Greenbook: A Local Guide to Chesapeake Living - Issue 3 | Page 11

specialty food stores for some nibbles,
and headed south to the end of the
famed Rehoboth Beach boardwalk
where I paused for lunch at Al Fresco.
Just a few hundred seagulls and me.
Al Fresco had to work. If you stumbled
upon me, and paused to listen, you
may just have heard the slow grind of
my gears relaxing, moving onto beach
time, one anxious eye on the cell phone,
just in case, “Someone needs me.”
Fortified by a lovely lunch, I headed
north back through Rehoboth Beach
to Gordon’s Pond, the southernmost tip
of Delaware’s stunning and unspoiled
Cape Henlopen State Park. I took
the Gordon’s Pond trail through the
coastal marshes connecting the
Lewes-Rehoboth Canal to the
Atlantic Ocean (Rehoboth Beach end)
and the Delaware Bay (Lewes End).
The trail now connects Rehoboth Beach
to Lewes Beach and on to historic
downtown Lewes (the “First Town In
The First State”). Miles of bicycle,
running and walking trails that
crisscross beach marshes and sand
dunes eventually connecting back up
with another jewel of our area – The
Junction and Breakwater Trail. Many
visitors miss these beautiful vistas
away from the boardwalk. Ask a local
REALTOR®, though - the Junction and
Breakwater trail is a peaceful, shaded
path running from Lewes to Rehoboth
Beach behind the frantic activity of
coastal Highway One and the Tanger
Outlets. I bike this trail in the summer;

I run it in the winter. It’s idyllic,
pastoral; an aspect of beach life that
one would not expect.
Yesterday I needed to clear my head
from a challenging transaction, get
some ideas for a better approach. I
cycled the whole way through the
Lewes parts of the Cape Henlopen
State Park past Fort Miles, paused to
direct visitors back to their campsite,
journeyed past the Cape May-Lewes
Ferry and on into downtown Historic
Lewes. Lewes is much different than
Rehoboth Beach. Rehoboth balances
hot dogs and French Fries, T-shirt
stores, and many options for beach
time for all types of family groups,
small town charm and James Beard
Award nominated restaurants. Lewes
sits in quiet, introspective, and
retrospective gentility. Instantly
I’m transported back to the ‘quaint’
English villages of my childhood in the
United Kingdom. Are my eyes playing
tricks, or is that my dad on that bench
waiting for my mom to come out of the
fancy clothing store?
Such a day like Tuesday is
admittedly all too rare for a
transplanted local such as myself,
juggling two real estate businesses.
When one gets busy working, it’s all
too easy to forget why I moved here
full-time with my family over 10 years
ago. After a career in corporate
Information Technology as a Business
Analyst, Project Manager and

Database Designer, I chose Real
Estate (or more correctly, Real Estate
chose me) as a career for the second
part of my life because I wanted to
help others realize the dream that we
have actualized. Sounds corny, yes, but
I’m sincere.
Selling Real Estate in a resort area is
its own specific type of specialist within
the profession. Very often, resort
Realtors are selling a product that a
client does not necessarily need – a
second home, a beach home. Our clients
come mainly from the metropolitan
areas to our north (New Jersey, New
York), and to the west (Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Washington
DC, and Northern Virginia). All Real
Estate is local, so in terms of seeking
out a real estate professional to help
you navigate the beach resort market,
in that respect it does not matter if you
choose a REALTOR® who has lived at
the beach his or her entire life, a
Delaware born and bred native, or, as
in my own case, a REALTOR® who is
a transplant from an urban area Although I think the advantage to
using a transplanted ‘native’ is that,
hopefully, one could find a match with a
REALTOR® who has been where you
are. Empathy is a much-needed part of
the sales process. When I was forming
the foundation of a business model for
my own real estate practice, I pulled
heavily from my former corporate skill
set. In Business Analysis terms,
eliciting ‘User’ (Client) needs, asking
GREENBOOK | SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2014

11