Real Estate is like taking your Kindergartner to school!

Real Estate is like taking your Kindergartner to school!

For real!  Hear me out on this one.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.  Friend told me a funny story recently, and I couldn’t help marveling at how it related to real estate.

This story is about my friend’s friend.  He had recently re-connected with his friend about parenting life.  As they both have multiple young children.  And life as a parent, especially a parent of young children, is very different.  His friend is a mom of two.  Not that it matters, but I think she lives in California.

As a point of reference, he told me she was an attractive woman.  This story is regarding a recent early morning with her kids.  This particular early morning, she was getting ready to take her daughter, her oldest of 2 children, to her first day of kindergarten.  The daughter is 5 years old.  Just a reminder to those who don’t have Kindergartners, how truly young they really are.  The daughter says to the mother, “Are you going to take me to school like that?  Please put some make up on.  I don’t know what my friends will think if you go to school like that!”

I laughed whole heartedly when I heard this story.  It’s funny, and it’s sad, and it’s real.

I personally don’t think women, or people for that matter, need make up.  Yet they wear it.  They wear it every day.  And in particular, they wear it for special events.  People wear make up when they get married, when they go on job interviews, when they go on dates.  People of both genders wear make up on TV and in the movies, and all kinds of other performances.  Whey do they do this?  They do it to put their best foot forward.  To create the best first impression.

This is just like real estate.  When you live in a home, you don’t necessarily clean it every day.  You don’t stage a home when you’re living in it.  And people often don’t renovate a home all the time.  And yet all the time when I’m meeting with a client we discuss creating the best first impression for potential home buyers.  We discuss creating curb appeal.  That’s just like the story with the little girl.  We need to make the house look good.  They may not put on the make up after they bought the house.  But that’s up to them after they’ve bought it.  We need to make it look as good as we can, so that they do buy the house.  That’s why so many people do the fixes, the improvements, and even the renovations right before they sell the home.  They want to make it look good, make it shine, make it appealing, so that it sells, and sells fast, and sells for top dollar.  Who knew that this five year old was a great Realtor in the making!

Hope I made you smile, and hope I made you laugh.  Most of all, hope I made you see how taking your kindergartner to their first day of school is like selling a home.