Merry Christmas and Happy ‘Season of Appreciation’ from Alpharetta
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Stuff I like to talk about
We are very thankful for a great 2007 and want to wish all of you, regardless of your religious faith, holiday customs or personal belief system, a joyous end of 2007 and great hope for 2008.
Not only do we appreciate that our real estate business continues to grow from last year, but even more so appreciate that we are able, by choice, happenstance or just shear luck to live in both the United States and Alpharetta.
The United States offers many fine places to live and this post is not the place to debate the merits of one locale over another. I’ll just say that Alpharetta has a lot of things going for it including relatively low property taxes compared to the rest of the country, a growing job base and good business environment and a climate where it rarely snows. You’ll appreciate that if you’re reading this in the mid-west today. But that misses the point.
During this holiday season sometimes we get wrapped up rushing around. I’m as guilty as anyone of this. In fact, December is one of my busiest months of the year for sales so I’m unusally harried. On top of that, I think that most realtors are expected to give their past clients a gift of some sort in appreciatiton. It is supposed to be "good business practice" to stay in touch with your past clients. Real estate is a referral based business after all, or so they say.
In this gift giving area, I tend to take a different path and wanted to take a moment here to reiterate how fortunate we are to live the way we are able to in Alpharetta. Any world-wide social or economic organization like the United Nations, UNICEF or World Bank can provide all sorts of statistics on the relative poverty of the rest of the world compared to how we live in the U.S. and Alpharetta. For instance, half the population of the world lives on LESS than TWO DOLLARS A DAY. That is about $700 a year compared to Alpharetta where the U.S. Census reports we live on about $40,000 a year PER CAPITA. (The U.S. per capita income is half the Alpharetta per capita income, which is one reason we are fortunate to live in Alpharetta. The median HOUSEHOLD income in Alpharetta is almost $100,000 per year almost double the US household income.)
As for literacy, a BILLION people entered the 21st century not able to read or write. In Alpharetta, 95% of us have high school educations (compared to 80% in the U.S.) and 57% have a college degree or higher (compared to 24% nationally.) The world statistic is that 1% has a university degree.
By some reports 80% of the world’s population lives in poverty and 20% of the population is in conditions not befitting a human. In Alpharetta, there are 1,785 people (260 families) below the U.S. poverty level; that is only 5% of Alpharetta’s population but still startles me as unacceptable. (The U.S. poverty rate is 24%).
All this is to say that if you are a client of ours or in any way affiliated with Warmath Real Estate, you won’t be receiving from us a box of chocolates or holiday wreath that is dead on arrival. Instead, we are 
continuing our tradition of giving to Heifer International on behalf of all our clients. Heifer is an organization that helps reduce world-wide hunger by giving livestock in the broadest definition of the term (water buffalo, llamas, chickens, honey bees, goats, pigs, sheep and of course, heifers) to needy recipients. The recipients must, in turn, pass on the gift by giving one of the offspring of their animal to someone else. Heifer’s work creates long-term, environmentally and socially sustainably solutions that I am, one, philosophically aligned with and, two, pleased to continue to support.
It is our pledge to continue to fund Heifer each year in honor of the patronage of our clients. And even if we didn’t sell a single house in a year, we would still give to Heifer!
Our slogan is: "No wreaths, more pigs!" We wish you the very best holiday season and know that you have made someone else’s stomach a little less empty - and that is the best gift to give.
Download my vCard for your Outlook Contacts
Kevin - Merry Christmas to you and what a beautiful gift to both your clients and Heifer International.
Kevin- what a great idea. More pigs for everyone!