Pick the Best Real Estate Agent
Seattle Real Estate | Gerhard Ade
When I got married nearly 45 years ago, I watched with wonderment how much goes into planning a wedding. Inexperienced in matrimonial matters and new to these United States, I had no idea as to what to expect.
How not to pick a wedding photographer
One of the many tasks was to find a professional wedding photographer. The one we had chosen was detained by a sudden heart attack. Hospitalized, an assistant would take the pictures. I don’t remember if time was running short but we should have looked into an alternative. We didn’t. The assistant took the all-important formal photos. These are the ones that are decades later found faded in family photo albums – bride with bridesmaid, the couple with college friends, the groom and the best man, the new in-laws, you get the idea.
Let there be light, but not in the wrong place.
In our case, all these formal wedding party photos had one thing in common. Shot indoors on an October evening, the photographer’s lights were omnipresent in all the windows. We were left in the dark about this until we received the contact sheets several weeks later. For the benefit of the digitally raised, think of contact sheets as thumbnail shots but reproduced in a dark room on photographic paper. Disappointed, we ordered just a few large prints for history’s sake. Below is one of these.
If at all possible, get it right the first time.
There are a few events in one’s life when you hope to get it right the first time. There are some events in life when you hope to make that choice only once – picking a spouse, committing to a college, choosing a wedding caterer, a pediatrician, a heart surgeon, the divorce attorney, the funeral director.
When the stakes are high, it pays to ponder.
It pays to to be careful and circumspect. Ask around. Who has made these decisions already? What did they learn? What, if anything, would they do differently if given a second chance? If they had a second chance, did they do any better? What went wrong? Were the mistakes avoidable?
By now, you know where I’m headed with this. With so much at stake, you should do everything to choose the real estate agent best for you. Note, I did not say the best real estate agent. There is a difference and that is you. Do all you can to ensure the best financial and emotional outcome of your next real estate transaction. If you are a first-time buyer or seller, you cannot be careful enough.
When you look back at your Facebook posts years from now, you want to have only the best of memories.
Published originally as the 122nd issue of The View from the Street.
