While I am generally pretty trusting of clients that I have dealt with over an extended period of time, I might have to get back to some rules that served me well when we saw more potential clients.

I have been very lenient about taking my online customers on a neighborhood tour of our area in the hopes that they could make a quick decision as to whether we are the right area for them or not.  In general it has worked well.  Most like what they see and end up buying in our area.

Recently I had a visit from a couple with whom I had been working for over eighteen months.  There was a fair amount of communication that went back and forth over that time.  I was well informed when the closing for their home got postponed.

When they finally stored their stuff and made the long drive down from the northeast, they were good about getting in touch with me.  They ended up staying in another village about 45 minues from our area. They apparently had relatives in the village.

I agreed to show them our area one afternoon.  One of the first questions I asked was why they were not locating close to their relatives.  I was told that there was no way they would locate there because there was nothing to do there, and their son would be terribly bored.

So I took them on a trip of a few hours through our area.  I showed them enough neighborhoods to get an idea what they liked, and at the end I showed them one unoccupied house so they could be familiar with a typical home in the area.  It seemed like we had got along well, and I did not sense any problems.  They appeared in no rush.  They told me they wanted to be careful since this might be their last home.

I was pretty busying working on two closings so when they called to see some homes, I quickly agreed without my normal "if I am going to spend this much time with you, we need to have an agency agreement speech.

They got real serious about what they wanted and over the space of a couple of days, I found them two homes which they really liked.  They liked them enough to get the name of a banker from me and get pre-qualified.  They wanted to do some serious thinking before making an offer so we agreed to talk the first of the next week.

My wife and I were going to be out of town for the weekend so I made arrangements with the two sellers' agents in our company who had the listings to show the homes if my buyers had any questions or wanted to see them again.  I was a little surprised they did not take me up on the offer.

I called to check on them during the weekend, and I was told that things were still on track, and they were just trying to decide which house.

One of the homes is a particular favorite of mine and the other is just across the street from where I live.

When I got back in town, I called to see if a decision had been made.  I was told that neighter home excited them now, and they were considering a job in another state.  I was certainly surprised, but this is real estate and anything can happen with today's buyers.

They asked me to call them back in a week or two, and what they were doing might be a little clearer.

The fact that they all of sudden stopped loving these two homes smelled like a red herring to me.  I was very suspicious as to what was happening.

When I called back in a week, I missed them.  The wife called back and said they had decided to buy a home down the street from their relatives, and they were taking a job out of state.  It would work well for them.

I was happy to have the honesty from them, but it was  a good reminder that I should never put someone in the car for serious looking unless they have signed an exclusive buyer agency agreement with me.

The reality is that when yoiu smell a red herring, something is likely rotten.

I would rather Carpe beach diem than waste my time with someone who is going to buy in another area.

If you are from North Carolina like my wife and I are, you have likely heard the old description of North Carolina as "the valley of humility between two mountains of conceit."  The two mountains of conceit are Virginia and South Carolina.  North Carolina developed a little later because its well-protected coast line was harder for ships to penetrate. Until the last century North Carolina was considered a backwoods area by its neighbors.

Sometimes  dealing with buyers and sellers, I often see people who think they really know the real estate market.  Their only reason for using a real estate agent is to get some marketing support or some help getting into the houses that they have already picked.

Conceit according to dictionary.com means- "an excessively favorable opinion of one's own ability."  It is rare to find a seller who can separate their emotion from the decision of what to price their property.  Most will listen to your pricing suggestions, and then go with their own number anyway.  I have even taken people to see homes that have sold quickly so that they can get an idea of what features and prices are important to buyers. While that helps, I have seen people pretend to not like just the features that are selling homes today.  It seems that the only cure for sellers who want to overprice their homes and lots is for the property to sit on the market forever.

When it comes to buyers, one of the great challenges is getting over their assumption that the dollars they want to spend will get them exactly what they want.  Our biggest problem is that buyers assume that the three or four hundred thousand dollars they have budgeted for their waterfront home will actually get them a waterfront home.

Even after seeing the challenges of waterfront properties in those price ranges, they continue with the thought that the next foreclosure or short sale might be just the ticket.

Actually of the two groups, buyers usually end up figuring it out first.  Eventually when time after time they see homes that do not meet their standards,  they figure out they are either going to have to pay more money or settle for less.

Back in the spring I took a listing that was overpriced.  It was against my better judgment, but the family seemed to eager to work with me, and made a commitment to lower their price should the house not move.  The husband was one of the strangest sellers that I have met. Eventually he convinced himself the property was not in MLS in spite of there being MLS flyers in a box in his front yard.

I suspect they were very puzzled as to why I was so happy when getting them to sign a cacellation of their listing agreeement, nine months early.  When another seller dropped his lawn service and turned off his air conditioning. I started working towards cancelling the listing.

Buyers are hard enough to find without getting them into a house with grass that is 12-18 inches high.

Perhaps it is just the market that causes the weird behavior.  While buyers can certainly be excused for thinking they might find a deal in this market, sellers should know better.

Sellers have to be hiding under a rock to not know that real estate is down in price a lot.  As we have seen homes go for 25 to 30 percent less than asking price, some sellers have figured ii out and are putting their homes on the market at recommended prices.  Those homes are now moving quickly.

As the market stabilizes I am hoping our two mountains of conceit become molehills that are a little easier to help.

I am fortunate to have worked with great buyers and sellers over the last few months.  Having a great experience with someone makes it a lot easier to take the tough ones.

Great clients are always a safe harbor when times are tough.  I was happy to see the safe harbor of Bluewater Cove pictured at the top of the post.  My morning kayaking trip which had started out with calm waters had ended with gusty winds and large swells which are not very reassuring in a kayak.

Just as it was a good thing to get back to Bluewater Cove, I think it will be very positive to get back to a market which reinforces reasonable expections.

I came to the real estate world long after computers had infested society.  In fact with my twenty years at Apple, I could rightly be accused of helping spread those computers.

So almost all of my real estate clients have been computer users to some degree.  I had a buyer last summer who did not use a computer.  I ended up printing pictures and sending them to him.

The convenience of email is really hard to argue.  It is immediate and more often than not you can accomplish a lot of business using email.

Recently I had another computerless buyer come to me.  This one really likes to do old fashioned on the ground neighborhood searches.  Yet she is also very appreciative of all the extra homes and information that computers can bring to the table.

It occured to me that perhaps this was the way real estate agents and clients operated before so much real estate information made it to the web. 

We have actually worked very well together.  By my client bringing me neighborhoods that interest her, I have been able to get a good read on what works for her.  As somone with interior design experience, she has been clear during showings about the homes she likes and the ones that do not work.

We are close to finding the right spot for her.

Often when I am working with very computer literate clients who really hang their hats on their online findings, it takes a while to get them back to earth.  They are often disappointed when seeing some of their favorite online listings because they have only seen homes online and not in the context of their neighborhoods.

It often takes half a day to get them familiarized with area neighborhoods.  Usually then their computer searches are much more effective.  It almost seems like without some neighborhood context, computer searches are close to shots in the dark.

Of course as people who live and breath real estate, we agents have known that what you see on the computer is only part of the picture.

Recently I have run into some "potential buyers" who seem so stuck on computer information that they never get to the point of actually seeing neighborhoods or homes.  They are the virtual tire kickers of the real estate world, those folks who enjoy looking at automated emails from MLS, but rarely ever get to the point of buying something.

Fortunately they are in the minority of people who contact me.

I have never been afraid of having too much information on the web.

In fact I am a big believer in getting as much information on the web as possible.  It helps potential clients, and it helps me.  If someone calls, I can go to my website advertising a listing like this new construction in Bluewater Cove and have all the information at my finger tips.  It is far easier than trying to pull out a piece of paper.

I still do not see computer search replacing real estate agents, but I do think we have to work to make sure that we add value to the technology.  If we are just printing pages off and handing them to the clients, we are not in a sustainable position.

Just over three years ago, we concluded four years of searching and made an offer on a home in a small subdivision on the banks of the White Oak River in Western Carteret County near the beaches of Emerald Isle, NC.

We had looked long and hard from Chincoteague to Oak Island.  There were a number of reasons that Carteret County met our needs, but the biggest was access to water.

I worked in technology for 25 years and was looking for a change.  After having a very good experience buying our home, I decided to try a new career I have been thinking about for a couple of years.  I became a Realtor®.  Eventually I ended up working in the real estate division of the company who had built our home and actually developed our subdivision.

It probably was not an accident.  I have always needed the backing of my own experience before I could sell a product.  When I sold Angus bulls that produced fast growing calves which were born easily, I felt comfortable standing behind them because that was the result I had seen over the years from my own herd of cattle.  In the same light, when I sold Vermeer round hay balers, I knew that they would do the job because I depended on them myself to put up 600 tons of hay each year.

When I moved on to selling computers, it was natural that I ended up selliing Apple products for over twenty years. I had bought one when I started to work as a marketing specialist after we sold our cattle in 1982.  I had personally experienced the productivity gain.

So it is no surprise that I live in Bluewater Cove which was developed by Bluewater Builders who are part of the same company that I work for, Bluewater GMAC Real Estate.  No one can say that I am not familiar with the product or the company.

I like it that way.  I know the people and the products.  It is easy to sell something you believe in yourself and that you use each day.

It has been something of journey since we bought the home and jumped into the world of real estate.  There probably could have been no worse time to buy a home or go to work in real estate.  Still we are optimistic.

Now that I have seen literally hundreds of homes and dozens of subdivisions, how do I feel about the investment we made in a home in Bluewater Cove?  Actually I am still very pleased at what we bought.  There have been a couple of homes that were perhaps close to what we found in Bluewater Cove, but none that caused me to jump up and say "Wow, I wished that I had waited for this home."

I like to think that is a function of the uniqueness of our home, the special amenities that come with Bluewater Cove, and our location on a beautiful river between Croatan National Forest and the beaches of the Southern Outer Banks.

When the owners of Bluewater Builders came to me and told me that they had plans to build new homes not far from me, I was actually pleased and excited.  First off, new construction in this uncertain market means the developers still have confidence in their product.  Secondly, I have not run into a community in the area with the same set of features.

We live on a quiet cove of the White Oak River,  just ten minutes by boat from the Intracoastal Waterway.  Modern services are less than ten minutes from our home.  All the additional shopping that we need is less than twenty minutes away in Morehead City.  Our neighborhood is peaceful and safe.  We have a pool for swimming and lots of water for kayaking and boating.  We have the best ramp on the river.  Some of us are lucky enough to have lifts behind our homes so we are in the water with just the push of a switch.

In spite of all these great things, we are in sheltered area.  Some larger boats have anchored in our cove during storms.  These are people who have lived here many years so I respect their wiisdom.

While I would not want to put my home on the market today, I am confident its value will hold up.  You just do not find homes like ours with this kind of water access for the price we paid.  If you do find one, it will not be in a great community like ours which is fond of holding neighborhood pool parties.

With all that said, I am somewhat excited to rollout out our new construction at 128 White Heron Lane.  It is offered at $329,000 with 3 bedrooms and two baths and 1812 square feet.  I think it will be a great home for someone.

The home is walking distance to the pool, boat ramp, and clubhouse.  I can even see the house from my front porch.

If you are interested in a wonderful home in a great community with low dues and the lowest property taxes in North Carolina, Bluewater Cove deserves a look.

You can check out the home and the community by visiting this real estate portal and clicking on "New Construction 128 White Heron Lane."

Come on down and join us in our little piece of paradise.  There is plenty of summer left, and we still can look forward to the fall fishing.

This truly is a great area, and you can explore it with this interactive map.

While I depend a lot on my Internet efforts to keep my real estate efforts going, I also try not to neglect more traditional means of marketing.

Yesterday was the Fourth of July. I spent the majority of the day, printing and distributing a flier.

The rental division of our company allows us to hand out information to people checking into their beach houses.

It is agreat opportunity to get in front of a lot of people who already love our area.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what type of flier would have some persistence.

I ended up doing a map with some off island places that people new to the area might miss.  I included a list of 21 things to do at the beach, and a list of 18 restaurants that I felt comfortable recommending.  I also included links to two of my most popular travel guides to the area, my Emerald Isle one and my Beaufort, NC one.

There was a link to CrystalCoast.us which has a lot of local information and plenty of articles by me.  It also has a real estate listing tab.  I also gave them a link to my interactive area map which ends up being a good supplement to the print one that I included in the flier.

My only real estate pitch in the brochure itself was an offer to show local beach or water access communities like Bluewater Cove where I live to any one needing a more serious taste of our paradise.

Of course when greeting the clients,  I was wearing my tee-shirt that I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts.  The tee-shirt, Birkenstocks, straw hat, sunglasses and shorts certainly were the right uniform for a warm beach day.  The one lesson learned is that next time I will take two water bottles.

Most people really seemed to enjoy the personal touch of someone welcoming them to the beach, handing them some information, and confirming that after a long drive, they were in the correct spot to get their keys.

Hopefully people will find the information about the our Southern Outer Banks (SOBX) area useful.

We will see how the experiment works.  I handed out 250 fliers.  I am going to take my remaining 50 to the tourist bureau to see if they might be able to use the maps.

I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend.  I missed the area's fireworks so we could stay home and enjoy our subdivision party.  We had a great time.  It was a perfect evening.

It is easy to lose sight of things you enjoy about your job when the pressure for success is continuous while the opportunity for success rarely pays a visit. 

I got into real estate after a technology sales career of over twenty five years because I wanted to get back to those days when the right solution really made a difference in what people were doing.  In the early days of computing, the right computer loaded with the proper tools could let people do what they could not do before.

I saw real estate in a similar light.  Often people moving seek to change their lives for the better.  I have seen people coming to our area looking to a new home as base for doing things that they could not do before.  My own experience taught me that a warm coastal climate could make the out of doors a much bigger part of your life.

Still moving a problem from one location to another will rarely fix it, so part of the job of a Realtor® is to help a client move from the limitless possibilities that might at first appear when looking to move to the realities of an actual move.

As much as I talk about the great coastal climate, it is not a place where you can set the thermostat and the outdoor temperature will respond.  We have hot weather and some almost cold weather.  A lot depends on your perspective.  I try to help people have that perspective.

Yes we have lots of water for boating, but you also have to understand that boating along the shallow waters of the NC coast is not the same as boating in a deep water lake where you can go anywhere you want.

I think we all know there is no perfect home, but there are likely a number of homes that will do perfectly well if people approach them in the right frame of mind.  There are always tradeoffs.

When we got our last home, my wife really wanted a backyard.  In fact she has wanted a backyard for the last three homes.  We ended up settling for a home with a dock as the back yard, but I am positive that is not what she had in mind.  She has adjusted, and to me, it is just less to mow.

Even with all the technology available to us, it is hard for people to really get the feel for an area without getting in a car and riding with you.  That narrative you spin of the area, its features and even some things you hope will change for the better is a key part of helping clients make informed decisions and moves with their eyes open.

I just wrote a piece on Apple's iPhone and my thoughts are to why it might or might become an indispensable part of my job. In writing the article, it occured to me that I can get a little carried away with what technology might do just as someone might think they are moving to an area where the weather will always be perfect.

Somewhere between what we dare to dream and what we have already realized is the place where happiness can be found if you keep your eyes and mind open to it.

We had a great Memorial Day at the beach, and I had happy to report that things are back to normal with a weekend of stellar weather for those fortunate enough to be on the shore.

We all have some funny stories about the web.  One of my favorites is the call that I got from a lady who wanted to know why a listed house was only $79,000. 

The listing was out of our normal area so I had to pull it from MLS.  I had to chuckle when I saw the screen.  An agent had posted the picture of a clubhouse as the MLS picture for a lot.  While the listing was clear that it was a lot, the picture caused some confusion.  The caller had not taken the time to read the listing, they had only looked at the picture and the price.

The good news was that I had gotten a call, the bad news was that it was practically worthless.  The potential buyer was only interested in houses under $100,000.  Those are in short supply in our area.

A lot of marketing is all about touching a lot of people who are not interested in your product before you get to someone who is.  That holds the same for print based media and Internet based advertising.  The good news about Internet marketing is that there are some tools that can touch a lot of people without costing a lot as long as you do it yourself.

For a long time, I have used both Flickr and Picasa webalbums to attract people to my websites and to provide images which will attract people looking to live in our area of great scenic beauty.

As web streaming technology has improved along with camera technology, it has become relatively easy to use the web for stunning slide shows and very interesting virtual tours. I recently wrote a post on my Applepeels site about how Apple application intergration made it very easy for me to produce a slide show and add video to the slides to make it a good YouTube virtual tour.

With all of this I was able to enhance a pre-listing post that I had on the Crystal Coast's electronic village.  The electronic village site does an automatic feed to Twitter.

My job prior to real estate was all about measuring web traffic so I am not a stranger to the challenge of figuring out whether what you have done is working or not.  It is especially difficult when most standard methods are also having a hard time demonstrating value.

While higher viewing numbers are no guarantee of success, at least they help eliminate efforts which are producing little.  I am still a believer in casting a wide net on the web much like a spider.  The more entry points into my world of websites the better opportunity I have at least making contact with people who are interested in our area and potentially buying homes.

I still believe we are in the infancy of effective use of the web for reaching buyers and helping sellers make the best use of the web.

There are a lot of tools already available.  The mix that works in a self contained market area might be different than what works in an area like ours which often deals with retirees moving in from long distances.

There is no question in my mind that the next wave of buyers will turn more and more to the Internet.  I am pleased with the options available in our area for agents.

Two years ago, talk of a company real estate blog was just talk.  Today we have a blog in place where potential buyers can get a taste of the area from articles like this one. Peace on the beach.

Blogs, slideshows, maps, and video provide buyers with more information than ever.  You can find out more about an area today without leaving your kitchen than you might have found out in the first day visiting an area a few years ago.

If you combine the web with a visit, and a meeting with a local real estate agent, most buyers should have what they need to decide if an area meets their needs.

There are people out there that still doubt the power of the Internet to connect people. That does not surprise me any more than a connection between people can come from an Internet pimento cheese recipe, but more on that in a minute.

I still see agents who believe that the only place on the Internet where they need a presence is Realtor.com.  We are rapidly moving towards a society where many initial contacts will only happen on the Internet. If I measured the number of contacts that I have from covering the real estate duty desk against those that I have received from writing and having an Internet presence, it would be no contest as to where I would focus my time.

I would give up the duty desk and spend all of my time writing. However, I stay on the duty desk because calls from signs have become a second important source of leads. However, they are well behind the Internet in total numbers for me.

My pimento cheese lead is a good way to show the power of the Internet and to illustrate that you meet people on the Internet through just as many different ways as you do in real life.

If you do a Google search for "Classic southern pimento cheese" my recipe has the number two spot on Google.  Recently I got a note from someone several states away thanking me for my pimento cheeese recipe.  As I always do, I sent back a note thanking the person for his comments.  My email signature block has a link to my Crystal Coast website.  

Either from that site or from my blog where the recipe was posted, the person who commented picked up that I might be a Realtor®.  Soon I had a couple of more emails and some questions about our area.  My potential client is now busily reading posts about our area and deciding whether or not to visit. He and his wife happen to be looking for a new place to live.

I am certain that he is spending some time figuring out if I am a reliable source of information.  I actually encourage people to do that.  I even wrote a post, How to review the reviewer, on that subject.

In the end the point to take away is that just as recipe exchanged at a church function might lead to someone making the effort to get to know you better, so also can a recipe on the Internet.

If you are ignoring the Internet as a way to make contact with people, you are making a mistake.  If you are a buyer looking for a home, you probably already know that the Internet is a good way to find out information about homes.  It is also a good way to find out information about Realtors®.  You should take advantage of it.

If you are a Realtor® and looking for my advice on where to start as a local expert on something other than real estate, check out this post.

Monday night I got a call from someone whose area in South Dakota was in the midst of being whacked by a blizzard.  I guess it was the last straw for him.  He was ready to start investigating a move the Southern Outer Banks or SOBX as it is locally known.  Actually the blizzard was not the real reason for wanting to move, but I covered that in a post on the Crystal Coast Living blog.

His call had come just hours after an email from a potential mountain dwelling client who is already scheduled to visit our area this summer.  The same blizzard had just dumped over two feet of snow on her Montana doorstep.  She was desperate for a picture of anything that was not white.  I sent her a link to some spring flower pictures that I took this weekend.

While I know a few folks who love to be snowed in, most are past that when April is on the horizon.

I can certainly appreciate what our friends in the northern plains are enduring right now.  My wife and I lived in Canada for sixteen years.  For over ten of those years, we lived on a farm in a tiny settlement about twenty miles north of Fredericton, New Brunswick. 

We were in a snowbelt, and I was the farmer with the largest tractor along a tough stretch of road.  Many snowy nights someone would knock on our door and asked to be pulled out of the ditch.  When living on the farm, helping your neighbors is just a way of life even if it means putting on a snow suit late at night and rescuing someone who had no business being out on the road.

I never really felt threatened by a blizzard, but we were living in Canada where they would not even bother plowing the roads unless it snowed more than six inches.  We heated with wood and our water was spring fed.  On top of that, it was so cold we could just unplug our freezers for a couple of months in the winter.

Still I can feel sorry for folks who are accidently trapped out in a blizzard.  I am sure it happens, but even twenty five years ago on the farm, we had a pretty good idea when a big blow was on the horizon.

Still most people ride out blizzards with little interruption to their daily lives.  You take a day or two off, drink some hot chocolate, and sit around the fire.  Farmers are among those who do not get the day off.  A big blizzard meant hours of snow blowing before I could reach our cattle herd and give them their daily feed.  We had storms that dumped over three feet on us at a time, and temperatures as cold as minus forty. Still I managed to make the trip out with a big round bale each day.  Fortunately we never had a bad blizzard during calving season.

The seasons have turned, and we are a long way from blizzards here on the Carolina Coast.  We did see some snow this year, but it did not even stick to the driveways so my Canadian heritage allowed me to almost ignore it.

When people in blizzards start calling for a warmer place to live, I usually get found through the Internet.  One of the things that I do to help make sure that I come up in searches is to do some searches myself and see where I rank.  There are often lessons to be learned when you do a search and find someone ranked ahead of you.

I will often look at the page source of a page which is ahead of me.  Sometimes I will actually create a new webpage to go head to head with one that is particularly troubling.  One of the things that I learned long ago is that you cannot expect one webpage to win all the battles.

It helps to have webpages which are customized to certain search terms.  I do really well in Google searches on "SOBX real estate" but not as well on searches for "Cape Carteret real estate."

Today I created a new website to help fix that problem.  It is focused on Cape Carteret real estate and has URLs and keywords built to help move me up in the rankings.

While the Internet continues to lead in bringing in long distance customers, it seems that good old fashioned signs are still most effective in pulling in listings.  I was happy to pick up a nice reasonably priced waterview cottage and a well priced family home in a quiet but convenient neighborhood in the Cape Carteret area.

Now that I think about it, I wish today's real estate market could just be a blizzard that I waited out around the fireplace.  Unfortunately it is not going to be that easy.

It has been an amazing few weeks in American.  Barack Obama is president, Steve Jobs has stepped aside at Apple, my Vista computer has hardly misbehaved, and it snowed at the beach.  On top of that I have taken two phone calls on desk duty.  One is leading to what looks like a sale, and the other might well develop into something.

As I took this picture of the water behind our home in Bluewater Cove this morning, I wondered if there were any fish swimming beneath the surface this time of year.

Earlier in the week when we had some ice, there were some Mergansers swimming around the the same water.  It is a popullar notion that the Mergansers, a diving duck, does a real number on fish populations.  I am pretty sure the ducks have much less of an impact than the gill nets in the White Oak River.

I was also thinking about how clear the water has remained in spite of some significant percipitation in recent weeks.  I was reminded that at one time this fish nursery behind our home was filled with mud. Because of conservation efforts in the last few years, our water is often very clear.

That makes fishing a great challenge in shallow waters which pretty describes most of the White Oak.  Sometimes you are very aware of the brown tint to the water.  Other times all you can see is blue water because of the brilliant blue skies that we get.  I am just happy the water is clean and clear.  I love both colors.

All this got me to thinking about real estate in the next year. Trying to look forward is like trying to read deep and dark waters.

Much of what I could think about real estate comes from what I hear from my colleagues, all of whom are facing some challenges.  Just as the ducks have an impact on the fish, I am sure that as my colleagues believe the headlines about foreclosures have an impact on buyers.  I suspect that the needs and limitations of the real estate buying population are more important. In spite of a lot of priming of the money pumps at the banks, I have not seen much change in real estate buyers. 

What is really happening remains something of a mystery played out in thousands of different locales.

My guess is that like most news, we will not find out the story on 2009 real estate until after the trends are well underway.

In our piece of Coastal NC the real estate market, while showing some signs of life, remains relatively quiet.  There are plenty of challenges.  The worsening job market is certainly a larger factor today than it was a year ago.

In the end for me personally, it all comes down to this.  Listening to doom and gloom is as easy as stopping to chat with someone who has not sold anything in a couple of months.  While I can be supportive of other agents facing challenges, I cannot let those conversations define the conversations that I have with the me that keeps me going.

I have to look on the positive side of every situation. The only person that can keep me pumped up and moving forward is me.

With an enumeration of what is headed in the right direction for me, I can keep myself headed in that right direction.

I look at the two properties that I have already sold this year as an indication that 2009 will be better than 2008.

While some have lessened their efforts during the slump, I have continued to increase, enhance, and refine my web presence.  There are enough results coming in for me to know that the strategy is working.

My standard marketing efforts have also stayed strong. That includes mailings and strategically placed brochures .  Next week I hope to roll out a co-promotion with a popular local restaurant.

I am very pleased with the quality of the content that I have been able to deliver for the Crystal Coast Living Blog which is featured on our company's real estate home page.  The electronic village for the Crystal Coast that I have worked on with a friend from Virginia Tech has statted to get some traction.  As we refine it in the next year, it will become a great place for potential buyers to find homes and information.

Two of the three small towns in the area are using photos attributed to me, and I am averaging at least two photos per week on the local television station.  I continue to get the comment, "So you are the guy who does all the photos?"

When I put my shoes and smile on in the morning, I know that I am headed in the right direction.  If I do not have a great year, it will not because I did not give it my absolute best effort.  I have promised myself that I will not let myself be talked into a world of doom and gloom.  I am ready to acknowledge the challenges, but I will not let them beat me.