By Erica Christoffer, Multimedia Web Producer, REALTOR® Magazine
Moving is an event that involves the entire family. It’s an exciting new stage in life, but it can also cause some anxiety, especially for children.
A real estate practitioner serves as a guide, advocate, and educator to clients making their way through the home buying process. Anna Parille says she takes that to heart.
A REALTOR® with William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty in Ridgefield, Conn., Parille has written a children’s book, Teddy & His Magical Paw: A New Home for the Honeypies (AuthorHouse, 2010), to help children embrace the new beginning a home purchase can bring. “When a child is stressed, it really stresses the parent. It’s a domino effect,” says Parille, who ran a nursery school for 20 years before entering real estate in 2005. “I thought maybe I can help everyone out there experiencing this.”
Her book introduces children to a REALTOR®, Miss Annie, and her special puppy named Teddy, and walks the reader though the journey of the Honeypie family as they look for a new home. “Being a REALTOR®, I’ve worked with clients whose children don’t want to move and leave their bedroom, their friends, and their school,” says Parille. “The goal of this book is to alleviate some of that fear.” Continue reading »
The National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) is now accepting entries for the fourth annual Robert Bruss Real Estate Book Awards Competition. Authors of books published in 2010 in the broad field of real estate –- including finance, mortgage lending, foreclosures, investing, green building and sustainable design, as well as home buying and selling and commercial real estate — are invited to enter this prestigious contest.
The deadline to enter NAREE’s Bruss Book Awards Competition is Feb. 15, 2011.
Entrants should submit three copies of their book and a 5,000-word excerpt (many authors pick a key chapter or two). Download the call for entries PDF brochure, available www.NAREE.org.
NAREE, a non-profit association founded in 1929, will name gold, silver, and bronze award-winners. In addition, NAREE will give a special award to a first-time author. The awards, with $2,000 in cash prizes, will be presented at the 45th Annual NAREE Real Estate Journalism Conference, June 15-18, headquartered at the historic Menger Hotel in downtown San Antonio.
NAREE’s book awards are named for the late Bob Bruss, syndicated real estate columnist, prolific writer and NAREE leader. Bruss frequently wrote reviews of realty books. Meet last year’s winners:
Gold Award: Anthony Downs for “Real Estate and the Financial Crisis,” published by The Urban Land Institute.
Silver Award: Marcia Stewart, Janet Portman, and Michael Molinski for “First-Time Landlord: Renting out a Single Family Home,” published by Nolo, Inc.
Bronze Award: Dwight H. Merriam for “At the Cutting Edge 2008: Land Use Law from the Urban Lawyer,” published by American Bar Association.
First-Time Author Award: Dale Robyn Siegel for “The New Rules for Mortgages,” published by Penquin/Alpha.
For more information, contact Mary Doyle-Kimball, NAREE executive director, at 561-391-3599 or MADKimba@aol.com.
Interior design on a budget? Don’t let your clients stress. Design expert Frank Fontana, a specialist in low-cost, high-style design, shares his techniques room-by-room and project-by-project in his new book Dirty Little Secrets of Design (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; November 2010).
In the book, Fontana analyzes several beautiful homes, dissects the individual design components of each room, and applies his “Look for Less” principle to help readers build their own look on a budget. The book also includes more than 40 DIY projects that are accessible and doable for readers of various skill levels, such as a multipurpose ottoman, a custom display case, unique artwork make from reclaimed items, and more. Plus, he gives advice on how to be a savvy shopper when looking for home decor items or furniture, leaving readers with practical decorating and fabricating techniques.
Here are five of Fontana’s Dirty Little Secrets of Design:
1. Work with one small space at a time. Advise your clients to create vignettes and groupings of seating furniture that provide additional conversation areas and help break up a room. Don’t just throw a comfy sofa in a room next to a hand-me-down coffee table and call it a day; it will feel empty.
2. There’s no need to fumigate. Try using low-VOC paint (VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds, and paints low in them are better for the environment and less harsh on your nose.) For a cheaper, homegrown solution, drop a few squirts of vanilla extract into the paint can, and breathe easier. (Note: The fumes are only masked, not eliminated.) It won’t affect the color.
3. Exit courtesy. There is one piece of furniture that Fontana considers essential to an entryway — a chair. Continue reading »
Whether you’re trying to motivate a team, negotiate a contract, or make a sale, the conversations you have will either help you succeed or undermine your goals. Communication expert and leadership coach Shawn Kent Hayashi has spent more than 20 years studying how the things people say impact their business and professional lives. In her new book, Conversations for Change: 12 Ways to Say It Right When It Matters Most, she not only identifies the 12 most important types of conversations people have, but shows readers how to reach their maximum potential by using conversations effectively.
Foundations for Every Conversation:
In order to communicate well, you must first master three fundamentals, says Hayashi.
1.) Building emotional intelligence. “When you are aware of what you are feeling, you can begin to speak about it in a way that builds rapport,” explains Hayashi. Emotional intelligence is not only for understanding yourself, but for recognizing your emotional wake — the affect your words have on people. For example, at the end of a meeting, are team members angry because they think they haven’t been heard, or do they feel excited about what they’re doing?
2.) Understanding workplace motivators. Figuring out what motivates you, and what motivates others, will help you build connections. Whether you’re trying to land a sale or gain permissions for a flextime arrangement, recognizing what drives those you’re seeking to convince will increase your chance for success. Hayashi discusses the six basic motivators, or values, that show up in the workplace, and how to identify them in yourself and your colleagues. Continue reading »
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