Editorial
Front Page - Friday, May 7, 2010
Changes in real estate abound but American dream persists
Erica Tuggle
Raymond Warren has been in the real estate business for 34 years and is the owner of EXIT Upward Realty on Hixson Pike. He says he is “cautiously hopeful” about the future of real estate and the resilience of the American dream of home buying.
- Erica Tuggle
In the last 34 years of real estate, two things that have changed the most are the paperwork and the technology, says Raymond Warren, broker and owner of EXIT Upward Realty.
In 1976, contracts were one page and carbon paper was used to make copies. If there was a change to the contract, they changed it on the paper and initialed beside it. Today’s contracts are 25 to 30 pages long and the process of making addendums to the contract is a little trickier, he says. Cell phones and computers weren’t even a sparkle in technology’s eye in ‘76 and the multiple listing service consisted of a book that came out weekly.
“It was basically a catalog, and you guarded it with your life because it was your inventory,” Warren says. “There was a time lag for new houses on the market; chances are you wouldn’t find out about it for as many as 10 days.”
This seems like blasphemy in today’s speed driven age, when a listing can be posted online within the hour a house is up for sale. There are even printers available for automobile use for printing out contracts on the field, and almost any phone available today can download a contract from the Web.
What has remained the same are the basics of selling, Warren says, though now it is a more meticulous process overall with the inclusion of home inspections and those legal-jargon laden contracts.
Warren has owned Upward Realty since 2006, although it was not his initial career choice, but rather sprang from a bad incident he had with an agent.
“I was working with an agent looking for a house when he basically misled me,” Warren says. “I made an offer on a house and he told me I could back out if I changed my mind, but when something came up two days later, he said ‘No, you have a contract; you can’t back out.’”
Warren said fortunately the deal fell through, but he realized with this that he was going to have to wise up if he was going to keep this from happening to him again.
A few classes later, an answered ad from a local broker, plenty of experience and 34 years later, he is managing the EXIT Upward Realty office on Hixson Pike.
What’s in a name? Warren said as he was forming his company in 2006 he was looking for a name that was new. He spent time thinking about the goals of his company and realized the main thing he wanted to do was offer something that was a little different.
“Everybody’s intent is to improve themselves when they make a real estate deal, whether it is an agent’s intention to improve his career, or a client’s move ahead in buying a property,” he says. “Basically, ‘upward’ was a good word that was a direction you would want to go.”
He bought the name “Upward Realty” before he formed the company, and in 2007, he chose the EXIT Realty franchise to partner with because of the educational and residual benefits they offered agents that would transfer to helping clients have an informed partner in their buying and selling needs, he says.
Warren said EXIT’s benefits help ensure that agents don’t have to live solely off their commissions, and on the concept that if an agent helps build a company, then he shares in the company’s success.
Another individual aspect of his business is Exit’s focus on education. These efforts include a monthly evening training session, mini-training sessions every week at the sales meetings, national trainers, boot camps and other classes that EXIT and Warren bring to the agents. This results in thoroughly trained agents in a full service business, Warren says, where clients are taken care of from the day they walk in to the day they close; all the while with a licensed professional alongside them.
Warren says, “We expect our agents to be some of the best trained. We want them to know what they are doing in the field when a client asks a question and want them to have the knowledge to answer questions, serve and recognize needs.”
Upward Realty has grown from the beginning five agents, to the current 15 agents that interact in a close family-like atmosphere, Warren says. This allows easy access to their broker that larger franchises don’t have, and he says he encourages any agent who is unhappy where he is to take a look at EXIT Upward Realty.
Warren says he is “cautiously optimistic” about the future, but no matter what the economy or changes in real estate bring, he thinks the American dream of owning a home will remain.
“People have memories of growing up in a certain house, and they want those for their children as well,” he says. “I think that has been evident with the rush to buy a house before the tax credit ends because people see it as a real incentive to help them fulfill that dream.”
He says regrets will be there when people realize they have missed out on an $8,000 check from the government, but it still won’t be too late to be a homeowner, as he predicts that property will come back in value and there will be a time when buying a house will once again be an investment for future profit.
While he says Upward Realty hopes to find a new office space within the next year, for now, his agents and he are ready to help make the American dream come true in any way they can.
“They say you’ve got to live somewhere, and most people do not want to be at the mercy of a landlord all their life,” he says. “The dream still lives.”
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