Barnett Roars into Grand Terrace and Makes His Presence Known

This last Sunday, Grand Terrace had a roaring good time thanks to Jody Barnett, owner of Barnett Real Estate, who brought a grand opening like Grand Terrace has never seen. Barnett brought in a petting zoo, pony rides, two-story slide and a day filled with entertainment – but the star of the show was the king of the jungle. "When I was that close on Sunday, it just blew me away and it just does something to you inside to see their eyes and being so close and powerful. It's like, wow he really is the king," said Barnett. "My son is the reason the lion came to the city. He thought of the lion because it's in our crest, it's in our logo. We thought that it would be a good thing to bring to get the community familiar with us. A lot of people, especially kids, don't get the chance to get that close to a lion and when you go to the zoo you don't get that same effect." Barnett went on, boasting about his son Christopher, 25. "He's an adventurous type... from the time he was little he started traveling around the world. His first trip was to Japan. Then when he was a freshman in high school he went to Africa for three or four weeks with his AP history teacher." AP is advanced placement college prep. Barnett continues, "That led him to go to Alaska for a few years and do commercial fishing, which I didn't want him to do, but he did and he had some close calls up there, and he did okay, but I think he got it out of his system and now he's doing real estate, which I obviously feel better about. He’s just great to work with and I just love it. I'm blessed to have a kid like that.” Barnett gives credit to his son for planning the entire event. "We wanted to get the community familiar with us and we wanted to create some goodwill in the community. We felt that a free event like this would create that, and that's the reason we did it. We figured that bringing in some non-profits and charities would also just enhance the whole event.” Barnett shared, "It did help the charities quite a bit. A total of around $4,000 was raised. The Grand Terrace High School cheerleaders earned $1,350 between ticket sales and selling snow cones. The other charities that jumped on this opportunity were The Foundation of Grand Terrace’s Dog Park, The Foundation of Grand Terrace Veterans Wall of Freedom, and medical bill assistance for a friend of ours, Sean Dunn. He passed away a couple of days before the event, so we turned it into a memorial fund for him. “It was a good day for all of the charities and that's what we wanted. We didn't want to touch any of the money – we just wanted to give them an opportunity. We didn't charge anyone for a booth. We bought the raffle tickets, we told them we were going to get some nice prizes and we wanted them to come out and just earn some money for their program,” said Barnett. The event was four months in the planning. “I gave my son a budget and he doubled it," said Barnett with a smile. It was a feat in itself to bring a wild animal to Grand Terrace. "At first we heard a lot of No's, ‘It can't happen, you'll never make that happen here.’ So it wasn't just one person saying, ‘It's just not going to happen.’ Some city officials said we’ll probably have to stop with the lion. It took a lot of help. We actually reached out to Councilmember Darcy McNaboe and she kind of guided us on some verbiage to use. I think that really helped us get over the humps," shared Barnett. Also, the owner of the property, Dr. Leonard Sigdestad, is a veterinarian. "He's a guy who dedicated his life to helping animals. If a guy like that is behind it, that also gives you a little bit of credibility. We had insurance in place, and it's private property, which also helped, and the owner of the property was 100 percent behind this,” revealed Barnett. "To me, you make your own fortune sometimes and I think when I'm told no, I tend to go the other way. So no doesn't necessarily mean no. Clearly you're not going to do anything illegal, but… if you want something bad enough, then I think you need to do your best to attain it. As long as nobody gets hurt and it's beneficial — to me it's beneficial to everybody. I don't see this as being a negative event at all to anyone in the city." There are several real estate brokers in this town – some do feel real estate is competitive; others have a cooperative mentality. Barnett shares, "I've never understood the mentality of competition between realtors. You get your offers accepted if you're a friend with the listing agent. You know, if they don't like you, they don't like your style of business, they're going to downplay your offer to the seller, bottom-line. So I think a relationship needs to be there. I don't have much contact with many realtors here yet. I've spoken with a couple. I did do a transaction with Stephanie Darwin, which went fantastically smooth. She was fantastic to work with.” “I'm a real estate broker,” said Barnett, "so I do residential and commercial properties. I get the most joy out of working with new buyers and repeat clients moving up or downsizing. Investors are fun; they are numbers guys and as you know there's not a lot of emotion when those guys buy properties.” “Real estate is not a boring business and I don't think that people should expect the realtor to be boring. I think it's very fun, it's very exciting and it's very stressful, so I think you need to make the best of times with it and I think you know next to death and divorce it's right up there on the stress level,” said Barnett. “I think clients like the fact that I answer my phone at night and I'll get back to them. They know they can just come and talk to me in my office, or my home, it doesn't matter. I'm there for them and I think they appreciate it." Barnett moved here three years ago and has made Grand Terrace his home. Barnett finished, “My clients typically become friends after the transaction.”