There has been discussion on one of my other blogs about the reasons and stressors of changing "formats" in real estate - joining a team, leaving a team, changing brokers, relocating - any type of major change in your business format, location or outlook.

For me, change has been all positive - thanks to a blog on legalities of blogging, I will leave out all names - not hard to see where I'm at currently ...

I left a smaller brokerage end of May - the office was actually closing, so it wasn't exactly a choice -

BUT I had started my real estate career with the company and it was PERFECT for a new agents - lots of great training, "field" work, mentoring, etc. - some hand-holding - and an amazing way to get my feet wet without diving in

When that office closed, I looked at number of brokerages - I'm one of those ... - and realized all of my training and experience had really set me up to know more about what I was looking for - once I determined which brokerage - my current brokerage has 17 offices - I was presented with the choice of going it alone or joining a team of people who I "knew" and were well established in an area that I both live and wanted to focus on reaching out to more

I chose the team route to give me more support and because having a name that people in the area knew helped establish more credibility for me - and it's proven true

SO to get back on topic - of course, it was a stressor to find out my office was closing - after I was just getting going pretty well - and a stressor to start at a new office - with 124 other agents - BUT I will say that they all made me feel very welcome and I was impressed to be up on their website about 15 minutes after filling out my paperwork -

I must say ultimately that I had an ideal scenario, but still credit some of that to diligent research, interviews, and making decisions about what was right for me -

I would love to hear about others experiences in changing offices, joining a team, relocating to a different market, etc.

I have lately made a push for first time buyers - and it's going well

I know they generally have lower purchase price, take more time, blah blah - (they also don't have contingencies on selling another property in this market!)

BUT I like working with them and I love educating them and helping them make that LEAP

I'd like to open the floor to others who have any comments regarding marketing to first time buyers, tips or tricks, any good stories, horror stories (surely not), or anything else related to first time buyers

GO!!

I work on a team in the North Atlanta area, prior to that I was an individual agent with a different company.

My team environment is great - BUT seems to be different than most teams - we each can still handle all parts/types of transactions. I still can have listings, work with buyers, we all do our own processing of contracts and all of the above.

Our team leader is a great guy who always seems to have time for us as well as a record number of clients.

Not sure of the AR policy on shameless plugs, but his name is Mitch Falkin and the team is the Move With Mitch Team.

I have found that his 21+ years experience and my youth and excitement are a great way for me to combine the knowledge of what works with the creative and technology knowledge that I bring to the table.

I am very curious to hear some of your experiences with teams and how they are set up - whether you are on a team or have dealt with a team on the other side of a transaction.

thanks!! Lee

OK, Realtors -

I wanted to start a blog on what all you guys have found success in for FREE or LOW COST ads - online, print, anything goes

Obviously craigslist and active rain/localism allow you to reach out to people for free - other free blogs are out there - too many to list - google "free blogs" if you are wanting to find more.

I also have a list of websites you can post on for free and I will get that together for anyone interested.

Please share your experiences and types of ads/keywords/etc.

Please try to keep these non-area specific! Thanks!

~Lee

I am new to Active Rain, but kind of a fool for technology.

Smiliar to any networking site, it could be really easy to spend hours on end searching, posting, looking for replies, etc.

I was previously using an email program called Eudora (which is great) but switched to Outlook 2007 a few months ago. With both programs you can setup "filters" or "rules" where you can sort your incoming emails or what not. I have rules for all of my different types of emails - in-house brokerage emails go into their own folder, my marketing responses or online search emails into another and my active rain emails all sort "auto-magically" into their own folder.

This allows me to do one thing at a time as well as prioritize and spend certain times each day for specific tasks. You can set different types of notifications in both programs as well to play a sound, display a new window or what not to let you know when you have new mail in a given folder.

I would be curious to know what other people to do manage or check/respond to their blogs and posts.

~Lee