You’ll read a lot about safety in this issue. A whole lot.
No, we aren’t overreacting to the recent incidents. Real estate agents are in a dangerous business and, as one person said, they’re so busy trying to make money that they sometimes let themselves get into a difficult position.
I was in the market some years ago and the agent was a good friend. We were heading out to see some homes but wait!, she said, I need to get someone to go with us.
Uhhh ... Pat, we’ve known each other for a decade. Our kids play together. Your husband is my wife’s doctor.
“Rules are rules,” she said, “and they’re there for a reason. I don’t take chances.”
Overreaction? Of course. But Pat wasn’t taking any chance, nor should she. She may have known me socially, but she didn’t know me professionally and she darn sure didn’t know me when just the two of us are inside a building.
Good thinking. It can happen anywhere.
One of the many tips you’ll read in this issue cautions men to carry their wallets in a front pocket when they’re around strangers.
A few years back, we went to Rome and attended Mass at St. Peter’s (the Pope wasn’t around, by the way.) I felt a tug on my back pocket and wheeled around just in time to keep a young man from pickpocketing me.
In St. Peter’s. In Rome. During a church service.
If it can happen there, it darn sure can happen in a new development where there isn’t another person within a mile.
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We usually don’t make a big deal of ourselves around here. You won’t find photos of our staff writers (except on “column heads,” as we call them — see above) and we don’t write stories about ourselves (ask Michele — she had to battle to let you know her baby had arrived.)
Let me make a big deal of a fellow employee, Deborah Metzig. If it weren’t for her hard work selling ads, you would be holding a lot fewer than 64 pages now. Her success makes my life a bit more difficult. We strive for quality in every page. The more pages, the more stories. The more stories, the more writing and editing and headline writing and picture taking and ... on and on and on.
That’s OK; we’ll pull our wagon, and what you’re reading has become the most successful publication of its kind that I see.
Deborah is a lot more than an ad saleslady. She’s part of the real estate and construction community and I think that’s why she’s such a success — you know her, she knows you and there’s a lot of mutual trust.
Selling ads may not be much different than selling homes. If my real estate agent, Pat, told me that a certain home was a good deal, I believed her. She did, and it certainly swayed our choice to that home. Deborah assures you that your ad will be in a newspaper that reflects your business (no schlock ads, etc.), you believe her.
Good lady, in every way.
— Fred Seely is the editor of Realty/Builder Connection and editorial director of Bailey Publishing & Communications In. He can be reached at [email protected].