Inman Diaries is a weekly feature tracking the day-to-day activities of America’s leading real estate agents — in their own words over the course of a seven-day week. This week, Deniz Kahramaner of San Francisco-based Atlasa pours through the data to determine if a home with a brick foundation will stand up to a quake in the Bay Area. That and a lot of workouts with his team.
Monday
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6 a.m. It’s cold and dark out, but I’m wide awake and excited about the week. Unlike many, I love Mondays as they represent a blank slate of sorts. All possibilities waiting… and we have much planned.
7 a.m. Our team works out together. I’m not kidding. Some are a little more into it, some a little less, but they all show up…coffee and pressed juices in hand. We laugh, we cry (not really), and sweat together. It’s team building without calling it “team building.”
Deniz Kahramaner
8:30 a.m. Everyone starts trickling into the office. Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are our “Maker” days where we primarily work from the office on data projects, client-facing software projects and any other work that requires a computer.
9:00 a.m. We have “sprints” three days a week and today is one of them. A sprint is a 30 minute planning session where each team member discusses his/her goals for the day and for the week, and talks about what he/she has done since the last sprint. It keeps us accountable and transparent.
2:00 p.m. Mondays are specifically big data project days. We spend Monday mornings charting the course for big ticket items that can shed insights into large scale real estate trends in the Bay Area and beyond. We look at things like the housing crisis in the Bay Area, how tech companies will affect real estate prices going forward, how movement of venture capital money should affect neighborhoods and much more. We address these questions with data projects. Every project we finish has a report that we make available to our clients.
5 p.m. Some team members have kids and have to head out to pick them up. I stay with a few others. Mondays can sometimes run late, especially for me, as I am out on the field on Tuesdays.
Tuesday
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8:30 a.m. Tuesdays are comprised primarily of broker tours and client calibration. I check in with the team either by swinging by the office or calling in. Tuesdays are all about relationship building, whether it’s with other brokers or clients.
9 a.m. I met with a client at my favorite cafe in Cow Hollow. I have 16 house tours today, so I’m going to need some very strong coffee! I love this client. He’s hilarious and seems to really understand the SF market. A couple of weeks ago, he happened to hear me at a talk I gave on big data and real estate and approached me after. He’s hoping to buy in the next couple of months in the area.
10 a.m. A frenzy of house tours that’s fairly non-stop. Much to see, note and ask about. When feasible, we take videos of properties. If there are homes that I believe are of particular interest to my clients, I ask my team to start running data on them. The truth is that by now, all my clients expect the data analyses and are not just interested in comps and disclosures, so if I’m going to present a property, the data has to be ready and available.
6 p.m. I’m wiped, but excited as four out of the 16 properties I saw today could be a fit for my clients… if the data supports them. Now you may ask why is a “field” day important for a data-driven broker? Without seeing a house, it isn’t possible to really know whether it will be a good fit for a client. The data is incredibly important, but so is the human touch. It’s the balance of the two that makes what we do very unique.
Wednesday
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7 a.m. Team workout!
8:30 a.m. Back at the office with a strong cup of coffee in hand. I review what the team has been able to pull up on the four properties I noted yesterday for my clients. There’s still data to be had, but I notice that one of the properties has a brick foundation. I’ve tasked one of the team members with digging deeper to see how the foundation would hold up during an earthquake, because the property is a bottom unit condo.
9 a.m. Today’s another Makers day. We start out with the sprint and everyone transitions to their desks fairly quickly. Truthfully, we all have our marching orders already.
1 p.m. We’re in the thick of data. Here’s a sampling of what we’re tackling. We analyze the different development and permit activities in San Francisco to see what would be helpful for our clients. We identify specific buyers and sellers of real estate across the Bay Area and try to come up with strategic conclusions about what to do. We look at what software could be most beneficial for our individual clients’ goals. And a thousand other data points, but you get the gist.
Thursday
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8:30 a.m. Thursdays and Fridays we build software and tools that directly help our current set of clients. So whatever we ideate on Wednesdays gets put to the test on Thursdays.
12:30 p.m. We just ordered and ate at least 800 pizzas. Everyone has food coma. There’s only one answer, coffee!!! Well, that and the gym tomorrow morning.
2:30 p.m. Data don’t lie! One of the four homes I was considering indeed has foundation issues. That means that even though it’s listed for $3.2 million, if another major earthquake hit, which is highly probable, my client would be unsafe living in the property and a new foundation would be prohibitively expensive given the price of the condo. Definitely not showing it to my client.
4 p.m. Met up with a client at Farley’s in Cavallo Point. She lives and works in the city, but is strongly considering moving to Marin because of the better public schools. She seems to have her heart set on Sausalito and I can’t blame her. It has some of the most solid land in the Bay Area and the drive over the Golden Gate never ceases to inspire.
6 p.m. Our head engineer just texted to say we have an MVP of an app. This particular app has been six months in the making. We can only share it with our client as much of the information contained is client-agent privilege. Excited to give it a run tomorrow!
Friday
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7 a.m. Team workout!
9 a.m. Our last sprint of the week, where we review what we’ve accomplished for the week. This week definitely flew by.
10:30 a.m. Testing out the newly finished app. Definitely has a couple of glitches, but nothing major and I agree that we have an MVP on our hands. We’ll introduce it to our clients on Monday.
5 p.m. Most listings hit the market on Thursdays and Fridays. For each of our clients, we weave through listings using software and our own eyes, and create a curated list of properties our clients might want to see over the weekend. We do this activity on Friday evenings to not miss out on last-minute listings.
Saturday
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10 a.m. Much needed hike with a buddy of mine. Gorgeous morning!
2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays are open house times. Either I’m hosting an open house or I’m visiting open houses with clients.
4:30 p.m. Having drinks with two clients. Turns out they know one another. Small world.
Sunday
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2 p.m. Open house.
4 p.m. I spend Saturdays and Sundays meeting with new clients, getting to see what they’re looking for, and seeing if we’re a “mutual” fit. While the team is definitely connected and reachable, I do my best to let them rest. We all need a bit of yin to our yang, and Sundays are perfect for it.
8 p.m. Scheduling my week ahead and catching up on some TV shows. Feeling very grateful for my team and the work we do.
Kahramaner is passionate about helping his clients build wealth through real estate. He primarily has a background in technology — which he uses to help his clients make informed, data driven real estate investment and purchase decisions.
Inman Diaries is a weekly feature tracking the day-to-day activities of America’s leading real estate agents and brokers. To submit a diary, please send requests to Diary@Inman.com.
