How long have you been licensed?
Since March of ‘08

When did you join M Realty?
6 Months after getting licensed, I was with a firm that had a couple of condo conversion projects that I had worked on.  They were based out of California but decided to pull their Portland office plus it never felt like a good fit so I started looking for a new place to hang my license.

Why did you choose M?
I chose M because I’ve always been a HomeQuest user and loved the product so I interviewed with Garron.  I really liked his vision and his understanding of technology.  He understood the value of blogging, websites and I knew he could help me get to where I wanted to go.

How did you become the go-to person for modern homes?
I started a blog about real estate in ‘09 called PDXMetroHomes and I wrote a post on a mid century modern home, one of my favorite home styles.  In our weekly meetings, Garron reads through the analytics of all of our sites and we saw that there were a lot of people looking at this post that were most likely very interested in this type of home.  Since I was already going to modern events and love everything modern it was an easy transition to just start talking about it on a separate site and so Modern Homes Portland was born from that research and our conversations.

So you only sell modern homes then?
There’s this idea that as soon as you pick a niche you get stuck by it but I haven’t found that to be true at all.  Ever since I decided to focus on this one thing I have increased my business, 20-40% more year after year.  I am selling more and more modern homes every year but that’s not always what buyers want.

Do you know how many people read your blog?
Of course, we track everything.  On a monthly basis there are 5,000-6,000 unique visitors and about 32,000 page views.  My site is starting to get recognized locally as a source for information about modern homes and the architects that designed them.

Are there any other real estate offices in Portland that you would consider joining?
There isn’t another office that could come close to providing me with what I need, so… no. I love the boutique feel of the brokerage, the creative collaboration that happens constantly here, every time I am in the office people are excited about implementing something new,  there is a constant pulse a M.  The world of marketing has changed and it seems that some of the national companies are still doing business the old way which won’t fit the business that I want to run.

Most places have their agents do everything under the company name which I think is a little selfish,  here I’m building the “Marisa Swenson” brand powered by M Realty and it’s really exciting!