I was going to name this post "Cool Things You Can Justify Buying When You Become A Real Estate Broker" but I thought it might be a little too long to fit in the space provided or bring extra scrutiny to some of my write-offs.
My name is Tom Field and I have an addiction to things that go "beep". It isn't a bad addiction and rather than effecting my work negatively it really helps me help my clients in a way that just wasn't possible as little as 10 years ago.
For example this summer I bought a shiny new digital video camera that makes lots of cool beeping noises. The idea was that I would do video "showings" of my listings in the same way that I show a home in real life. Well, I am still working on that idea (who knew you could have stage fright even when you are the only one in the room?) but in the mean time I had a perfect opportunity to use it in a different way.
I was working with a couple who were interested in a cottage on Damariscotta Lake. We spent a day together seeing almost every camp and cottage available on the lake. Although we saw a lot of homes none of them was really a good fit. Except one cottage. The cottage that they really liked when we did a drive by. The cottage that we couldn't get into because it was rented. The cottage whose tenants didn't leave until the same day as my clients whose return flight could not be rescheduled. Bummer. But wait, I have a video camera and I would be happy to go to the cottage in between tenants. I spent about an hour wandering around the house and waterfront taping the house and although I felt supremely self conscious about taping myself, I managed to show them what they wanted to know about the property for them to make an offer. Yes, my clients made an offer based on a drive by and a video tape tour. Of course the offer was contingent on a lot of things including their visit to the cottage and liking it, but it gave them enough confidence about the place to make an offer and commit themselves to a purchase and sale agreement. I think that justifies a tax write off for the video camera.
GPS devices also make a lot of cool beeping noises. I know because I have two of them. One is a TomTom. It cost about $100, sticks to the windshield and has an amazing ability to find even the most remote dirt roads in a place like Willamantic where I recently traveled with a friend to find the perfect camp. Amazing technology. It had road names that my 60 page DeLorme doesn't have and it has a voice telling you where to turn next. Oh and that voice can be changed. I found this out when I uploaded the Hannibal Lecter option ("If you value your liver, turn here Clarice"). That one did not last very long. But you get the idea. User friendly, programmable, updatable and I don't have to focus on where my next turn is.
But why would anyone ever need two GPS units? Well the TomTom is great on the road but not everything I do is on the road. Just last week I previewed a property for a couple that is out of state and was planning to come up and look at a 12 acre lot on Biscay Pond. But they wanted more information before they made the trip all the way up. I emailed a survey, I emailed the Google Earth satellite overview and a town tax map but even when you looked at all of them together it just didn't give you a complete picture. So I took the survey and my GPS unit and went to find the pins. Once I found a pin I set a waypoint on my GPS and moved on to the next one. After I found the points on the survey I came back to the office, uploaded the information to Google Earth, sent an email and we were done. Now they knew almost exactly where the property was, what the waterfront looked like from above, the highest point, the lowest point, etc.
So this is why I don't feel all that bad about buying a new toy piece of technology every so often when the spirit moves me. Now if I can only figure out why a 60" plasma screen television makes me more efficient at work.
Tom Field
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