On Monday, August 18th, 2008 HomeGain.com kicked off its 2nd Annual Office Olympics. Coincidentally it was also the official Summer Olympics this year!

The kick off meeting was held in HomeGain’s Emeryville Employee Lounge, and we had numerous events throughout the week, including:

• “How Many Pieces of Candy are in the Jar” – each team had to guess how many pieces of candy were in the jar and the closest without going over was the winner.
• “Word Find” – the contestants were read a question with the answer being the word they needed to find. These questions were based on HomeGain facts or people.
• “Max needs a Roommate”- each team turned in their Roommate applications as well as a Model Roommate for Max. All teams was giving a bag of supplies and the Ad that Max placed in the paper for a Roommate. Each team then needed to “create” a roommate for Max. As you can see from the picture, Max had a lot of great options!
• “Paper basketball” – the goal was to get the paper basketballs into the waste paper basket. Each team had one person holding the basket with the others tossing ten paper basketballs into the basket – or at least attempting to get them in the basket! This is an event we also did last year. Since this is an outdoor event sometimes there are issues with the wind, but this year we had nice weather so the wind was not a factor. Continue reading this post

HomeGain Gorilla Snags Emeryville AgentView Zip Code

It is a tradition at HomeGain to send Max away when we release new products. Prior to the release of AgentView we sent Max to Paris.

Max, not only took the product launch in stride, he even signed up to be the feature Realtor in his hometown of Emeryville.

Max also enrolled in the HomeGain Blogging School that comes with his AgentView subscription.

As you can see, by Max’s listings, his specialty is tree houses!

Louis Cammarosano

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Max Hits the City Of Lights on Eve Of HomeGain Product Launch

On the advice of Max’s personal veterinarian, Dr. Wolliz, Max, the HomeGain mascot is once again in travel mode in anticipation of a new product launch at HomeGain. Our readers may recall that Max was sent to the hospital after HomeGain launched Agent Profiles. Apparently, the shock of the level of innovation was too much for him. Prior to the launch of the HomeGain Agent Blogging Network Max was sent out of the country as a precautionary health measure.

Now that HomeGain is on the eve of launching a new product next week, we have sent Max for a two week sojourn to the city of lights.

To see Max living it up in Paris,

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Max made an appearance today at the Bloggers Connect sessions at Real Estate Connect San Francisco. As we handed out Max t-shirts and buttons, we were pleased to see him so well received!

Max-mobiles also made appearances outside the Palace Hotel.

Most people at the show recognized Max right away – there was just one passerby who confused him to be a pink bear. (Shh, don’t tell Max that!)

In the buzzing hallways we met up with several of our contributors and guest bloggers including Nicole Nicolay, Jay Thompson, Joe Ferrara, Pat Kitano and Roberta Murphy, and some of our member agents, Brian Block and Michael Lissack.

All of us HomeGainers, especially Max, are looking forward to the panel on Friday at 10am at which Louis Cammarosano will be speaking. After that will be the awards ceremony!

Click here to see what else Max has been up to.

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Max Motor Tour Resumes in Phoenix and San Francisco

Max has been hitting the road hard since returning from taking his first vacation as HomeGain spokes-gorilla. “I barely had time to enjoy my new home when I felt the marketing road calling,” said Max.

Max was recently spotted resuming his What’s Your Home Worth motor tour in San Francisco, CA and outside Phoenix, AZ with his driver, Hoke Wolliz.

“The San Francisco part of our trip was hectic as Max is a bit of a local idol and we did more parking than driving to give the fans time to take pictures of Max and get paw prints,” said Wolliz. “Once we hit the open road in Arizona, we had some time to relax and Max was able to kick back and enjoy some jelly beans and coconut milk.”

“Max remains unaware of HomeGain’s product release schedule,” said Louis Cammarosano, General Manager of HomeGain.

“While Max took the announcement that HomeGain was offering blogs to its AgentView customers in stride, he did not react so well to the prior product announcement that HomeGain was allowing agents to post their profiles on HomeGain.com. “We’ve got another major announcement coming up and its probably best that Max stay on the road.”

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Max definitely needs to “relax” because we have been busy – on both the buying and selling side here in Maryland. Things are also picking up with summertime quickly approaching.

Although our market has been down in terms of prices, many of our listings have recently sold. This means we need to get even busier and find more homes to list.

One of our biggest issues with home sellers is price. I have to work quite a bit with them to list their home at the correct price. They aren’t too happy about the idea at first, but when they see their home sell and other homes listed around the same time not sell or sit on the market with a “Reduced Price” For Sale sign, they understand my strategy and appreciate my advice.

We have invited Max to our HCAR (Howard County Association of Realtors) Casino Night and participate in the “Realtor Idol” Contest. We hope he’ll have time in his busy schedule. My strong Team and my Broker at RE/MAX Advantage Realty—who was just named Broker of the Year—will all be attending. Continue reading this post