Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Today was my fiftieth birthday and I have spent it working and enjoying it with my family. I realize many things have changed in the last couple of years and many will probably change in the near future as well. Contrary to my original expectations and to the custom habits of many individuals of my age, I am celebrating my first half century with a totally new job, a totally new life in a totally new place. Strangely enough my life has become much more adventurous as I have grown in age, so I can’t really imagine what it will be when I will be sixty or eighty for that matter.

Today I work on a broader sphere than I used to do 10 years ago. I deal with wider responsibilities and my business activity isn’t limited to just one office in the building of a major corporation, but spans across an ocean and connects Italy and the US and it could probably extend beyond that.

It is not necessarily big in size, but it is big in objectives and what is more important it is my creation. I have built it with my own determination and work and with the help of my family and a few friends that have given me advices or support. The most important of these friends being Daniele, who is also my partner and with whom I am, bringing the whole project to a new level.

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I have just completed the motorcycle rider course that was required for me to become a legal bike rider in Florida. I have been riding for quite a long time in Italy but I had never gone through a formal training program on the subject and I was amazed at the number and quality of concepts I managed to learn during this three days experience.

There had been things I had been doing instinctively without me knowing the reason why I was doing them and there had been concepts that were just missing and that are instead very relevant to perform a safe and pleasant ride. But what surprised me the most was the level of challenge involved with the course.

The training and testing range where I got my motorcycle license.

I had gotten the idea and maybe somebody even told me that it was just something you had to do in order to get your paperwork straight but there wasn’t much to it. Quite on the contrary the type of actions we were supposed to learn and perform with our bikes were challenging even for an experienced rider as me.

Also the precision of those actions and the time involved in the training itself, over 12 hours of actual exercised and tests, was quite surprising. Note that some of the students who attended the class and that eventually passed it had never rode on a bike before. The training was actually organized in a long series of consecutive steps, each one building on top of the previous one and leading from the very basics up to the most complex actions.

The bike that got me though the training and the tests. I had never used it before.

It was amazing seeing that under the challenge of the program, people would actually move from nowhere to being able to ride and control their vehicle to an high standard and that this was accomplished by the vast majority of the people attending the course.

The coaches were really good and the program has been tested nationally on many thousands of people, yet the most important things was that never during the training the coaches indulged with the thought that some of the students would not make it. They simply knew it could be done and that we could do it. On our side, we felt challenged to measure up to other students and to simply show we could also make it and it simply happened.

Roberto Mazzoni

If you too far away from your car and the remote doesn’t lock ro unlock your doors, try to stick it under your chin and will reach much further. This simple trick can make the difference between having to walk back to your car or stay comfortably where you are. Also, if you are in dark paring lot and you are looking for your car, by placing the remote just under your chin you’ll have a wider radius of action and you’ll find it more easily.

A nice tip that was given me by an investor lady who owns a rental property just next to the one of the houses I am rehabbing. I was passing by yesterday to check on the tile work that is being done in this particular property and I noticed a dumpster being deposited just across the street. I thought that more rehabbing work just next to my house was going to be beneficial and went on doing my business.

On the way back to my car a lady called me from the neighboring house and she introduced herself. She explained they had this rental property that she and her husband bought just before the market started going down, but they had it for a decent price so they still managed to break even on the mortgage payments with the rental, or almost even.

She was keen in showing me the work they had done and so I followed her forgetting to lock my car. Once inside I didn’t want to go back but tried to lock it from a distance and it wouldn’t respond so she gave me the tip above and it worked right there. I got some very good additional information about the rental market in the area and then we moved across the street and I showed the property I am working on.

She had some really interesting history about it (she knew the previous owner before it went in foreclosure) and again I got some very valuable feedback on my rehab projects. And she even pointed out to me that an external faucet was leaking so that I can save on the water bill (quite expensive in Florida).

She has naturally Italian origins and I have made a friend, I have got some valuable information about the rental market in that specific road and I know I can count on some help in case I need it. And she can count on me too.

In Italy they say that even a queen needs a good neighbor. So I need it too.

Roberto Mazzoni

You are just as good as the last deal you made. This is a rule that is prevalent in the US and although it may not be written in stone, it definitely applies in your day to day life as well as in your business.

This pushes people in following en mass what they think successful people do. Fads and crazy trends are built exactly this way. When people where getting mortgages they could not afford 3 or more years ago, they did it because “everybody” else did. Now they are all going in foreclosure. It is true that your rightness and wrongness will be decided eventually by the results you get, but they also depend on how much you believe that you can get those results and work around obstacles to obtain them.

If you let external opinions or your temporary set backs tell you that you are a looser and that you should change what you do in order to comply with the desires of somebody else, you won’t ever stand out from the crowd and I am afraid you won’t ever accomplish anything because the very people that tell you are wrong can’t tell you what is right.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing you or your evaluations are wrong simply because they don’t fit somebody else. This is not just an American game. I remember when I was in Milan two years ago and was selling my personal house. We had hired a local Realtor who spent the following 3 months showing it to tire kickers and trying to convince us that we had to lower significantly our asking price.

So we lowered the selling price following his advice and we simply got more tire kickers. Eventually, me and Maria, my wife, came to the conclusion that such a Realtor was simply unable to sell above a certain price, whatever the house. So we dropped the listing with him and started marketing the house ourselves on the Internet and got it sold in 15 days at a price which was close to what we were asking originally.

I must admit that the Italian real estate market is more stable than the US scene, but the concept stays the same. We proved ourselves right by eventually winning and we later found out that the Italian Realtor had changed job and was now a school teacher: he had lost at in his own game.

Don’t care to be right or to have other people agree with you at all cost. Be reasonable and considerate, of course, but focus on winning and then you will also be right eventually.

Roberto Mazzoni

Yesterday I have started my course to become a legal motorcycle driver in Florida. I have been riding bikes in Italy for almost three decades but this is the first time I have to go through some formal education on the subject. Unfortunately or fortunately I could say my Italian bike driving license is not valid in the US therefore I have to take classes like any other newcomer.

Motorcycle riding is a passion, which is shared by women and men alike, whatever the age and the profession. Attending to the first class has been a very eye opening experience. For the first time somebody explained me some basic concepts on how you drive and steer a bike. This is the type of knowledge that can save your life when you have it and know how to apply it.

Yet I have been riding for all this time on any type of road and with many different types of bike without knowing it. I was one of the very many riders who learned by himself, by trial and error and some common sense.

Now I need to learn how to drive all over again, but in the right way and our instructor told us that people with no experience usually do better at the exam as compared to experienced people simply because the latter need to first cancel their previous “self training” before really developing the right skills.

So how about the wrong habits one develops in business and in cultivating relationships both in the real and the virtual worlds? The whole message I am giving here is that constant education is essential if you want to become a real pro and avoid the dangers down the road: it doesn’t matter if it is work or bike riding.

Roberto Mazzoni