Author: Real Living Real Estate
Be Sure to Join Us for These Upcoming Fall Diversity Events
This fall, Real Living Real Estate will participate in several events, conferences and conventions celebrating diversity in our industry. Join Gino Blefari, Chris Stuart, Teresa Palacios Smith and more team members at these events happening all over the country.
NAHREP CONVENTION, SEPT. 26-29
The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) Convention takes place in San Diego, CA Sept. 26-29, 2019. This national convention is NAHREP’s marquee event, where top-producing real estate professionals, industry experts and corporate executives convene for four days of education, networking and entertainment. Chris Stuart, Vice Chairman of Real Living Real Estate, will serve on a panel with David Acosta, 2019 NAHREP president, to discuss all the exciting new initiatives and brand offerings.
Stop by our booth No. 207 at the EXPO hall where you will get a chance to meet our team, take photos and pick up goodies! If you haven’t registered yet, contact teresasmith@hsfranchise.com for discounted pricing! For registration information, visit nahrep.org/convention/.
NAGLREP CONFERENCE, OCT. 1-3
Join Teresa Palacios Smith at the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals (NAGLREP) Conference, held in Palm Springs, CA Oct. 1-3 at the Riviera Resort & Spa. NAGLREP will unite over 700 LGBT and allied industry leaders for three power-packed days of learning and networking with some of the best masterminds in the country. Come ready to gain insights into what top-producing peers are doing, hear from industry executives who are shaping innovation and learn more about the LGBT culture. Celebrate the Top LGBT+Agent Awards and remember to stop by our booth during the event.
All Real Living Real Estate network members will get $100 off NAGLREP conference registration! Now’s the time to spread the word and get registered. Remember to use the discount code bhhs100 when registering. For more details, visit naglrep.com/2019/.
VAREP NATIONAL CONVENTION, OCT.13-15
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is sponsoring the Veteran’s Association of Real Estate Professionals (VAREP), which will hold its National Convention in Orlando, FL Oct. 13-15. The convention will educate, develop and empower by equipping you with the necessary tools to serve the military and veteran housing needs. There will be powerful networking, dynamic breakouts and industry leading classes along with a military and veteran expo. Stop by our booth at the convention. Take advantage of our discount when registering by using the code HOMESERVICES.
For registration details, visit varep.net/convention/.
AREAA NATIONAL CONVENTION, OCT. 17-19
The Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) holds its National Convention in Boston, MA, Oct. 17-19 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place. Experience three inspiring days focusing on education, networking and professional development. Learn more about the greater AAPI community, how to connect with them in real estate, and how to make an impact in your local market. Teresa Palacios Smith will be one of the featured panelists at the conference. Please stop by our booth #225 located in the marketplace where you will get a chance to meet our team, take photos and pick up goodies!
For more information and to register, visit web.cvent.com/event/324cd465-f5eb-482d-a7ae-6fad6b27ab3a/summary
A Letter from Leadership: Don't Retire from Real Estate
Roger Federer, the third ranked tennis player in the world, who in pursuit of his record setting 21st Masters Series championship, recently lost an epic and grueling five-hour, five-set tiebreaker in the Wimbledon finals. After the celebrated match, Federer was asked by one reporter … “Are you considering retiring?”
Well, if the third highest ranked and to some the greatest tennis player of all time, encounters as he nears the age of 38 pressure to retire; or at least to consider packing in his tennis racquet, then what should those in Real Estate who are in their 50s and 60s and who are in 50,000th place in productivity rankings be thinking?
Well, you can take it from this 7O-year old grizzled industry veteran and I am sure from your deeply appreciative broker as well, along with your many clients that you should not even think about the possibility of retiring … too soon! Listings expire, but you cannot prematurely afford to! Especially those of you who have enjoyed success for years, and here is why:
According to social scientist Arthur Brooks, there is a phenomenon that he refers to as the “Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation.” This, according to Brooks, is how “the agony of professional oblivion is directly related to the height of professional prestige previously achieved and to one’s emotional attachment to that prestige.”
Therefore, to both you legendary brokers and iconic community real estate professionals, I respectfully suggest that you take a page out of the world of politics regarding how one’s inevitable declining years can be managed. Regarding my declining years, each week, I am on an accountability call led by Gino Blefari, chairman of Real Living Real Estate. On our calls, we all are asked by Gino, after making our business reports, to announce what we are doing to improve that week.
Not wanting to call unwarranted attention to myself, I, too, mention my diet and exercise, what I don’t mention is that I am really asking myself as a former Boston Celtic draft choice what I will need to do that week to slow my decline. And nobody works harder at managing their decline than our highest-rated presidential candidates. This is not to say that you should seek to emulate them in another way. That is unless you want to become duplicitous, conniving and self-promoting.
Instead I do suggest that you look to emulate the geriatric galaxy of presidential contenders in how they validate how society values experience, resilience, career stability and longevity. Remarkably, our leading presidential contenders from both sides of the proverbial aisle, even if their vision is waning, are of the following eye-popping ages … 77, 75, 73 and 70 according to 70-year-old TV anchor Wolf Blitzer. Clearly our political aspirants, who, like real estate professionals, must rely on brains versus brawn, did not receive or pay attention to the society’s collective email delivered to all of we who are aging!
Accordingly, why would a professional real estate professional who has spent decades developing experiential knowledge, invaluable skills, a considerable real estate retinue and widespread admiration for their resilience and how they have withstood numerous watershed Real Estate changes, retire now at the peak of their real estate powers?
Moreover, what an opportunity to engage in so-called reverse mentoring. That is by accepting technology advice from younger (and based on evolution) more intelligent generations to come. My advice for our much younger agents, is rather than mocking your older counterparts for not being as adaptive regarding emerging technologies as you are, why not offer your more contemporaneous grasp of our digital world to them? They can then reciprocate through providing meaningful career and life lessons.
Given the importance of not only developing spheres of influence, but actually influencing spheres, our industry might not be able to withstand a massive exodus of long tenured agents. This is due to how new business-modeled entrants will at the same time seek to dislodge the relationships that many real estate professionals have built with home sellers. Indeed, if selecting a so-called listing agent now becomes as random as how buyers select an agent when they buy then “industry beware.”
The most effective way for us to generationally move forward, as I stated, would be through the formation of symbiotic relationships. This is where in exchange for tech support from younger agents, aging real estate professionals can turn over or sell their career “ book of business” to a younger agent who was helpful in its sustenance. This transition however, in my view, should only happen when our top and more seasoned agents are ready to retire and on their terms.
This is in contrast to being rushed to retire, based upon society’s pressure to speed up the beginning of the so called “Golden Years.” Doing well in real estate and making a major difference in the lives of those you serve are your Golden Years … Thus, I fervently hope that whether you are a broker, manager or agent that you get to enjoy your real estate Golden Years for years, if not decades to come.
All my best,
Allan Dalton
A Letter from Leadership: Dalton's Dream
While it is not typical for any of us, and especially CEOs, to share our personal dreams within the workplace for fear of political correctness or worse, I feel compelled to share a recent nocturnal hallucination as it has to do with the Real Living Luxury Lifestyle Division. Hopefully my recalled dream and this unexpected form of communication, might heighten interest in our recently developed and introduced Real Living Luxury Lifestyle Division … here goes!
In my dream I was brought before the “Truth in Advertising” court and challenged to defend the introduction of the Real Living Luxury Lifestyle Division. My judicial encounter however unfolded more as a nightmare as you will understand by the following transcript:
Judge Jones:
Mr. Dalton, how can Real Living claim to have a luxury lifestyle division? Especially considering how your Real Living brand was indirectly and informally influenced by two former brands neither of which symbolized luxury real estate. One of those brands was symbolic of mainstream America and the other for middle-of-the road automobiles and finance. Moreover, you do not appear to have anywhere near the number of million and multi-million-dollar listings as do the other brands. Ironically these other so-called upscale brands here in court today, don’t even claim to have divisions. Instead, they only promote that they have luxury marketing without bringing lifestyle into the mix. What say you?
Defendant Dalton:
Mrs. Jones, or rather Your Honor, Real Living is the most natural brand for the upscale market because of the words that describe our organization and our division, which represents luxury lifestyles. With all due respect, if anything, you might consider asking these other brands to defend their presumptuous and excessively elite selection process along with the dismissive assessments they make every year regarding the merit of thousands of remarkable luxury lifestyles that to them do not qualify for their elevated marketing and rarefied categorization.
Judge Jones:
Oh, so I guess it should be up to you or Wendy Durand or Marie Cabo to define luxury. Or is it just because of your name alone that you believe that every home you represent automatically constitutes luxury … or Real Living? Mr. Dalton are you basing your decisions of what makes a luxury lifestyle based upon etymological research on the interplay and interconnectedness of the words “Real,” “Living,” “Luxury” and “Lifestyle,” or the gosh darn property itself?
Defendant Dalton:
What does that word “etymological mean Your Honor?
Judge Jones:
Essentially the history of words.
Defendant Dalton:
Well since you mentioned the importance of the history of words I did some research. According to WebsterBusinessDictionary.com and the Cambridge dictionary, I learned the following:
That “Real” can mean very, extremely or especially as in … get real. “Living” can mean existing, and “Luxury” can mean something adding to the pleasure or comfort of something, but that is not necessary. “Lifestyle” is widely defined as the way in which a person lives.
Judge Jones:
This is beginning to sound like jabberwocky or real estate gibberish, please get to the point.
Defendant Dalton:
Your Honor, there are millions of homes that I believe are so “real” that they belong in an “especially” or “Real” category, not only because of the physical structure but also the overall and special lifestyle they represent. Also, there are millions of homes and their surroundings that go well beyond what is “necessary,” making them luxury lifestyles that are being under appreciated and under marketed by our industry.
And finally, “lifestyle” meaning the way that one lives, must by definition include more factors than square footage, curb appeal and arresting amenities within the domain. Therefore, we must rethink, recalibrate and re-engineer our approach to marketing homes, which is not only good for our home sellers, but also will help to improve the perception of our marketing value. Such re-engineering means re-evaluating how millions of homes have been defined or labeled for decades.
By making our marketing more magnanimous your Honor, we will appropriately be honoring more lifestyles and greater numbers of people whose new-age real estate decisions coincide with a mass movement that displays preference towards selecting overall lifestyles versus making life-altering decisions based upon the myopic attraction to the property alone.
Judge Jones:
Allan, I have a three-bedroom home on a little less than an acre that we purchased two years ago for $350,000. It is located in a section of town that has many million-dollar homes. We are close to Whole Foods, the museum and the most beautiful park. I know we would not qualify for the programs of these other real estate companies, but would Real Living, if you will forgive the pun, judge our property as a luxury lifestyle?
Defendant Dalton:
We would not put our luxury lifestyle sign rider on our iconic Real Living sign or create a customized luxury lifestyle marketing program if we did not understand how luxury lifestyles do not begin or end at the curb. I’m happy to come to your home personally and together we can evaluate.
Judge Jones:
Case dismissed.
Mr. Dalton, would you please approach the bench? Allan, here is my contact information. We want to sell, especially after hearing your expanded view of the meaning of Lifestyle.
Also, I don’t know if you have any program like say a Neighbors Know Best or something like that one in which you could ask for testimonials from my neighbors about our overall lifestyle. I think this would help because all of us believe we are enjoying Real Living at its best and are the fortunate residents of luxury lifestyles.
Ring, ring, ring. And then my alarm clock went off.
All my best,
Allan
Guest Blog: Tips for First-Time Home Sellers
by Brenda Cuoco
A lot of focus in the real estate industry has been placed on first-time homebuyers. But what about first-time home sellers? There never seems to be enough education on this topic. Selling a home is very different from buying one. Whereas buying a home generally involves emotions and feelings, selling typically centers on the home seller maximizing profit. It is best that homeowners do not allow themselves to get emotionally attached to the home they are selling as they most likely will not get what their home is worth.
Here are a few tips to help home sellers achieve their goal:
1. Choosing an Agent
Choose an agent who has the experience and expertise to get your home seen and sold. Don’t choose your cousin’s sister-in-law, for example, who dabbles in real estate. You’ll fare much better if you select an experienced real estate agent who has a strong level of local expertise. It is always good to interview at least two agents. Some good questions to ask are: how many homes have they sold in the last year? how much volume have they sold? and what is their list to sale ratio? A great agent will be able to answer all of these questions. You can also verify some of the information provided by the agent directly on the agent’s online profile.
2. Pricing and Marketing your Home
Your agent will analyze comparable sales and prepare an estimate of value often called a CMA, for comparative market analysis. Your listing agent should have the experience and education to provide you with a more accurate opinion of value. The marketing of your home is incredibly important, you should know exactly what your agent is doing to get you the maximum exposure for your home. The agent should be sharing their comprehensive home marketing plan with you, which explains in detail what they will do for you. Of course, if you have hired a top-notch listing agent, your agent should provide professional photos. Remember, how your property appears online is what will drive the consumer through the door.
3. Home Staging Boosts Selling Power and Appeal
Your agent should help you stage your home for photos and for sale. Yes, that’s right. There is a difference in those two statements. Staging for photos is what gets everyone through the door but staging to sell allows you to put some of your comfort items back into your home for showings. Most homes show better with about half of the furniture removed. If a buyer walks in the door and wonders if anybody lives in the house, you’ve done your job correctly. Consider home staging to boost your selling power and appeal. Painting is the single most effective improvement you can make, that gets your more money in your pocket. Don’t let dings in the woodwork or scraps on the walls make your home reflect deferred maintenance. Present your home as if it is a crisp clean $100 bill hot off the press. If you do this, a “SOLD” sign will likely be hanging on the sign out in your front yard soon!
4. Be Flexible with Home Showings
If home showings are too much of an imposition, consider going away the first weekend your home is on the market. Yes, it can feel a bit intrusive to allow strangers to trek through your home and check out your soft-closing drawers in the kitchen. The best way to sell your home is to let a buyer inside with his/her buyer’s agent to tour in peace and quiet. Leave the house when buyer’s agents show up. Anything you say can and will be used against you, plus, buyer’s agents prefer to show without interference. Be sure to ask your agent to provide feedback on all showings. This is imperative to understanding how your home will perform in the marketplace. Some agents have a feedback form that the buyer’s agent will fill out that goes directly to the home seller. This is a critical element to the home-selling process.
5. Review Your Listing Online
Agents do their best to ensure accuracy, but since it is your home, you know the details better than anyone. If you spot a feature that is missing, contact your agent immediately and ask for them to correct any inaccuracies.
6. Respond Promptly to a Purchase Offer
Many offers contain a date by which the offer expires. Notwithstanding, it can drive buyers crazy if they are forced to wait for a seller to decide whether to accept their offer or to issue a counteroffer. Remember, if you are selling because you need to buy a new home, you are no different than when you are a homebuyer yourself. Your agent should walk through the offer with you and guide you in the right direction of all the terms, possible counter offers and educate you on the closing process.
Following these tips should bring home sellers closer to their ultimate goal – selling their homes for what they’re truly worth.
Brenda Cuoco is a broker associate for Real Living Realty Professionals and has been working in the real estate industry since 2004, successfully climbing the ranks each year. Her many years working in the corporate world, along with the impressive network of clients she has cultivated both locally and abroad, has enabled her to easily bring buyers and sellers of properties together with 103 homes sold and revenue of $26.4 million in 2018.
Allan Dalton on Image vs. Value
Image vs. Value
Our industry is prodigiously photoshopped, resplendently dressed and we essentially (along with Hollywood) invented personal promotion.
Moreover, we have been writing self-glowing reviews for decades, and the highways and byways throughout our local communities are brimming with BMWs and a litany of other luxury automobiles.
We are universally polite, the world’s leader in thank-you notes (thank you Brian Buffini) and we are keeping the calendar and refrigerator magnet sectors in business!
No, we do not have an image problem. Our challenge is that we do not do a similarly outstanding job in promulgating our value. Regrettably, many consumers from where I sit still perceive a real estate transaction as a fee-inflated event that they must subsidize to promulgate an inefficiently-run industry.
Or, if you prefer, consumers believe they are paying too much for our services.
If consumers think all they are receiving are our services – as remarkable as “we” believe them to be – then to them, they are paying too much.
How do we begin to change the perception of many consumers that they are paying too much for real estate services?
1. Stress our skills of negotiating, marketing, merchandising and networking far more than the value of our service.
Service must be the frosting on the cake and not the cake.
Our greater value, like other professionals we romantically refer to as our contemporaries – doctors and lawyers – should be a reflection of our outstanding skills rather than our exceptional service.
Consumers believe we are charging surgeon-like fees while we are myopically celebrating our outstanding service. Bringing the bedpan, as indispensable as it may be, does not enjoy the same value as performing surgery or prescribing the proper medical course of action.
I know this first-hand, as many of you also do, as last year I donated my kidney to my wife and the word “service” never came up. Instead, we were seeking, and very content in paying, commensurate skills.
2. Begin referring to listing presentations as “marketing proposals.”
A listing presentation is about you, your company and what you have done in the past. A marketing proposal is about their home, your marketing and what you will be doing now.
3. Change your thinking from “homes do not sell because of price” to “ineffective marketing.”
Why? Because price is just one part of marketing. Remember the 4 Ps of marketing: Price, Product, Placement and Promotion. If all four Ps do not enter into success or failure when marketing a home, we are inadvertently undermining our own value. Additionally, you are charging a ‘marketing fee’ or a ‘pricing fee?”
4. Begin to refer to the individual who represents the seller as the marketing agent vs. the listing agent.
When consumers hear us ask “who is the listing agent?” it reduces the value of the entire industry. Language like the listing agent suggests one’s job is complete with the securing of the listing agent. You do infinitely more than merely list the home and it’s time you get more credit and higher value.
5. Stop “servicing the listing.”
Just as Elsa in Frozen sang, “let it go, let it go, let it go!” How about letting go of this all-time value killer? Rather, you serve and service (in most cases, represent) your clients, you do not service your listing. Without this more accurate language, you underserve your higher value.
Similarly, an open house should not represent how you are servicing your listing. Rather, it is merely one element in the marketing of the property while in the act of representing your home seller (if that is the agency relationship you are in).
Another example of greater value positioning is when you are introducing your property to the world of buyers through realtor.com. Again, your decision to differentiate your property on the site is one that reflects upon your overall marketing strategy to represent and service your clients and not the listing.
If you think such advice represents a distinction without a difference or is a matter of mere semantics, then please consider the words of Confucius: “All wisdom begins by properly naming things.”
6. Shift from celebrating how you “sell more homes” to how you “market your homes for more.”
This is why I am forever proud to have spent several years with realtor.com® because you do not need the site to merely sell a home but rather to market your property for more by leveraging the laws of supply and demand.
Allan Dalton is the CEO of Real Living Real Estate. This article was originally published on April 18, 2019 on realtor.com.
A Letter from Leadership: Don't Let HomeLight Take Away the Spotlight on Your Credentials
Two personal examples of the resonance and relevance of real estate, were front and center this past football season. During the televised football games, two real estate-related commercials constantly appeared. One was a source of pride. As the former CEO of realtor.com I loved their ads that exclaimed that they are the, “Home of Home Search.”
The other oft-appearing commercial about HomeLight left me with mixed feelings. HomeLight, a seemingly honorable company, seeks to serve the public by algorithmically determining on their behalf who are the best real estate professionals. While I love the fact that someone finally, and on a big scale, is challenging the notion, if not the delusion, that all real estate professionals are alike, I also have concerns.
My concerns can be found in the specific difference between how realtor.com and HomeLight seek to serve consumers. While at realtor.com, I remember our metrics reporting that 98% of visitors to our site clicked on the “Find a Home” button and only 2% on the “Find a Realtor” button. My strong sense was that the 2% represented real estate agents checking on their bios.
Realtor.com attracts consumers based upon property search. The HomeLight differentiator is to encourage the search for the “best agents.” Defining who the best agents are is quite ambitious for the following reasons:
- Some agents focus on selling more homes rather than selling or marketing homes for more.
- Some team leaders who accrue credit for the volume of their transactions are akin to professors who have graduate assistants teaching their classes.
- Some agents market or sell fewer homes but get better results.
- No one can ever categorically document what any sold home might have been purchased for through a different agent or company.
Because homes are not stocks or commodities, it is impossible to declare any outcome as being superior to what other agents might have been able to achieve. My reason for expressing my thoughts is that while I believe that realtor.com and other third-party portals have ably served the public by extending the range and reach of homes for sale, I have concerns regarding any third party serving up who they believe are the best agents.
All this means is that all real estate agents will have to work even harder and more strategically to keep the spotlight on their credentials.
Allan Dalton
Chief Executive Officer, Real Living Real Estate
A Letter from Leadership: Let's Get More Political in Real Estate
by Allan Dalton
I have always been of the view that real estate professionals can learn a lot from politicians and politicians can learn even more from those of us in real estate. For those of you who are either disgusted, or who think all of politics is a joke, I disrespectfully say: I no longer approve of political jokes as I have seen too many of them get elected.
So why then, do we need more politics in real estate?
The reason is that approximately 90% of members of congress, down from a one time high of 98%, get re-elected. To the contrary and despite our decades’ old plea, “I want to be your real estate agent for life,” according to the National Association of REALTORS®, fewer than 13% in our industry enjoy a vote for their real estate candidacy the second time around.
One definition of politics is, “the activities, actions and policies that are required to hold power in government.” Notice how the definition is about holding power more than accomplishing anything. Speaking of activities and actions, elected politicians, given their insatiable desire for career longevity, have mastered the following:
- Social media
- Mobile and overall digital marketing
- Networking, door knocking, direct mail
- Hyper local targeted messaging and advertising
- And, of course, prodigiously photoshopped personal promotion
They also invest in their campaigns. Above all, however, they are responsive to the needs of the community.
Being community centric is in the DNA of all politicians. Unsurprisingly the word politics is from the Greek word “affairs of the city.” I will leave the possible jokes that can result from that double entendre about affairs to others.
Seriously, if we are going to get elected and re-elected, then we must illustrate the same demographic acuity that is found in the political world.
Those who seek to gain and keep political office have distinct messaging for seniors, different income groups, ever-changing needs, as well as an overarching theme or campaign message. Their messaging, like all good advertising, is almost always consumer centric … as in “I love New York and not, “I love me.”
Therefore, I am pleased that Real Living can now reach out through Real Living. Real Answers.SM to people who are either downsizing, moving up, moving with children or pets, looking to develop a lifestyle plan for life or who relish the idea that where they live is where Real Living begins.
Additionally, we have two universal campaigns “Real Living, The Home of Lifestyle Advisors” or “Real Living, The Leader in Customized Real Estate.”
Where we can coach all politicians is on how we work together to get things done. We accomplish real and relevant results for the good of humanity because of the exemplary and highly ethical way we individually and collectively do business.
Indeed, we can all proudly point to the following:
That our industry is not known for scandals, deception, negative campaign advertising or being divisive.
The same cannot be said for our elected officials on either side of the aisle. In fact, as unifiers we represent the opposite. We as an underappreciated industry, masterfully and sensitively, unite the inherently divided or polarized interests of buyers and sellers.
Our immense professional and people skills enable us to majestically create an outcome whereby both parties leave the closing table or high-tech enabled transaction with smiles and gratitude.
We also differ in how politicians attend partisan-only conventions while we attend both brand-only as well as industry-wide gatherings. It is there where we continue to celebrate the most mutually respectful, collegial and collaborative of all professions.
Also, despite the realities of our competitive environments, we maturely put aside our company and political loyalties to the benefit of our clients and thus to the greater society; a society whose very economy is inextricably interwoven with real estate results. Politicians are compensated regardless of their governing success or failures. Because they are rewarded richly for their political strengths, this is where their remarkable talents lie, notwithstanding the lack of trust the public has in the political class.
Real estate agents, regardless of surveys, categorically engender trust. Therefore, consumers write checks and come into open houses as strangers. Experience has taught them that both their money and physical presence is safe with real estate professionals. Regarding trust, while it appears so few politicians seem to trust one another, real estate professionals embody complete trust in one another, in my opinion.
Throughout our industry all real estate professionals know that they can trust the referral they send to another professional. Such trust extends the referral to an agent that they may not have never met and who lives and works thousands of miles away.
Real estate professionals have come to learn, and deeply appreciate, that after the transaction – regardless of the brand or brokerage affiliation or how formal or informal the referral was – that the referring agent will be paid a referral fee.
While I do wish that we would be more political to protect our “books of business” from all potential disrupters, it is even more important that politicians might learn from us and govern themselves with the same ethics and ethos replete throughout our industry … and that is no joke!
See you in California at the Real Living Real Estate Connection convention, where we will introduce programs designed to help you get new and renewed clients. And … please leave your politics at the door.
Sneak Preview: New Initiatives and Speakers Announced for Real Living Connection 2019!
Get ready for some fun in the sun in beautiful Huntington Beach, CA aka “Surf City USA,” on Feb. 8-18, 2019 at Real Living Connection 2019. This is your opportunity to gain valuable tools, tips and tricks to transform your career. The team is excited to announce new Real Living initiatives that will be unveiled in detail at Connection. These four game-changing programs are:
- The Real Living Luxury Lifestyle Division along with the Real Living Luxury Lifestyle Marketing System
- The Real Living Lifestyle Planning Guide
- The Real Living Community Lifestyle Videos Concept
- The Real Living Selection & Career Development System
Plus, this year’s speaker line-up packs a punch with industry experts and relevant topics. Learn how to significantly increase your profits with the help of:
Gino Blefari, president and CEO, HSF Affiliate
Allan Dalton, COO, Real Living Real Estate
Chris Stuart, Chief Operating Officer, HSF Affiliates LLC
Rosalie Warner, VP of Network Services, Real Living Real Estate
Teresa Palacio Smith, VP of diversity & inclusion, HSF Affiliates LLC
Wendy Durand, VP of global marketing, HSF Affiliates LLC and
Bob Watson, director global network training, HSF Affiliates LLC
Not to mention, you’ll enjoy a tax write-off, too! Take your whole office and enjoy a discounted group rate, which is available until Jan. 16, 2019. To secure your hotel reservation and take advantage of the group rate, please make your hotel reservations while registering and not directly with the hotel. Early Bird pricing ends Jan. 4, 2019.
Here are a few more details to help you plan your stay:
Oceanfront Resort with Full Amenities
Perched along the famous Pacific Coastline sits the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa. This upscale oceanfront resort features an array of amenities with lagoon-style pools, Pacific Waters Spa, fitness center and on-property restaurants. Learn more.
Reservations
A discounted group rate of $269 per night, plus tax and fees is available for your stay. Triple occupancy rate is $294 per night, plus tax and fees and quadruple occupancy rate is $319 per night, plus tax and fees. The group rate is also valid three days prior and three days following the event with extension subject to availability. Real Living Program Headquarters will send you a confirmation email once your extension has been approved. Please wait to receive confirmation of your hotel extension prior to booking your airline tickets.
Three Convenient Airports
You can find non-stop and connecting options with flights on Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines. Choose from the following airports:
SNA - John Wayne Airport is 10 miles away
LGB - Long Beach Airport is 17 miles away
LAX – Los Angeles International Airport is 38 miles away
Don’t miss out on Real Living Connection 2019! Register and book your hotel and flights today!
Real Living Southern Realty Agents Help Habitat for Humanity
In Ringgold, GA, an elderly couple’s home was in desperate need of repairs. Chase Jolander and his mother, Vickie McBryar, owner of Real Living Southern Realty of Trenton, GA and eight of her agents were on hand to help. It all started when Jolander and McBryar, board members of the Northwest Georgia Council of REALTORS®, attended a meeting and learned that Habitat for Humanity had a project for them.
“At least once a year,” said Jolander, “we try to do something to enrich our community.” On Oct. 29, Jolander and the Real Living Southern Realty Team painted the exterior of the couple’s house. Although other firms were involved, Jolander was proud to report that their office had the most participation at the event. “We had agents getting up on the roof, doing everything they could to make the home beautiful again.”
Jolander said when they were almost finished that the couple came to see their progress. “They were so grateful and excited!” he said. “It was a very rewarding experience.”
