How my Blackberry has changed my Real Estate Business – Part 2

How my Blackberry has changed my Real Estate Business – Part 2

In part 1, I whined about my cell phone service going down. In part 2, I’ll try to stop whining and explain why it was such a big deal.

During the late 1970’s Atari introduced a wildly popular video game system which my parent’s blessed my sister and me with. Pong was awesome. Shortly thereafter, Atari introduced a home computer, the Atari 400. It was an 8k system which hooked up to the TV and used cassette tapes for storage. No 11” floppies for Atari, nope, they used cassette tapes which were frequently mangled by the tape deck. Again, this was awesome. I subscribed to ‘Compute’ magazine and spent hours and hours typing their programs into my Atari so I could have something magical appear on my TV screen. Frequently, the magical thing would turn out to be a colored square that would flash changing colors. It was revolutionary. That flashing square would change many lives, mine included.

I was drunk with power. A teenager from Lakewood, Ohio was able to make a flashing colored square on her TV screen, what would they think of next? My Atari led me to the Radio Shack TRS-80, affectionately referred to as a ‘Trash 80’. IBM was developing home PC’s and word processors were somewhat affordable for the home user.

Fast-forward to the early 1990’s. Bill Gates, Compuserve, Apple PC’s. All would have a massive impact on the world. Home PC’s finally became within reach for the home user. That is, if you had a spare $3000 for the basic PC which might even include a printer. I jumped on board the home PC bandwagon, learned as much as I could about Windows (version 3.something) and never looked back.

All of his just basically established me as a huge geek. My name is Tracy and I am a huge geek. So let me just skip over the next decade and get to the point. I really do love my career. Real Estate fascinates me. All of the various nuances, the ebbs and flows of the market and the unpredictability of it all make for exciting work.

Real Estate has also allowed me to leverage my geek side by creating venues where technology allows me better serve my clients. I maintain 2 major websites (www.TalkToTracyHomes.com and www.AZHomeBuyerHelp.com) and 4 small sites. All of which combine different technologies to assist me in getting information to the masses.

I’ve had a lot of success building my business online and using the Internet to provide the best service possible to my current clients. Then I purchased a BlackBerry.

I really did spend a long time researching PDA’s. I even bought a Dell AXIM handheld. The Dell AXIM was useful, fun, and worked as expected. Where it failed for me is in not being a phone and having spotty network connections. I needed to be able to access my email 24 hours a day.

I was pushed into getting the BlackBerry when I dropped my phone for the 937th time and it decided it had had enough. The BlackBerry waved to me from the corner of the phone store and the rest is history. When I realized I could store pictures of my listing on my phone to show to prospective buyers at a moments notice, I was sold.

How I functioned before I’ll never know. Before BlackBerry, a day of appointments meant a day without email (even with my laptop, getting a wireless connection while out of the office is a roll of the dice). Now, I can schedule a day at the doctor or a trip out of town and not miss a beat. I can ever receive faxed offers on my listings on my Blackberry. One day, a few months ago, I was at a Phoenix Suns game when I was emailed by an old client who wanted to list a property. By halftime, we had worked out the details. All in email. The best part was the man sitting next to me (not my husband but the stranger on the other side of me) asked me what I was doing and when I explained to him I was listing a property for a client he became very interested. He asked for the details on the property and while he decided he didn’t want that particular home, he still has me searching for one for him.

So you can see how I panicked when my cell service failed last week. The Phoenix real estate market is flush with real estate agents. Being a step ahead of my fellow agents gives me a competitive advantage when it is time to negotiate the best deal for my clients.

If you would like more information on how to use technology to best help you buy or sell your next home, contact me today. Tracy Thompson 623-326-0597