You know how some businesses will keep the first dollar they ever made and frame it?  Usually they display it somewhere near the front door or the cash register, or in the office.  I always thought that was a neat idea, although I’ve never done it.

In real estate, you need to keep client files for seven years, then you can toss all associated paperwork.  My first sale, to the O’Hairs, closed just over seven years ago, in April, 2004.

That means this is my eighth year selling real estate.  I can’t believe it.  When I began, I had no idea how much I would grow to love this business.  It’s so funny – for the period of time that you’re working with a person or a couple to find or sell (or both) a home, it’s an intense relationship.  You talk often, you e-mail late at night, you text at random moments; you’re very connected.  And then suddenly, the sale closes, and these people you spoke with, sometimes everyday, you don’t talk to anymore.  I call about a week later, just to check in, and then over the course of the next couple years I’ll write or call or comment on their Facebook wall, so the relationship doesn’t go away altogether, but it definitely becomes different than it had been.

I pulled out my O’Hair file the other day, preparing to shred everything therein.  I was flooded with memories.  I remember making the appointment to show the home, and then donating blood immediately before I was supposed to leave.  I had skipped lunch that day and for the first time for me, I felt dizzy and light-headed while donating.  Of course, I had to sit and recover, but I didn’t want to be late for my appointment.  I guzzled my juice and threw back my cookies and ran out of the Red Cross to drive to the house (about 20 minutes away from the donor center).  It was raining, I’d never been to the property, I had no idea where I was going…ugh, what a crazy day that was!  I showed up, let the folks in the house, and they loved it (note to all non-Realtors reading this – that is extremely rare…it isn’t very often that someone decides to buy the first house they look at!  It almost never happens, in fact.)!  We scurried around, securing financing and writing my first offer (scary!!!!), then the waiting began.  It was a repossession, so Fannie Mae, a government entity, was the seller.  And we waited, and we waited, and we waited.  Every day, if I hadn’t heard by 3pm, I knew it would be another day until I did hear, because the seller was in Texas, two hours ahead.  The buyer called me every day, if I hadn’t already called him by 3:02.

And finally, in April, it closed.  And I received MY VERY FIRST REAL ESTATE PAYCHECK – for something like $659.17. Woo-freakin’-hoo!  I had jeopardized my life to show a house, and spent countless hours on the phone, for less than seven hundred dollars!!  Note to all non-Realtors reading this – real estate is NOT the path to get rich quick!

I’m having a hard time parting with the O’Hair file.  They were the very first couple to take a chance on me as a Realtor, and all my initial enthusiasms and anxieties and hopes seem to be caught between the cover and back of the folder.  I’d frame it, but it’s a bit too thick.  The people who frame their first dollar take that dollar out of circulation, and they’re okay with that.   I think I’m going to have to be okay with sacrificing some much needed file space in order to hold on to the O’Hair file.  It’s going to be around as reminder for some time to come.

But I love it because I’m helping. I am contributing to the betterment of my community. I’m living out the Golden Rule that day (even if I flub it sometimes the other 364 in a year).

This year, we did some major landscaping at the old Police Station in downtown Kennewick. We removed the old shrubs and trees, lots of rocks, the old ground cover and some sod. We put in new borders, ground cover, flowers and trees, and spread new rock. The YMCA will be using this building and they were thrilled with the changes.

In a neat little twist, this year the Windermere Foundation got in to the act. If I tweeted and used the Twitter hashtag #wrecsd when writing about my Community Service Day activities, the Windermere Foundation contributed $1 for every tweet to the Windermere Kids at the Y fund – up to $25,000! I did not tweet twenty-five thousand times, but I did tweet about nine times, and added a picture, too, for most of them.

If you are on Twitter, follow me – http://twitter.com/carimcgee. Go back through the stuff on Friday the 18th and you can see some of what we did.

If you’re not on Twitter, then check out the KNDU story. At the 26-second mark, you can see me almost fall, but my coworker helped me out and spared me from future years of remembering the year I twisted my ankle!

So, I’ll tell you here – I sold sixteen properties this year.

It’s not pitiful, but it’s not stellar, either.  The goal was 24, so I am winding up eight short., or 33% down to goal.  Ouch.  I like saying I missed it by a single-digit number better.

I took a look at where my business came from, and exactly half came from the Internet (blogging, social media connections, web site visitors), and the other half came from people who already know me.  The people who know me either did business with me themselves (hi, Vopalenskys!), or referred me to someone they knew who needed my help (hi, Dahls!).

Regardless of how I came to work with them, I had an awesome group of clients this year.  And, I’m looking forward to meeting my 2009 clientele.

Have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.  I’ll be posting again on the 2nd.

But, who cares?  I can use it like a cell phone, listen to some iTunes while I wait for a client, play games,  check out Twitter, and do the on-the-spot kind of research I need to do when someone bets me if The Loneliest Runner is based on Michael Landon’s life or not.

The sheer beauty of having and utilizing an iPhone in my business was brought into focus this week; day 5 of owning it, actually. I had a client heading in to her signing in Spokane (buying down here, but lives up there and couldn’t get down to sign during this week), and she needed to make sure the items on her inspection repair list had been completed.  If they weren’t, she wasn’t going to sign, and closing would have been delayed and unnecessary snafus would have arisen.

So I drove over to her future condo and took a picture of the one item that hadn’t been repaired by the reinspect the day before and then, wait for it…E-MAILED HER THE PHOTO. Yay!!!  She got the pic, was satisfied that the necessary fixes had occurred, signed and tomorrow it should officially be hers.

See the pic yourself -

Nice to know that the fate of a real estate transaction can hang on the balance of some pixels.

But yesterday we had a web site class here at the brokerage, and people were trying to figure out what their domain names would be.  Unless you have a difficult /unusual first or last name, a great idea is to use your real name as your domain name. 

So, my suggestion is as follows  – have a baby or a young child?  Register his or her domain name now.  Chances are, whatever they do in life as they grow older, they’ll need a web presence (even if they’re simply blogging about how you’re the worst parent in the world!). 

A few years ago, we were contacted by a college student who wanted to run for president of his student government organization.  He had the same name as our son, and he wanted to buy our son’s domain, just for a year, to launch his campaign.  We didn’t let him, because once it’s out of your hands, it’s out of your hands.

I know their are a million things we have to do as parents, but this one is inexpensive, takes a tiny bit of time, and will help them out immensely.

The worst thing that ever happened to me while showing a house is hearing the sounds of someone in the shower.  The buyer and I skedaddled before the owner exited the bathroom! 

I like the extra bit of info I can obtain about someone.  It helps me prepare.  For example, in 2004, I received a floor call (someone called the office to find an agent to show them a house) and I googled the wife’s and husband’s names in.  I discovered the wife was active in our local Democratic Party.  So, I knew if I had had a George W. Bush bumper sticker, I’d have needed to scrape it off before meeting with them.

The query for the husband’s name brought paydirt.  I discovered he was an engineer, and had penned such thought-provoking work as  The Path of a 1-mm Paramecium Through a Solution Containing 2% Carbolic Acid.  Wow.  He was going to be a real ball of fire, I just knew it.

Due to Hanford, we deal with a lot of engineers in our line of work.  Because my husband has an engineer slant himself (I call it anal-retentive, he calls it meticulous), I am used to dealing with people who are on the other end of the personality spectrum from me.  And I enjoy it.  I value what they bring to the table.  After all, someone’s gotta design the reactor, and it ain’t gonna be me!

And, if you Google me, I am not the Cari McGee with a son named Chris who bought a house in Nampa, ID.  Just so that’s clear.

Well, I don’t always have new, fresh, exciting things to write about.  So I went back and took a look at my 2007 posts.  I received the most links and comments on posts that told a story  – something about my family or home decor or the vagaries of my daily life as a real estate agent.

So, look for more of those in ’08.  And, on Sundays, look for a post where I just link to things that I thought were interesting in the week that was.  I’ll try to write more often, and it won’t always be specifically about real estate.  Sometimes, it’ll just be about life for a 39-year-old married woman with a husband she adores, two amazing kids, about 65 excess pounds on her frame, a deep faith in Jesus Christ, type O+ blood, who just happens to also be a Realtor in a great market.

Hope you enjoy!

I love that my officemate calls me “Ms Googlemeister 2007″ because if I need an answer, I go to Google. Everything from ‘is an avocado a fruit?’ to ‘lyrics for Hannah Montana’s theme song’ gets typed into the search box and the answer comes up seconds later. But the fact that I am a champion Internet searcher is not the reason I am the techiest tech techster in Tri-Cities.

I was at our local Realtor board meeting this afternoon and we were discussing the creation of a Technology Committee and who should be on it.  The woman next to me said, “Cari should be on it!  Cari is very techy!”  I shook my head.  Not in false modesty, but for good reason.  I don’t know anything about the behind-the-scenes workings of computers.  Just a week ago my Outlook Express program compacted my e-mail, which it does every week.  But this time, when it was finished, all my saved e-mail from May 25th on, had disappeared.  Now, if I were technologically inclined, I could get those e-mails back, couldn’t I?

So, people nod in agreement with the woman next to me who keeps insisting that I am a perfect candidate for the Technology Committee.  I keep protesting and finally, another woman from my office says, “She has a blog!” The man next to her contributes, (in all seriousness), “Well, if she has a blog, OF COURSE she’s technical!”

So, I have a blog. And apparently that makes me the techiest tech techster Realtor in Tri-Cities, WA! Ah, it’s good to be Queen.

One of the things that a buyer will do when they are skittish or nervous or have changed their mind, is they’ll ask for everything that is pointed out during the inspection to be fixed.  So, on Tuesday they informally asked for a window latch that was too tight to be loosened.  Right.  We’ll get right on that.

The formal list came on Friday. The window latch is not a concern any longer.  But much, much more is.

In case you’re a seller, and you are being presented with a list of requested remedies/repairs/replacements, this list should come in handy.  It’s called the Schedule of Normal Life.