COMPETENCE IS A RARE QUALITY IN  REAL ESTATE...Do You Have It???  (This is part 2 of a 5 part featured post on the 5 Keys to success in real estate. If you missed the featured post or found it too long to read at one sitting, here it is in separate posts) II. COMPETENCE: Competence is a rare quality in real estate---You know very well that if awards were handed out for incompetence in real estate, chances are many agents would win it! I do not state this in a patronizing way--I state it as a fact. There are only a handful of agents who truly excel in the business in many market places---why??? Because many people come into the real estate profession thinking that it is all about showing houses; then the truth becomes revealed, first in the class room where many agents start to see how m... 11/20/2012

DO YOU HAVE AN "APTITUDE" FOR REAL ESTATE?...If Not, Take A Look At Why It Is So Important: (This is part 3 of a 5 part featured post. If the featured post, 5 keys to success in real estate, is too long for you to find the time to read--here it is in separate posts.) III. APTITUDE: APTITUDE MAKES AN AGENT SUCCESSFUL!!! Do you have it? ...If you don't, why should you? Your customers and clients expect you to have it if you are in the real estate business!!! Do You have it? This is a real estate question that we all should address. It is expected that all real estate professionals have an aptitude for real estate; there are exceptions to this however and I will cover that in a later post. So, here I will give you the actual meaning of the word. according to the dictionary: APTITUDE 1. cap... 11/20/2012

DO YOU FIND "RAPPORT BUILDING" EASY???....If Not, Keep Working On It!...It will pay off eventually! (This is part 1 of my featured 5-part post..If the featured post is too long for you to find interesting--this will make it easier. Watch for the other 4 parts to follow.) I. RAPPORT BUILDING ....Nothing else can do more for building your business!!! It is the one area that most real estate professionals neglect. Most don't understand how critical rapport building is in the early stages of a business relationship. It will make the difference between making a sale and losing one; ..will make the difference between getting that great listing or losing it to the next agent who HAS taken the time to build a rapport with their clients and customers. CHARM-- If you take a look at the most succe... 11/19/2012

POPULAR POSTS, WITH MORE THAN 3000 CLICKS!!!... NOTE: "Clicks" can be seen under "traffic" on your home page menu. I have been a member here on ActiveRain since 2007. I have had moments of great insight from reading other members posts and I have been inspired on countless occasions to write a post or two simply from reading those posts! The value that I find here on AR goes far beyond real estate! I truly feel that I am a better person for having been here, for having participated in this higher level of engagement in a profession. I thought I would share the posts that I have written since I joined AR that have attracted so much attention that they were actually clicked upon and read by at least 3000 people. In three cases there were well over 6,000 clicks. ALL OF THESE POSTS STILL GE... 11/13/2012

....MORE ON SANDY AND IT'S AFTER-EFFECTS: Below, more photos of the damage from Sandy---We are very lucky it was not worse! we are so much luckier than the other places here in New York, like Breezy Point in Queens where they lost 110 houses in a waterfront community--a place where firemen and policemen called home for a century or more! Houses with vinyl siding and doors literally melted into the water and left so many homeless. Thank goodness these people had been evacuated before the storm or they mayhave been in those houses!! This was a record storm that can be compared to the Long Island Express of 1938 that wiped out ocean front estates on the South Fork of long Island...The damage in the estate section this time came from the ocean breaching the dunes and piling up on the opposi... 11/01/2012

SANDY DOES NOT MEAN A SANDY BEACH ANY MORE!! Here is the latest from Southampton and the storm that blew through here 2 days ago.... We are doing fine here---except for the major loss of trees, waterfront homes and beaches. Power is out and the internet is spotty, so to get on to AR today is quite a feat! With the horrific happenings at Breezy Point in Queens and the awful wipe out of the beaches in New Jersey taking the top spots of disastrous events, I feel very fortunate that we didn't have it worse here. We were VERY lucky! Normal will not be very fast in returning so we are all working together to get through this event with as little stress as possible. A FEW PHOTOS OF THE AFTER-EFFECTS OF SANDY: The beach at the end of Little Plains was wiped out to sea--the water and wind rushed... 10/31/2012

THE 5 KEYS TO SUCCESS IN REAL ESTATE TODAY; Do You Have Any Others??? THE 5 KEYS:  RAPPORT BUILDING, COMPETENCE, APTITUDE, TRUTH TELLING AND EXPERTISE. (This is a very long post because I wrote the 5 segments to be published individually but decided to put it all out there at once!) I. RAPPORT BUILDING ....Nothing else can do more for building your business!!! It is the one area that most real estate professionals neglect. Most don't understand how critical rapport building is in the early stages of a business relationship. It will make the difference between making a sale and losing one; ..will make the difference between getting that great listing or losing it to the next agent who HAS taken the time to build a rapport with their clients and customers. CHARM-- If you take a look at th... 10/14/2012

ON BECOMING A LOCAL EXPERT: Reveal Little Known Places in Your Area... I wrote a  post in July of 2011 about the effects of local blogging--"Niche Marketing" was what I was focused on. I made a point of the fact that to get the attention you want on your posts you need to make a colorful impact--You need to reveal the colors of the landscape in order to make an emotional impression on the mind of your readers. The posts below cover the details of making "color" work in your local posts: WANT TO CAPTURE YOUR "NICHE" AUDIENCES ATTENTION?...Use Color In Your Local Reports!! PUTTING YOUR "LOCAL KNOWLEDGE" TO WORK FOR YOU: ...How To Make It Work And Why It Will Create More BusinessIf you want to become a local expert, you need to reveal things that you know about your market place....things ... 09/13/2012

FALL WEEKENDS IN SOUTHAMPTON, NEW YORK....PUMPKIN PICKING TIME!!! It is September; the end of summer--all the crowds have left the Hamptons and things return to normal! Well, that is what is supposed to happen; but for the past 18 years, things have changed and the crowds that stream into the Hamptons all summer now remain and even stay through the Holidays---Thanksgiving and Christmas are treasured here and the crowds remain for those special times too. PUMPKIN PICKING TIME IN THE HAMPTONS! Now, it is almost Pumpkin Picking Time and there is a place in Water Mill New York (just  1/2 mile East of Southampton Village)  where the young and young at heart love to come to pick out their very own pumpkin---they pick out their pumpkin and then they stay and ride the wooden, handmade rides tha... 09/03/2012

LOCAL "PROXIMITY ASSETS" DRIVE AN INCREASE IN SALES....A Look At The Facts About The NEED For Proximity in today's real estate market... A few months back the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the latest real estate trend for purchases of homes within walking distance to shops, groceries, drugstores and other places: Wall Street Journal Article: Home Buyers Look For Homes Within Walking Distance To Everything! In that article it was noted that the most promising areas for a housing recovery are those areas within close proximity to the needs of the homeowner. It states the following: "A walkable neighborhood doesn't necessarily have to be in the city center. And it doesn't have to be more expensive". Just what is an important "Proximity Asset"?... and what is the key to being the... 08/04/2012

MORE SIZZLE IN THE HAMPTON'S REAL ESTATE MARKET!...HAMPTON'S MARKET REPORTS ARE SIZZLING! On July 14th I wrote a featured post regarding the unit sales we were witnessing in the month of June here in Southampton Village:SIMMERING SALES IN SOUTHAMPTON VILLAGE, NEW YORK!...An Update On Sales Here: Re-blogged by 0 agents With most major real estate firms reporting their Hampton's Q2 results for 2012, there is one good strong message: we are seeing a jump in sales that surprises even the most diligent market watchers for the second quarter of 2012!  Miller Samuel is the accounting firm for Prudential Douglas Elliman and when they release their quarterly report on real estate sales, they are quoted as gospel for the Hamptons housing activity. Below is the link that will take you to the most ... 07/27/2012

WHY DO WE "BEAT OURSELVES UP" WHEN A DEAL GOES SOUTH??? It's happening more and more now:  Are you noticing a different tone to the way a seller or landlord speaks to you? Do you have buyers who are angry with you when the house they want so badly is no longer available because another buyer came along and paid all cash? When a deal dies do you take a pro-active postition or do you just let it go and find yourself in state of mind that is hard to get over? Do you feel like the deal fell apart because you did not do your job properly?...that if only you had remembered to say such and such you woud not have lost the deal! If only you had used another technique in handling the whole affair, maybe you could saved the deal??? All of these feelings and reactions come naturally in a normal mar... 07/22/2012

SIMMERING SALES IN SOUTHAMPTON VILLAGE, NEW YORK!...An Update On Sales Here: Yesterday, I checked the transfer of properties here in the Southampton market--Southampton Village to be specific. There in black and white was the evidence I was looking for: JUNE SALES 2012 VS 2011 Week of 7/6/12   2 Houses sold Week of 6/29/12  8 houses sold                                          Week of 6/22/12  4 houses sold Week of 6/15/12  3 houses sold Week of 6/8/12    5 houses sold                                                                 Week of 6/1/12    4 houses sold 2012 JUNE TOTAL        26 houses sold This shows me that the pace of sales has picked up nicely compared to a year ago: 2011 TOTAL       19 houses  sold (month of June, 2011--same number of days)  2010 TOTAL       13 houses so... 07/14/2012

RAISING THE BAR: A MATTER OF TRUST...THAT GOES BOTH WAYS! OK, another post on "Raising the Bar" for real estate agents looks a little over-done! But I get really irked by the constant pointing out of the importance of education to this profession....as if the classroom is the place to correct under-handed, bad behavior. I don't think those who exhibit poor judgment in business can or will ever change! In spite of all the classes taken and the titles earned, a bad agent is still a bad agent and they make more of an impact on the public than great agents do simply because that's what the public hears about..... I think there is an entirely different approach that can and should be taken by large real estate companies; and it has to do with the investment they have already made: The invest... 06/27/2012

WHEN A YOUNG PERSON PASSES...Remembering Loss. This is a very sad moment to the real estate community here in Southampton Village today as we watch a Mother in grief and a family go unwillingly into mourning. One of my fellow agents and a close neighbor of mine, Kimberly, just had the horrifying experience of finding her 29 year old daughter dead in her bed...after not getting a response when she called her name several times Sunday morning: "Time to get up Heather---let's get ready for church!' No answer and she went to the upstairs bedroom where her daughter slept and was devastated when she found she was not breathing...Nothing prepares a Mother for what Kimberly found there that day...and nothing makes it easy to deal with the loss. Where does one go for instructions on how to help ... 06/04/2012

THE "SATISFACTION QUOTIENT",  A KEY ELEMENT TO A SUCCESSFUL SALE IN TODAY'S REAL ESTATE MARKET...It's Not the same thing as a "Comfort Level" since that can be reached with relatively little input from the agent and has less to do with the process of actually buying a home. A "Satisfaction Quotient" deals with the buyer's feelings about how they are being treated in general, how the critical information they need is given to them, how the inventory they are looking at can fill their housing needs and how they feel about the buying process as the agent has explained it to them.  I am sure that the market here in Southampton and the other Hamptons is similar to all the other markets out there, in the  way the buyers respond to the brokerage community and how it serves them. In the Hampton... 05/21/2012

SOUTHAMPTON, NEW YORK... WHY I  CHOOSE TO LIVE HERE: It was 1978 and I had just moved to Manhattan from Michigan. I was very new to the Hamptons as a weekend get-away and was just beginning to try to spend every summer weekend here. Living in the cement "oven" of the Big Apple can be so oppressive! About 2 hours away is the escape that everyone "in the know" now enjoys! Record crowds now fill The Hamptons every summer and Fall weekend. What is it about Southampton, New York that made me choose to spend my summer weekends here? The very same things that made me choose to eventually live here permanently; but the most important reason was the history of the town of Southampton..that and the beautiful, long, white sandy beaches!..and the Great Peconic Bay...Ah, the Bay!     LOCATED on the ... 05/15/2012

SOUTHAMPTON VILLAGE, NEW YORK IS THE DESTINATION FOR  HOME BUYERS... The Head line reads: "A Walkers Guide to Home Buying" --and then the rest of the Wall Street Journal article goes on to describe the "amenities" or "places" they were referring to: Restaurants, movie theaters, drugstores, Grocery stores etc....Small wonder then, that Southampton Village, New York is THE destination for home buyers! Buyers, looking to buy here in the Hamptons are looking for "proximity" more than anything else right now.  Wall Street Journal Article: Home Buyers Look For Homes Within Walking Distance To Everything! The article ran in the Wall Street Journal in their Real Estate Section in late 2011. It offers many good reasons why home buyers are being pulled to locations which have a "Village" feeling ... 04/29/2012

DO YOU HAVE A "BRIGHT SPOT" IN YOUR MARKET???...In The Hamptons It's New Construction!                                         The best selling houses right now in Southampton Village are New Construction--two of them are my listings. I worked very hard with the developer/builder to get the right price and the right location for these two houses. Now, there is a mad Rush on the part of other builders to get into the same location and the prices on the existing homes have started to get too high for my client to do what he did so well just 6 months ago! The other builders in the area are offering sub-standard quality and design, in my opinion and the way my client has been successful has been his approach to the whole product: Highest quality workmanship and design with the top of the li... 04/24/2012

TODAY, I DELETED A POST FOR THE FIRST TIME....Full disclosure as to why: I did it because it became an unimaginable monster. It became a monster because in the process of going back and forth with an individual, or rather 2 individuals, I could see the writing on the wall and the subject matter became something I never ever thought I would be tackling at this point in my career: the ethical treatment of the private information about a client or customer.  I deleted my post about the websites Zillow and Trulia's crazy pricing of properties here in my small Village of Southampton, New York.....something Zillow calls Zestimates and Trulia doesn't seem to have a name for. It became a monster because I made the bad mistake of trusting an individual here on AR to give me the "scoop" on how th... 04/21/2012