Local Knowledge. Total Commitment.
A month ago I was in Washington DC for the REALTORS® Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo. This was my first visit to Washington DC and it won't be my last. With the amount of history and tradition that exists a person could spend a lifetime there. This blog is not about the history of the US but something very interesting happened to me within my first hour of being reconfirms my business focus.
I had a reservation to stay in a fairly well known hotel with a unique name. Again I have never been to DC so I have no idea where this hotel is or where anything else is for that matter. I got into the taxi and gave him the name to my hotel and to my disbelief he did not know where it was located and I had to pull it up on my Blackberry to get him an address. Now I would have understood if he would have been new to the area as well but he told me during the trip that he had been a cabbie there for over five years.
My next confirmation was the next day. I had reservations to a well known seafood restaurant down by the Potomac River in the Georgetown Waterfront area. Once again I haled a cab from my "not so known" historic hotel and asked the cabbie to take to the restaurant. Once again he had no idea where the restaurant was and dropped be a good half mile short of my destination.
There are Realtors in this industry that are no different then the cabbies I spoke of above. I have heard stories from buyers that have stepped into a Realtor's car, who claimed that they were the area expert but they proceeded to add the address into their GPS system and still proceeded to get lost. Local expert? Most likely not. You must have local knowledge of your market.
NAR statistics show that 25% of the time an agent was selected for a listing because they had local knowledge or they were a specialist in a geographical area. What does this mean? That local knowledge and total commitment will lead to an amazing and successful career!
Michael V Welk
Your Castle Real Estate
mwelk@yourcastle.org
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