Real estate agent Graham Hunt: A youtuber, promoter, and neighborhood guide

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

The eruption of new technologies and the severe crisis that the real estate sector went through forced professionals to reinvent themselves. That is the case of Graham Hunt, an Englishman who has lived for more than 20 years in Pobla de Vallbona (Valencia), who became a real estate agent for international clients and understood that in order to rebuild lost confidence and reach more people there was to do something different. Hunt joined Youtube and began posting short videos on possible problems or doubts that foreigners might have when living in Spain.

In addition, he has a blog where he shares articles about the "paradise" of Valencia and the advantages of living in the city, among which is a guide, divided into four chapters, about its neighborhoods in which it depicts the characteristics of each one exposing its main attractions and attractions.

After living a few years in Asturias, Hunt decided to move in 1998 to Valencia where he started working in the sports department of an English school given his profession as a sports coach. His life took a turn six months later when he and his wife rushed to buy a home. That "bad experience" was what prompted him to take the step and become a real estate agent focused on foreign clients to avoid an experience like his.

"The process of buying a house was as bad and difficult as getting a tooth pulled Agencies did not listen to what we wanted. I had a cap on how much I wanted to spend and they took us to see three properties above the budget. So at that time, I thought 'I can do things better than them,'" he explained.

His first client was a friend of his who asked for help in the search of a property and, from there, he began to help the teachers of his old English school find homes of their own. His real estate agency, Valencia Property, was born in which he not only intermediates in the purchase of a property, but also offers support with mortgages, currency transfers, legal advice, local contractors and removals. "What we sell is not just houses, but lifestyle," he said. Two years later they created the website and began to receive demand from customers from different countries, exclusively in English, in a market that, in their opinion, was not well served by the shortage of agents with high level in the language.

"The market was like the Wild West with a lot of cowboys"

"Until the crisis, everyone was a real estate agent and their only reason was because they understood that there was a lot of money involved, I know cases that kept money in B and I could not stand that," he said.

In addition, he affirms that many foreigners had experienced situations similar to his own so that abroad "the agencies in Spain were very badly seen and the people when he came were very afraid".

"You had to get people to have confidence," he stressed. And, for this, he resorted to a medium with reach across the globe: Internet.

Thus, with a small camera and in just four days, he toured the main monuments of Valencia willing to record videos with recommendations when moving to Spain and about life in the country. A series of 100 recordings that was hanging on the platform for 100 days in which, from emblematic locations in the capital of the Turia as the Plaza de la Virgen, the City of Arts and Sciences or the Lonja, explained the health system in the country, typical food, taxes, geography and traditions.

"I made the videos about the problems that foreigners could have when they came to live here to answer their questions and nowadays they still bring us clients... Now when they see me, they say 'you are older than in the videos,'" he joked. His channel also has another series on the reasons to live in Spain, as well as videos with some of its properties. "I do not need millions of people to see them, only those who really want to buy," he remarked.

Neighborhood guide

Another of his creations is a guide, posted on his blog, which details district by district the different opportunities offered by each corner of the city explaining the reasons for buying or not a home. "If people do not have information, they won't buy," especially international customers who have to take the step of leaving their country behind.

Through Twitter, he shared with users this document that he divided into four fascicles. The first focused on the singularities of the most central areas of València such as Eixample, Ciutat Vella or Pla del Real, while in the following radiographs areas such as Patraix, Jesus, the Cabanyal or Nazareth. A meticulous work in which he invites to live in a city that, as he pointed out in one of his texts "is the perfect size for modern life, it is not too big, but it is enough for there to be many activities throughout the year."

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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