For Real Estate

Welcome to For Real Estate with Nova Tower

June 06, 2022 Nova Tower Season 1 Episode 0
For Real Estate
Welcome to For Real Estate with Nova Tower
Show Notes Transcript

Hello from Portland, Maine and welcome to the first episode of the For Real Estate podcast, a new series with Portside broker Nova Tower. In this episode Nova teases the series to come, which will provide local real estate insights, trends, market knowledge as well as common misinformation and avoidable mistakes. Join Nova as she dives deep into the local real estate market in the Greater Portland, Maine area, and stay tuned for new episodes as they drop this summer!

Hi, I'm Nova Tower speaking to you from Portland, Maine, and this is For Real Estate, a podcast about local real estate insights, trends, market information, maybe a little bit of hilarity along the way. This is episode one. And today I just want to share a little bit about what I'm excited about, why I'm doing this podcast, my background, and what you can expect in the episodes to come.

I'm a real estate broker with Portside Real Estate Group based out of Portland, Maine. I'm in my seventh year managing transactions and brokering transactions. My introduction to real estate was as an investor in the area. I bought my first investment property in my twenties. I have five (5) rental units in Portland on the peninsula. Some of those are long-term rentals and some of them are short-term rentals. I have another rental property--lakefront property--up near Sunday River ski resort. And I manage all of our properties. So I'm not with a property management company, which I think is worth pointing out because it's its own career, property management in a way when you have that many rentals and that many tenants.

I come to real estate with varied perspectives. I come to it as a landlord, as a property manager and as a real estate broker. Through those different lenses, I just think that I have a lot of information to share  and that's why I am here today. 

I noticed a trend when I'm talking with clients; I see this more with younger buyers, also younger first time home buyers, but I see it with sellers too. If you bought property 25 years ago and you haven't been involved in the real estate market since you're operating on outdated information. And so whether you're a first time home buyer  or it's not your first time, but it's been awhile, you might go where we all go for information, which is the internet. And you might do that thing on Google where you type in "how to sell a home" or "how to buy a home in this market" or whatever your search is. And that's great. There's so much good information online. I don't want to discourage that practice at all, but one of the problems I see is people read these blog articles and then they come to me and they say, "well, this is how I want to do. This is what I've read, and this is what I think I need." 

The problem with that is you might be reading that blog article and it's written by somebody, you know, sitting in an office in Idaho. They're trying to write generically and to share information that can apply to a national audience and meanwhile, here you are trying to buy a home in Falmouth, Maine.

I find that a lot of times in my work, I almost have to undo people's expectations and their learning, and then reset it based on what's going on locally.  Really, this is what all real estate agents should be doing everywhere. There should be helping people to understand what the local market is based on what their individual needs are, because the local market has many things. As a real estate broker, I work with people buying single-family homes, people buying condos, people, buying multis, people, buying land. Occasionally, I work with people looking to buy or sell commercial real estate. There's such a wide spectrum, and that's there we're talking about property types, we haven't even talked about property values. 

I thought I could create this podcast and try to focus in on a specific area, which is the area that I work in predominantly, which is the greater Portland, Maine area, break it all down episode by episode. And each episode should kind of be a way to zoom in on something interesting going on within our market: tips, things that sellers should be thinking about, things that buyers should be thinking about. One thing I'm really excited about with this podcast is you're not going to be hearing only for me. This isn't just going to be me speaking at you each episode. I'm really excited to interview some other colleagues I have, whether it's other brokers to share their own ideas and what they do and their creativity, and also other industry experts.  We're going to talk to lenders. We're going to talk to inspectors. We're going to talk to people working in tech and real estate. We're going to talk to landlords. We're going to talk to clients. One episode I can't wait to do is sight unseen offers because that is, to me, one of the most interesting trends to come out of the Covid market.

We're going to talk about sort of some hard to talk about topics. I think a common thing I see in real estate is there are a lot of people out there who are skeptics about the industry in general, real estate brokers are among the least trusted professionals, which to me is blowing. 'cause how can you work with someone that you don't trust when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. And more than that, you have a home which represents so much more value than just money. [A home] represents family and lifestyle and comfort and security and wellness and all those good things. So, thank you for listening. I can't, wait to, to record some more. I've got so many fun things to share with you guys.

If anyone's listening to this and they think they have a great idea, or you want to be interviewed, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to talk to you. I'd love to hear your story.