Gerhard's View from the Street

Because I came to real estate with three decades of experience in corporate and product branding I am very interested in how real estate companies, brokerages and agents present themselves. In this market, the Seattle area, two major regional players dominate the landscape: Windermere and John L...

Which real estate course is the easiest to take and pass without problem? For me it’s the ethics course. Quick and easy clock hours. What they should have told you in Kindergarden. You can also read about it in Exodus, Chapter 20. I took the RESPA quiz online and scored 100 percent. None of this ...

Most people remember what they did or where they were when JFK was shot (I was in a boarding school run by Franciscan monks), when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon (I was on vacation in Denmark, camping) and when the terror struck the twin towers (I was on a bus to downtown Seattle). But do you ...

One of my favorite forms of expressions is the Limerick, a five-line poem. Ogden Nash may be the most famous practitioner of this art form. I started to write my own back in college in Switzerland, some of them in mixed German and English which was a lot of fun. When I started in real estate and ...

Today, I weeded out some of my personal real estate transaction files. Although my broker keeps the required records, I tend to hang on to the entire paper trail. I keep too much of it and for too long. Looking at barely decipherable third-generation faxes of legal significance and hastily handwr...

Hard to believe: within the span of 25 years I learned to set type by hand as a graphic design student at a college in Switzerland and saw the profession of typesetter vanish. Despite having gone digital the typesetting business was wiped out by desktop publishing. Now anybody can and anybody doe...

If you consider selling your home on your own, envision this scenario: A well-dressed, friendly, well-spoken stranger rings the bell. She wants to see your house and you invite her in. She seems taken with your home, pays you compliments and asks to take some digital photos so her husband, who is...

I spend much of my life in branding and corporate identity as is used to be called. In writing brand and identity guidelines for Fortune 500 companies and smaller enterprises the first chapter usually covered names or, as the expert put it, “nomenclature.” The chapter distinguished between legal ...

“Why don’t you give back to me 50 percent of your commission?” That’s the question my client popped just as he was about to sign the last page of the offer on a home he intended to buy. “That’s what a friend of mine told me his agent is doing for him. So why can’t you do the same?" he went on. I...

When my family contemplated moving to Seattle we turned to the Internet for information. One of the best resources we found back in 1999 still exists today.  It's the Reviews of Seattle neighborhoods and surrounding communities by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The look of the site has changed s...