My Life as a San Carlos Realtor

I have been fortunate enough to maintain the San Carlos Blog for the past three and a half years. I am extremely grateful for the loyal readership of all of you.  Once a year I try to write a personal article.  I believe it adds some color to every other post that is published on this site.   This is my story.
In May of 1992, I was preparing to graduate from St. Francis High School in Mountain View.  If you had asked me then what I would be doing for a career in fifteen or twenty years I would have given you a very short list of possibilities.  Doctor, lawyer and engineer would have all been on the list. The word “realtor” would not have made the Top 100.
In September of 1994, I was starting my junior year at Santa Clara University.  During the fall semester I took a four-month internship in Washington, D.C. working as a writer for several political action committees.  It was here that I caught “Potomac Fever” and decided to go to law school.
In August of 1996, I started law school at Santa Clara University School of Law.  I chose SCU Law because it gave me the opportunity to attend classes at night. This enabled me to work during the day in order to help pay my tuition.  At the age of 22, I was hired as a seventh and eighth grade history teacher at a local private school.  The scheduling worked out great.
In January of 1997, I took a few days off from school and work to fly back to D.C. and watch President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration.  One of my co-workers from my 1994 semester in D.C. had received special seating. The night before the inauguration we popped into one of the only bars open in the Adams Morgan district of D.C. and it was there that I met my wife, Lori.
In August of 1998, I left my job as a teacher to more closely focus on my pending legal career.  I was hired as a clerk at Palo Alto’s Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.  WSGR is considered a top-tier law firm, worldwide.  I was not attending Stanford, Cal, Harvard or Yale, so overcoming that obstacle and proving myself worthy enough to be hired as an attorney once I graduated was truly an uphill battle.  I will forever be grateful to Mario Rosati for giving me that chance. Upon graduation in May of 2000, I was offered a position to come work for WSGR as an attorney.  I was fortunate enough to pass the July 2000 Bar Exam and life was good.
By the age of 25, I was practicing at a top-tier law firm and I had just gotten married.  This was the way I had envisioned things back in May of 1992. It was also the first time in my life that I had to admit that I really was not happy with what I was doing.  After four years of college, four years of law school and passing the California Bar….it was a difficult conversation to have with myself.
I decided to make a change.  Believing that I could be happy practicing law on my terms, I made the decision to leave WSGR with another WSGR attorney and start Bredel & Sayar LLP in Los Altos.  We managed to turn our one room firm into a thriving practice.  This is where I branched out and started doing real estate transactions and litigation for the first time. After a few years at Bredel & Sayar, I had to fully admit that I was just not happy practicing law.  Our little firm was ready to take off and all of our risk in starting such a venture was about to pay off, but it was also the time that I decided cash out my chips and walk out the door.  Sayar Fausto LLP is how the firm is known today and I am very proud of how they have grown.  They have become one of the most recognized boutique firms in the South Bay.  I will forever be grateful to my former partner, Alison Sayar, for believing in my idea that we could start and grow our own firm.
After handling the countless real estate litigation files that came over my desk at Bredel & Sayar, I knew I could take my experience and turn it into a real estate career. The day I resigned from Bredel & Sayar, I went home and told my wife that I was giving up my years of law school, the California Bar, my first years as an associate at WSGR and my own law firm to go work at ReMax in San Carlos.  She divorced me.  I’m kidding, of course.  Let’s just say that I have a very understanding wife.  I managed to convince her that I could make it work.  In May of 2005, I officially started my real estate career at ReMax Today in San Carlos.
At that time, San Carlos was dominated by three or four very solid agents.  Cracking that top group was not going to be an easy task. I decided early on that I would need to think outside the box.  I decided to rely on my strengths.  Having grown up in San Carlos, I knew it well.  Having managed the legal end on residential transactions, I knew the mechanics of the real estate contract better than most other agents.  I took those two concepts and blended them into an online presence offering residents and future residents of San Carlos an online forum where they could find out about the San Carlos community as well as a variety of articles advising them on the nuts and bolts of local transactions.  Luckily for me, it worked.  The San Carlos Blog has ended up being one of my largest referral sources.  In 2008, I was named in the Top 100 Remax agents worldwide for overall production. Since 2008, I have represented a combination of 52 buyers and sellers in San Carlos, alone. More importantly, I love what I do.  There has never been a single day where I was not excited to go into work.
Working in a community such as San Carlos also comes with the responsibility of giving back.  I am a proud supporter of the San Carlos Educational Foundation, founder of San Carlos Treasure Hunters, a San Carlos Parks and Recreation Commissioner (2003-2005), President of San Carlos United Soccer Club (2007 & 2008), San Carlos AYSO Coach, San Carlos Pony Baseball Coach.
I feel truly blessed to be able to live and work in a community such as San Carlos, and I owe much of it to all of you. Thank you for continuing to read the San Carlos Blog and for allowing me to share just a little bit about the crazy person who writes this stuff every week : )