A few weeks back I posted a set of lessons I had learned from a visit to San Francisco where my wife and I will be moving to in a few short weeks.
Well I'm back in the City by the Bay for another home hunting trip and I thought I'd see how well I learned the lessons mentioned in that blog.
The Improvisational approach may not always be the best one
Well this one was learned well. We had a realtor working with us looking at possible homes to buy and we had made a bunch of appointments of places to see for short term rentals.
However, the home we saw that we would most like to buy was not on the list that the realtor prepared for us. We saw it a few doors up from somewhere else. True it did not have one of the attributes we had said was important, but there was a good work around to that. Being open to the moment and taking an improvisational approach worked well for us there.
Too many new things will overwhelm you.
This time we had some good basic knowledge. We built on it block by block. We walked a lot, up and down hills sometimes but rather than try to work out how the buses and trains in the new city worked we used a rental car for some things and feet & taxis for the rest (oh and a pedicab at one point!)
Ask for lots of opinions, but be wary of filters.
The questions we asked were more pointed this time. When someone told us that the house they were trying to rent to us was 'protected by the hospital' from the fog we realised that this may be true, but the rest of the neighborhood wasn't.
Use the information out there to help you
This was well learned last time. By the time I arrived here, google was my best friend. As was the SF Chronicle web site and the ASTD Golden Gate Chapter. Oh and this time I took a look at the weather forecast and kept in mind the 30+ micro climates that make up the city.
So Learning Transfer was successful. Oh and so was the trip!
Happy Learning
Alan
Well I'm back in the City by the Bay for another home hunting trip and I thought I'd see how well I learned the lessons mentioned in that blog.
The Improvisational approach may not always be the best one
Well this one was learned well. We had a realtor working with us looking at possible homes to buy and we had made a bunch of appointments of places to see for short term rentals.
However, the home we saw that we would most like to buy was not on the list that the realtor prepared for us. We saw it a few doors up from somewhere else. True it did not have one of the attributes we had said was important, but there was a good work around to that. Being open to the moment and taking an improvisational approach worked well for us there.
Too many new things will overwhelm you.
This time we had some good basic knowledge. We built on it block by block. We walked a lot, up and down hills sometimes but rather than try to work out how the buses and trains in the new city worked we used a rental car for some things and feet & taxis for the rest (oh and a pedicab at one point!)
Ask for lots of opinions, but be wary of filters.
The questions we asked were more pointed this time. When someone told us that the house they were trying to rent to us was 'protected by the hospital' from the fog we realised that this may be true, but the rest of the neighborhood wasn't.
Use the information out there to help you
This was well learned last time. By the time I arrived here, google was my best friend. As was the SF Chronicle web site and the ASTD Golden Gate Chapter. Oh and this time I took a look at the weather forecast and kept in mind the 30+ micro climates that make up the city.
So Learning Transfer was successful. Oh and so was the trip!
Happy Learning
Alan
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