More than 6,800 Real Estate agents from throughout North America recently attended Keller Williams Realty’s annual convention, Family Reunion, in Orlando, Florida Feb. 21-25. Starting 2008 as the fourth-largest Real Estate company in the United States, Keller Williams Realty is powering through the shift and now claims the No. 3 spot, said Mark Willis, CEO, during the State of the Company and Culture address.

This is solid evidence that the model works!” he told a cheering audience. “When you faithfully commit to our economic model, our operating model and our organizational model, and take advantage of the education and the resources that we’ve developed, you create an edge over your competition and disrupt your local market.

While we cannot escape the trends of the industry, we have definitely outperformed the industry,” Willis said, noting that compared to the National Association of REALTORS®, which lost 140,000 of its members, a decline of 10.5 percent between December of 2007 and December of 2008, Keller Williams Realty’s total active agent count declined by only 7 percent. “Comparatively, Keller Williams did more than 30 percent better than NAR.” Citing the 2008 REAL Trends 500 report, Willis added, “Keller Williams was the only Real Estate franchise that experienced a positive growth in the total number of sides, the total number of offices and the agent count per office. Between 2003 and 2007 Keller Williams Realty increased its U.S. market share by more than 161 percent, while only one other network gained, and their increase was less than 20 percent.

Comparing Keller Williams Realty to the 10 largest independents in the country over the last five years, Willis enthusiastically noted that “Keller Williams grew by 65 percent more in associates per office, 61 percent more in transactions per associate, and 32 percent more in sales per office. The model works! This is your money, your production and it thrills us.

From the very outset, the shift in the Real Estate market has been viewed within Keller Williams Realty as an opportunity, and never has that been more apparent than right now. “The promise of the shift for our market centers who nail the model, and grow in this market, is greater than in any other market, because this is when the best agents and brokers gain market share,” Willis added. “We have to gather ourselves, get focused, get a plan of action and CHARGE!”

Although the Keller Williams McLean Center was founded less than two years ago, it has quickly grown into the most talked about office in the Northern Virginia region.  We hope to open an office in Great Falls by Summer 2009.

My recent shift to Keller Williams Realty enables me to bring you numerous advantagous that were not available with my previous company.  The home buying calculators are an example of some such benefits.  Try using the affordability calculator to determine exactly how much home you can afford.  FYI:  Current interest rates are running between 4.5% and 5.0%.  To be conservative, you should plug in an interest rate of 5.0.   Feel free to share this calculator with others who may be considering purchasing a home.

To access this calculator go to the Keller Williams Website and click on the affordability calculator.  Be sure to some of the other tools to help make your homebuying decision.

This post probably should have gone up before the first one.  Below is a basic list of what we’re looking for in a house.  However, please keep in mind that we already have a beautiful 3 bedroom townhome in a very nice part of north Reston that my dad helped us buy 4 years ago (that story is a blog post of its own).  We’d like to take advantage of this buyer’s market to look for the home of our dreams, or at least something very nice to get us to the home of our dreams in one or two sales.  We also think that, once the twins are a little older, it will be years before we’re able to keep a house clean enough to sell it again.  Okay, now to the list.

Things that our next house must have:

• 4 or preferably 5 bedrooms
• 2 car garage
• decent size yard (.3+ acres)
• good sized kitchen with a view of the backyard
• back porch for grilling
• sidewalks and some type of grocery type shopping center within walking distance
• central heating and air conditioning
• basement (finished or unfinished)

Things that we’d like our next house to have:

• a front porch
• a screened-in porch
• hardwood
• Verizon Fios

Let me know if you know of anything that matches these criteria and is in the sub $515k range.

Earlier this month, the Today Show had a segment on the Top Ten Myths surrounding the current real estate market. The advice given on the show was extremely valuable and really should be taken into account whether buying or selling a home. I am reviewing each of these as separate entries with my own experience.  This advice will be valid whether buying/selling in high end markets such as Great Falls and Mclean or in Loudoun County or Prince William County where prices have dropped dramatically.

Buyer myth #2: Sellers today are desperate.

This premise has held true for most every buyer to whom I have shown houses during the past year.  Not all sellers are desperate.  There are a number of people who are looking to take advantage of the current buyers’ market.  They are willing to sell their home at a lower price than would have been obtainable two or three years ago.  They simply do not want to give the home away.  It is important to always ask why the the home is being sold as a means of determining how motivated and anxious they are.  I will always asked where they are moving.  They are more likely to answer this than bluntly asking why they are moving.  A response of “We’re being transferred” is a very different answer than, “We’d like to find something bigger.” The first homeowner is very motivated while the second may stick closer to their price.  I am always surprised at how much info you can get from sellers by asking the right questions.  If your buyer agent doesn’t ask exploratory questions, it may be time for a new agent.

For sellers:  You are well served by following your realtors advice to vacate the home when someone is coming by to see it.  Never, never, ever have kids home!!  While you frequently think you can help market the property, you more times than not provide information that buyers use to rule out the home or give the selling agent fodder with which to negotiate a more advantageous deal for the buyer.  Kids will almost always say something about the home that you’d rather not have known.  If your listing agent hasn’t given this advice, it may be time for a switch. 

I will always maintain that your principal reason for looking at houses is to find the right home for your family. Once you have found a place to call home, don’t lose it over a few percentage points in price.  We’ll establish a fair price and then negotiate to get as close as possible to this price.  It will then be up to you to determine if you really want the home.  You can rest assured that the home will be worth significantly more in five to ten years than you are paying today. 

I had planned for my first post to the site to be a recap of all the searches we’ve done so far.  However, after our long day the Sunday before last (1/25/09) I figured I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to post about our house tour.

For about two weeks now my dad has been running MLS searches for me on 4+ bedroom houses in Asbhurn, Va.  After looking looking through a bunch of listings I narrowed it down to about 4 homes that I thought Marie and I would like.  After convincing Marie mid-day Sunday that it would be a good idea to go look at these homes (which as you’ll see later it wasn’t) we packed up the twins and called my dad to take us through them.

Our first mistake was leaving about an hour before a feeding on a trip that would take about 25 minutes to get to the first stop.  The plan was to leave the babies in the car with one of us while the other went through the house and then we would swap.

As soon as we stopped the car at the first house (which I’m not going to post a picture of or address for because it’s my favorite of the four and I don’t want competition) we discovered Reagan needed to be changed.  Marie hopped out of the car to take the first look at the house and I preceded to squeeze in the back of the Pilot to change Reagan away from the cold.  This worked surprisingly well.  As soon as Reagan was changed and back in her car seat they both started to cry.  I drove around the neighborhood in attempt to soothe the babies to sleep… it worked… sort of, but they were definitely hungry.

House #2

This is when things got interesting.  Marie took Reagan (while parked) and nursed her (covered with a blanket) in the car in the driveway of the house while I took my turn in the house.  The feeding went surprisingly well, except when the owner of the house walked up.

At first neither of us were particularly impressed with the house (it was older than most in Ashburn and the current owner is a smoker).  However, the more both of us thought about it, the more we realized it was perfect for us.  It had everything we were looking for just a little older and stinkier (2 car garage, yard, screen in porch, 6 bedrooms, and more)

As soon as we were done at this place we drove to the local shopping center to sit in the parking lot and nurse Robert (III).  This also went well, though it took a long time.

Once the babies were fed the visits started again.  Our next stop was this beautiful place in Ashburn Farm.  It had all of our “nice-to-haves” (front porch, screen porch out back, second floor laundry, and completely spotless inside) and almost all of our “must-haves” (4+ bedrooms and a 2 car garage).  The only problem we had with it is that it lacked a back yard, which is something we really would like.  However, if a back yard isn’t important to you give my dad a call (703-999-5812) and he’ll take you out to it.

The last place was similar to the second but everything was just a little bit older (and the price was lower).  The first place which won’t be named is now at the top of our list.  All-in-all it was a successful trip, but we haven’t tried it again since.

My son (Bob) and his wife have been thinking about moving to a single family home for several months.  However, they had to put their search on hold when the twins were born.  They’ve just recently asked that I ramp the search back up.  They’re not sure where they’d like to live so we’ve been all over Northern Virginia including a 5 acre fixer-upper in Great Falls, a 100 year old home in Fairfax, and several beautiful homes in Ashburn and Sterling.  I’ve invited Bob to be a guest contributor to the site and document his family’s experience in searching for a home, hopefully finding one they like, selling their current townhouse, and moving his family into their dream home (or at least the next step towards their dream home).  If you are a first time homebuyer, you should enjoy learning about the whole process through Bob and Marie’s adventures.  For those of you who have already gone through the process, you may learn something new.  When Scotty (a friend of  Bob’s) bought his first home, Bill (his dad) commented that he wished someone had explained the whole procedure to him when he bought each of his homes.