Nice work Paul.

You earned it!

Your friend,

Kurty D

By the second home, I was finding information on my own, found the place I wanted, and worked with the Realtor to help me determine price, comps, etc.

On the third home, I found the home, knew the price I was willing to pay, and called the Realtor to simply write the offer.

We know from other industries that trying to resist this change would be futile. Imagine how silly it would be to try to “lock down” the MLS system like it once was… no access to listings without a Realtor’s password… those days are gone, information was meant to be free as some would say. Sites like Zillow, Trulia, and CyberHomes among others are able to aggregate information that individual “traditional” Realtors could have only dreamed of.

In this “identity crisis” of a profession, just like any other, I guess I’d say, take a look at what you can bring to the table that the real estate buyer or seller can not do on their own. Focus on the benefits of what you can offer, and assist them in “helping themselves” if that is their desire.

I’m much more motivated to choose a Realtor who is tech savvy, teaches me more about the online tools instead of hiding them from them, and provides me tools and knowledge to become a better buyer/seller. By providing that knowledge and information, it makes it more likely that I’m going to stay with him or her for future transactions.

Thanks for getting back in touch. I like what you’ve done with your blog. I also am a big fan of the Canon G series – I shoot primarily with the G9 and almost 99% of my post-processing is done in Lightroom. Here is my typical Lightroom workflow and what I used on your image:
1. Import and convert RAW files to .DNG for archiving purposes.
2. Boosted exposure 1 stop and used highlight recovery 43.
3. Increased black clipping +7 to add contrast.
4. Clarity +44 for overall sharpness by increasing midtone contrast.
5. Vibrance +33 for midtone saturation.
6. Luminance noise reduction at 38 because Canon G series has high pixel density and gets noisy even at low ISO.
7. Sharpening at 100, 1.5 Radius, 18 Masking. Basic rule: Zoom to 100%, overdo it and then back off to see what looks good.
8. Somewhere along the way hit ‘\’ key to toggle before image.
9. Also while you are zoomed in at 100% look at your highlight edges for weird colors that may have developed along the way. Defringed all edges and adjusted Blue and Red chromatic aberration.
10. Straightened 1.26 and cropped to remove branches around the edges. Also spot removed one remaining palm branch.
11. Vignetted cropped image by -100 and adjusted midpoint to taste.
12. Exported resized final image to JPG with sRGB colorspace.

Let me know if you have any Lightroom questions and what you think about the image.

For the lunch, it really depends on what kind of expectations I would have. If I hope to make a contact, Seth Godin would probably be a better choice. As Paul said, he is more approachable. And I think the lunch would be more interesting. However, if my expectations of learning valuable insights or creating a contact during a single lunch were very low, it would be better just to take Trump’s $5000. It is all about weighing the risk and reward.