Every weekday is Broker tour day in Sonoma County Real Estate
1 Comment Published by Pam Buda October 5th, 2008 in Market updates, Open Homes. by Pam BudaMost Sonoma county realtors could spend a good four or five mornings per week touring new listings in Sonoma County. Some folks call them caravans. It would take at least 2 weeks of doing so to hit all the new listings on tour because of dueling chapter schedules and a large county.
What a Sonoma County Realtor could do every weekday morning
Monday Generally quiet but groups such as Marketing Masters and Homescopes meet on Mondays, plus there are some office meetings.
Tuesday The main Santa Rosa Chapter meeting of NORBAR (the North Bay Association of Realtors). As many as 100 to 150 realtors attend a breakfast meeting, educational session and swap information on upcoming listings, buyers needs, rental requests and market updates. Property tour ensues for Santa Rosa. One week is East side, one week the west side. Mike Kelly cracks the whip so you’d better stick to business!
Wednesday The Sebastopol, Russian River and Petaluma chapters of NORBAR have their breakfast meetings –see above for the agenda. Sebastopol, Russian River and Petaluma property tours.
Thursday The Healdsburg chapter of NORBAR, The Cotati-Rohnert Park chapter and many of the large brokerage offices such as all the Coldwell Banker offices (separately), CPS and Prudential have their own sales meetings, marketing sessions and broker tours.  Our Santa Rosa office (over 100 agents) meeting and tour covers the East side of SONOMA county one week and the West side the next. That means we could be looking at properties from Cloverdale and Healdsburg down to Petaluma on the same morning (theoretically!). This is why FOOD at broker open houses is so important, and water on hot days. Got to fuel the troops!
Friday Friday morning is the weekly meeting of the Windsor Chapter of NORBAR and the Windsor tour. Cloverdale is in their somewhere as well.
That means the average Sonoma County Realtor could spend 16-20 hours per week at breakfast meetings, marketing sessions and on property tour and still not cover the whole county. How do you use your time?  How much time every week do you tour and network with other realtors? What is the main benefit of attending these meetings?
(Next post an update on some interesting new listings on the market in Santa Rosa, from a lovely view home on 2 acres to 2 Rincon Valley bargains and and Junior College duplex.)
Pam,
It is interesting to see how Realtors in other areas fit in the properties they need to preview. My core market area in the Half Moon Bay area is small compared to yours. Realtors here typically view every new listing on the Tuesday tour. Frequently I also fit in select listings around San Mateo County in Pacifica, Daly City, South San Francisco, Belmont, San Mateo, or San Carlos for active buyers.
Interesting to note how small San Mateo County is (approx. 449 square miles) compared to Sonoma County (approx. 1,576 square miles) per Wikipedia’s list of CA counties. The larger population (707,161 people compared to 458,614) is due, in part, to the desire to live in close proximity to San Francisco and Silicon Valley…
It’s so great to learn about each other’s markets on our Monday Homescopes meetings.