💲July 2025 AR Challenge - Selection
☀️For ALL of Your East Valley AZ Real Estate Needs
📞Call or 🙋♂Text Brian at 480-773-2370
I always enjoy participating in the challenges hosted by ActiveRain. I am grateful that Patricia Feager and Lew Corcoran are hosting this month's challenge. Thank you both very much for doing so. Since I began my real estate career officially in 2010, there have been so many changes, even from one year to the next, haha. Being that the challenge asks for either business-related changes or personal changes, and I can think of so many of each, I will try to discuss 2 of each for this challenge.
The first thing that comes to mind for me in thinking about my real estate career is how much I have changed with regard to the selection of clients to work with. When I first got into the business, I was hungry and had a dire need to find clients to work with, which led me to take whatever came my way. Of course, this leads to working with people who didn't treat me very well, and didn't always end up even turning into a sale. Both good and bad came from working with tough clients, so I will try to recall an example of each.
I remember being contacted by a prospective buyer moving to the East Valley from Ohio, and the area he was looking at was not necessarily close to where I lived, and his budget was really small. I kept wondering in my mind if it was even worth the effort I would need to put into it since the paycheck might not even cover my expenses, haha. Ultimately, I helped him purchase a home, and I am glad that I did, since 3 months later, he called me and they didn't like having a two-story home. So, I helped them purchase a single-story home, and then sold their current home for them. Another 6 months down the road, they decided that they wanted to move back to Ohio, so I helped them sell the home that home, haha. Believe it or not, they had plenty of equity in each of the homes, even though they hadn't owned them very long at all. They bought at a very low point in the market, and it continued to surge upward for quite a few years, so they took plenty of cash and put it towards a new home in Ohio. I haven't heard from them since, but they were such nice people, and looking back, I am so glad that I chose to help them with their very first home purchase here. Having 4 transactions in a year through the same client is very rare, unless the client is purely an investor.
There have certainly been more clients that I have regretted working with than clients like I discussed above, but one in particular stands out. My neighbor knocked on my door one afternoon, and she wanted to sell her home. She wanted to list it for way more money than it was worth, and I knew that there was no way it would sell for that much. I agreed to list the home for her at that price, but I wanted a retainer since I needed to at least cover my costs. She said no to that, and I was fine with it as well, haha. Over the next few years, she listed it with different agents, and it never sold. I felt so bad for those agents, but learning about these types of clients and why would should steer away from them is something that is learned over time. I am so glad that I am at the point in my career that I can be more selective with who I work with and who I can say no to, haha.
I specialize in the East Valley of the Phoenix Metro area - Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Tempe, Scottsdale, Apache Junction, and Gold Canyon
☀️For ALL of Your East Valley AZ Real Estate Needs
📞Call or 🙋♂Text Brian at 480-773-2370
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