Wednesday, March 23rd – Approximately 5:00PM EST

I leaned back in my ridiculously comfortable seat at the outdoor dining area of a well recommended restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina…took a bite out of my shrimp and grits appetizer (AMAZING!) and washed it down with a sip of refreshingly cool sweet iced tea. The 77 degree breeze brushed over my face (It’s currently 40 degrees and rainy…and gray…and windy in New Jersey) and I thought to myself…you know what, I could really get used to this. I could definitely see myself moving down here one day.

I was in the Carolinas on a whirlwind of a road show speaking with hundreds of Coldwell Banker United agents in Charleston, Columbia and Charlotte about the new Coldwell Banker website that’s set to fully launch sometime in June. I had about a 2 hour drive up to Charlotte ahead of me after my early dinner but I had heard that traffic usually built up on 77 N around rush hour. So I decided to kill time and indulge my curiosity by driving around the neighborhood surrounding Gervais Street and checked out properties for sale near me (GPS enabled) on the Coldwell Banker iPhone App. After cruising by several homes and flipping through pictures and slide-shows, (not at the same time!) I began to get more comfortable with the thought of lemonade pitchers and cookouts on my very own southern style wraparound porch. After about an hour of driving suspiciously slow around the neighborhood, I hit the open road and headed towards Charlotte.

Wednesday, March 23rd – Approximately, very late…maybe Thursday very early morning

Hotels aren’t the most entertaining places on earth. I was a bit bored that night and decided to poke around the Internet and do some more “dreaming”. I pulled coldwellbanker.com up and looked at the Home Price Comparison Index to see how comparably sized homes in Columbia and New Jersey stacked up to each other price wise. Personally, I prefer video to images 9 times out of 10 so I went on over to the Coldwell Banker brand YouTube channel (On Location) and looked at a few actual listing videos. I suppose I could have rang some doorbells and asked for personal tours but that probably would have been a bit weird (and dangerous?) so video was definitely the next best thing!

I’m not entirely sure if I’d have the guts to pick everything up and move hundreds of miles away from home, but it was really fun dreaming about it at least. What’s great about how technology has advanced is that I don’t have to be glued to a desk or a laptop with questionable battery life in order to get out there and learn about unfamiliar people, places or things around me. Advanced GPS, hyper-local technology, accessibility of video, social networks,etc. has allowed Coldwell Banker to create and give us access to tools that help us dream…to dream about a charming home hundreds of miles down south or even about a home with an extra bedroom 3 towns over…

I’m a Real Estate Dreamer