President's Corner

BARA DIFFERENCE MAKERS

Get involved! You can make a difference within your RealtorŪ Association! These have been a few of the calls to the membership to get involved with the Boulder Area RealtorŪ Association this year. Well, there are a couple of BARA members that heard that call to volunteer and acted on it and have made a tremendous impact - they are examples of difference makers in our association.

By now, all BARA members should be aware of the CARHOF Playhouse fundraiser that concluded in early July with the raffle drawing in which Jill Griffin from Broomfield won the playhouse when her winning ticket was selected. Much effort and many hours were invested into this project and a few of our members should be recognized for the time and energy they put in to making the playhouse fundraiser a success.

The idea for this project originated from BARA Director Mike Moger from Wright Kingdom and a similar fundraiser that Mike had been involved with years ago when he was a RealtorŪ in the state of Washington. Mike created the plans for the playhouse, was the general contractor throughout construction of the playhouse and he essentially lived with this project from beginning to end. For weeks, volunteers would meet at Mike's home on Wednesdays and weekends to build the house and Mike would work on the project whenever he had free time to make sure that the home was completed on time. Thank you, Mike, for the great idea, the passion you showed for the playhouse project, and your many hours involved with and overseeing this project.

BARA Director Denise Patryas with Coldwell Banker also made an incredible volunteer contribution to the Playhouse Project contributing much time and effort over the past few months into the project. Denise is the 2004 CARHOF Committee Chairman and spent many hours on site helping with construction, but she also coordinated donations of building materials and was instrumental in securing the flatbed trailer to move the playhouse to the different events where it was exhibited and raffle tickets were sold. She also secured a forklift to get the playhouse onto the trailer to be moved around to the different sites.

Eric Park with Mock Realty also made a huge contribution. Many of you may have seen the playhouse on the road stopping traffic and getting plenty of notice on the way to the different sites to sell tickets. Well, the driver making those white-knuckle drives was Eric Park. Eric has one more drive to make for the final delivery of the playhouse, but if you need any pointers on how to drive and maneuver with an extra-large trailer - Eric would be a good resource.

The Affiliate members are a very important part of the Association and Affiliate members played an important role in the success of this project. Kathy Atkinson with Countrywide Mortgage was a regular on site throughout construction of the playhouse and is another difference maker that contributed many hours and made this project a success.

Once again, a very large thank you to Mike, Denise, Eric, Kathy and everyone who contributed to the project and purchased raffle tickets! The Playhouse raised nearly $12,000.00 dollars ($11,800.00) and the Daily Camera made a contribution of $2,000.00 bringing to total for the CARHOF Playhouse fundraiser to $13,800.00. You will be hearing much more about it in the coming months, but all of these funds will go directly to BARA Project Home and the home that BARA will be constructing in the next year.

NEW BARA WEBSITE COMING SOON

The Website Committee has been very busy the last few months reviewing Requests For Proposals (RFP's) from website designers and making a determination of what company BARA will work with in constructing a new and improved website. Web Media Engineering (WME) was the company that was selected by the Board of Directors in June and they have been working closely with the committee in the month of July receiving input and different ideas they will be integrating into the new BARA site. If you have an interest in web site design or have a good idea or two regarding your new BARA website, please contact the BARA office or attend an upcoming website committee meeting, The new site should be released and live sometime this fall.

PRESIDENT SPOTLIGHT

In April at the National Association of RealtorsŪ mid year meetings in Washington DC, there was an education session/panel discussion regarding Limited Service Brokerage and some of the issues involving the differences between the Limited Services business model and the traditional real estate business model. Soon after returning from Washington DC, this same issue came up in our own association. (As a friendly reminder, if you are aware of a property as a result of an advertisement by a limited services broker or from the MLS system, that particular property owner likely has a brokerage relationship with a real estate broker and is a property that you should not be soliciting.) There are differences between the two business models and any issues that arise are more than likely the result of lack of understanding or education about different business models. In an effort to provide education regarding this national and local issue, IRES is in the process of developing a class on the subject that they will be offering soon.