New way to view property – on Facebook!

Gary, originally from Headingley in Leeds, graduated from Northumbria in 1984. On leaving Newcastle, his career path took a few twists and turns before he reached his current role with RE/MAX, the largest Real Estate company in the world, and the new Facebook App is another string to his career bow.

Gary’s team is a sub group of the world renowned property dealers, RE/MAX, but it was his love of music, not property, that prompted him to move to the USA. But after a while Gary thought perhaps he should be pursuing a different career path to music, “I realised everyone was much better at reading music than I was and more talented, so decided to get my Real Estate license. I thought it would be a good part time job while trying to work on the music!”

It was then he broke into the Real Estate market which has proved to be a very successful move as Gary now runs a team of 20 realtors, “The Ashton Real Estate Group” and it is soon to expand to cope with demand.

It’s this demand for dealing with enquiries quickly and giving the customer what they want which has led Gary to this latest venture. Real Estate on Facebook.

Gary worked with his good friend and web developer in Nashville, called Brian Daley, to create the application. The application allows people to view properties through Facebook, which at the moment is the only one of its kind in the USA. “In terms of providing extra exposure for our clients with homes to sell it’s another avenue for advertising the listings and we are the only Real Estate team in the USA that has a dedicated app for Facebook to promote local Real Estate. As time goes on I think more and more people will just exist virtually in a Facebook world.”

Gary told me "Facebook is rapidly become the start page for most of America and the world. We thought that giving Facebook users the opportunity to search in a secure environment, without the need for submitting additional personal details may be seen as more comfortable way of surfing for Nashville homes for sale online.”

The growth and partnership of Real Estate and the internet has helped him to keep a good work life balance, “the business can be run virtually from my phone or anywhere with internet.” This has allowed Gary to keep up with his other interest, apart from his music, such as photography and travel.  

I was keen to know how Gary was expanding his team when many people were finding the current economic climate quite tough, “The changes in the financing and Real Estate markets over the last couple of years have made Real Estate sales more challenging but people will always need to move for all the usual reasons...births, marriages, divorces, deaths, promotions.” he explains, “At the moment I see my job as generating the enquiries for the agents on the team which means making sure we have a good internet presence and then co-ordinating the leads to the agents so they can respond quickly.”  This is exactly what the new Facebook App. helps to do.

If you’d like to have a look at what Nashville could offer you property wise, Gary and his team are exclusive agents for www.Nashville.com, “It’s ironic,” Gary tells me, “As I'm from England and Nashville.com is one of the most sought after domains for Real Estate in Nashville!”, and if you’re keen to see the Facebook App in action please click here.