Working The High End of the Market

When I was a brand new rookie Realtor® a really long time ago, I had a dear friend and fellow rookie named Tom Cordle who taught me something that has served me very well throughout my career.

"Be prepared," he'd say, "because you never know when some rich guy is going to fall out of the sky during your floor duty shift or at some Open House."  And Tom and I spend a good part of every week previewing every new high end listing that came on the market both condo and single family homes.

Now, it didn't matter that I didn't have clients for any of these fabulous places.  I saw them all.  I kept notes, and I remembered the smallest details, down to the wallpaper in the first floor powder room.

Then, one day it happened.  I was on floor duty, and a kid came into the office with a very pretty young woman on his arm.  He was a graduate student at George Washington University, and the lady was his kid sister.  He needed to find something for his father to buy that would accommodate him, his sister and his sister's chaperon.  And I was ready.

By then, I had seen every upper brackets condo in town.  I showed him three and within a week, his dad's North American business manager came and to check out the son's favorite place, and voila.  I had my first big deal.

The magic has happened often enough to reinforce this particular behavior of previewing Washington's finest.

And I guess the bottom line is, as my friend said, be a good Girl (or Boy) Scout!  Be prepared. 

You can have the best center of influence on earth, and if you don't know your market, it won't matter.  And with no center of influence at all, you're still bound to run into people looking for high end real estate who you might find intimidating,  unless -

• You listen carefully when they tell you what they are looking for
• You've already seen the house they are going to buy
• You can talk about it, and perhaps others, with some enthusiasm and expertise

Sort of reminds me of that line in movie "Field of Dreams": 

If you build it, they will come!