Thinking about the beach

Fortunately there is a warming trend for at least today in Virginia and North Carolina.  We're pretty lucky compared to Anchorage, Alaska (actually the banana belt of Alaska) which has received 74 inches of snow so far this year according to this Houston Chronicle article.  When I talked to my friend in Halifax, Nova Scotia yesterday it was one degree above zero Fahrenheit, and they were having gusts of wind to forty miles per hour.

It doesn't take much late January or early February sun to get me thinking about the coast.  That's especially the case since I wander between the mountains and the coast all year nowadays.

When I lived in Canada this was the favorite time of the year to order seed and real estate catalogs.  Today you can hit the Internet to enjoy a taste of other places. 

Last summer I made the decision to switch to a new career as a real estate broker.  It's been a long journey as many of my classmates can attest.  I started classes in late July and passed my North Carolina licensing exam in late September. Then there were another ninety hours of classes before I could get the "provisional" removed from my broker's license.  This week I was in class again for my orientation as a Realtor®.  I was most impressed with the ethics training and commitment.

Perhaps the most interesting thought that has come to my mind is that I spent nearly twenty years with Apple (the former Apple Computer) and never received any substantial ethics training.  Certainly I dealt with my customers ethically, but other than some statements on relatively obscure web pages, working at Apple had no backdrop of ethics like my job as a Realtor®.  Working at Apple was all about selling computers.  There was plenty of secrecy so that customers could end up buying a computer that would be out of date or worth less money the next day.   Actually there was so much secrecy at Apple that customers sometimes would know more than employees.  We spent a good deal of our time making sure that our own customers had the benefit or our best guesses when it came to Apple.

In the world of real estate, if someone has become your client instead of just a customer, you are committed to helping them make the best decisions possible whether they are buying or selling.

In the real estate  there is a huge distinction between a customer and a client.  If you click on the link you'll get a good dose of information about that distinction.  It is something anyone looking at real estate should consider carefully.

When the taste for other places gets more serious than just being driven by a desire to provide some warm thoughts, most people can run into problems finding good information.  They often find it very challenging to explore a new area and decide on a place that meets their needs and perhaps turns out to be a good investment.

While there are no guarantees these days, one of the best ways is to ask your friends if they have had dealing with a Realtor® in a particular area or a local one who can provide a referral.  Most real estate brokers have established relationships with other brokers.  Given the amount of time real estate people spend in classrooms keeping up to date on certifications and training, it is not surprising that real estate brokers end up knowing a lot of other brokers.

I hope to provide a service to the Southwest Virginia area by helping people find their special spot on the North Carolina coast myself or referring them to someone else that I know.  My wife, Glenda and I are in our eighteenth year in Roanoke.  We were both born across the border in North Carolina and grew up in Mount Airy area.  We have strong ties regionally so it isn't too much of a challenge finding out what kind of people we are.  I have a career in sales which stretches back well over thirty years.  I have worked hard to make sure that my customers over the years have been pleased with my advice, whether they bought a purebred Angus bull, a Vermeer baler, an Apple computer, high speed networking, or email services from me.  As far as I know I've been successful in having happy customers.  I like to think I was very ethical with my customers.

So if my customers have been happy, just think how well I will treat clients where I have a fiduciary relationship with them.

I hope to make it a lot easier for friends and other people in the Roanoke area to get information about properties on North Carolina's Crystal Coast.  Most real estate agents are very local in their knowledge due to the tremendous amount of information they have to master.  I hope to have that local knowledge but also to share some of my broader knowledge that I have gained over the years visiting a wide variety of areas on the Carolina coast.  I have chosen to work with Bluewater GMAC Real Estate.  I made the decision carefully. We used  Bluewater GMAC brokers to handle the purchase of our home which happened to be built by Bluewater Builders.  Not surprisingly we live in Bluewater Cove.  If I weren't happy with the services I received, I wouldn't be part of the organization.

One of the reasons we're here in Cape Carteret, North Carolin is that we found great value for our dollars in this area.  There is tremendous selection in waterfront property in Carteret County where we are located.  The county is over 1,300 square miles of which 61% is water.  Often the challenge is deciding what kind of water you want and factoring in how much flooding or wind risk you want to assume.

We wanted to avoid a direct assault from hurricanes so we're back from the beach a few miles.  Still we can be walking the beach in ten to fifteen minutes which in our case is an acceptable trade off.

I like to tell everyone that based on my experiences in both Canada and Roanoke, that mountain flooding can be very serious.  While it can be serious at the coast, most of the time, it drains away very quickly because we aren't far about sea level.  People ask if I'm afraid of hurricanes.  No life is without danger.  When I lived in Canada, it was pretty easy to die if you slid off into a snow bank at minus forty degrees Fahrenheit.  We've had trees fall into our house in Roanoke due to high winds, and there was that one year the whole valley was filled with smoke from West Virginia forest fires.  Of course there are tornadoes in the Roanoke area and here in coastal North Carolina.  There is no perfectly safe spot.  If there was one, I wouldn't want to live there.

I guess I believe it is better to have lived where you love it, than to try to find the world's safest place.  For all I know all the deer that continue to forage in our Roanoke azaleas may leave behind some ticks where I'll get Lyme disease.

As to hurricanes, I see buildings from the 1700s in Beaufort and Swansboro, both of which are right on the water.  That's not to minimize the risk of storms, it's just to point out the facts which led me to make a decision that I wanted to live my dream before I was too old enjoy the area.

I think one of things that attracts me to Carteret County is that there seems to be room for everyone.  That means that houses prices go from very reasonable prices to homes costing into the millions.  The estimated real estate valuation for Carteret County is $18 billion dollars so there is plenty to choose from in homes.

So what do I consider good value.  I actually think the model home in our neighborhood is a great value.

I'll be talking more about real estate value in some other posts on my Realtor site®, but when you can spend under $340K for a home slightly over ten minutes from the Emerald Isle beaches in a waterside community with a swimming pool, club house, day dock, boat storage, and boat ramp, then in my mind you've gotten a good deal.

Then again when you're in love with an area, it is easy to convince yourself of value.