This month marks my 15th year in the real estate business. While that might seem like a long time, I feel like I’m just getting started. I say that because this is my ninth year doing what I truly love. Let me provide a little background into what I mean.
The first six years of my real estate career were spent figuring out the business and understanding all I could about real estate. Then, about nine years ago, my sister and niece moved back to Chattanooga. My niece was 3 at the time and excited to move into a house with stairs. She loved climbing the stairs, never thinking about them and just racing up to get to her room and her space.
What I came to love at that time is feeling like I now truly get the chance to help my clients establish roots. These roots can help set their family on solid ground for many years to come. Now I see the impact that the stability of a home has for my clients and community.
Recently reflecting over that time got me thinking about the importance of having an address. Sure, an address means you have a home, but it’s much more than that. It’s a sense of belonging to a community. It means you’re part of the fabric and being of people – knowing where they come from and playing a role in where they’re going.
An address is used every day, and most of the time we don’t even think about it. Yet have you ever tried to think of everything you couldn’t do if you didn’t have an address? You need an address to open a bank account and register to vote. You also need an address to get a driver’s license and register children for school.
And you need an address to get a passport and have a safe place you call home.
As we move into a new decade, we as a community face the challenge of ensuring the dream of a home to all. This home and address are more important than we realize, as it ensures the security of the future.
As Realtors engage with other community players to think about zoning codes, building codes and land usage, let us keep it in the framework that all people want to have an address. As a community, we need to come together to ensure that the future makes available to everyone who wants a home an address where they belong.
Greater Chattanooga Realtors is The Voice of Real Estate in Greater Chattanooga. A regional organization with more than 2,000 members, Greater Chattanooga Realtors is one of some 1,300 local boards and associations of Realtors nationwide that comprise the National Association of Realtors. Greater Chattanooga Realtors services Hamilton and Sequatchie counties in southeast Tennessee and Catoosa, Dade and Walker counties in northwest Georgia. For more information, visit www.gcar.net or call 423 698-8001.