I once had a client tell me, “I want to look out my window and see the ocean and walk out my back door and shoot my shotgun.”

If he had wanted to live in a remote area of coastal Onslow County, we might have been able to accommodate his wish. Not so much in Wrightsville Beach!

I’ve also had requests for homes in “gated communities” from people who don’t want anything to do with homeowners associations.

Remember the Teeter-Totter?

If you recall the teeter-totter from your childhood (then you’re old, like me!), you will remember that you had to find a kid who was about your size to play. Otherwise, one of you would spend a lot of time pushing up only to repeatedly land hard on your rear end!

I was something of a daredevil as a kid, so it wasn’t uncommon to find me straddling the pivot-point with one foot on each side, distributing my weight from one foot to the other to make the teeter-totter wobble back and forth.

A Balancing Act

Real estate, like our childhood toy, is something of a balancing act. You want to exercise your right to shoot clay pigeons? Cool. Let’s find you a spot way out on one the end of the teeter-totter bench and you can fire away. You want to be on the ghost tour downtown and be able to walk to to nightspots, galleries and shops? Great. Let’s go sit on the other side of the bench.

However, if you want to be a short drive to the beach, downtown, shopping, restaurants, hunting, fishing, golf, cycling, etc., then we’re going to need to drop our playmate, put one foot on either side of the fulcrum and teeter-totter back and forth. That means we have to find you a location that doesn’t offer it all but offers a balance of all things within an acceptable level of compromise. 

The Art of the Compromise

I make a strong case to many of our clients from out of the area that goes something like this: “No, we are not a big city, but we’re a short 4.5 hours from Charlotte, a couple of hours from Raleigh, six from Atlanta, the same to D.C., and equidistant from Manhattan and Miami. No, we don’t snow-ski here, but we’re a short drive from the mountains, where we can watch the leaves turn color in the fall, ski in the winter and get a break from the heat in the summer. Miami and Manhattan are the two big kids; we’re the fulcrum.”

Okay, I’ve worn out the teeter-totter analogy, but finding the perfect home for you is truly a balancing act. Budget, lifestyle, hobbies and passions all come into play.

I recently explained to a group of 100 agents that being truly effective in real estate is about absorbing information from your clients, making a connection, creating a relationship, and then finding the fulcrum - the balance between wants, needs and budget. The agent that connects those dots is the one that you want to keep.

Our hope at KBT Realty is that you’ll interview us to help you find that balance.

Kirk Pugh is a 25-year hospitality professional turned real estate broker. Licensed since 2009, together with his partners Becky Brown and Tyson Emery, they own and operate the KBT Realty Team, a division of Keller Williams Realty. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Kirk has been blessed to live in some amazing places during the course of his career and has called Wilmington home since 2001.“Seek first to understand before being understood" is one of the more recent quotes on Kirk's list of favorites. Understanding his clients, who they are, how they live and where they are in life’s journey is most important in determining how he can meet their needs.