edwardsvillehomes.com - The Company Family

The Company Family

The Company Family

This is our company "Starter-Scrapbook"....a short overview. We've had some others, but they need updating, so we're starting over. We want to include a bit more about our families than we have before, and we're betting they (our families) are a lot like yours!

So here are a few items, to get us started:

In early 2009, we published a local history calendar, and one day, thought it would be fun to do the cover, with each of us representing characters from within, and that’s what you see here. Once rented for the day, all of us tried to stay in costume for as long as we could, which took a bit of explaining down at a couple of title companies and with several clients looking at homes! The calendars won’t be good again until the year 2056, but the history is the same, and we do have some extra copies.

One of a series of whimsical holiday cards, (intending a separate scrapbook for the topic,) this was published in January of 2010. I hope you can see the lit 3-foot-long fuse, and get the other joke within. The caption said something like, “Wishing 2010 is a Big Bang for You,” or something like that.

postcard 2010 small 2

Here’s a card from Christmas 2009 where we’re appearing as bakers of Fruitcakes. The “Good Intentions Paving Company” is a long-running joke, only funny if you know the old adage about the pavement of the road to Hades, but we’ve developed an essay about it that we’ll post somewhere. The bottom line of the essay is; given good or bad intentions, we’ll take good!

Paul Ottwein, Nancy Jo Mitchell and Denise Carter are perennial winners of production awards from our local Boards of Realtors, and awards from St. Louis

Magazine called “5-Star Awards” for exceptional service. Here, actual buyers throughout the St. Louis area are interviewed....it’s amazing to us that our smaller Illinois agency comes up so well, (and only a bit less amazing that exclusive buyers agencies across the river do so well, too. The concept enables it.)

group 2

This is a publicity picture when John Ottwein became licensed as the third “Ottwein” in our agency. We don’t remember that happening otherwise lately, but it surely has.

Here, the Dixieland band that we hired for a Client Appreciation Day allowed (suffered?) Merrill, on the left, do a tune or two with them. Merrill admits it was an act of kindness, because Merrill wrote the check for the band.

Here, in the fall of 2008, Merrill was awarded membership to the “Hall of Fame” of REBAC, the Real Estate Buyers Agent Council. Five individuals are elected annually from a membership of 80,000, so it’s not a bad award. Merrill said he didn’t know the classic Fostoria box was so universally recognized. In the lobbies and meetings, it was, “better than a puppy”, he indicated, in terms of striking up conversations. His friend and national real estate columnist Charles Dahlheimer is making the presentation.

That award came for his efforts in blending he work of REBAC with NAEBA, the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents, where he has had a prominent role. He was a charter member and its first treasurer, but here, as its fourth president, he is giving an award to Sue Weinstein of New York, a small minuteman statue, as a memento to his motto that year, “Leading the Revolution in the Way America Buys its Homes.”

copy of merrill_naeba1

	In this picture, Merrill is literally rubbing elbows with Ralph Nader, a friend of the concept, along with the first three presidents of NAEBA. Merrill was impressed with the intellect and humor of Mr. Nader, the latter of which is missing in his national appearances.
Finally, this picture is pure whimsy. You all must know we love Cardinals, but in this picture, in Detroit, (2008,) with Detroit apparently doing well, our lone Cardinal fan is decidedly forlorn!

All for now, folks!