Have you ever had one of those days that you wish you just didn't get out of bed? I'm sure you have. I had one yesterday. I woke up Friday morning feeling really good. It had been a very productive week and I had no appointments on the calendar. Just had to go down to the office and follow up on a few deals and put a couple of properties on the market. My kind of day. All positive. I'm on top of the hill and feeling good about life.Well, it went downhill real fast. First, I get a call from Veronica, my new Buyer's agent, to let me know her Buyer, who we had just negotiated a deal with the day before, on one of my listings, got cold feet and backed out of the deal. Bummer!! One down.About an hour later the phone rings and the REALTOR® on the line starts fumbling his words but finally man... 03/10/2007

OK, so the big day is approaching fast. My two year Broker's license renewal. Woe is me, woe is me. This means, an exhaustive 14 hours of classroom work, and a grueling, 30 question, multiple choice exam. How am I ever going to squeeze this in to my busy work schedule? I'm way to busy listing and selling properties to have to go through this. There must be a better way. I wonder if I can use the 20-30 hours a week I spend on ActiveRain? How about my experience from the 70-80 closings I have had over the last 24 months? There must be something I can do.......................Hey, I know! Why not call the Bert Rogers school of Real Estate and have them send me the book? Yeah, that's it! They can send me the book and then all I have to do is look through the book and answer the 30 questions... 03/08/2007

Wow, it has been three whole days since I posted on ActiveRain. That is the longest break I have had since June when I first joined. Well, let me tell you, it wasn't intentional. I have been swamped with business!! I guess that's a good thing, but I must say, this work stuff sure does get in the way of blogging. "Broker Bryant can you sell our house?" "Broker Bryant can we buy that house?" "Broker Bryant is our closing scheduled yet?" "Broker Bryant........?" Anyway, you get my point.I read a comment yesterday, in a post written by Michael Kwan, a guest writer on www.johnchow.com, he was writing a review on ActiveRain. The review was actually pretty good. The best part was that it mentioned me. Anyway, this is what he wrote:****"Come to think of it, the real estate professionals who hav... 03/01/2007

Last Thursday, as usual, I was in my office checking the MLS hot sheet for the day. I do this every morning as it helps me stay in tuned with what's going on in my market and also so I can prepare my expired listings mailer for the day. Anyway, as I was scrolling through the new listings for the day, I suddenly stopped. "Hey, that's my listing! Why has another REALTOR® just loaded an active listing that I already have on the market?" Now first, you can't do that. The system will kick the property back. Unless of course you manually change the legal description AND put in Drive instead of Lane. And second, what's up with my Seller? I just spoke to him the day before.Well, I guess I need to call him and find out what's going on. "Good morning Mr. Desperation Has Cloudedmybrain, how come I... 02/26/2007

Ok, just a little "quickie" today. One of the advantages to participating in ActiveRain is the excellent web exposure that it gives us. Since joining AR, back in June, my web presence has sky rocketed off the charts. That's a very good thing. The consumer has been finding me on GOOGLE searches and I have been fortunate to get quite a bit of business from the Internet since becoming a member of ActiveRain.I've had my website www.poincianaproperties.com for many years but never really put forth much of an effort into generating web leads. I have a lot of business anyway so it just wasn't very important to me.BUT, things have changed and my attitude about it has changed. One of the tools I have been using this year is telling people to GOOGLE me. It works great. If I'm riding down the road... 02/25/2007

OK, so this post today, is geared towards hopefully helping someone in their business and also to give the consumer an idea of how I handle my marketing. I've read quite a few posts on ActiveRain and other forums that I participate in wanting to know what marketing works and whether or not we should try this of that. First let me say, the most important think about marketing, by far, is consistency. Whatever plan you implement, in your business, you must commit to it for a minimum of one year. If you are not able to make this commitment then don't waste your time or your money. You would have better luck buying lottery tickets. All marketing needs to be a long term plan. There are NO quick fixes or miracle cure alls in Real Estate. I will be doing these things until I am an official old... 02/18/2007

Hi folks. This week Tutas Towne Realty, Inc has changed directions, slightly. We hired a Buyer's representative. I know, I know, "But Broker Bryant you don't work with Buyers, ever". Well, I changed my mind. I'm the boss and I can do that. You know one of the traits of successful people is the ability to be flexible and willing to change directions when it is called for. Ever, to me, means, not at this time. As things change and I get more data I make adjustments accordingly. You may have noticed that the market has shifted and, at least in my area, it is a full blown Buyers market. So I hired a REALTOR® to handle my Buyer business. We've had Buyer representatives in the past but when the market changed in 2004 I didn't need one anymore. My associate, at that time, left for greener past... 02/11/2007

  I've had one of those weeks, where I spent way too much time dealing with incompetence from REALTORS® and mortgage brokers. So, this post is being written, so I can direct my fellow peers to it when necessary. As a listing Broker, I, Broker Bryant, promise the following:All of my listings will be priced correctly.  All of my listings will be clean and easy to show.I will get you in any of my listings with last minute notice.I will return your phone call within 1 hour, 7 days a week, 8am to 8pm.All offers will be presented in a timely and professional manner.I will never lose my cool and will always talk with you respectfully.I will do every thing in my power to ensure we have a successful closing.My Sellers are educated and will not be difficult to deal with.Now folks, for making thes... 02/10/2007

While cruising around Poinciana Fl., on Saturday, I started thinking about market conditions and how things have changed so drastically from the boom period of 2005. Then I had a flash. What better way to illustrate this than to snap a few photos. Sign, sign everywhere a sign..............First you have CONFUSION!       Then we have a little REDUNDANCY! And of course DESPERATION!       Followed by FRUSTRATION!        Finally, they get smart, call me, and we have SUCCESS!       Sign, sign everywhere a sign....blocking out the scenery breaking my mind. Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign................!CLICK HERE FOR THE ENHANCED VERSION DESIGNED BY JEFF TURNER.(Lyrics are from "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band) 01/27/2007

I interviewed Bryant Tutas, aka Broker Bryant, over on Bloodhound Blog today.Some of the questions I asked him were:Bryant, you were involved in commentary with Candybags, on Bloodhound Blog, some time back and followed up with a post asking “So, What Do You Do To Justify Your Commission?“. How do you think Realtors who host or comment on weblogs should prepare themselves to answer this question? How do you think the commentary could have been handled better here on BHB? Let’s shift to a hot topic: The Mortgage Industry’s Internal Civil War. What did you think about the mortgage industry before this post?How have your opinions changed since that post and subsequent discussion?How do you see Active Rain as a player in Web 2.0? Tell us about your new weblog.For the answers to these questi... 01/19/2007

You know, I wake up every morning and the first thing that comes into my head is, "What can I Blog about today?" Trying to write 4 or 5 posts a week, is very difficult, when you are always trying to be original and also trying not to write about things that have already been written about. So every day, I start the day, worrying about it. Then the phone rings and my worries are over. "Good morning, Tutas Towne Realty, this is the incredibly good looking and intelligent Broker Bryant speaking, how may I help your dreams come true today?""Hi Broker Bryant, this is your Seller over at 4321 Desperation Ave. I'm calling to let you know I have found a Buyer for my house. My neighbor, who has lots of money, wants to buy my house. I know he has lots of money and can pay cash for it, if he wants... 01/12/2007

Last week, I was fortunate enough to get multiple offers, on one of my "short sale" listings. I received three offers on the same day. That's always a real good thing. I discussed the negotiating options with the Seller and we decided to ask for "highest and best" and gave the Buyers 78 hours to resubmit their offers. Well, the strategy worked pretty well, and one of the offers was increased by $11,000, which was just high enough for the Seller to be able to accept it. Being that the property is going to require a "short sale" it was important to get as high an offer as possible and as close to market value as we could. One of the keys in getting the bank to accept a "short sale" is to get them a realistic offer based on current market conditions. Low ball offers will not work.Anyway, t... 01/10/2007

The Central Florida Division of Avatar Properties, Inc., closed out the first nine months of 2006 with 1,160 closings for a total of $327.8 million and posted 692 new home sales for a volume of $247 million.The division which is developing Poinciana, Solivita, Bellalago and the Isles of Bellalago averaged over 4.2 closings per day and 128.9 per month for the first three quarters, while sales for the 9-month period averaged 2.5 per day and 77 per month.Poinciana lead the way for closings 935 homes for $237.5 million, an average of $254.011 per transaction.Solivita, Poinciana active-adult community here in Poinciana posted 547 closings for $149.3 million which was an average of $272.943 per transaction.The primary homes in Poinciana accounted for 388 closings for $88.2 million with an ave... 01/10/2007

According to recent reports, Poinciana Development Board has builders but no residents.  This sprawling community with more than 61,000 residents has a development district to oversee Poinciana's drainage system.The district has a funding mechanism and a board supervisors.  However, it does not have residents to serve on that board.  This board is controlled by representatives of Avatar which is the largest builder in the community.Getting residents involved is not easy.  The board has the ability to put residents on the committee however, they are finding it hard to get anyone to join.In a recent meeting held by the board over at Solivita, an adult-oriented community on the Polk County side of Poinciana, residents were urged to take more of an interest in how the CDD operates.CDDs were... 01/10/2007

Poinciana which started in the 70s now spread over two counties - Polk and Osceola counties and have a population of more than 65,000.  This community is now suffering many growing pains.  This was especially evident last year due to the rapid growth in the area.Some of the issues that the area is currently dealing with is getting a new hospital and post office that are desperately needed for this area.  As far as the plans for the hospital and the post office are concern, red tapes continue to delay these projects for this area.  Other issues are school overcrowding and recreation facility like a YMCA (the YMCA is now in the area).Residents and builders alike are happy to report that within this area, there are three new schools currently under construction.  Two of these new schools a... 01/05/2007

Hi folks. Today, I have given myself a challenge. I'm going to see if I can put together an interesting post about Poinciana Fl. You see, this is where I'm coming from. For the last couple of months I had been comfortably perched as the "Top Blogger" on the dashboard, for whatever that's worth. The system was pretty straight forward, write controversial and conversational posts, for rankings and comments, down rank a few fellow Rainers and send out E-mails spamming for comments. OK, maybe I didn't use ALL of those strategies. Pretty simple stuff though. Now, the Rain gods have stirred things up a bit and put in one those algorithm "thingies" and are basing dashboard positioning on average post points, going back 15 days, and are only using "For Real Estate Professionals" posts. Also, wi... 01/05/2007

Well, I must say, if the first two business days of 2007 are any indication of how the rest of the year will be, then it is going to be an awesome year! I have been busy, busy, busy. I have been in automatic Robot mode. When I went down to my office yesterday, after ten days of relaxation, my first order of business for 2007, was to contact all 16 of my current Sellers and reevaluate their properties and what we need to do, to get them all under contract, in the next 60 days. So I spent most of the morning, yesterday and today, updating CMAs and phoning my Sellers for price reductions and co-broke increases. All were very receptive. I'm meeting with my last two, tomorrow morning. In the middle of doing this I received three offers on one of my "short sale" listings, that's three, as in ... 01/03/2007

Here we are folks, the end of another year. It's hard for me to believe 2006 is over. Seems like the older I get the quicker the time goes by. I've been spending the day going over market statistics for last year and getting my head around some new strategies for my business next year. My intention was to post about these things today but then I decided to take a quick look to see how many registered sex offenders they are in my market, Poinciana Fl. Well, I have to say, I was shocked. There are, as of today, 108 registered sexual offenders in Poinciana. Wow!!! That is really disturbing. One of the most disturbing things, is that Poinciana, has a population of a little over 63,000 and 50% of those people are 18 or under. That means there are almost 32,000 children in an area with 108 re... 12/31/2006

Finally after 11+ years of waiting.  It's confirmed . . . there will be a groundbreaking set at 4:00 p.m. today for an elementary school that is scheduled to open here in Poinciana with the start of the 2007-2008 school year. I contacted the school district's Department of Community Relations at 863-534-0699 and they confirm that Poinciana is schedule to get another Elementary school. This is welcome news for the parents on Polk county sides of this community. Earlier this year, they got their first (temporary) elementary school which is already overcrowded by at least 300 students! The new school, which is yet to be named, will be on Palmetto Street in Poinciana. After the groundbreaking, parents can meet at the community center at 7:00 p.m. tonight to get more information on the numbe... 12/07/2006

Have you ever had one of those days where you can't get a topic out of your head? I'm having one today. I woke up this morning thinking about something to write about and I keep coming up with PUDs. It just seems to me that there must be something a little more interesting that I could write about than this. I mean come on, PUDs. Boooooooring!!!! But I can't get it out of my head. "Yes, I would like the sirloin, medium rare and a PUD." "Hey, PUD how are you?" It's driving me crazy! So I surrender. This post is about PUDs. I got to get it out of my head!For those who may not know, PUD, stands for Planned Unit Development. My market, Poinciana, Fl., happens to be the second fastest growing PUD in the country second to "The Villages" which is also in Central Florida. A PUD is a planned mix... 11/25/2006