2016 Resolutions

Every New Year I contemplate objectives for the year ahead. What have we done well in the preceding year and what can we do better? And every year I make two lists, one personal and one professional, to reflect my goals.  Here are my professional 2016 New Year’s resolutions for myself and for Warburg Realty:

• This year we will broaden our catchment areas – Every year the parameters within which our core clients live expand. Further south in Brooklyn, further north in Inwood and Washington Heights, further east and north in Queens; we and our agents must constantly stretch our knowledge base and expertise to meet the demands of buyers and sellers who are expanding the boundaries of the “center city.”
• We will pursue advances in technology – We have arrived finally at the point at which there seems to be general agreement that the most effective online tools will be those which enable rather than replace the real estate broker. To that end, we will devote resources and time in 2016 to developing our capabilities with search, data mining, and customer and client relationship management.
• We will improve corporate and personal branding – The past two decades have transformed the way individuals and companies deliver their message to the public. With greater sophistication comes a greater need to distinguish one’s brand in the overcrowded 21^st century marketplace. We are dedicated to making the Warburg brand speak more emblematically of our commitment to expertise and integrity. In doing so, we are forging tools that will allow our agents to distinguish themselves based on their areas of expertise and abilities to provide exceptional customer service.
• We will refine our negotiating and transactional expertise through training and experience – We pride ourselves on managing transactions successfully. If we experience co-op Board turndowns, we often succeed in reversing them. We bring apparently people with apparently irreconcilable differences to agreement. At Warburg we work together as a team to institutionalize the knowledge we gain from each transaction to pass on to the next generation of top agents. Each year we strive to do it better
• We will provide a more complete luxury service – Our brand stands for a few core principles: putting the needs of our clients above our own, being above board in every situation, allowing our business to flow from the establishment of strong and lasting relationships.  We are committed to responding quickly to requests, to being unfailingly courteous, and to having a deep understanding of what we are talking about when we talk real estate. None of us do this perfectly, but we try to do it better and better each year.

Some of these resolutions evolve with the times, some remain very much the same from year to year. While goals are always ephemeral, seeing my team reach for these will make 2016 a proud year for me.