Claude Labbe's (yourbusylife) Blog

Coffee w/ V

12 Comments

If you want a favor from me, it's pretty easy. Invite me for coffee at my favorite coffee shop (that's a result of the time in Boston years back). In September at some point, a prior client, V, called to ask for some help in doing some work in his rental unit in Washington, DC. Let's be clear, ...

10/30/2014

Breakfast with Eric G Brown

4 Comments

Eric is my photographer, which really means.....he's one of my marketing tools. He solves problems. He solves my seller's problems. The best thing about Eric is that I can tell him what I want, and then he'll tell me that he has a better idea. Often, that's true. Other times, he'll humor me be...

10/29/2014

Post Mortem Lunch With Scott, my lender

6 Comments

Some people follow a few baseball teams, or 2-3 football teams. No clear favorite, but a few they like. That's how I see a few lenders around me, and it was time to follow up with Scott, from Movement Mortgage. His firm has assigned him to our office, and I love their quick turnar...

10/28/2014

Dinner with David

5 Comments

One of the challenges this month was to follow up with our prior clients and our referral sources. That just means I have a legitimate reason, or more so than my usual "just being social". A higher authority was asking me to be social. One of my references actually led to this story, settl...

10/27/2014

Housewarming Party

59 Comments

A few months ago, I helped a buyer get a sweet home, close to an ice cream stand, which I'd written about. She had a housewarming, and naturally, I showed up with a few tubs of the ice cream. It was a fun get-together, and all was going well, until I met "her friend". This home was in Maryland,...

10/25/2014

Toastmasters, Capitol Hill, Washington DC

7 Comments

Let me be the first to say, I'm a strange duck. Mostly an introvert, which is why I've been part of Active Rain for years, but have only recently pushed past 200k points. I'm not the extrovert, and so, I don't write. Though I do read. That's how I'd describe the real me. That's how my family...

10/21/2014

2 buyers: J & T

4 Comments

In the past few weeks, I've had 2 different buyers find me. Let me tell you about each, surely you'll see a pattern. Each is a relocation, but that's not the key. J is from Atlanta, and was being relocated to the greater Washington DC area. He drove up for a weekend to see some ho...

10/20/2014

My new .realtor url

6 Comments

There are some things that I can be very ocd about, and today, 11am Eastern, I knew I could get onto the defined site and claim my new url which has a .realtor extension. While I'm not certain of the value and the point of this, I'd rather lock myself in than to regret having done so later. The ...

10/20/2014

Short Sales, Taxes, Solutions

2 Comments

A local r.e. speaker who I know recently wrote this story on housing & tax codes. I'll stay on the realtor side, and leave the economists and those steeped in the arcane tax codes of our country debate how to best get to a solution. But from a realtor perspective, it seems that many people are...

10/18/2014

Do YOU say something?

14 Comments

I received an email this afternoon, as a response to an email I'd sent. "ps: you may want to add a space after your cellphone number in your signature - my phone won't let me click on the number and call it from the email b/c it doesn't recognize it as a number. Just a suggestion!" Now...do I thi...

10/13/2014