I think the major advantage of working with an agent is that they are knowledgeable about the industry and the market. They know what houses have sold for in your area, what people are looking for in a house, and they have the expertise to help you sell your home quickly so that you can move on to other things.
I would recommend getting an agent, but interviewing several so you get a feel for their personalities and how they do business. Some agents are very aggressive. They will list your property under a price that will create activity and then drop the price later when they have created a buzz. Others will start at a higher price and try to hold out for more money. You need to find an agent who is comfortable with your style of doing business.
Another thing to consider is where you want to be with regard to negotiating prices and making decisions. In other words, how involved do you want to be in the process? Some sellers like the idea of being able to make the final decision on everything that happens with their home–which offers to accept or reject, etc. Others want their agent to make those decisions for them.
If you hire an agent who works from 9-5 every day, it can be difficult to get them on the phone when someone calls
A real estate agent can be a terrific asset when you’re selling your home. But it’s important to find the right one. Interview several agents and ask for and check references before you select the person you’ll work with.
To find an agent, ask people in the neighborhood who they have used and if they were satisfied. You can also ask other real estate agents for referrals – most real estate agents are happy to give you names of colleagues who specialize in your area.
When interviewing prospective agents, ask about their experience and track record. How many homes did they sell last year? How long have they been in business? How many homes have they sold in your neighborhood? What is their specialty – first-time buyers, move-up buyers or retirees?
Ask each agent to prepare a comparative market analysis (CMA). This report will show you what has sold in your area recently, as well as what is currently listed and how long it’s been on the market. The report will also show what percentage of the listing price the sellers actually got.
It’s also helpful to find out if the agent is full time or part time and whether he or she will be assisted by a partner or associate.
Once you’ve chosen an agent, be sure to discuss
The best way to think about the agent’s role is as a coach. The agent doesn’t want you to fail, but he also doesn’t want you to squander your opportunities. He wants you to do your best, make the most of your talent, get an education and experience, and hopefully end up with a job that is both satisfying and lucrative.
The agent will advise you, but ultimately it’s up to you to make your own choices. Even if an agent wants something for you-say, more money-he can’t just say yes without getting your approval first. You need to be proactive and make sure your agent knows what you want.
The only thing an agent can’t do for you is help you play football, or basketball, or tennis better than you already do. An agent can help you arrange a tryout with the New York Yankees or the San Francisco 49ers, but he can’t force them to sign you. If they don’t believe in your athletic ability, no amount of negotiation or persuasion on the part of your agent will change their minds.
There’s no such thing as a typical path to a career in sports. Some people start at the high school level and work their way up; others skip right over college and go
As an agent, I’ve had to reject a lot of people. Here’s what I tell them:
“Your writing isn’t good enough.”
That’s often true. Even if it isn’t, I never say so.
There are two reasons for this. First, writing can be fixed. If someone wants to be a writer, they have to be willing to sit in a room and write a lot of crap until they get better at it. They have to be willing to get rejected over and over again until they finally figure out how to do it right.
If you don’t think that sounds like fun, you probably shouldn’t be a writer.
But some people *do* want to be writers – and the only reason they aren’t yet is that they haven’t improved their craft enough yet. Perhaps their writing isn’t good enough (yet). Maybe they just need more practice. And if I can see that there’s potential there, I’ll take them on as clients and try to help them improve their craft.
Second, even if their writing IS good enough… it’s not MY job to tell them that! My job is *not* to give feedback on craft – my job is to sell work that’s already been written! So
A lot of people in their twenties decide to “take a year off” and travel around the world. Most of them come back, more or less on schedule, claiming that it was the experience of a lifetime. But you can’t really get the most out of life when your goal is to see as much of the world as possible in twelve months.
I’ve known some who did take years off, not just one. They were mostly programmers: that’s one thing I like about programmers. Several who went traveling for a couple years never came back; they just kept going. The road was too appealing to give up after only a year. The ones who came back brought back souvenirs from distant places, but better than beads and pottery: photos and memories and ideas, even occasionally a spouse from an exotic land. “Traveling” is not incompatible with “settling down.”
If you want to travel around the world for two years with someone you love, you probably can. If you want to start a company that does something cool, and keep doing it for ten years, you probably can. If you want to get really good at programming or physics or car repair, you probably can. Even if you don’t plan on doing any of these things–
The most important thing about a startup, though, is how it’s going to make money. And this is much easier to see in retrospect than prospectively. It’s hard to tell what innovation really matters, because it’s so bound up with the technology.
What was important about the car? Was it that you could turn on the ignition switch? That you could buy a new one every few years? That you didn’t have to feed or groom it? That you could travel great distances at high speed? That you didn’t have to shovel manure out of its way? The answer is all of the above. If you had asked people what they needed most at the time, they would probably have said faster horses.
There are two ways to figure out what people need: ask them, or look at what they do. Unfortunately, these don’t necessarily give the same answer. As Steve Jobs once said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” What people say they want and what they actually respond to are often two different things. You can’t trust what people say; you have to watch their actions instead.
The trouble with asking customers is that often they don’t know either. They may not even
The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has transformed our world. We are now living in a global village, where all kinds of activities are linked up around the globe. With the help of modern information technologies, we can communicate with anyone, anywhere, any time and share information instantly. This is changing our way of life and affecting how we live, work and play today.
In this global village, people work together across national borders to accomplish tasks that cannot be accomplished by one person or one nation alone. They form international networks to exchange expertise, knowledge and technology to address common problems.
This phenomenon is known as globalization. It is a process in which people and economies around the world become more connected with each other through trade and communication networks. With the help of new technologies, information travels easily around the world every day at almost no cost. But globalization is more than just an economic process; it also involves many social aspects in our lives today.
How does globalization work? I think it works best when people from different parts of the world get together to learn about each other’s cultures and to cooperate on common projects in education, science, culture or entertainment. And this is what we are going to do during this International Youth Camp.
