A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to take a little break and travel abroad on a Euro-Tour. I was filled with tons of excitement and anxiousness to leave work at home and enjoy the vacation with my wife and friends. NOT!! When we arrived, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at For Sale signs on buildings and homes everywhere that I went. I guess when you love what you do, it really isn’t work, it’s enjoyable!

Here’s a photoblog of some interesting real estate related things that I came across on my trip:

London, UK – Interesting enough, a week ago, I finalized my decision on making a move to Intero Real Estate Services and what do you know, I was closer to home than I thought. This company Fine & Country that you see here is now Intero UK. Who would’ve thought?!

I just read a blogpost on InteroREblog.com about Tom Tognoli, our COO who recently spoke with Mike Bidwell which was the former COO of Fine & Country and is today’s COO of Intero UK and talk about making moves. Local Bay Area company going International! Kudos!

Interesting facts: (1) Real Estate Agents are called Estate Agents in the UK. (2) Rent’s are collected weekly for leases so not like our normal once a month kind of gig.

London, UK – You’re probably thinking….a photo of a lion?!…

There’s a story to this Lion, well, at least from what our tour guide was telling us.

Here goes, there’s a saying that as the water level rises and is level with the Lion’s mouth, “When the Lions drinking, London’s sinking” and as the water goes over the Lion’s head, “When the Lion’s Ducked, London’s….”…yeah..I’ll let you ponder about that one. LOL.

If someone can verify if this is true, please comment below.

Here are some Commercial RE Signs. In the States, we would normally see a sign on a building FOR LEASE however in the UK, they have it as; To Let or To be Let.

Also, another interesting fact is that they don’t use the term PENDING like we do, however their term is Under Offer which sounds a bit odd but I guess it works.

Since we’re on the subject of Real Estate, I ran across this contemporary looking Dry  Cleaners in Westfield’s London Shopping Centre. Dry Cleaners are a Realtor’s best friend! They are the ones that keep us looking sharp and crisp at all times. When I saw this place, I was immediately drawn in and had to take a peek. If all the dry cleaners had this type of set up inside the mall, we’d probably end up buying more clothes just to dry clean them!

Can you imagine a dry cleaners in Westfield’s Valley Fair Mall? Wouldn’t that be convenient? Someone should definitely open one.

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There was an empty conference room at my hotel so decided to do a Real Estate presentation for a party of one, my wife the photographer.

I think you should visit that website for some great Real Estate information. LOL!

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Paris, France – Talk about the French Connection. This C21 office was located right across from our hotel so every time I took a glance out of the window, I almost thought we were at back at home. Paris is a bit like San Francisco in a way. It has lots of tiny cars and the streets are filled with buses and metro stations.

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Lake Lucerne, Switzerland – The Swiss definitely know how to market themselves and they don’t run on Realtor time, they are always on time! Swiss Watches, Army Knives, Rolex’s and all, they have an abundance of these products. Also, you can drink the water directly from the taps, they come directly from the Swiss Alps, fresh and cold. From my trip I came to the conclusion, whether right or wrong, that they know how to put great use to technology and are very efficient with their time.

I had the opportunity to go inside Engel & Volkers and saw it first hand.

Hope you enjoyed the Real Estate Photos from abroad. There were about 2,000 photos that we took as a group and I’m thinking of making another blog post on it, just seeing if I can maybe request that everyone who read this post and LIKE’d it, press the LIKE button below. =)

As the French would say, “au revoir”