When you take exterior pictures...do you just lean out the window, with the mirror in the picture and shoot into the sun and say "good enough"?

Or do you take when the sun is behind you, and when you get up the energy to get out of the car...and get a picture without the road and power poles and wires in it?  After a property has been for sale awhile, do you rework the images, or take news ones for the marketing mix when the grass is green and snow gone or just keep the old snow pictures for marketing during August?  Effort, curb appeal caught on a picture you can share.  Close ups of fine stained glass, rear deck with sunset, uncluttered cellar or garage, lights on in the new tiled bath ...not just the whole house shot with seven cars in the yard obscuring the home you are peddling.  Capture it and your copy is not as crucial.  Show them the place and optimize those photos so you can not tie up your server and emailer.  Assume they have the third computer made and not alot of skills so the images that are not sized to email easily will just shut down their whole system draining every volt of energy trying to pick up the image.  This possible client or customer will really remember the broker who choked their system and stopped the conveyor belt of property information in one large picture grenade. Still and videos...get out of the vehicle to get the image without the mirror in the corner...or at least crop it out or start learning to lean without your seat belt on.  Trotting out to another angle can give the home a whole new spin!  The spin that sells it.

In advertising write ups..short sentences, questions that appeal to the needs/wants/desires of the reader or viewer and lots of adjectives that nail it.  Fantastic, panoramic, sportsman's paradise, blah blah blah.  Have some fun..."Take this house and LOVE it!" for a caption.  "How good are you with a skill saw?"   With vacant land  "See your new home?  (Pointing)  Right there..the one you are going to build!  We can see it and make it happen" .  Reverse copy...to make it black with white type...don't do it the way everyone else does it.  Dare to be different.  Many brokers whine they hate doing ads.  Well, your buyers and your sellers are reading them.  And you're spending the money anyway..why not make them rise above the "Nice 3 bedroom, nice yard, nice colors..." type blurp everyone uses.  If it was you looking for a house like this, what would trigger your interest to call, to see, to buy?  And what features do you care nothing about but someone thirty years older or with different hobbies would die for the place if you just point it out.  Heck rhubbard in the back garden and a place for the bird feeders off the deck in the sunshine could make someone say "Yessss!"  I want that!".  Broaden  the appeal by inventory of all the features.  If the place is plain jane Olive Oil nothing fancy, the price will make your wallet smile, the payment is sooo small that you'll have money left over for luxuries like gas, food and other obligations as your paycheck gets sliced and diced with household/life expenses.  Money left over...cheaper than rent, stop renting, start owning.   If there is a huge yard for the kids to play and entertain themselves for part of the day outside with other neighborhood kids, brag it up.  Just because your kids are gone and that would not be an appeal for you, think of others...play the cards you have with the property you listed.

I know a local fellow who owns five McDonald's franchises who could afford something late model.  But he drives large older "boats"...old Cadillacs not in the best shape but paid for.  He does not spend alot of money on his ride and to judge his based on the wheel he is behind would not meet your expectation of his wallet size or ability to buy whatever he wants!

Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers - Maine is the way life should be.

You sponsor a little league team...a hockey team, soap box derby racers...right?  You should.  You make your money in the little burg or big city and need to sponsor youth in the many outlets available to you.  Its fun, you open your sphere of influence...and who knows, if you stay at it long enough...you may be selling property to that 9 year old when he settles down making seven digits a year with lessons learned on the town championship team you sponsored a few years back.  Or his grandparents may need to down size..."Honey, where's the number for that nice broker who even bought the team power aid and went to some games...." even if his kids were not on the team any more!  You can have a hard day at the office...but throw on some shorts, grab your camera and head to the park or ice arena or derby hill to see the folks you sponsored.  You may even see the trophy they win or at least have flash back to when you were a little leaguer, hockey play or derby racer.  Remember being in the local parades...the crowds...the relatives waving at the little hero...now think of the advertising of who helped make that warm feeling in your heart happen...Good ole ABC Realty.

  Fact.  There are folks with mental illness among us.

You have listed property with sellers that have a tad of mental illness.  You have dealt with stressed, paranoid buyers that are obsessed with the process happening warp factor five...like a life and death situation.  Their head is a scary place.  With that in mind, you can get caught up in the craziness or establish the course of action that is professional and maybe with limitations they do not want to play fair with.  Remember who you represent.  Remember you have money for groceries next week and this deal is not life and death although you are trying to make it work for the client.  Keep it honest, at a sane pace and don't get caught in a box canyon by a person bent on deviating from the path you know the transaction should be on to. Be fair, above board and completed on time.  Otherwise you may be hooked to a customer or client with barb wire and that deal will come back again and again to haunt and cause wasted emotions and valuable time when it should be stopped or guided by you the real estate professional.  Or be prepared for communication from every board and licensure outfit in the land that wants to know why you treated good ole John Q Wacko the shameless way he/she says you did.  Sometimes you do have to throw in the towel.  Fisherman know about the one that got away and the ones they caught and released. Be able to spot, sense and avoid those who do not want to play fair .  Remember who you represent.  Remember you have money for groceries next week and this deal is not life and death although you are trying to make it work for the client.  Keep it honest, at a sane pace and don't get caught in a box canyon by a person bent on deviating from the path you know the transaction should be on to be fair, above board and completed on time.  Otherwise you may be hooked to a customer or client with barb wire and that deal will come back again and again to haunt and cause wasted emotions and valuable time when it should be stopped or guided by you the real estate professional.  Or be prepared for communication from every board and licensure outfit in the land that wants to know why you treated good ole John Q Wacko the shameless way he/she says you did.  Sometimes you do have to throw in the towel.  Fisherman know about the one that got away and the ones they caught and released.  

 Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers - Houlton & Area  Information

     Work Smarter Not Harder is not a catch phrase you have not heard before.  But if you make a serious effort each day to plan that day, more can get accomplished.  Waiting at a property to show it?  Maybe you should have had the client meet at the office so when they are late, and more and more folks are less concerned about your time, you can keep producing at the office and meeting other clients that would have missed you while you were stewing at a property wondering where the heck they are.  Tip number two, write down your mission for the day so you don't have to worry about remembering to do this or that.  Its on the list.  When way laid at a property waiting if you whip out your list, you could make cell calls, updates with attorneys/banks.  Or if after  hours, office calls can be forwarded  to where ever you are for just a few dollars a month for the service.  Make it a game to make better use of your time.  Kids call it multi tasking I believe!  Keep swimming with the rest of the sharks...I mean brokers.  You control how you use your time and if yu waste it, don't take it out on others because of not being in the habit of planning!

When you live in a little rural Mayberry type town, that is what you are selling...small town values.  Friendly people and a community that cares.

  Trusting, no locked doors, willing to help.  Northern Maine prices are so much lower than the rest of the world as the jobs are rewarding but giant pay to sport a couple Hummers in the yard is not the reason to move here.  You won't make as much money...but you won't need to.  Homes for $39,900...what's the catch?  Ahhh..let's get out the map (unfolding sound of paper map)  You are here (pointing) and way way up here on the Canadian border..Yes..that's Houlton Maine.  Aroostook County is the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island...and only 11 people per square mile.  No road rage...no long delay getting across town.  When you are a rural broker, property with land....farm type listings are asked for alot.  Selling single family homes in town is part of the gig, but acreage..getting the Jeep out back on the rear 40 acres is what many that want the path less traveled are interested in. 

     Since 911, folks in the populated areas have not felt safe...and their life is like a gerbil on a treadmill...frantic.  They decide to cash in their real estate chips there...have some money left over after buying the farm or farmette or victorian in Northern Maine.  Before they have a stroke and have to retire in the city, they opt out for rural america.  Baked beans Saturday night.  Church on Sunday, and maybe even Wednesday night. 4th of July parades with homemade floats, little leaguers marching, high school bands, yesteryear autos...and plenty of horses, fire trucks and armed forces units!  Community involved on local boards, sponsorship of everything group going because you make your money here and want to give back...that's life where the sky is bluer...the stars are brighter...and the people are spaced with lots of elbow room.  Slow down...explore life in rural Maine.  Grab a granola bar...turn on the Crosby Stills and Nash...reach for the Mother Earth News and start walking, sitting on porches watching sunsets and living...not just mad dash work work work!  

School goes in three weeks early the end of summer..and then youngsters get out for three weeks of harvest when the potatoes are ready to pick! For pickers, 60 cents a barrel which is four baskets full and weights 165 pounds.  For potato house and harvester workers the big minimum wage...which seems like a fortune to local 16 year olds that want an ipod or new stylish winter coat.  The kids take better care of what they buy...and they choose carefully not wasting any of their own money.