Do you know your floorplan?

Happy Friday!

I'll make this brief...

Know your floor plan! You may find an extra room you never thought you had!

I think that there is nothing more valuable for marketing a property than by having a copy of the floorplan.

This helps people understand how the house is laid out, how furniture can be placed, and what renovations they can make to better fit their families' needs.

Good places to find floor plans are your local city building department, the architect who designed the house, or the builder.

If you cannot find a floor plan through those methods, hire an architect.

There are many local architectural students looking for some extra cash, you can always hire one to take measurements and sketch out a floorplan for you!

An architect will be able to give you professional looking results that can be used in marketing, planning a remodel, or placing furniture.

You can also do a simple one yourself with a measuring tape and some graph paper, or use one of many helpful computer software suites for homeowners.

Take a small copy with you when shopping for furniture! Use a ruler, graph paper, and some scissors to cut out scale outlines of the furnishings to see if they will fit in your room or complement your current decor.

Caravan Committee...here comes Trevor!!!

Broker's caravan...

For those of you who do not know what that is...

Every week, every Realtor® has the opportunity to come for an hour to an hour and a half and network with other agents and service providers (escrow, title, inspection, etc.).

THE goal and purpose of these meetings is to create a forum to share ideas, clients' needs, information, properties and socially interact with our peers who are slugging through this market together.

Through this spirit of camaraderie, we can have a social network to help each other out and mainly...to service our clients the best way we possibly can!

I attend two caravans each and every week, and I have now been invited to the committee for the Carlsbad/La Costa/Encinitas/Cardiff. I am honored and priveleged to accept this designation and responsibilty.

The sad news is that caravan attendance has been slowly falling since the economy has been getting tougher.

What I need to reiterate and I will never stop saying this is: CARAVAN IS CRUCIAL to the success of an agent and the clients he or she serves.

I have personally put several deals together that otherwise would never have even been considered had I not had the chance to pitch the ideas and have a response!

Every agent needs to know how that if they don't come... they are not only ignoring the needs and wants of their client, but also passing up an incredible opportunity to make money!! And they are also preventing me from making money... the less they hear about my listings or buyers, the less chance I have of selling something faster and getting paid sooner!

So...Caravan...it's crucial...just do it.

Del Mar Deal of the Day!

This is not my listing but I wish it was!

This awesome house was on caravan today! Compared to all the other homes I saw in Del Mar, this is twice the view at half the price!

Now I will be the first to tell you that I think homes over a certain many of millions of dollars are difficult to make any financial sense of... but this is a REALLY nice house...for around 4 million.

The reason I like this house at this price is because of the comparable property that is currently on the market

I saw two houses today priced at over 6 million bucks...one had dirty carpets and the other was brand new but with most of the living space sub-subterranean...which is fine...if you happen to be a mole-man...or woman

The other deal just came back on the market! WOW!!
In Escondido
For less than $370,000 you get:

1. A 5 Bedroom, 4 Bath house
2. A 2 Bedroom, 1 Bath house
3. Over half an acre
4. A 4 car garage
5. A great neighborhood

Call me...this is a GREAT deal!!




Otherwise the market is still humming along.

The buzz at both the Carlsbad/La Costa/Encinitas and the Del Mar/Solana Beach caravans is that deals are coming together, financing is getting through, creativity is coming back into play and people are buying and selling real estate


Let me repeat that...people are still buying and selling their homes!

Now we may not have the volume nor fervor that we had 4 years ago, but the truth of the matter and the market is this:

Life goes on and people need to move

Just today I had some folks that I have been working with call me. They said that they now have a rather unexpected pregnancy and that their needs are now drastically different than they were just three days ago!

What does that mean? Well that means that families are growing, that means jobs are transferred, lost, gained or promoted! That means people are getting married and divorced...that means LIFE GOES ON no matter what economic climate we may be in.

So before you get sour and mad and depressed that the real estate market is dead, or that the media keeps blitzing you with negative doom-news...just remember that we are all in this together and guess what...

Necessity is the mother of innovation! Welcome to a new global era of change...and a new method of life-outlook!

Let yourself be the master of your situation and adapt. Behold the glory of new thought and fresh and positive outlook!

Welcome to my mind on real estate!

Hello and welcome!

I got this blog idea from a missionary friend of mine who says that this is one of the best ways for people to stay in touch with you and find out more about your mission in life.

He happens to be spending the next two years in Peru, I plan on spending the next 2 years working through and prospering in this challenging and exciting time in our local and national market for property.

I am based out of Encinitas, California. I was born and raised here with a 4 year stint in Missouri for college.

I am a 3rd generation real estate agent here in Southern California and I believe I have a very unique perspective of our market.

Coming from a family history of property ownership and rental management, it is difficult for me to look at homes through the eyes of a typical consumer, but rather an investor. Real estate, like any large financial transaction, needs to be evaluated in a fiscally rational way. By using simple calculations, knowledge of the mechanics of property, investment analysis, and predicting consumer behavior, it is my goal to appropriately guide my clients into sound financial decisions that will help them achieve set goals in property ownership and investment.

So I welcome you to my mind on real estate and hope this helps you understand and achieve your goals in real estate.

-Trevor