Chronicles of a Silicon Valley Real Estate AGENT - Day 2,951
7:31 am: received a random call from someone saying that they noticed that my office hours were posted as opening at 7:30 am (have no idea where that would be) and they were at my office looking for me. Beware of the non-scheduled-drop-in-out-of-nowhere prospective clients… I usually tread very lightly here.
Dropped kids off at a bilingual Mandarin/English program using my wife’s car. I strongly recommend the programs during the summer time for kids. My car was still in the shop, so dropped my wife’s car back at home and then hopped on a Uber (7 min. wait) to my office in downtown Palo Alto. (Trip Time: 17:11 / Miles: 5.17 / Cost with 25% summer discount: $12.68)
10:10am: meeting with media team to discuss new Instagram 15-second video campaign and aerial drone photography for upcoming listing in Saratoga Hills. Definitely bleeding edge technology. Must continue to innovate. Otherwise, I’m no different than any other agent. Complacency leads to extinction. Think what happened to the dinosaurs.
Walked to a nearby cafe (I love downtown Palo Alto) to get a quick bite to eat before having my car dropped off just in time for me to head to Emerald Hills to meet a serial entrepreneur looking to downsize. Beautiful home. Well thought-out floor plan with quality upgrades and amazing views. Was a good first meeting and looking forward to connecting with the seller first thing next week to follow up.
3:33pm: drove down to Miramonte area of Mountain View to meet with a general contractor and buyer who is purchasing a duplex. Went over scope of work and discussed next steps in terms of remodeling and repairs to be done once escrow is closed and rental strategy. Creating value through your experience is your client's largest asset.
Spent rest of work day until dinner working on confirming that two properties were able to close escrow as scheduled today. My listing in Mount Carmel Redwood City closed, however not till the afternoon, so seller’s funds would not be available until Monday. Gave the sellers a call to let them know that. Better to update sellers constantly than reacting to clients calling you saying, "What's going on?". This was a great listing. With a decent remodeling budget, we were able to upgrade the home, market it, and negotiate a great price all within the expected timeline. Our return-on-investment was close to 400%. Other listing in Campbell however was unable to record on time due to a delay in receiving documentation from the lender and therefore scheduled to close on Monday. Nothing is for sure or definite in real estate and quite often we just need to ‘roll with it’. Setting expectation and thorough communication with the client is VERY important. Needless to say, today these two clients were on my speed dial all day.
Enjoyed a nice family dinner at home with bride and kids. After dinner, took my daughter to Planet Granite (best rock gym on the West Coast?) with me for some indoor rock climbing. Her first time climbing indoors and she was initially timid and afraid but quickly overcame that fear and by the end of the night, she had climbed 7 times with the highest climb being a 5.6. It was very impressive. Good times.
Looking over communication stats for the day:
- 57 phone calls
- 9 voicemails
- 19 text conversations
- 45 emails
11:24pm: Lastly, working on submitted an offer for a client. My assistants are off this weekend. So need to draft offer package myself. TGIF. Time to get to work.
