All it took was one phone call, and a little bit of luck. I was whiling away another endless afternoon manning the front desk at the local brokerage here in good ol' Fredericksburg, supposedly in an effort to snare potential home buyers, as if one would ever really walk through the door, but really not doing much more than hoping a red three was somewhere in the deck, and that it would magically appear before time ran out. I had all but given up, and 5 o’clock had come and gone, so I start packing my computer and all other stuff that is supposed to make me look like a real Realtor, hoping to make good my escape quickly and quietly.

And then the phone rang. Thinking optimistically that I had nothing to lose, I snatched the receiver to my ear, quickly belting out my best real estate greeting, hoping they would ask a question that I could sort of fake my way out of with some sort of answer so they would not be able to read how green I was, and that the ink on my license was barely dry. Right away I can feel that I'm only half listening as she starts to tell me she is calling from a "bank" in California. Already mentally hanging up, I quickly pause as she says "we have a property in Fredericksburg we need an agent to check on." Again, going back to that whole thinking optimistically thing from the beginning of the paragraph, I took down the address and agreed to go by there and take a look.

It turned out to be only a few miles from the office, and the young man who answered the door seemed a little "confused" and since I really had no idea what to ask him, much less any real idea of what I was doing there, it was a pretty short conversation, so I headed home and didn't really give it much thought.

The next morning I sent an email to the bank letting them know that the property was occupied, and then went on about my day, which pretty much meant I got up and poured another cup of coffee.

I returned to my assigned work space to find, believe it or not, a response from the bank advising me to offer Cash For Keys to the occupant, assist them in finding a new place to live, if necessary, and to prepare the home for marketing as soon as possible. A listing agreement was also attached, which certainly lent a little credibility to a process that was starting to make me feel like I was trying to figure out what the number nine smelled like.

It was 2007, and I had just entered the world of Real Estate Foreclosures, and in the next 18 months I sold over 200 homes.

Now, I can already hear you; who is this guy, and why is he bragging about how great he is? I'm not bragging. Well, not much anyway. My point is here that when you sell 200+ homes in that amount of time, you get smart real fast, mostly out of necessity and repetition. I saw a lot of contracts in that 18 months; probably over 400, and when you review that many contracts, some of it is bound to sink in.

So when you are shopping for your new home, or selling your existing one, drop me a line. I've been around the block, I pretty much know the in's and out's of the home buying and selling process, and I'm confident that you will benefit from my experience