Author: Dan Connolly (page 1 of 1)

by Dan Connolly

Realtor, Family Man

Author website

I had a come to Jesus moment a couple of weeks ago. I had a bout of pneumonia earlier this summer and seemed to have gotten rid of it with some powerful antibiotics. It seemed to creep back a little while we were on a camping trip over Labor Day weekend. I felt winded and tired after doing the simplest tasks. It rained the whole time and was a real pain in the ass to pack out.

I was kind of exhausted when we got back and unpacked and didn’t do much the first day. That night my wife woke me up telling me my breathing was weird. The next day I had some real estate stuff and was trying to dry out the gear. I was ready to hit the sack early. Discovered it was hard to breath normally while lying flat. This had happened during the pneumonia, so I figured it was back and I would go back to the doctor in the morning. Did not really sleep much because I had to be almost sitting up to breath normally.

When I got to the doctor she told me I was in heart failure. …congestive heart failure. They wheeled me straight into the ER where I spent 6 days. My otherwise healthy heart had been infected by a virus. I had a cat scan in March and was told that I had 0% calcium in my heart and would very likely never have a heart attack. Even in the hospital they told me no clogged arteries, no damaged valves, none of the typical leading indicators. I don’t drink (for 13 years) I have never smoked, no drug abuse, no fast food, healthy diet, no diabetic tendencies, not a lot of stress….just a fucking virus. My heart is pumping about 25% of what a normal heart of someone my age pumps.  Now I am wearing an external defibrillator which is a harness and a battery pack designed to give me a shock if I have an abnormal racing heart that knocks me out.  I have to wear it for 90 days at Read more

by Dan Connolly

Realtor, Family Man

Author website

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a broker with a small “boutique” brokerage about the business recently and he told me that since it was pointless to list property in this market, he has focused his efforts on rental properties. He is “hanging in there”, waiting for the market to turn around. I was surprised by his position. He defended it vigorously. I get this all the time from friends who ask me how am I doing, fully expecting me to tell a sad tale.

Let me tell you a secret. People get used to everything. Even a recession, you ask? Yes, people  even get used to a recession. The secret is that there are still people who are securely employed, who have decided that with the interest at all-time lows and the prices down, now is a perfect time to buy. They barely even know that there is a recession. There are grandparents who want to get closer to their grandchildren ready to pay cash for a house. There are rich kids who just got married who are ready to spend Granddad’s money. There are people getting divorced, people inheriting homes they don’t want to live in, people letting their underwater homes go to foreclosure and then cashing out of their 401K and buying homes for cash at ½ the price of the one they let go. There are people buying homes in areas where the prevailing idea is that the market is dead. There are investors getting out of the stock market and into real estate. There are landlords increasing their holdings.

The other side of the secret is there are way less agents in the market competing for the buyers or the sellers.  The worst thing an agent can do is to buy the sad story. The fastest route to the poorhouse is to think it’s pointless to try. Yeah, there may be a lot of reasons to be depressed, but nothing will turn a buyer or a seller off more than an agent who seems depressed.

Well how do you find these buyers and sellers? Well Read more