Rehoboth Beach Living Blog

Opening Delaware’s first Real Estate Café on the Atlantic Ocean is turning out to be one sweet job.  What does a smart savvy Broker do in the middle of a housing downturn, open another Real Estate office, hardly?  But with suppressed commercial rents, and high vacancies, now seemed like an opportunity to move closer to where the people are, which is somewhere between the Boardwalk and Nicola’s pizza.

Having already owned and managed one of the most successful Real Estate teams in the area, Joe Maggio of the Maggio Shields Team, reinvented The Maggio Shields Real Estate Brokerage at First Street Station, but with a twist on the typical office.  There are actually two businesses in one, a Euro-Café known as The Café’ with great veranda seating, the locals call “The View”, and a real estate office.  My business partner Bill Shields and co developer and another friend had similar ideas of sharing the space with the preexisting restaurant equipment and voila, our The Maggio Shields Real Estate Café’ was born.  Our first day we did 6 lunches and were pleased and then the second day we did 64 and I thought hold on.

NASCAR week at the beach was a great time to open and sharing the second level of the mall with “Hooters” gave us a ton of foot traffic.   Displaying our inventory of current listings along with a snazzy power point window display allowed people to interact with an office in a different way than before.  As they checked out the menu which includes “Shake & Bake” pork chop, Tuned-up Mac, Organic Egg Salad or Baltimore Shrimp Salad or casually sipped one of the best Cappuccino’s in town, they were able to peruse the inventory.   And when there was a question about price and location, guess what, one of our competent agents was there to help.

And can we talk about the work environment for the agents.  None of the desks are assigned, and there is free wireless throughout with state of the art printing services and scanning equipment. The agent cans meet with a client in the restaurant space or out overlooking the Avenue.   One of our newest associates, suggested we add lockers for tennis shoes, for a walk break along the board walk during lunch, which we’ve done.  This is slowly turning out to be the best job ever.   There is nothing like getting a ½ Gouda Grilled Cheese or scone delivered to your desk.  Yum!  Come in and check us out at 70 Rehoboth Avenue on the Mezzanine level, in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware or check us out online at www.rehobothbeachliving.com

Today was the first day of the Delaware Area Realtor’s convention that was held in Dover, Delaware.  I attended a course on Social Media instructed by the Social Guru’s, God they will hate that, the #TwitterQueens.  Part of the session was on Twitter and how to utilize it effectively to market to a target audience.  [...]

It only took a few large property purchases to settle this week in Rehoboth Beach including an older, but modern, Ocean-front home, that sold for an astonishing $5.5 Million that’s creating the buzz. ..

The Delaware Association of Realtors put together another successful module for the Graduate Realtor Institute this week and here I thought I was going to be bored. After 40 years in the business 5’2”, grandmother and former Go-Go-boot-wearing, Ruth Vella, gave a dynamic course on getting back to basics and looking toward tomorrow.

Often as a Realtor in a small town along the Atlantic Ocean I am asked by my clients, a lot, about life at the beach or Beach Life. And it took me a while to get it, but what they where really asking me is how do you live here? I mean they wanted to know what I do; on a daily basis. Where I went, what I ate, who I knew, and what were the winters like. And of course how do Rehoboth Beach Livingyou give up the “city-life” for the laid back life at the beach.

Rehoboth Beach, better known as “The Nation’s Summer Capitol” is part of almost 25 miles of pristine Delaware coast line, welcoming village-like Art Culture, top restaurants, and zero sales tax makes our beach resort a prime local target from the surrounding Metropolises.