I have been selling homes full-time in Austin for 12.5 years now.  When I got my license, I was 26 years old, and I was hungry beyond belief.  My business partner at the time was 21 years old, so we both wore suits (or at the very least, shirt and tie) most of the time, even during the hottest months of the year.  This was part of our effort to appear older and more experienced, as I recall.

With the exception of special events such as weddings and funerals, I haven't worn a tie in roughly 10 years.  Why not?  Because I DON'T LIKE THEM.  We have had record-high temperatures in Austin this year for several weeks running, peaking in the 107-degree range a couple of days.  The thought of wearing a hot, long-sleeved shirt and tie, especially with a jacket, makes me a little woozy now.

Instead, you are much more likely to find me in a polo shirt and either jeans or khakis.  I like being comfortable, and I have more than enough knowledge about this industry.  In other words, I don't need to try to prove anything by wearing a double-breasted suit (yes, I did that too back in the day).  That being said, I rarely wear t-shirts outside of the house.  Something about my prep school upbringing makes this difficult for me.

I am thankful to be self-employed, and even more thankful to live in Austin, which is probably the most casual big city in Texas.  I haven't been able to bring myself to wear shorts and sandals for showings.....yet.  However, I have encountered agents who do this regularly, especially those who specialize in ranch or waterfront properties.

I typically advise my agents that it's best to be dressed just a little nicer than our clients.  If they are wearing shorts, jeans will probably suffice.  If they are wearing jeans, wear something slightly dressier.  If they are wearing a suit, you must rent a tuxedo.  If they are nude, wear a bathing suit.  Of course, I am kidding about the last two.  I can't remember which sales trainer I heard mention this rule of thumb, but it has served me well over the years.  Generally speaking, the vast majority of our clients wear VERY casual clothing when viewing homes, unless they are coming straight from work.

The bottom line: If you are looking for a button-down, 1950's-style real estate agent, I don't really fit that bill.  If you want a real estate broker who cares passionately about his clients and strives to make the process as easy as possible, give me a call!  Who knows?  I might even wear a tie if you request it, assuming I can find a jacket that fits.  :)

Thanks for reading!

Photo above by paul goyette - found on Flickr.com.

 My RSS feed is http://activerain.com/jasoncrouch/rss.

After a few days of judging, I am happy to announce the winners of the "Local Video" contest that we were running from June 1st - June 23rd. 

Here's the original announcement in case you missed it:

How To Get Some Easy Bonus Points on ActiveRain - Local Video Contest Announcement

We had a great turnout, with about 40 entries overall.  Frankly, this was one of the most difficult contests to judge that I have been a part of on AR.  Thanks very much to the other judges:

• Lesley Lambert
  
• Debe Maxwell
• Carolyn Tann-Starr
• Richard Weisser

Without further ado, here are the winners!

Irene Kennedy - 1st Place - 5000 Bonus Points!

Fascinating, FREE Family Fun - FOSSILS in Hamburg, NJ

Irene was one of the only contestants to appear in front of the camera in her entry, which went a long way with the judges.  I felt like I got to know her better, and she wasn't afraid to be a little silly, too, which always helps.  Kudos to Irene for her winning entry!

Steve with Amazing Video Tours - 2nd Place - 3000 Bonus Points

Entry for the ActiveRain Localism Video Contest

Steve's video is definitely the slickest with regard to its production quality.  I would highly recommend contacting him if you are in the general Charlotte area!  Great job, Steve!

Christine Donovan - 3rd Place - 2000 Bonus Points

Fun Things for Kids in the Newport Mesa Area: The Balboa Fun Zone

Christine's personal touches made this worthy of placing in this contest.  I want to visit her town!  Thanks for providing multiple good entries, Christine!

As a small aside, there were a good number of entries that were never actually posted to Localism, so they were not able to win.  However, we will award the 500 bonus points to those entries as well, just for the effort.

Thanks for reading!  I look forward to our next contest!

Over the past several months, I have heard rave reviews about the Amazon Kindle device, which allows the user to download books and store them for reading anytime.  I like the idea of having an entire library of possibilities at my fingertips when I am on the go.

I have been tempted several times to get one, but I couldn't get past the big pricetag.  Currently, the latest version of the Kindle runs $359.00, and the "first generation" version starts at $239.00.

I wouldn't mind paying these prices IF the device included books, too, but each book runs another $9.99 on average for first-run titles.

With that in mind, you can probably imagine how happy I was to realize that there is a Kindle application for the iPhone! 

But there must be a catch, right?  Nope.  It's FREE!

I downloaded this app within minutes of hearing about it for the first time, and I am finishing reading my second book on the iPhone this week.  Incidentally, the very first title I grabbed was Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Outliers" (highly recommended, by the way).  Gladwell has become one of my favorite writers, since he always makes me think.

So, if you have an iPhone, and you like to read, this is a "must have" application.  It only takes a few seconds to install, and you can immediately start book shopping.  Enjoy!

My wife and I don't get a chance to sit through very many movies all at once.  Typically, it takes 2 or more evenings for us to get through a whole film, since our time is limited to the hour or two after all of our kids are asleep, assuming that we don't get interrupted by our newborn baby or toddler. 

That being said, we watched a movie a couple of nights ago that was so interesting and well-made that we couldn't wait to finish it the next night.  As with many of the things we watch, this was available via our Roku device, which streams movies from Netflix to our TV.

"Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father" is quite possibly the best and most memorable documentary that I have ever seen.  We were intrigued because it is one of the few selections we have seen with a 5-star rating from other Netflix users.  It turned out to be time well spent.

In a nutshell, "Dear Zachary" was made by an independent filmmaker, Kurt Kuenne, who wanted to provide a complete portrait of his murdered friend Andrew for Andrew's newborn son Zachary. He tirelessly travelled around the country, interviewing Andrew's friends and family, and he included a lot of footage from when they were kids growing up together.

If you commit to watching this movie, please be advised that it is somewhat emotionally draining, but it is an editing masterpiece, and the story is incredibly compelling.  Be prepared to cry - maybe a lot.  As you get to know the people who loved Andrew (including Kuenne himself), the emotions are palpable and raw.

I don't often give such a ringing endorsement, and this is certainly the type of movie that requires more attention and thought than average, but my wife and I have been talking about it for days.  I think it's very worthy of more exposure and word-of-mouth.

It was released last year, and it has received a lot of attention from critics and film festival audiences alike, including being selected as one of the Top 5 Documentaries of 2008 by the National Board of Review.

If you have a chance, don't miss this one. 

Abby, our three-year-old daughter, is ridiculously cute.  If she had her way, she would spend most of the day cuddling our newborn baby girl, petting and kissing her head. 

I have had a bunch of people ask me, "Is your toddler jealous?" and I have to laugh, because that has never crossed her mind.  Instead, she likes to come up with new nicknames for Jenny (Genevieve), including:

• Jen Jen or Jenner - kinda obvious
• Gingerbread - I like this one!
• Sugar Baby Strawberry - This is my personal favorite

Then, she forayed into "just plain odd" nickname territory, with these gems:

"Mama, can I call the baby 'ointment'?"

"Can I call her 'books'?"

Now it was clear that she was just looking around the room at random objects. 

Another fun new trend for Abby is her cool new lingo, which mainly involves dropping the last syllable or word in a sentence, such as, "I don't want!" or "I am thirst." (seems a bit profound now that I see it written), or "I love Sugar Babe Strawb!" (see above for explanation on this one). 

One of my jobs as a dad is to get our three older kids to bed each night since my wife is taking care of the baby, which usually includes storytime as well.  Abby is about 5 years younger than our oldest daughter, so she gets her own special time with me before I get the big kids headed off to brush their teeth, etc.

The other night, just after I turned off the overhead light, Abby said, "I wanna talk."

"Okay, sweetie, what do you want to talk about?"

"What CAN we talk about, Dad?"

I could tell that this was going to be an interesting conversation.

"Well, would you like to talk about kitty cats?"

"No."

"Puppies?"

"No."

"Monkeys?"

"No."

"Clouds?"

"No."

I went through at least 50-75 possible topics with her, including every member of our immediate and extended family, different types of weather, TV shows, with a few silly items thrown in for good measure, and I was starting to wind down:

"Sunshine?"

"No, dad."

"Unicorns?"

"Nope."

"Rainbows?"

"YES!  Tell me a story about rainbows, dad."

So I did. 

She loved it, then she fell asleep in about 25 seconds flat.

I love my life.

I don't profess to be a technology or social media guru, but I will say that I have been immersed in this stuff for a couple of years, so I certainly have developed my own set of opinions on what works and what doesn't.  That being said, one of the worst pieces of advice that I have witnessed is something along these lines:

"Don't blog about your personal life."

or

"Don't tweet about your boring day.  No one cares!"

And so on.

I utterly disagree with those statements above.  If people care about YOU, then they will likely care about what is going on in your life and during the course of your day.

The title of this post refers to something I recently discussed with a friend of mine at lunch.  If you allow others to tell you what to write about, this is tantamount to attending a party with a script in hand.  Don't allow anyone else to direct your networking activities to this degree.  It's fine to get tips and understand protocol, but let your content show your unique personality.

On our radio show (Social Media Edge), we once had a guest who told us about his "formula" for Twitter, with specific percentages for each type of tweet (something like 20% personal, 20% business, 40% information, and 20% unwanted advice). 

I disagreed with him on the air, and I still disagree today. 

The essence of social media is that it's SOCIAL.  When you are talking with friends in person over dinner, do you ever think, "Wow - I need to work in about 8% more talk about business, then I can mention that cool movie I saw yesterday."  NO!  No one does that in real life - why would you do it online?

Be yourself, and reap the benefits.  If you relate to others and engage them, it can lead to some great friendships, some of which may turn into business for you (just like offline, right?).

I have been asked "But what should I blog about?" at least 250 times over the past year.  The quickest answer that I can give, when blogging, tweeting, or spending time on Facebook, is this:

Anything that you are comfortable writing about is fair game.  Period.

Thanks for reading!

Photo above by _MaO_ from Flickr.

 My RSS feed is http://activerain.com/jasoncrouch/rss.

Please take a couple of minutes to read this post from my friend and radio co-host Ken Cook.  We are hoping to make a real difference through our social media efforts in the upcoming months.

I took a brief hiatus from the internet starting on Friday.  Yes, I was away from all things online for about 48 hours, and yet I lived through it.  :)

My wife and I took our kiddos to San Antonio for the weekend, primarily so that we could visit the Texas Folklife Festival on Saturday.  My wife is from that area, and she has very fond memories of this event stemming back to her childhood.  We went 3 years ago (with a different infant daughter in tow), but we hadn't been back since.

I would have made some great video of the event to share, but my camera melted in my pocket at around 3pm or so.  Later, I learned that it was 104 DEGREES that afternoon.

Thanks to Expedia.com, we were able to stay at the Airport Hilton and we got a phenomenal deal, which was supremely helpful, considering that we now need TWO hotel rooms just to accomodate the Crouch family.  This makes me seriously consider purchasing an RV in the near future.  I am not joking.

On Friday night, we went to the Magic Time Machine, which is one of my older kids' favorite restaurants in the world.  I DO have video of our evening there, which I hope to share with you sometime this week.  In a nutshell, the kids love it (okay, I do, too) because everyone who works there is in full costume.  Our waiter was Indiana Jones, although the guy dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow from "Pirates of the Caribbean" was probably the most talented one there.

I actually considered using the wireless service at the Hilton, until realizing that it was $10/day.  It wasn't the money - it was the principle!  Is it them or me?  It's them, right?!?

At any rate, I am happy to be back online tonight, although I must admit that the break was much-needed, and I hope to take some more mini-vacations in the near future (or maybe even a real one sometime?).

The other night, I took my two older kids swimming.  My son is 10 and my daughter is 8.  The neighborhood pool that we prefer to use is about a block and a half from our home, and it's usually not crowded, especially in the evenings, when we prefer to swim.

Last year, I remember that my son could almost stand up in the "deep" end of the pool, which is about 5 feet or so. 

This year, one of the first things he did was to go stand on the drain and show me that he could still keep his head above the water. 

"I'm not even on my tiptoes, Dad!"

It reminded me of my own youth, as I would gauge my height among my friends through the years.  In my own case, I was the kid who was perenially in the middle of the back row for any class pictures (that's where they put the tall kids).

Perhaps more importantly, it reminded me of how I felt when I sold my first "luxury" home here in Austin, then my first million-dollar property.  Later, in 2006, I sold a home priced at $3.4 million on Lake Austin.  The same year, my business partner sold a property for over $4 million!  We had made it - right?

Well, not exactly, but that was a really strong couple of years for us. 

I finally felt like I was one of the "big kids", too!  If my clients trusted me to help them to invest this much money on ANYTHING, I must be doing something right.

After watching many of the top luxury agents in Austin over the years, I finally could say that I was part of their ranks, at least in some small way.  In fact, we sold a good number of homes in the seven figure range.   Frankly, those days seem to have dried up substantially over the past year or so, but they will likely return at some point. 

Here's the important part of this post:

Once you have achieved a goal, it becomes easier the next time around.  You have already proven that you're capable, and it shows when you're dealing with clients.  I have often said that clients can smell desperation, which I firmly believe to be true.  Conversely, they can tell if you are comfortable in any given situation.  I chose to cut my real estate teeth on higher-end homes back when I started in 1997.  Consequently, I am not intimidated by any "normal" transactions these days (as if such a thing exists anymore).

I think the same ethic holds true for our industry as it does for just about any business - the first big achievement is likely the most difficult, partially because it is uncharted ground.  

Think about these items for a second:

• Stephen King has sold tens of millions of books - at some point in the early 70's, he sold the very first one
• There was a time when Babe Ruth hadn't yet hit his first home run in the majors
• Abraham Lincoln lost EIGHT elections before becoming President

I guess the point I am trying to make here is that everybody starts somewhere. Whether it is a luxury home, or a first-time home buyer, or a difficult loan, or your very first blog post, just know that it will get easier with experience. Dive in!

Thanks for reading!

Photos courtesy of leozaza and IceNineJon - found on Flickr.com.

 My RSS feed is http://activerain.com/jasoncrouch/rss.

Forbes.com released its list of the best cities for couples in the U.S., and I wasn't surprised to see Texas placing really well on the list, with the top two spots going to Dallas and Houston, respectively.  Austin placed #5 on the list, and San Antonio placed 7th.

There are always a lot of lists like this floating around, like the most affordable places to live, or the "fittest cities", and so on.  This particular list struck me as interesting, partially because of the criteria they used to put it together:

1. Marriage rates per 1,000 people
2. Divorce rates per 1,000 people
   
3. Housing affordability - the specific focus here was on starter homes in each area, which may be why Texas fared so well overall
   
4. Income disparity - For this piece of data, they analyzed male vs. female income levels, with the thinking that greater disparity might also indicate big disparities in education and experience, which could lead to a mismatch.
5. Access to couple's counseling - Frankly, I'm not sure how helpful this particular item would be in forming a list like this one, but there you have it.  I suppose if there were no counseling available at all, that could certainly affect things!

If you are interested in reading the entire article, please visit:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/03/cities-couples-best-forbeslife-lovebiz08-cx_rr_0204couples.html

If you are looking to make a move to the Austin area, or if you need more information, please feel free to contact me anytime.  I would love the chance to help.  I can be reached anytime at 512-796-7653 (cell) or by email at jason@austintexashomes.com.

I have also gathered some previous posts of mine which you may find helpful as you are making decisions:

Austin Texas Relocation Package

My primary Austin real estate website is www.austintexashomes.com. Thanks for checking out this post - I hope to hear from you soon!

Photo above is courtesy of wattsbw2004 from Flickr.com.