The Original Real Estate Web
I was recently doing an update for my database of clients, and about midway through, I decided to step back and think about the times I had shared with each of them and how we had met and eventually become friends. Each contact I went through and was reminded of led to another person in my web, which led to two more in this web and so on…
I traced the connections for the first client and noticed that after I helped her find a home, I then helped her sister sell a family member’s home and his sister sell an in-town condo. That led to me selling one of her high school friends’ homes and then helping her mothers’ gardener and his wife find a new home, just in time for them to have their first baby. During the process of helping all these folks, I learned the sister-in-law of the original client was a high school friend of friends who graduated in my Chapel Hill High class.
High school memories...
The next clients were looking for land to build a home. I helped them find two parcels of land to combine and give them the property they needed to do their farmsteading. They became great friends with the folks across the street, who eventually wanted to move and sell their home. We listed their property, and it was ultimately purchased by folks I had met previously, who had been interested buyers of the home on 20 acres I had listed earlier. They’d come back around as buyers again and ended up purchasing this property instead.
The next clients on my contact list were retired and wanted to sell their home on 20 acres. We found a buyer who purchased the property, but they never moved in. They lived next to my best friend’s parents’ home in Ohio. Later, after years of owning the Chapel Hill property, they decided to sell. The market had changed by then, and to help them realize the most return, we divided the property in half. The back parcel was sold to a man whose brother-in-law is my brother’s best friend. The person who bought the front half of the property grew up in the same home I grew up in that my parents had built years earlier, and later sold to his parents.
Sunset on Bill's family farm just outside Chapel Hill
Some would simply say “small world”, but I think so many of my clients and contacts are all woven together into this “original web” of real estate, and my entire contact list is ultimately connected in some way. This old fashioned web is not connected through strands of electric wires or current, or computers or videos, or instant messages, but mostly by people reaching out to each other through sharing their stories and experiences. I am so glad to be woven into this web and to be bonded together by so many different relationships, all made through the work I love. Some people call it a phenomenon, and some even relate it to Kevin Bacon and B movies or the Six Handshakes Rule.
Small World. Nova Scotia folk art discovered on Bill's recent travels
Some may not know of a time when real estate was all done by printed books, word of mouth, newspaper and magazine ads, and of course no one could be without their treasured Ro-lo-dexes. As I looked back and started to remember how I was introduced to each of these clients, I was astonished to see how all these people were connected in this woven web of real estate. It was interesting to reminisce about how I had met and shared my life and heart with each of these wonderful people and how each successful transaction led to a friendship, that in turn led to another and another.
And, the web continues to grow every day, and still today, mainly from word of mouth. Whether we meet each other through friends, or friends of friends, or cousins, uncles, nieces, church members, gym members, town leaders, local strangers, out of town strangers, or folks met by happenstance, (if there is such a thing), we are all connected. As I went through my list of clients and traced back how I met them, and how they all know each other, this strange phenomenon of how we are connected, I was amazed to see how all the people in this web fill so amazingly well together.
It just goes to show you that no matter how different we all think we are from each other or how we all look on the outside, we are all just six steps or less from knowing everyone on the planet- so in reality, we are all alike. We all have hopes, dreams, desires, and goals, and I am here to help get folks six steps closer to realizing those dreams. Happy Hunting! Let me know how I can help you discover your dreams.
