By Amy Stockberger
The recent quintessential holiday of summer is one of my favorites — celebrating all things American, freedom, independence, fireworks, grilling and most importantly time with family and friends.
WalletHub estimated that 47 million people traveled 50-plus miles from home over the holiday in 2019 to spend time with family and friends.
With our busy work lives, a social 16-year-old and an uber-active 3-year-old, we cherish all the time our small family of four gets together.
I personally experienced one of the top five days in my life around this holiday break. Us four, a pool, hot dogs on the grill, sun and lots of laughs. My cheeks hurt from smiling; it was beautifully blissful.
At Amy Stockberger Real Estate, we know our clients feel the same way about their time with family and friends, and with our Lifetime Home Support platform in mind, we created our VIP Club. Clients get access for life into our VIP Club by buying or a selling a home with us.
One of the perks is our party shed, stocked full of almost anything they would need for a party, from banquet tables and chairs, commercial grade food warmers, tent awnings, bouncy houses and machines to make cotton candy, hot dog, popcorn and snow cones to the small stuff like coffee pot warmers, pretty serving platters and a myriad of extension cords.
People value their time with family and friends, and we value our clients, so this give back is very important to us. This holiday was like most, where our VIP items were rented far in advance, leaving our garage depleted of inventory. We love that!! Knowing we are helping our clients enjoy treasured time together with the help of our supplies makes us beam.
At ASRE, we are always trying to save our clients time, stress and money. We even had custom software created, the ASRE Hub, so that our clients could easily reserve their items. Along with the party shed access they also get access to our tool shed, which offers wheelbarrows, a commercial grade paint sprayer, tall tree branch trimmers, ladders, drills, nearly all you can imagine one may need for homeownership maintenance items.
There are many other privileges to our free lifetime VIP Club, including access to two moving trucks, an enclosed trailer and a flatbed trailer, as well as in-house, climate-controlled storage units and access to our top-shelf “Home Support Partners.” One of my personal favorites is our client events.
We do an annual turkey giveaway every November, an ice-skating event in March, and we normally rent out movie theaters in June or July for a free private showing for our clients and their family. This year, that isn’t an option, so we planned something better!
On July 25, we will be having ASRE Fest in the parking lot of our new building. We are not only inviting our clients and their families, but also we are extending an invite to all first responders and essential workers and their families as a thank you for their hard work.
The event will be from noon to 5 p.m., rain or shine. We will have live music, including Micah Wetzel and Too Drunk to Fish, food trucks from Watecha Bowl, Backyard BBQ and the SDSU Ice Cream truck, refreshments, a kiddie carnival with a face painter, balloon maker, duck fishing pond, balloon darts, mini train, giant bouncy houses and obstacle courses, Escape 605’s mobile ax throwing, mini golf sponsored by our Home Support Partners and a dunk tank. We are rounding it out with a charitable give back to the Sioux Falls CASA Chapter. All games and kiddie carnival activities are free, but if you have someone you want to dunk, take a shot for $1 a throw and all proceeds go to CASA.
We also hope to unveil our new strategy for connecting buyers and sellers at our event. The 2020 real estate market has outpaced last year’s market despite COVID-19, with closed sales up nearly 8 percent year to date and pending sales up more than 15 percent. Inventory levels continue to drop, down approximately 29 percent. Whether it is COVID-19 that is holding back sellers from putting their homes on the market or the lack of inventory being the problem itself, where sellers can’t find what they want in their next home, we feel we have an easy solution to offer.
With the Fourth of July now behind us, I hope you are reflective of another great holiday, not only taking pride in our beautiful stars and stripes, but also that you enjoyed some cherished time with family and friends. And we have less than 20 days now to wait for MLB’s opening day, which means more family time for the Stockbergers and grilled hot dogs, of course.
For more details on being one of our Home Support Partners, contact Amy at 605-731-9597.
Looking to buy or sell a home? Visit Amy Stockberger Real Estate here.
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