I understand how uncertain that can be. As a trusted advisor for real estate success in 2010, I welcome a candid preliminary conversation with you today - over phone or coffee. My real estate perspective and expertise in the Raleigh Cary market are what's relevant, and my comprehensive website provides Raleigh and Cary homes for sale for your immediate convenient research. I believe a sense of mission is essential in your agent. Having led an entire community's dreams to fulfillment (read on), today I have the privilege of an individual family practice. If you've made it to this, my back story, then you're a researcher - a reader for sure - and I've let this last page remain in the archive especially for you.
A Raleigh native, I've been a licensed North Carolina Real Estate Broker for fifteen years. Full-time in Triangle homes since 2002, I created my own independent firm in 2003.
My role is to work with you, centered upon your objective while supporting your needs, your hopes, and your future. Clients have described me as focused, careful, precise, patient, intense, and analytical - a Massachusetts Master of Psychology home buyer proclaiming I was to her advantage: "the best example of a Vertical Thinker" she had ever met, and a retired New York City Firefighter relocation from Long Island commenting: "you're like having a relative down here, looking out for us."
Real estate work began back when I was the producer of over 50 stage shows, inspecting and renting 10 to 15 resort homes each year to house my seasonal employees and New York performers.
I originated and led The Blowing Rock Stage Company successfully as Producing Director against all odds of survival through its first 12 consecutive summer theater seasons. It was the golden era of first-class Off-Broadway AEA Union professional theatre in a North Carolina town the size of Mayberry, the politics of which challenge literary depiction. This was genuine "show business" back in the day - an exceptionally challenging period of problem-solving. "Act One" of my life was over a decade of broad public service cherished in the not-for-profit sector, paying myself a dedicated school-teacher salary as necessary for the project to survive. I was blessed with the business acumen essential for recognizing cost-effective value, bringing all the right elements together - making possible nearly 500 jobs, and happy experiences for over 100,000 customers. I suppose you could say I've always been a "top producer".
Working with you is more than a transaction of real estate. It's a consulting partnership that comes together for your best interest. Every step, I put your best interests first always, as I did in public service - and I do for you as I would do for my own ... my own family, my own money, my own investment. Never settle for less.
The challenge of housing change is not always easy...particularly doing it alone! I understand your stress first-hand. I've got my sleeves rolled up currently for the sweat-equity of the town home I'm living in, while flipping for future rental. Your home real estate investment is the most important step in the business of building your financial future. My experience should help you avoid unnecessary mistakes - a strategy more crucial than ever, and the best part of my job is having your dream become reality. The internet is our essential tool for research, knowledge, shopping and perspective, but it's more important to have quality time for the things truly important to you - your family, home, hobbies and your own job - and that's the best reason for having professional RealtorŪ expertise. Buying or selling a home is a rare and special occasion.
Making other dreams come true as a younger man ... a click will take you back.
With my former wife, I started with nothing, and built that entertainment production company virtually single-handedly from the ground up.
I negotiated locally, and with national union reps, lawyers, agents, and publishers - casting - hiring - designing marketing campaigns - writing hundreds of press releases - recruiting and educating Trustees - raising millions, and creating all the community relationships and partnerships necessary to launch, grow and sustain a not-for-profit North Carolina Arts Institution that concluded its 24th season in 2009.
My "loyal congregation" felt a one-to-one relationship with me and our organization - essential for the mission! I greeted and talked with the audience personally every night, giving approximately 300 speeches. For the first eight years, I didn't have a paid assistant. Julie and I worked seven days a week, always with deadlines of catastrophic potential. She was the supportive spouse / enlisted volunteer. We treated the project as the family we never had. 24/7 anxiety, adrenaline and euphoria - it was the miraculous start-up phase, wearing every hat, and one that few folks ever have the privilege to experience in life. Beginnings have a unique magic - they only happen once. Got children?
In summer of 2006 - 20th Anniversary of my project - a permanent $10m facility (Hayes Center) was inaugurated to house my theatre company, fulfilling a phase conceived and proposed in my master plan many years ago. The lavish permanent theater inspired by The Blowing Rock Stage Company remains an eternal monument to the regional standard of professional excellence we established.
So many homes - so many folks to keep happy!
I was responsible for housing all the stars I cast, including William Christopher (Father Mulcahy of television's long-running M*A*S*H), Wilford Brimley (movies Cocoon and The Firm w/Tom Cruise, and television's Our House), who once called me a "tough horse trader", and Lara Jill Miller (5 seasons of NBC's Gimme A Break and today the voice of Clifford of PBS' Clifford's Puppy Days). Casting Director instincts are a tremendous asset in interpreting distinctly different and diverse personalities. The Box Office is where you embrace service and customer satisfaction. The public does not require entertainment the way it does the need of housing, but I filled those seats. We sold and satisfied!
William Christopher, Wilford Brimley, and Lara Jill Miller are some of the stars Mark has hosted...
More obscure trivia and serendipity?
Pauline Frommer (my production of Oliver!) is travel writer for MSN.com, Special Correspondent to MSNBC, award-winning author of the Pauline Frommer travel guidebooks, and co-host of The Travel Show with her father, Arthur Frommer, now heard on more than 100 radio stations nationwide. Actress Robyn Peterman (my production of Nuptials and daughter of the REAL J. Peterman of the infamous J. Peterman Catalogue spoofed notoriously on Seinfeld) is now married to movie actor Steve Zahn. Another of my favorite castings was the elegant Marie Wallace (we're in her memoirs on Amazon) beautiful star of the classic ABC daytime drama Dark Shadows (and if you know what that is - yep, I met Barnabas!) I supported the development of Radio Gals by Mark Hardwick & Mike Craver (Red Clay Ramblers) as it made its way to Off-Broadway. We also produced several world professional premieres, including The Melody Lingers On: Life and Music of Irving Berlin, published for a decade in the Rogers & Hammerstein Music Theatre Library catalogue.
When I was a kid in college, I supported myself working at Charlotte's Discovery Place Museum of Science and Technology, in commercials, and as host of an afternoon children's cartoon television show Cosmos and the Captain, even hosting the Ice Capades. There were lots of odd-jobs, hard work and not so glorious. I remain a member of Actors Equity, the National Union, to this day. I anchored briefly Real Estate Matters, a locally-produced public service program for home buyers and sellers in the Research Triangle area. Along the way, I was a pretty good gardener, enthusiasic cook, blues piano player, and Mercedes 300S Diesel restoration "mechanic".
Ironically, my Grandmother's former home one block from the Governor's Mansion in downtown Raleigh was for a while the home of the North Carolina Arts Council, the state agency which provided many grants I wrote successfully for the start-up and growth of the theatre company. Even my Find My Dream Loan associate Sheri Rimel is a descendant of the legendary Booth theatre family. Spooky, how connected it all seems.
Today, my real estate firm Find My Dream Home offers service individualized for you personally, with the same enduring passion.
Copyright, 2010 Raleigh Cary Wake RTP NC
