I’m sure most of you have noticed our industry has been changing for the last couple of years and with it our approach to our business. How are we adjusting, have we made the right moves, did we get the training and certifications needed to survive in the new market?
At one time all it took was the ability to pass the exam and get licensed as an agent. There was so much activity in the Real-Estate industry that some one could just wait for business to fall into their lap and actually make a decent living. Whether you were great at listing homes for sale or you spent your time showing homes to prospective buyers the sale was easy and almost inevitable.
During the real-estate boom we were working with people who wanted to upgrade their house to their dream house. The buyers were driven to take advantage of the ever increasing housing prices. It was a win – win situation for the seller and the buyer, everyone got what they wanted.
Then the bust hit and the money and the market dried up. Money became hard to get even for the well qualified buyer, not to mention many of the sellers found they couldn’t afford to sell because there house wasn’t worth what they owed on it.
We all personally saw many agents who fell by the way side, some of them had been in the business for many years, many were “Johnny come latelys” who jumped into Real-estate, late, for the easy money but couldn’t cut it when they actually had to start looking for business. In our area we lost at least ½ of our agents with in the first year of the market decline.
Those of us who continued to work in the business full time, saw the handwriting on the wall and began to change our business tactics by learning about Foreclosures, short sales, etc. We took classes, went to seminars, and began to cultivate contacts with REO companies. We had to learn what they wanted, how they wanted us to market and work their properties. It was a whole knew way of doing business, it wasn’t just a seller and a buyer agreeing on a price, it was now working with service companies and/or mortgage holders who’s primary concern was to cover as much of the debt as possible. We had to learn how to convince the servicer that an offer on a short sale was the best they could get. We all know how difficult that is, but we adjusted our approach, put our selves in their shoes and began to think like them in order to build the necessary rapport that would allow them to trust your judgments’.
Now we find ourselves working in an environment that is changing again. We are looking to work with investors more and more, as they are the primary the buyers in this Foreclosure market. We now need to focus on building those investor contacts. We find we are doing our wining and dinning with them rather then the seller. and it requires us to be ready to do the above and beyond in understanding what our investor is generally looking for and how they will work the property in order to bring them the profits they expect, be it either from rental property or property that will be flipped.
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