It’s been a great Thanksgiving, but sadly now it’s time to get back to work. I am so thankful that I have a job that allows me to spend time with my family. I remember back when I was a truck driver, it was nearly impossible to have any holiday off with any certainty. On Wednesday I had a showing in the morning and then my family came in for an early Thanksgiving lunch. They left that evening and my in-laws came by and took us down to Lindsay’s grandfathers house. On Thanksgiving day we had about 25 relatives show up and it was a blast.

Since I am in real estate I realized that Thanksgiving would be a very different holiday without a home to celebrate it in. I am thankful that I have a roof over my head!

I’m also thankful for the three homes I currently have under contract. This week I’m working hard to try to get another one under contract.

We put our Christmas tree up yesterday and little Dawson loved to stare at the Christmas lights! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Want to buy a home but still have to sell your old home? Be sure to read these tips! http://www.easttxhomesearch.com/miarticles/articleid/12/

I’ve just got 3203 Linda Lane under contract! Interesting fact: You do not even need to be present to buy a home. My buyers on this home are moving from out of state and have never even seen the home. They just had a relative look at it for them and I took care of the rest. I’m scheduling home inspections for them so that they know that the house is in good shape. Finally all my hard work is starting to pay off!

Man this week has been busy. I’ve shown several houses and worked with numerous people on getting financing. I also just became a Destination Services Consultant. I’m helping a Schlumberger employee who is being transferred in from overseas to get settled in Longview.

Today through Monday I’m volunteering at Faith Explosion Kids Camp in Lone Star. I’ll be watching over the boys from Emmanuel Lane Baptist Church and Lindsay and another adult will be watching over the girls. We will get back on Monday around noon. It should be a blast!

Finally a friend invited me to be a part of the new social network Google+. I’ve only been using it a few hours and I think it’s going do really well. I love how you can organize all your friends into circles, it helps you manage large groups of friends better. You can now click on the +1 button at the top of my website to recommend this page to others, kind of similar to the “like” button on Facebook. If your interested in an invite give me a call or shoot me an email and I will send you one.

Yesterday was the first day of VBS and Emmanuel Lane Baptist church and it went well though at times I didn’t know exactly what was going on. The kids really enjoyed singing and dancing to I’m in the Lord’s Army. I’ve been on phone duty today and received a call about the house I have for sale at 200 Forrest Hill Rd in Lone Star. Maybe I’ll finally get an offer on it!

Wow, it has been a long time since my last post but I have been focusing on building my real estate business. I am working with numerous buyers and am working on contacting my leads everyday. I have started using a new contact management program call Top Producer which allows me to schedule tasks and keep up with everything I need to do. My goal is to respond to my clients and prospects quickly and to provide them the excellent service that is hard to find in a real estate agent.

This week is going to be really busy. Today I have a meeting with a new client to discuss home financing and to go over the process of buying a home. This evening and every evening through Saturday I will be helping out at Vacation Bible School at my church, Emmanuel Lane Baptist Church. I will be running the music portion each day and helping the kids learn some good songs and have fun doing it! I’m sure it will be a blast but it’s a little bit stressful to be doing real estate all day and then VBS all evening.

Today I also got a new listing! It a beautiful home on two shady lots in Pine Tree. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a 2 car garage. Visit the homes website for more information:

http://1813swanst.checkoutmore.com/

Thanks for reading and if you or anyone you know needs to buy or sell real estate, contact me and i’ll be glad to help!

Today my client that purchased the home in Gilmer wrote this review on Zillow.com:

“We were moving from Colorado to Texas and wanted to purchase a fixer upper that we could pay cash for without a mortgage and we contacted several agents that never returned our calls or emails until we ran across Daniel, who was very responsive. He provided us with a list of homes in the area in our price range. Drove out to the house and took a video before we put an offer in on it. If anyone asks for a recommendation about a real estate agent I would not hesitate to give them Daniel’s name and number.”

- S. DeVergie

I’m glad I was able to help them out especially since they could not see the home themselves until after closing! A few days ago I started a new website: easttxhomesearch.com It offers free searches of the Longview MLS homes on the market and allows you to save listings, email them to friends, create listing alerts, and much more. Check it out today! The search fields in the left sidbar will also take you to that website as well.

Wow, this week has been busy. I haven’t even had time to keep up with my blog. On Wednesday I met with Kenneth Travis to learn about some technology I could use to grow my real estate business. Kenneth is a mortgage lender and does a great job. If your looking for a home loan or refinance give him a call! I’m already using some of the techniques he talked about.

I now have the capability to create an individual website for each home. Here are 4 properties that I’ve made websites for so far:

http://1813swanst.checkoutmore.com/

http://1316windlandpkwy.checkoutmore.com/

http://6902foxrd.checkoutmore.com/

http://200forresthillrd.checkoutmore.com/

I’m also going to have sign riders to go on the sign in the yard that will give people who are interested the ability to get information on their phone via text messages.

My house I was selling in Gilmer closed yesterday and I didn’t even have to make a trip up there. The buyers are very pleased with the service they received and are working on writing a review for me.

Today my parents are coming into town along with my brother and sister. They’ll be here just for the day and then will head back to Dallas tonight. This morning I’ve been working on helping my wife clean up the house as well as working on posting properties on craigslist. This Sunday from 2-4 I have an open house at 1813 Swan St in Pine Tree, please stop by and check it out if your in the area!

I hope every one had a great time with family and friends over this holiday weekend. I got to spend time with my family at the hospital in Dallas. My dad had been feeling heaviness in his chest and ended up finding out that 2/3 of his heart was not receiving enough oxygen. They did a number of tests and decided they needed to do a heart catheterization on Monday morning. During the procedure they were able two put two stents in to clear up the blockages. The stents were a success so there will be no need for bypass surgery thankfully! He is doing very well now and may get to go home today. My aunt also came and visited Monday evening.
We got back to Longview late last night and slept in this morning. Now I’ve been catching up on emails and checking up on the title work on the Gilmer house. Hopefully I’ll make another sale this week!

Business is booming! Yesterday I got a call from a real estate investor who had just moved into the area. He wanted me to do some market research for him on the cash sales in the Longview area in the past 90 days. After doing the research I was surprised to find out that 40 homes sold with cash in the past 90 days. The average cash sales price for those homes was $156,750! So in the past 90 days buyers have paid $6,349,200 in cash for homes in Longview. That tells me that our market is doing quite well.
On top of that, I got a new listing! You can scroll down this page or click on the My Listings link under the main menu to see more information. It is a lovely 4 bedroom 2 bath home on ~15 acres at 6901 Fox Rd. in Gilmer, TX.
With all this stuff going on I wasn’t able to make it home very early but I still got home before 5. Lindsay had a end of the year party for the first year teachers at Christian Heritage School at 7 so I had most of the evening to myself. I watched a webinar on Talk Fusion which has some good looking video products and seems like it could be an excellent business to be involved in, but I’m still doing the market research on it.
Last night my father went to the emergency room with chest pains and is now in the main hospital building. He did not have a heart attack but they are doing stress tests to see what might need to be done. They may have to insert stints.
I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend. Remember our troops! God bless america!