I began my real estate career in late May of 2002 with no clue that I would be working primarily with real estate investors before too long. Like so many inexperienced real estate agents I grabbed a sign and held an open house that first weekend. The listing belonged to my broker. The house belonged to a guy named Phil.
I didn't get the house sold that day. (But I did get it sold about 7 months later.) And like so many newer agents I didn't have any listings of my own and no buyers to speak of. My broker, Randy Lindemuth, made me an offer I could not refuse.
"I have this townhouse out in Broken Arrow that I'm not getting much traffic on. If you want to work under my name, do all the work and advertising and showings and negotiations I'll give you half of my listing fee when you get it sold."
So I was going to be making half of half to sell a house? I'm in! (What else did I have going on?)
To make a very long and somewhat boring story shorter I got that town house sold. Boy, was I proud of myself. But being young in the business I didn't know what I didn't know. About six weeks later I get a call. You see, that Phil guy who owned the first open house that I had done also owned that townhouse I had gotten sold. Seems he liked my meat and potatoes approach to things and asked it I could sell his other three townhouses in the same community.
You can own more than two properties?
I guess I knew that though I had never put it all together. Again, to condense the story, I got those sold. And about 16 other homes that he owned in and around the city. What an education. Here was a man who owned 23 homes and he was at a stage of his life where he was just liquidating them to live off the capital gains. (Minus appropriate taxes, of course.) He had no further interest in working with property managers 1,500 miles away from his home. It was just time to be done.
I'm not going to give details. But he made a fortune. And he didn't give me any of it. He gave me something better. He allowed me to earn sales commissions on those homes while going to his hard-knocks school of real estate investing. We talked on the phone. We worked through numbers. He taught me the language of real estate investors. He taught me;
- the difference between net proceeds and net profit.
- how to determine a correct sales price based on income and expenses, not comparables.
- how to negotiate and work with property managers
- how to negotiate with buyers and sellers of income property.
- how to tell the difference between a real estate investor and a property collector.
- the mathematics of making a sound real estate investment.
When I left Tulsa two and a half years after beginning my real estate career and came home to Kansas City I scouted out the real estate market in great detail. I knew what to look for in a community, in a broker and in real estate office.
I also looked around Kansas City for a real estate agent that seemed to understand the needs and wishes of real estate investors. There were very, very few. (Any?) I attended a couple of the Kansas City area real estate investment clubs and heard what they had to say and talked to the investors in attendance to see what they were looking for. In fact, searching for.
So I decided to take my expertise and turn it into the cornerstone of my marketing efforts. To actually create my niche from thin air. This story may seem extremely self-serving to many people out there. But if you are a working real estate investor focused on long term wealth building to create a retirement worth having, I think you'll be happy to know I'm in business here in the Kansas City area.
There are approximately 10,100 real estate agents that belong to the Kansas City Regional Association of REALTORS.Many of those are good agents and some own multiple properties and know real estate investing inside and out. But the consensus among most working real estate agents is that investors can be a pain in the rear to work with. (See a previous posts here and here.) You need an agent that;
- owns investment property.
- understands the time constraints of the real estate investor.
- has full working knowledge of the mathematics of real estate investing.
- can recognize up and coming neighborhoods.
- can recognize neighborhoods in a negative transition period.
- is in touch with Kansas City's top property managers.
Here I am.
Chris Lengquist
Keller Williams Realty
Olathe, Kansas
913.568.1579
www.listwithchris.net
listwithchris@kw.com
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