In the spirit of goodwill and charity, we propose to offer consumers something special. Imagine thousands of Realtor’s®, and other real estate related professionals, offering their services to first time home buyers and sellers in need for FREE! For too long, real estate professionals have had to fight negative public perceptions and sterotypes. We want to help change that.
We are looking for real estate agents and related service professionals, such as mortgage brokers, attorneys, home inspectors etc, who can afford to, to donate their services or time to a person or family in need. We will promote this charitable concept on our nationwide blog tour to everyone we meet. This goodwill gesture will leave a lasting impression on everyone involved. If you’ve seen the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you can get a general idea how we want to make a difference in people’s lives. We will be successful even if we can help one person or family.
Raise your hand now if you support the idea. We leave the door wide open on how and whom you want to help. If you are a professional, let us know how you can help. If you are a person in need, let us know how we can help. We’ll post the stories on Blog Tour USA.
If you have any ideas, suggestions or comments about our idea, please let us know.
Technorati Tags: Blog Tour USA, Charity, Goodwill, Good Samaritan, First time home buyers, first time home sellers, pro bono real estate, sellsius
Sorry, I’m cleaning my gun that week so I can kill more poor people.
Nice thought - keep in mind that agents affiliated with most brokerages would have to give the brokerage money. We can’t really work for free, we have to pay to work for free.
Consider the Ekday team to have both hands raised. Like Teresa said though, we have to pay the broker about $350 to do a transaction, plus, if we are trying to help someone sell a home, we have to offer a minimum commission for the buyer’s agent. Maybe we can help someone sell FSBO and give them flyers and market them on our website. Let us know how we can help.
Great Idea! Let me know how I can help.
Cheers,
- Kit
312.379.3542
www.kitmueller.com
Goog point Teresa. Maybe the broker can forgo their fee.
Here’s the plan:
Tell us what you can offer—whatever it is. And we will post it on the Blog Tour USA blog under Good Samaritan Realtor. Give us a link and contact information and if anyone wants to take you up on your offer, they will contact you.
We will promote this to others along our tour. Maybe we can think of other ways to get your offer out there. And your good deed.
I did something like this last year targeted at the workforce housing segment of my market, and will offer it again.
Great idea, and thanks for doing it.
–Jim
Well being hearing impaired, I would love to do a few transactions. I have a real estate license, but here in North Carolina we have to work for a firm for two years before we can go out on our own. I have a broker’s license (we start out as provisional brokers) so I pretty much have everything I need except for someone to hire me.
No one will hire me it seems due to my hearing. Once they ask if I may have any problems working for their firm, I always mention I have trouble hearing on the phone and they ask why. When I tell them, the mood changes really fast to I do not think you will be a very good fit here and such and such.
One of the reasons I started blogging was to piss all the local agents off by stealing all their traffic. It worked and most took notice of it and wanted me to come work on their sites but they still would not offer me the job which I really wanted. Since then, I have kind of grown bored of blogging about real estate.
I have no interest in doing real estate anymore at this time. I am content with my writing career and teaching history. I do plan to keep my license active and stuff in case I want something to do when I retire (even through I know I will make millions as a famous author) but anyways, if you guys could find me a firm here in North Carolina to hang my license up with without charging me all those crazy fees I would love to volunteer my services and help two or three buyers or sellers out. Pay my advertising expenses and I’ll do the dirty work!
I have nothing to lose and everything to prove!
Obeo will donate two of our online marketing packages to two Realtors who are assisting sellers.
…nuff said.
Steve in WI
Thanks Jim and Steve. We will post your offers on Blog Tour USA blog.
Derek: We will put your comment up to and see what happens.
hi jim!
that’s fantastic. we’re happy that you will extend your offer again.
hi derek!
thanks for sharing your story with us. we will do whatever we can to help you out.
Would love to help someone in need.I am a licenced Realtor in St.Petersburg, Florida. Let me know.
Margaret,
Let us know what you plan to do to help (you can email us the details at sellsius(at)gmail.com) & we will post it on the Blog Tour USA blog as well as promote it while we’re on the road. Thanks.
Note to all Good Samaritan Realtors: We plan to take a list of all our Good Samaritan Realtors and hand them out while we are on the road. So it is important you specify what services you will supply and any criteria you have to receive your free services.
Rudy and Joe: Your cause is a good one, and you have me thinking. We are already doing some pro bono real estate work and perhaps we can weave this in somehow.
More to follow.
I support the idea, totally!
Without being too negative, let me just say, what’s up Bloodhound Blog’s a** all the time??? (You can spell that word out, if you don’t mind profanity on your site.)
I have never offered to do a deal gratis for any clients, only because I figure if they can afford to buy a home in Boston (average price, $450,000) then they can afford to “pay” my commission. (I say “pay” because I work only with buyers.)
Since I work for myself, I can do whatever I want. If you hear of anyone who really needs the services of a real estate broker but would really benefit from getting my 2.5% commission back as a rebate at closing, feel free to pass on my name & info.
Thanks Roberta.
Let us know what you have in mind (you can email us) and we will include it in our handout. We are creating a database of professionals and what they can offer. We’ll add you to the list.
Thanks John
We’ll add you to the list. We leave it to the professional to define “need” and the extent of their help. I gave the example of a family in a slum rental who have the chance to move into a real crummmy fixer upper. If an broker or agent gave up their commission to the family, they could use the money to do some needed repairs ( or a builder could offer to give materials at cost and sacrifice some hours to help in the repairs.) When my sister bought her house (a fixer) I was over there every weekend helping her fix the place up. I also did her closing for free. Need comes in many forms, as does generosity and goodwill.
What’s up with Greg Swann? I think we all know. His way of getting attention & traffic is to piss people off and try to start blog wars. He loves to instigate a fight (OK) but then censors rebuttal on his blog (NG) (reminds me of that kid in school who’d put his fingers in his ears and yell “nanananana” when you tried to argue with him)—he censors comments that disagree with him (not only ours, which he blacklists completely to his AND his contributors’ posts) He sees the negative in virtually everything (sipping from a half empty glass, his days are always party cloudy). But he is an excellent backflipper and fence rider. You can say he writes “with forked tongue.” Here’s a guy who went from debunking zillow to putting a zillow ad on his blog sidebar. Go figure. (IMO, he’s blobbying for a job at zillow.) The guy is new to real estate and probably won’t stick—offer him a writing gig and he’ll pull up his lawn signs.
Aside: What I don’t get is his obsession with the age of his blog —he celebrates a blog birthday every month or so (it just turned 11 months–yippee) and he lies about its age (his archives go back to November 2005–was that not Swann writing back then?) What’s up with that? I guess if I stopped writing here for a month or so and restarted, the blog would be brand spankin’ new. Must be some kind of weird “dog logic” at work. Stop blogging in the sun, Greg.