Learning real estate online by creating context in communities

This blog post about learning real estate online comes after a prolonged hiatus from the Man of Merit. I am excited to announce I have started the next “merit badge”. Of course, these badges are made up, but they are inspired by the Boy Scout merit badges I never got to finish when I was a kid because of the exclusionary nature of the organizations (i.e. no gays allowed). This made up "real estate business" badge, then, begins with me taking an online real estate course. But finding context in the communities around me is the piece that will make the information click for me in the end.

I have stated a goal to finish by the end of August 2020. I want to be ready to sit for the real estate license exam for my state by the end of October.

To support a more full-on focus in the real estate field I started two Instagram blogs, Harrisonburg-Rockingham Living and Winchester Virginia Living. I post about community open space, local culture, and real estate. The names work for now, but once I get more than 100 followers, I am going to change them officially to Harrisonburg Metro Living and Winchester Metro Living, to give it a more urban (or at least suburban) edge as well as to better communicate the areas they cover - aligning them with their respective U.S. Census Bureau Metropolitan Statistical Areas.

International food trucks add spice to Harrisonburg, Virginia

The Harrisonburg Metro includes the city of Harrisonburg as well as towns of Bridgewater, Broadway, Dayton, Elkton, Grottoes, Mount Crawford, and Timberville. The metro also includes around 30 unincorporated populated areas and is home to some 110,000 people. The Winchester Metro includes Frederick County and Winchester, its only incorporated city, as well as parts of rural West Virginia. It is home to nearly 135,000 people spread across more than 100 named unincorporated places. a great many of them historic rural communities in the hinterlands.

Both Rockingham and Frederick counties are quite rural, but many folks here – especially newer residents – trend cosmopolitan. Harrisonburg is quite diverse. Several universities in the area give it some cache. And the urban core is expanding beyond the city limits to engulf several towns and neighborhoods that used to feel a bit more separate.

Winchester is growing rapidly, too, with much of its urbanized growth within the fragile Opequon Creek watershed. It is becoming ever more a bedroom communitiy of the DMV, metropolitan DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia. Because of the DMV's expansion and the decentralization of government office buildings within that area, plans are in place that will dramatically change both of these MSAs over the next couple of decades.

Bucolic view surrounds this hilltop home in Broadway, Virginia

I have been driving throughout both metro areas over the last month, taking pictures of some impressive properties that are listed for sale with local brokerages. I focus on community amenities like walkability and local culture. I buy the food, engage in commerce, and go to community parks and other protected open spaces to walk the trails and report on their condition and uses. My hope is that people who are not already aware of these exceptional community amenities might begin to take part.

It feels right to be back to this blog, because Man of Merit keeps me connected to one of my greatest -passions, lifelong learning. As I take all the classes and work through the very in-depth material in the real estate course, this blog will help me track what I am learning and put it into real world context. I may even start to post some Man of Merit content to my YouTube Channel. We shall see…it is all so new right now. So, thank you for reading, and please subscribe, comment, and share freely!

From the PATC to the Sierra Club - for me it's about leadership

by Brian Schwarz

I'm looking forward to improving my outdoor skills this weekend, taking a class that leads to becoming a Sierra Club Outings Leader. Part mountain survival, part Leave No Trace, part leadership, the class is set at a hostel out on the eastern edge of the Appalachian's central valley in Northern Virginia, at a spot where some of the lowest mountains of the Appalachian Range rise to lift the AT off the floor of the Shenandoah Valley.

From the PATC to the Sierra Club - it's all about becoming a better leader

As a kid, I backpacked and camped somewhere in those eastern valley hills, though I believe it was a little further south of where I'll be hostel-crashing this weekend. It was sometime around my transition to Boy Scouts when I was here before. I was a pre-teen, or really I guess I was transitioning, becoming a teen. I just remember being confused about the experience of camping and couldn't really focus on whatever it was that I was supposed to be getting out of the whole thing.

The feeling? Awkward. I hadn't been in school long enough to make friends, so I just developed a crush on my patrol leader and did anything he asked me to do, with enthusiasm. I made it through. But I ended up with chaffing in very uncomfortable spots because I wasn't that great at managing personal hygiene in a simulated wilderness environment. We slept in wet tents down by the creek, at a clearing in the woods, with a field nearby for capture the flag, somewhere with no bathrooms, just a swell in the creek big enough for group bathing.

I had no idea over time it would prove to be one of the most significant of my personal experiences growing up in terms of providing a richness, texture and framework to my life that always brings me back to concepts I learned in scouting.

Hence, the blog Man of Merit where I am trying to go back and finish all the merit badges I'd not been able to complete when I was that confused transitioning teen; I'm working to fill in the gaps as I explore the art of living in the great outdoors. First the PATC Trail Patrol Training. Now this.

I feel like I finally get it. Now I'm ready to camp.