which they rotate their animals in such a way that each animal creates a new base for the next rotation. For example; first they allow the pigs to graze, then the cows come to graze, then they have the chickens come and “clean” up the area. This cycle helps create an ecological system that helps cut down on costs and benefits the animals. Polyface farming is suppose to emulate their natural habits. This method creates an organic system that is not only harmonious but beneficial to the animals. It is an incredible unconventional movement to farming and I am very excited about having a Poyface Thanksgiving.

To check out information on the Polyface Farm Click Here

If you want to buy some land to start your own farm click here

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