Hunting for a new home online is a great place to start your search, but it should not be your end all be all. Good listing agents are excellent at highlighting the best features of the home, but keep in mind there may be more than meets the eye. To make the most of your time and efforts and gather a well-rounded picture of home listings online, keep the following three things in mind.

1) Stay up to date. When you start your search, make sure you find a site that pulls up-to-date listings directly from the multiple listing service (MLS) where real estate agents actively post their most current homes for sale. Many online resources update less often or fail to remove listings that are off the market, making it more difficult to sort through the clutter.

2) Pictures can be deceiving. Real estate photographers are experts at showing a home in the best possible light. Many use tools and strategies to boost appeal, such as a fisheye lens to make areas look larger and creative editing to make colors and textures really pop. But, often listings will not contain photos of unappealing parts of the home, like small closets or outdated bathrooms.

3) See it to believe it. Once you find what appears to be your dream home online, call us, your future real estate agents, and schedule a showing. You want to take the opportunity to vet the home in person and explore every part of it before beginning the offer process. We will help you cover all your bases and will ask questions you may not have thought of.

An evacuation plan is a necessity for every home, especially if you live in an area where fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, and other disasters are a possibility. Many homeowners create evacuation plans for their homes and practice them with their kids, but far fewer have considered one for their pets. Take these steps to add your pets to your evacuation plan.

Assign pet evacuation to an adult. Everyone should know how to act during an evacuation, and that includes assigning one parent or adult to the pets. This allows the other parent and the children to focus on their part of the evacuation plan, so there’s no confusion during a high-stress moment when time is of the essence.

Keep evacuation maps and pet carriers readily accessible. If you need to evacuate, you should know exactly where every important item is. If you pets require carriers, keep them in a place that you can access easily.

Practice your plan. Include your pets in your home evacuation drills. It’ll help you see how they will respond and make changes to your plan if necessary. Getting your dog out of a window may not be as simple as you think!

Be prepared in case you get separated from your pets. No matter how much you drill your evacuation plan, it’s possible that a dog or cat will run off while you’re focusing on keeping your family safe. A microchip or a GPS-compatible tag can help you find your pets once it’s safe to return to the area.

Yes, I was one of the approximately 100 million viewers that watched a historically low scoring Super Bowl and one that many has called “boring”

And they are mostly right.  No Hail Mary’s; No one handed touchdown catches; No dramatic last second turnovers.  You probably already know it was a 3 point game until the last quarter when New England finally scored a touchdown.

So why is a Realtor writing about Football?  What does real estate have to do with the Super Bowl?  Nothing!

Except for, on the surface, my goal is to make your transaction look boring.

So again, Super Bowl LIII (on the surface) was boring.  But when you break it down, it was a technical game.  It was a game of defense and how to stop the ball from progressing to the end zone.  It was all strategy.

Real estate transactions are all about strategy.  With 17 years experience in the industry, I know what is involved with completing an escrow successfully.  And like the Super Bowl played yesterday Vs the one played the year prior and the one the year before that (and so on)…  The fundamentals are the same but each is unique.

Every real estate transaction is fundamentally the same and unique.

Another way real estate and footballs compares is teamwork.

Brady completed 21 of 35 passes for 261 yards.   Edelman was his top target with 10 receptions for 141 yards.   Gronkowski caught six passes for 87 yards.    Michel was the top rusher of the game with 94 yards and a touchdown.

I have a winning team of professionals:  Lenders; Title Company; Escrow Company; Legal team; Compliance team; Transaction Coordinator; Co-Agents (when needed); Home Inspector; Pest Inspector and an assortment of services I can refer,

OK, maybe I am not Super Bowl bound, but I am a Super Agent with a winning team and I am ready to help you reach your goals.

1. “The consequences of today are determined by the actions of the past. To change your future, alter your decisions today.” ~ Anonymous

2. “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

3. “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” Abraham Lincoln

4. “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Alexander Graham Bell

5. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs