Jo, I've been thinking about you this afternoon. Here's a few suggestions (use them if they seem worthwhile & toss them if they don't!): 1.) Start building relationships with every lender in town. Stop by & ask to meet with the head of lending. Residential lending is so automated today that processors & closers (unfortunately) don't have the cloute they did ten years ago. Since they are not the decision makers they used to be spending your valuable time building relationship with them is not productive. Rather, meet with that head of lending. Tell them you are new. Ask for their business & tell them why YOU will work harder to move their REO inventory. It's a good place & opportunity to learn to ask for "The Close"...something every salesperson has to learn. Also, REO business is easier, IMO. Then, follow-up on your visit with a written note & a dozen of your cards. If you haven't heard from them in 3 months...call again & this time invite him/her out to lunch. Ask the lender who they prefer as a title company, law office, inspector, appriser, etc. After speaking with half a dozen lenders, you'll start to get a snapshot of who's who in town. Then, spend your energy building relationships with those firms & leave the others for later. 2.) Builders...residential builders are really fun people. They were my favorite part of the real estate industry. They, however, are notoriously disorganized & rather poor at anything other than building. Get to know all of your SMALL, local builders (not the big guys...that's a waste of time, IMO, for you in the beginning). Go in with knowledge of their products & a plan to help them market. Keep your name in front of their face even if they currently have nothing to sell. Your building relationships at this point not trying to actually get a listing or make a sale. Builders love, love, love to bu##sh#t so allow a full half-day to meet with one of them! lol You'll learn more about your town's real estate industry in 3 hours from a local builder than six months in your office! 3.) Immediately begin attending the monthly Homebuilders's Association meetings in your area. This was absolutely THE best networking I ever did. 4.) Personally, I did not enjoy the monthly Realtor's Association dinners nearly as much as the builder's. But, you'll need to attend every month & force yourself to meet 3-4 new realtors at every dinner. More relationship building... 5.) Title companies can be tougher. But, I'd still recommend stopping by every one in town & dropping off your cards (probably won't get past the receptionist so leave them with him/her). 6.) My DH is an attorney as well as head of lending at a major financial institution. He works in NY. In NY, attorneys play a fairly large role in real estate. So, find out who specializes & go meet them with a dozen more cards. ASK for his business! He's got lots of clients who'll someday need to sell/buy a home. Also, then when you meet again across a closing table from each other it's easier to negotiate. 7.) Pick a FSBO (or two) & attend their Open Houses. Offer to prepare a CMA. Assure them there's no strings attached. Hope if they don't sell...they'll remember you. Leave 2 cards with them. 8.) A couple things I did over the years when I had a subdivision with a lot of homes I needed to sell in a single community... a.) I made arrangements to reserve the local community center for an evening. I prepared a speech on "Getting Ready To Purchase Your First Home". I advertised the heck out of my little speech (sponsored by my bank but you could ask your broker for sponsorship?). I had lots of hand-outs, coffee, soda, & cookies. I used the overhead with big color glossy pictures of smiling young couples holding little kids in front of their new home. I greeted everybody at the door & gave out business cards. Mostly, what I did was try to get those first-time homebuyers motivated to buy a home feeling that I'd land a few of them at my subidivison I needed to sell & it got my card in hundreds of hands! b.) I realized that I had to learn how to speak up at church, at the "Y" when I was swimming, at the grocery store as I stood in the check-out line, etc. & ASK for people's business. That's tough...the asking part. It a set-up for rejection & as humans we're resistant to it. You've got to lose any fear of rejection you may harbor down way deep inside. It's easier to start with people you don't know too well (like at the grocery store?). Seriously, learning to ask for the close is going to be a make or break skill for you so practice whenever & whereever you get an opportunity. I had many people call me at the bank asking if we had any REO inventory for sale. I'd make an appointment with them & ask about what they were looking for. Then, I'd show them one home I knew they couldn't afford, one I was pretty sure they'd hate, & one I wanted to sell them. Most of the time...it worked. But, I had to ASK for the close! Practice on your family with mock-up situations...unless this is something that just comes naturally to you it's going to be where you need the most work. If you're a natural saleperson...then you'll know when to ask for the close. Good luck...you've made me giggle tonight remembering all of the properties I've sold...like the one near a "babbling brook" with the mushrooms growing on the basement walls! Sold it to a realtor who thought I was a luney-tune for selling it so cheap...thought she could wring the place out & flip it for a nice profit...guess who had the last laugh? hahahahahah Or, the one I sold to an "80 Something" single gent who rode around the neighborhood on his motorcycle wearing nothing but a loin cloth...made his neighbors very upset. I received many threatening phone calls at the bank. Wow, who knew? He seemed so nice at the closing! hahahahahaha It's a fun industry. You'll have a good time. Well, you'll have a good time IF you're a people person. If you don't love people then you'll be miserable. It's not about the houses...it's all about the people. Remember that & you'll do great. Tricia

Thanks all - we are excited! We are buying a DW in a 55+ park just 4 miles from here and close to all shopping :-) It has a sunny eat-in kitchen, large living room, dining room, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths - one is a reasonable size and the master bath is huge. Master bedroom is roomy and the second bedroom is so large we will probably divide it so we can each have our own space - he dabbles in painting and I have an obscene amount of yarn (I packed a lot of it yesterday) for crochet, laundry room and a shed with electricity. The kitchen has black appliances w/a bottom freezer refrigerator. I have almond appliances now and will be glad to have black again, and an installed dishwasher after 7 years using a portable. We have the name of a MH inspector and someone who does MH repairs, not that that is anticipated right away, but you never know. Just a comfort to have that info at hand from the getgo. I'm so relieved to not have to do the routine to show, never knowing when, what, etc. Huge relief. (I'm using "huge" a lot here LOL) A fantasy I have had for many, many years is to have a bathroom large enough that I can keep the scale in it! Sure doesn't take much to make me happy...... Guess I'll have to open a photo hosting account so I can post some pics. TTYL, everyone - time for coffee.

This is a fascinating subtopic and would make a great topic on it's own. I am the worst category - I have poor visualization and spatial skills BUT I care a LOT about my space and am one of those people who really find therapy in an environment that is aesthetically pleasing. (It would be so much easier if I just didn't care) As you can imagine this makes picking a paint color crazy-making. Well, I can see it in my head, but it doesn't transfer to reality - and because I have zero artistic skill (have me draw next to a kindergartner student and have fun guessing who drew what), it's VERY difficult for me to translate/communicate what I see in my head for others. This is why I like to find inspiration pics that are pretty much exactly what I want. I trust my taste, but not my ability to visualize it in my head and make it translate to reality. (Unfortunately, I haven't found such a pic for the kitchen after looking at 3 M pics, so that is unsettling for me.) And, now that pal mentions it, it's probably difficult for me to totally trust someone who CAN do it, partially because I know I haven't been able to adequately relay what is actually in my head so how could they really translate it for me? When I was a new home owner, I brought a chair home after going to stare at it for weeks. The way I visualized it, it was PERFECT in my home. When they delivered it, it was way over-sized for the scale of the room and had to go right back. That's maybe when I really realized this is a problem for me and I was in my 30's. I try to only buy furniture that can be returned upon delivery, which gets trickier as time goes on! LOL But, I've learned to use free room design software like you can find on West Elm and that really helps. In fact, I used that to furnish my new office at work last year. The space was tricky in that it is small and needs to function as a group space as well as individual meetings and accommodate people of different sizes and physical capabilities. But, it also needs to serve as my office and store my books/paperwork, give me a place to write, etc. I did so well with it I am episodically asked if I hired a designer. Come a long way, baby? I'd love to study this more, actually. While my visualization/spatial skills are poor and I can't draw, I have considerable natural propensity for music and played for years and years. In the world of relaxation strategies, different people tend to respond to different techniques - some love listening to sound or a voice coaching them through, others respond better to visualization or staring at objects, etc. And the idea that people are raising here that we can build our spatial abilities through exercise, puzzles, practice, training, exposure is very interesting. In the meanwhile, I have this gutted empty space and it is not accompanied by a gut sense of how the space will feel or function with stuff back in it... and it's a tad unnerving, now that I pause to think about it.

DS just moved out of a Trinity in Philly that wasn't as nice, actually it was downright dismal! It was about the same size but had 1 Bedroom on the 3rd floor, the laundry area and the only bathroom were on the 2nd floor, and the basement kitchen didn't have any windows, the only daylight was from a recessed window well 7' off the floor - so no view either. It had standard renter's appliances and barely enough room for a tiny table and chairs . Since it was in a narrow courtyard it was always in a shadow. He only had windows in the front because there was another trinity behind him sharing back walls. It was in Northern Liberties which is a hot area of Philly and I think the rent is now $1500 a month - no parking, no yard but it was in a gated complex with a common courtyard. He was actively looking for to buy but as Pal states the market is hot. He'd make appointments to see properties after work or on the weekend and more than half the time there was already a bid placed before he could get there. It didn't help either that his agent was so busy that she seldom returned calls. He finally found a condo that he really likes but it took about 10 months. DD and her BF searched for almost 2 years before finding something that they could afford and wasn't in need of a complete rebuild. They found a great row home that was totally redone 10 years ago - it's 18' wide, 10' ceilings, almost 1900 square feet, a rear yard, available on-street parking BUT it's in N. Philly near Temple. Their block is nice, it's quiet and stable. Most of the neighbors have been there for many years and they've told her how happy they are that a young couple bought the house because apparently before that it had been a rental for 4 college guys. Some of the areas around her are sketchy and others dangerous. My other DS and his wife have finally decided to leave the city after 10 years and like so many others in their age group are moving to the suburbs because of the schools. Unless you can afford private school most of the schools in the city are abysmal. I mentioned this on another thread but there are only 9 librarians for 218 city schools - and those schools are also lacking nurses, guidance counselors, art and music teachers too. Tuition at Friends' Central ( A Quaker school) in Center City is $23,000 to $30,000 for grade school and $35,000 for high school. Mayor Kenney's initiative to tax soft and sugar drinks was originally touted as utilizing the proceeds to improve Parks and Recreation, expand pre-K and neighborhood schools. If only they had followed though on that and used all the money for schools, parks and recreation. Instead Council is planing on keeping a portion of that money for the fund balance. There have been several studies published that show millennials and empty nesters are buying properties. And Pal's right too about the increase in New Yorkers moving here for the lower prices - they can ride Amtrak or a bus into Manhattan - although that can get rather tedious on a daily basis. There is also a significant number of New Jerseyians moving into Philly and PA to avoid the high taxes on the Jersey side of the Delaware. The city has also granted 10 year tax abatements for certain areas of the city as a lure to improve those areas. I'm not a pro but it looks like the demand will continue for a while - especially as long as mortgage rates remain so low. My kids have trouble believing me when I tell them that when we bought our home in 1983 mortgages were 17%. While the market is hot there are many developers putting up additional housing units - I don't know what the demand will be like when the majority of them come on the market. Maire