Greetings from Mansfield, MA, 2576 miles from our front door in Linda Vista. On trips like these I’m always fascinated with getting to know a new neighborhood’s history, architecture, and (of course) real estate market. Our daughter is enrolled in a summer session at Berklee College of Music in Boston, so we took the opportunity to get her acclimated there and parlayed it into our family’s summer vacation.
While we were here, we had the chance to meet up with clients who’d just recently relocated to Boston. After we helped them sell their historic craftsman in Pasadena, they headed east; it was a truly joyous occasion getting to celebrate with them at their favorite Italian haunt in the North End, Mama Maria’s. They educated us about the history of their new neighborhood and treated us to epic cannoli after our meal.
After Boston, we visited clients who spend half the year in Linda Vista and the other half in Newport, RI, which is a spectacular place to spend a summer. We soaked up the local culture, toured the Breakers and the Vanderbilt Mansion, and took evening walks on Second Beach.
As our time here winds down, we’re capping our stay off with my wife’s cousin and her family here in Mansfield. After seventeen years in Paris, she and her family returned to the states and settled here. “Why Mansfield?” I asked, and the answer was simple: to be close to family. She also replied in a way that seemed familiar to an Angeleno’s loyal decree that we are, “an hour from the beach, an hour from the mountains, an hour from the desert,” etc. “The schools here are excellent and we’re thirty minutes from Boston and thirty minutes from Providence,” she explained.
Where we choose to live informs and impacts our lives and our families, which is why I consider my role in helping people find their homes such an honor. Getting to know, understand, relate to, and bond with my clients—across time and distance—is what really makes working in real estate a privilege.
