A year later...

Here I am, updating this blog, after ignoring it for a year! I promise to try to update this more often! Right now we are in class learning all about blogs.

Current Business

Right now I have 2 upper end homes listed. Surprisingly enough, they are getting quite a bit of activity. There are definitely a lot of buyers out there looking for these homes. I have one on Snowgoose Road, which is connected to, but not part of, Snowgoose Pond Subdivision. It is the one house I have seen which I really wish I could buy myself! It's absolutely beautiful. It's a ranch, 3011 sq ft, on 5 UNRESTRICTED acres. It has in-floor heat and a very open layout. The kitchen is absolutely gorgeous - I could see entertaining all my friends in this house. It needs some landscaping right now, so the Sellers are going to start working on cleaning up some of the brush and planting some grass. We had an offer on this house, but just when we were supposed to close we learned that the buyers couldn't actually get approved for the loan. Heartbreaking...but that's this business. Just when you know you did a great job and you are about to close on a deal, and, of course, get paid for your work, it falls down the tubes. Frustrating for me, even more for my poor sellers who are still paying for this vacant house.



The second house I have listed is off of Farm Loop in Poplar Grove subdivision. This is a subdivision full of upper end homes on large parcels with incredible views. This home is a 4 bedroom, 2 story on 3 acres. It has a home office that any business person would LOVE. It also has a den which is large enough for a pool table or a large screen t.v. The kitchen, dining area and living are all open, and there is a true formal dining room too. It has a view of Lazy Mountain from the front of house, but it is obstructed by some of the trees. The trees could be removed if someone really wanted to see the mountain. It's listed for $525,000. It's 3,745 sq ft and has a wonderful layout with all bedrooms upstairs. The landscaping on this house has been done, and the front yard is huge and fully grassed which is great for kids to play on. The back yard has a sandy volleyball court which is unique and cool! Also, there is a firepit and a large deck. Great for adults to play too! Very family friendly home.

I also still have two houses in Heart Haven subdivision. These are starter homes, which are about $155,000 each. They are on small lots and were designed for a first time homeowner, or a military person, who doesn't want to have a lot of maintenance. They are just as cute as can be, and the two left are To Be Builts which means the buyer can pick colors of carpet, etc. Right now we only have foundations for those two.

Also, there is a piece of land I have listed in Aspen Ridge Subdivision. It is 1.67 acres, and backs up to 35 acres of forest land owned by the State. There is a view of Wolf Lake from this lot and the only thing between the lake and the land is a bit of that forest land. Nice lot, needs a great house to be built on it. It's listed for $90,000.

Hopefully we'll get an offer on one of these great properties soon!

A New Career

After passing the exam (on the first try - wahoo!) I started talking to realtors and brokers about where I should go to work. What an eye opener - they said I probably wouldn't make any money for about 6 months! Whoa! I can't live that long with no income! I kept my process serving job, and my husband was very supportive, and jumped in with both feet into this real estate business.

I decided to go to work at Prudential in Wasilla. It is one of the largest offices in Wasilla, and offers a ton of training, which, being a newbie, I definitely needed. My long time friends entrusted me to list their house and find them a new one, and I was off and running in my new business venture.

At Prudential the realtors do not pay a monthly desk fee. Instead, Prudential splits the commissions with the realtor until Prudential has made a certain yearly amount. This is much easier for a new person who might not be able to afford the desk rent. I was told that very few people actually reach the cap on the yearly amount in their first year or two in business. I am the type of person that makes very high goals for myself, and if you tell me I can't do it, I'll find a way to do it. So my first year I made the cap and earned the award Rookie of the Year. I was ecstatic to have reached my goal!



The owner of Prudential was having this fantastic new building built that year (2006) and on April 1, 2007 we moved into it. I was given a private office since I had reached my goal. This was definitely a highlight.

In 2007 the market slowed a bit, not terribly, but I definitely felt a pinch in the beginning of the year. What happened to realtors making a ton of money for not very much work???? That fantasy went out the window very quickly! Wow, I thought attorneys worked hard (yes - they actually do, that is not a joke!) Once spring of 2007 came along I got busy and had a terrific year. I absolutely feel in love with the real estate industry and especially working with buyers. Some of the top listing realtors in my office realized this and referred some wonderful buyers to me.

The Valley Board of Realtors held their election in the fall and I was nominated for the position of Secretary. This is a position of the Board of Directors. In this short amount of time I was already involved in this organization and was truly honored by the nomination. I was elected and currently am serving in that position.

In January of 2008 we held the awards gala for Prudential. I had not reached my lofty sales goal for the year, but I was doing okay. I went to the gala expecting to have a great time with my peers. Little did I know that those peers of mine had chosen me for the most wonderful award I could receive. Associate of the Year! Wow! This is an award voted on by the people in my office - we vote for the person who "goes above and beyond" to help out others and contribute. I was completely shocked that I had been blessed with this award!

So now we are in April of 2008. And you know everything about me! Well, most everything. I could tell you that my 15 year old daughter, my only child, is my pride and joy and that being a realtor is my second favorite thing, next only to being a mom. My daughter is not perfect, she's currently not passing all her classes in the 9th grade, has just suffered her first broken heart, and LOVES to argue with me and my husband about just about everything. But she's wonderful and awesome and I love hanging out with her and helping her through all these life struggles. I don't want her to become adult too fast, and I'm not looking forward to these teen years ending.

Now you know everything about me. On the next blog I'll start talking about real estate!

The Return to Alaska

We started making preparations to move back to Alaska, and since my now adult brother was getting married and we would back for the wedding, it was a perfect opportunity to start applying for jobs. My husband worked for a yellow pages publishing company in New York and just before we left for Alaska we found on monster.com a similar job in Anchorage. So Ryan applied for it and let them know we would be in town and he would be available for interviews. We came for the wedding and heard nothing from this company.

We got back to Buffalo and about 30 minutes after getting home the company called Ryan for an interview. Turns out they have an office in Rochester and were able to interview him there and what do you know - he got the job! So our plans were kicked into full speed and a month later we were sending Ryan off in an airplane to Alaska, leaving Hope and me to sell our furniture and pack up our lives once again to hit the road. Hope, me and our dog drove from Buffalo to Wasilla in 7 days, stopping to sight-see and sleep.

We arrived back in Wasilla in October of 2002. 5 years to the day of when we left. My mom had bought a house a few years earlier in Wasilla, but she was now living alone since my brother had gotten married and moved to Anchorage. So we moved in temporarily with my mom into her 4 bedroom home. She worked two jobs so was rarely home, so it really worked out well for all of us. We had planned to build a new house at some point. I went back to work for the process serving company that I had worked for before moving, which had now expanded enormously in the Valley.

During the housing boom in 2005 we started looking at building a house. What I really wanted was a house in the same neighborhood my mom lived in, since my daughter went to school nearby at Larson Elementary. After some discussion, we all realized that what we should do is buy my mom's house, and SHE should build a new house, since what she really wanted was something totally different than what she had. So, that's what we did. In our endeavor to reach this decision, I also decided I was ready for a career change. A friend had sold her house the year before and we had talked about how realtors didn't really follow through and sure seemed to get paid a lot for what little they did! So I thought, I'll get my license, make a bunch of money, and do a much better job since I'll actually care about my clients!

I took the class in January of 2005, but decided that with my mom building, and us buying, it was a bad time to change careers. So I waited until the end of 2005 to get my license. My license came in on December 30, 2005.

The Young Adult Years

Of course, being a teenager, with somewhat of a rebellious streak, I just had to see more of the world when I grew up and knew all the ways of the world. So I attended college for one year at Mat-Su Community College, and then hit the road for Southern California. I went to college in California - Rancho Santiago Community College and Long Beach City College. I never did a degree, just took a million classes. I wanted to be an attorney. I got a job with a law firm soon after arriving in California, starting as a legal secretary and eventually being promoted to Paralegal. Working for attorneys, and not being an attorney, was definitely my calling. I worked for an attorney who handled a class action lawsuit against asbestos manufacturers for primarily those who worked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard.

Eventually I met a man and got married, and got pregnant soon after. Long story short, I had a beautiful daughter, who is now 15, and we moved to Phoenix, Arizona. I worked for a law firm there that had been set up to handle a class action lawsuit against Motorola for dumping chemicals into the ground water of certain parts of Phoenix. After a year or so I decided that my daughter and I needed to return to Alaska, which we did.

We moved back to Wasilla in 1994, I got divorced shortly thereafter. I went to work for a couple of attorneys in Anchorage. We mostly handled corporate matters and some real estate. They retired and I went to work as a process server for a company out of Anchorage. A process server is a person who "serves" or delivers court documents to someone who is being summoned to court for whatever reason. It's interesting for sure! After a few years of this and some personal challenges with my ex-husband, I decided we needed a change so in October of 1997 my daughter and I loaded up our car and hit the road.

I thought we would move to Kansas City, Missouri as I have family there, but along the way we went to visit some places we might not have a chance to see any other time. We went all the way to Buffalo, New York, then down to Kansas City. After a few weeks in KCMO I had a job offer in Buffalo, and decided to head back there. I met Ryan Murphy, a Canadian, and eventually we got married. We stayed in Ontario/Buffalo for 5 years, where Ryan adopted my daughter. There I worked as a paralegal for the largest law firm in Buffalo in the corporate and real estate departments. For the real estate attorney I reviewed title reports and prepared summaries of them. The corporate and securities department had me working on large mergers of corporations and filing reports for publicly traded companies.

After a particularly huge snowstorm and a bout with homesickness over the Christmas holidays, my husband and I decided it was time to move back to Alaska.

Debbie Murphy - An Introduction

So blogging is all the rage these days and I'm never one to be behind the times for long! Time for me to get on this blog bandwagon! I read my friends blogs, and my competitors blogs, and I think, sure, I could do that too, but who has the time? Well, I like to talk as much as the next person, so I thought I'd start bloggin'!

If you are reading this new blog of mine you probably already know a little about me. But maybe I can tell you a bit about me and you'll learn something you didn't know, or maybe this next bit will bore you to death with details you could have recited back to me. You let me know! I'm going to give you the long and short of my life thus far, and I figure this is important so that you can get to know me. I'm an open book. 40 years is a LONG time, so I'll break it up into a few blogs for your reading ease.

My name is Debbie Murphy. I just turned 40 years old this year. I moved to Alaska in 1976 with my parents, my dad being stationed at Fort Richardson. We (my parents) decided that they loved Alaska and when it came time to reinlist, my dad just didn't. He joined the Air National Guard on active duty status and worked at Kulis Air Guard base for several years. We first lived on Fort Richardson, back when it cost $.50 to see a movie at the matinee and me being 8 years old could safely walk there with my 8 year old friends. I remember seeing Benji on the big screen!

We moved to Anchorage a couple of years later, where my parents bought a cute little 3 bedroom home on East 20th Street. They paid $54,000 for that house in 1978. I attended Airport Heights Elementary School and Wendler Jr. High until 7th grade. My mom and dad announced one morning that I would no longer be an only child - the little brother I wished for every Christmas was finally arriving! My family decided that we needed more space, and we moved to Palmer in 1981.

My parents had a house built by Wilson Brother's Construction, a very popular homebuilder in that era. A new subdivision by the name of Shorewood Subdivision was being developed and we had our pick of lots. This subdivision is located off of the then gravel Bogard Road. Our new home was about 1,500 square feet, on an acre, with a one car garage. The basement was unfinished so that my parents could get it at the reasonable price of $69,000. We moved in on March 14, 1981. That June my brother made his appearance to our family. I was 13 years old.

I started 8th grade at Palmer Jr. High and went on to Palmer High. I thoroughly enjoyed Palmer and have always considered it my home. After being raised an Army brat, being in one town for 6 years felt like a lifetime!