Paul Johnston
Solving the Toughest Problems in Real Estate
Specializing In:
Portland • OR
Portland • OR
I've been in this crazy real estate business for 20 years now. It was kind of accidental, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had just moved to Tigard from The Bay Area, Berkeley and environs to be exact. Traffic there was terible. The schools were no place we wanted to send our kids, and Montessori School was expensive. I had been a chef and restaurant owner for 15 years and had had enough. So it was off to the rainy Northwest.
One thing led to another and I found myself managing a bunch of rental houses. When the market began to turn around in 1991 or so, the owner decided to sell them all and I went and got a license. In those days, you could write an entire purchase agreement on ONE PAGE. If you were a buyer, your agent was working for the seller. There were no disclosures, no stipulations for handling disputes, very little in the way of inspection contingencies. It was the Wild West for sure if you were a buyer. It takes a lot of paper now to do a deal, but the quality of the transactions is so much better. Especially for the buyer. Now a buyer is entitled real representation. All that is needed is an agent does a professional job. I think that a lot of the disrespect that attaches to the brokering business is a holdover from those days. The quality of work a client gets from a really good broker now is usually very high.
I spent a few years buying and remodeling houses, but now the market is a little too iffy for that. I've always enjoyed working for certain kinds of clients and now I've gone back to that. And what kind of client do I like? Easy. I like a client who understands that i'll always tell them the truth and always do my best. Just a little respect is all it takes!
I spent a few years buying and remodeling houses, but now the market is a little too iffy for that. I've always enjoyed working for certain kinds of clients and now I've gone back to that. And what kind of client do I like? Easy. I like a client who understands that i'll always tell them the truth and always do my best. Just a little respect is all it takes!
