I started in a small office in Kingsley which is about twenty minutes south of Traverse City. It was just me and my Broker Debbie Schnieder who is still the owner/broker of Paradise Realty.

I love small town Northern Michigan and enjoyed coming to work especially when my wife Sandy worked in the same small building for a printing design company.

I was told by everyone in the business that if I wanted to make a living I would need to work with sellers and acquire as many listings as possible.

That requires selling and my brain is not wired to sell especially when it comes down to a Dog & Pony show.

After trying my shot at a few listings it became clear to me that my passion was working with buyers.

I took a worthless class and became an ABR (Accredited Buyer Representative)

Whooptie Do.

I don't even place it in my profiles anymore.

As I said I love small town Northern Michigan but I got an offer to join the team at Help U Sell (with my wife Sandy) in the big city (Traverse City that is) as the teams designated buyer agent.

It was a pleasant change and I had a window at my desk with a view of the parking lot. (It was a nice parking lot).

I wanted to be an Exclusive Buyer Agent but there was no broker in town that didn't own a company that listed property or didn't work for a company that listed property.

FYI: A Real Estate Agent must work for a Real Estate Broker until they earn there own Real Estate Brokers License.

Soon the owners of Help U Sell decided to split and the whole team moved to Remax.

So with the clout of the Remax name and the company's outstanding reputation in Traverse City I decided to give listing Traverse City Homes another try.

Fifteen months and $25,000 in advertising later I decided "WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING

I had the required time and sales to get my brokers license so I did my best to stay awake through the 120 hours of Real Estate Broker classes, passed the obnoxious (pick the MOST correct answer) test.

I started my own Real Estate Company in 2004 called Paradigm Realty and have never looked back.

Well I soon discovered that many people couldn't pronounce it or spell, or new the definition of Paradigm so I recently changed my company name to Traverse City Buyer Agent.

I would not have known these things either if I hadn't barrowed the name from my father-in-laws company "The Paradigm Group". I just thought is sounded cool.

From the start it was my dream to start my own company and work from home with Sandy.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Larry Raspbury, Traverse City's exclusive Buyer Agent