Marsha Sell is an agent with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Marietta.
Every week, we ask an Atlanta real estate professional for their thoughts on the top trends in Atlanta real estate.
This week, we talked with Marsha Sell, a 40-year veteran of real estate who, in addition to being with Coldwell Banker for 39 of those years, has been the firm’s No. 1 sales associate nine separate times, and has received the brokerage’s International President’s Premier distinction, which is given to the top half of one percent of sales associates. She has numerous designations, including her CRS, and has received a number of sales awards from the Atlanta Board of Realtors.
Atlanta Agent (AA): Where do you see Atlanta’s market heading, in the next year?
Marsha Sell (MS): The general area in the south, including George and South Carolina, the prices are projected to continue increasing. Atlanta has never had the extreme swings that places like Florida or California or Las Vegas had, where we go unrealistically high. We were certainly at a peak in 2006, but that’s always been the great thing about Atlanta – we’ve never had enormous swings.
Granted, we still suffered; we had a whole lot more people who were under their mortgage, and there were more short sales in some areas. But going forward in 2014, it’s expected to continue to be a decent market.
AA: What kinds of technology and/or apps do you find to be the most helpful for your real estate business?
MS: In the last year, I’ve headed toward going paperless and using Dropbox extensively. That’s really been the greatest thing. Also, I purchased an iPad air as soon as it came out, and I don’t even have to carry a file to a closing any more, because I have all the documents saved in Dropbox.
You never know what you’re going to need. I carried around huge briefcases for years with all sorts of folders and papers, and it’s so much more time efficient to go into Dropbox, do a search and you have the file right in front of you. So it’s about saving time, but it’s also about conquering the unbelievable amount of paper that we deal with.
AA: Finally, what advice would you give to new agents?
MS: I would tell them two things: first, to really be involved as far as available education is concerned, and especially to look into the CRS courses, get the CRS designation and network with other professionals.
The second is to get listings. When brand new agents start, they put buyers in the car and they show properties for days and days – if they spent that same amount of effort and energy in getting listings, then they’d be assured to have a career in all kinds of markets, because our industry is all about listings.