Famil­iar­ity cre­ates trust. Recent research by the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors® (NAR) shows that even in the age of the Inter­net 64% of all real estate busi­ness for bro­kers is either the result of refer­rals from fam­ily and friends or it is repeat busi­ness. My guess is that this per­cent­age may be in the 80% range for the list­ing side of the busi­ness (as opposed to rep­re­sent­ing buy­ers). A case in point is my most recent list­ing which is the result of a friend (and repeat busi­ness client) rec­om­mend­ing me to a mutual friend.

The rewards of work­ing with friends. Although work­ing for friends in any busi­ness has its own chal­lenges, it can be the most reward­ing of expe­ri­ences. The lat­ter hap­pens when I’m con­stantly moti­vated to go the extra mile and my client con­tin­u­ally appre­ci­ates what I do.  When these two atti­tudes con­tinue to feed each other the result can be some­thing special.

What moti­vated me in the case of this Port Ange­les prop­erty was the beauty of the set­ting and the 20-year his­tory of my friends as own­ers and devel­op­ers. Stay­ing over night with my wife as their guests and liv­ing their live for a week­end did the rest. We learned that our friends moved from the Los Ange­les area to this tran­quil place and how it became what it is today. We walked the ten-acre prop­erty and took in the sounds and sights. I even did some tar­get prac­tice. We saw one of the boys milk­ing a cow and and sam­pled home made cheese, gin­ger ale and beer — organic farm­ing at its best.

Sell­ing a lifestyle prop­erty. Also, it became clear that the buyer of this prop­erty would want to live the same lifestyle. That meant the buyer pool would be small and the effort to find that buyer would need to be a joint effort. One result is the pre­sen­ta­tion of the prop­erty I cre­ated with web pages and a video, another is the own­ers telling their story right here on SERENE™.  Watch for it on these pages and tell your friends to visit and comment.