If Politicians Had to Abide by the Realtor Code of Ethics

realtor code of ethic

As we’re all bombarded for one last night on radio, TV and our mailboxes with the offensive and intellectually insulting ads produced by maggot politicians seeking our votes, I thought it would be interesting to see what the world would be like if these scumbags had to follow the same Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics that we do as Realtors.

Article 1
When representing a buyer, seller, landlord, tenant, or other client as an agent, REALTORS® pledge themselves to protect and promote the interests of their client.

This means instead of seeking power and wealth for yourself, Mr. and Mrs. Politician, you work toward the best interests of your “clients”, those being the constituants whom you are suppose to serve and represent.

Article 2
REALTORS® shall avoid exaggeration, misrepresentation, or concealment of pertinent facts relating to the property or the transaction.

Stop telling lies about your opponent, about yourself and about the issues. You’re all worse than a bunch of 5 year olds. It’s embarrassing to watch your ads on TV. You all should be ashamed.

Article 3
REALTORS® shall cooperate with other brokers except when cooperation is not in the client’s best interest.

Work together to solve common problems, not to feed your ego, your personal aspirations, and your pet projects.

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I Was Reprimanded and Lectured by a Travis County Polling Worker

I voted sticker

Sylvia and I stopped by Randalls in Westlake yesterday for early voting. Upon presenting my voter registration card to the lady who checks ID, she reprimanded me for having trimmed it to a size that fits into my wallet.

The voter registration cards in Texas are the size of a standard postcard. This makes it inconvenient to carry in a wallet. So I trim the excess off the top and bottom with scissors, making the card the same height as a drivers license. Then, when folded in half sideways, it fits perfectly in my wallet, with the relevant info intact.

Anyway, the election worker proceeded to inform me NOT to trim the card next time because I chopped off the bar code that the scanner reads and now she has to enter the info manually into her laptop instead of just scanning it. I told her I’d never been told that. She then proceeded to tell me that if it takes an extra minute to enter my info, I’m holding up the line and causing other people to wait longer than they should have to. I said “oh, would you like to scan my drivers license instead?” She said “no, I already have you up here” (on the laptop screen).

This was all spoken in earshot of at least the first 3 or 4 people in line behind me. I considered saying “hey, Old Lady, shut up and just do your freaking job”, but I instead apologized for having trimmed my card and causing her the extra effort of typing my name into her screen.

Is it the polling worker’s job or duty to issue such reprimands and lectures to voters? No, it’s not.

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Which Demographic Can’t Wait to Leave Austin?

Austin on map

I’ve taken an informal poll of a certain group of long-time Austinites, and 4 out of 5 surveyed desperately want to leave Austin .. before September 2011. Who are these crazies? High school seniors who are born and raised in Austin.

My own kid is one of them. Born at Brackenridge hospital, schooled for eight years at the Austin Waldorf School, and now a soon-to-be graduate of Westlake High. She’s an Austin native through and through. But she and her Austin-native friends can’t wait to get out of here.

As she puts it, “it will be lame if I go to UT and, when I finish college, I will have only ever lived in Austin”. Doesn’t sound “lame” to me, but what the heck, I’m just the Dad paying for all this.

OK, I do get the point. The grass is greener and all that. Birds flying the nest, coming of age, exploring the world, being independent. Getting away from the “parental units”. I get it. But this is Austin. I could see aching to get away from Bismark, or Tulsa or Abilene. But Austin? Everybody else is trying to get here!

And where is the grass greener? Waco. Go figure. Yep, Baylor University is a fine institution and I have to admit I was impressed with the visitor tour. But Waco? That’s the big escape from Austin? Yes, because it’s the “perfect” distance away.

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Austin office market back to pre-recession levels

Real Estate Contracts

This from the Austin Business Journal today, Austin office market back to pre-recession levels. Let’s review a few snippets from the news article.

The Austin office market saw a trifecta of positive developments in the third quarter with a dramatic boost in absorption, decrease in sublease and large corporate move-ins. The shift is the best the local office market has seen since the recession began, according to Oxford Commercial’s latest quarterly report released Wednesday.

“I think you can now say that we’ve turned the darkest corner and have a stabilized market that has signs of further improving into the next two quarters,” Oxford Partner Kevin Kimbrough said.

Read the full story for more positive data points.

What does this commercial real estate news mean for the residential home sales market?

More than you might think.

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Does the Austin Lifestyle Keep us all Feeling Younger?

Austin lifestyle

Sylvia and I attended a friend’s birthday party last night at a local restaurant. We were among the oldest people there, but we blended in just fine. I met a college guy who just recently graduated McCallum High. Our friend is in his mid 30s and the crowd of guests ranged from young 20s to late 40s/early 50s. The music being played was 1970s “Go Go” music, of which our friend is a fan. It was a typical Austin get-together of a diverse group of friends and acquaintances having fun.

My 48th birthday was last week. I’m either in denial about aging, or Austin is just a place where we don’t really feel like we’re growing old. I still feel the same youthful exuberance I did when I first moved here in May 1985 at the age of 22, only I’m a bit wiser and more financially responsible now. The hard-partying days are behind me. And I have 14 and 17 year old kids and, thus, a different set of worries and priorities.

But Sylvia and I were with a more age-homogeneous group of friends the night before. This was a bunch of her old real estate pals from the 1980s. She was an outside sales rep at GranTree Furniture back then and did sales calls at apartments, lease-locator companies and real estate offices in Austin, trying to sell furniture. She became friends with a large group of real estate agents. They would eventually talk her into getting her real estate license, which she did in 1988 (in the middle of the worst real estate market in Austin history), and she became a Realtor instead of an interior design specialist.

Anyway, as I looked around the table at these dozen or so veteran real estate people, I thought that I certainly can’t look as old as they all do. To me Sylvia looks the same as she did when I met her at age 29. We all certainly act about the same. Why is that? Why aren’t we all members of an Elk’s club, or the Moose Lodge, as our parents were at the same age when we were growing up, playing bingo on Saturday nights and showing up for $1 cornbread and beans on Wed nights? Drinking bourbon and water and playing darts and shooting pool? Why weren’t the women at the table wearing “old lady” clothes instead of the good looking outfits they had on? And us guys were all wearing what any 20-something would be wearing in Austin on a night out.  Yep, we live in a town where a 20-something could borrow clothes from a 40-something, noone would be the wiser.

Aren’t we supposed to dissolve from the Austin lifestyle “scene” once the grey hair starts coming in. How dare us show up at ACL Fest next week, wearing sneakers and jeans. Who gave us baby boomers permission to invade and take over Facebook and to learn how to Text? Why don’t I own a recliner-rocker and drive a Buick 4-door like good Dads my age should?

Because I live in Austin TX, where growing old is not an option, and staying cool is easy.

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Realtor Success, Girl’s Volleyball, Eating Frogs and Pareto

vilfredo pareto

Five years ago when my oldest daughter started middle school volleyball, I declared to her after observing a few matches that I could coach a winning team by doing just one thing. I would, I told her, spend every practice having every girl practice serving. 100s of serves each, every practice. Not until every player could serve with 90% success 90% of the time would we even practice anything else. And by serving well and consistently, the team would win every game. Of that I was certain.

And now my youngest is playing girls middle school volleyball, and nothing has changed on these middle school teams. I watched two matches last night. If a coach, at that level, were to do nothing other than teach every kid how to serve the ball over the net with 90% success, that team would win every game even if they lacked the ability to do anything else.

How did I become an expert at girl’s volleyball? Simply by observing the mathematical fact that very few serves are successfully returned. Often, less than 10%. Get a serve over, you get a point, 9 out of 10 times. And most players can’t get a serve over. Thus, the games are reduced to a contest of missed serves and missed returns, with very few actual volleys back and forth.

At the level of play I was observing, the team who got the most serves over the net won, period. To confirm this, I even kept a scratch sheet one match, tracking the number of serves made and missed by each team. And the theory was proven. No team ever wins without getting the most serves over the net.

Having run out of magazines to read around the house this month, I perused my bookshelf of old books the other night and pulled down my old copy of Eat That Frog! and started rereading it. There on page 19 is the chapter about the 80/20 rule, or Pareto’s Principle. Vilfredo Pareto would have been a successful Realtor because he would have understood how to use his time and focus his efforts. The rule says, simply, that 20% of our efforts account for 80% of our results. Or, stated the other way around, 80% of what we do accounts for only 20% of the results. We should, therefore, figure out what activities or efforts produce the most solid results, and focus on doing a lot of those things and less of the other. This is actually the same observation about serving that one can make while watching middle school girl’s volleyball.

Were I to coach a 7th grade girls volleyball team and employ my serving theory, my team might not consist of the most well rounded players, but they’d know how to serve consistently and we’d win every game. We’d be champions by doing just one thing really well with consistency.

So what’s this have to do with real estate and whether Realtors are successful or not?

It has everything to do with it. When other agents or even regular people we know ask me and Sylvia “how’s the real estate business?”, and we say, “great, we’re staying really busy”, they often seem surprised. “I thought it was a terrible market in Austin and everybody is really slow, how do you guys stay busy?”, they ask. The question is answered in 5 simple words…

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