Waynesword is back.
February 2007. Involuntarily, I took a hiatus from cyberspace for a bit. Through a confluence of unfortunate events, as they say, the server my tech-guy had recommended for my website had all of their hard drives confiscated for some reason I still can’t fathom, and my entire 6-year conglomeration of webpages was lost. Six years of Saratoga stories, real estate commentary on the fluctuations of the market, shout-outs to Cool Clients, digital pictures of Saratoga’s rapidly changing landscape, and Wayneswords on Hoop columns dating
back to 2001: all gone.
This disappearance of my site took place just aftera month in which my formerly reliable tech-guy had gone totally incommunicado on me after taking a more demanding job elsewhere. Page updates for late summer of 2006 never got posted, and for the last four months of 2006 I decided to put Waynesword on hiatus for a brief spell and re-think the whole thing.
You know what? There was a lot of stuff on there that I didn’t like anymore. There was stuff that was out-of-date and writing that embarrassed me. I didn’t ever go back through it and edit the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff. There was writing from 4 or 5 years previous that I had forgotten about completely.
Keeping up on your own website is an unpaid job, and though I received a few occasional accolades for Waynesword.com, I never got a LOT of feedback when I was keeping up on the site. But since it’s been down I’ve heard from many people that they’ve looked for it and were disappointed that it was not available. So I was getting in-directly positive feedback: What happened to Waynesword??
To tell you the truth, updating Waynesword on a regular basis was keeping me from doing any other writing—a novel, my journals, musical refractions, hoop stories, whatever. Everything I wrote was going into the website, like an electronic compost pile. I realized lately that I need to keep other writings separate from cyberspace, and stay true to paper-based text as well. So the break let me take the pressure off, allowed me to take a break from the writing deadlines, focus heavily on my business clients with SPA Realty, and re-evaluate what I wanted on my website, and what I didn’t. In my own minor way, maybe I felt that, like Jay-Z and Michael J., I’d be appreciated more after my comeback.
The New Waynesword.com
Writing extensively about Hoop on what was ostensibly a Real Estate website sometimes caused puzzlement or confusion. But I remain passionate about both: my vocation and my avocation, and you’re supposed to write about what you love. Until and unless someone offers me a fulltime salary to become a beat basketball writer, or to finish my first novel after 30 years of assembly and research, I’ll be sticking with the real estate profession, and it will be the prime focus of Waynesword, rendered monthly on the Home Page.
Waynesword on Hoop will be an easily accessible link for those who come looking for that, many of whom could care less about my real estate tales and commentary. The writings, commentary, opinions, ranting and rankings are noted to be purely subjective on my part—I’ve never claimed to be an objective journalist.
Real Estate Anecdotes—once I get it going--will be blog-like sequences relating to the day-to-day machinations and twists of the local market, updated periodically. The Perras Portfolio of Listings will be just that—a photo & text gallery of whatever listings I have at a given time. There will also be a general link to the TimesUnion.com real estate site, which is the most comprehensive and updated source of MLS listings in our entire service area, without the propaganda or slant of any one company’s sponsorship or influence.
Saratoga Tales will be part of the main page, a combination of new and older archived pieces I’ll dredge up from my files. Here will be my observations on up-to-the-minute changes taking place in the cityscape and landscape of Saratoga Springs, which continues to be upstate New York’s most vibrant success story among small cities.
I’ve lived here for almost 30 years: over a decade of living in the pedestrian zone at the core of Saratoga; followed by 14 years of living on the fringe of the city, two miles from Broadway’s attractions while sending my sons to the Division Street Elementary school on the Westside. Since then my family and I have been content living even further out on the outskirts—9 miles west of the City of Saratoga Springs, on a couple of acres backing to the Kayderosseras Creek. My business is based in Saratoga, but my life feels more balanced living in the country, despite the amount of driving involved.
To reiterate my position—I consider myself a fringe observer. I am at this point a solo practitioner (though that may change over time), a lone wolf, a maverick, not part of any grand organization or bureaucracy or totem pole of real estate agents. I spout NO company line or lines—I write my own. I am part of NO political
party, NO grand development schemes, NO Chamber of Commerce.
If you want to buy property through me, I have no hidden agenda, and
I will give you my opinion frankly and bluntly, on any real estate subject with which I am familiar, and will research the subject if I’m not.
I believe in free speech and am beholden to no one. I respect my colleagues in the business locally—for the most part, the vast majority of them are good people-- but will also be glad to inform you who among them is most likely to be jiving you, as a consumer, if you ask.
All this is why my phone message at the office says simply:
This is Wayne Perras, Associate Broker at SPA REALTY—Saratoga’s
Independent Voice in Real Estate Representation.
CO-OPERATION & COMPETITION
I have said this before and yet it is worth repeating, especially since my lengthy articles on Real Estate 101, and Buyer Agency, from my original website were lost in the cyberspace shuffle.
Real estate is a funny business in that the very people you might be competing against to acquire listings are often the very same ones you must later co-operate with to negotiate, execute, and eventually close on a contract. The trick is to be civil and professional while at the same time firm and passionate in defense of your client’s position, no matter who might be the other agent involved.
After nearly 20 years fulltime in the business I am very much aware of any other professional Realtor in the Capital District and Saratoga County who has been actively licensed for more than 5 years. There are a host of relatively less-experienced agents popping up all the time—most of them well-intentioned, but sometimes unsure of protocol, or unaware of long-term market trends. Let me deal with them, so you won’t have to. Part of my job as an independent Buyer’s Agent is to engage the other side of the negotiation in a dialogue as to what market reality might be in a given situation. Some listing agents (even the experienced ones), or their Sellers themselves need to be made to listen to reason in a Market such as we’ll see in 2007. There are logical caps on square footage values, relative to location of course, which can be established through recent comparable sales in each neighborhood. Some would-be Sellers are greatly exceeding those pricing values in their expectations. If you as a prospective buyer like a certain property but only at a certain price, I am the Buyer Agent who will argue effectively on your behalf, if I think it is reasonable.
It costs you NOTHING to engage the services of a Buyer Agent, so why not choose the most intelligent and responsive one you can find? We only get paid if we negotiate a deal you like, and it successfully closes. And even then, our commission in not paid out of the Buyer’s side of the ledger—it is contained within the price you agreed to pay. What could be a better arrangement for the Purchaser of MLS listed properties?
That’s the short version of my Buyer Agency speech. For a more detailed & specific discussion-- call me, set up a free consultation, or email me.
And that’s it for the first installment of the new improved
Waynesword.com. Watch again soon, as Waynesword’s content accrues!
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Copyright 2007 Wayne Perras