One Stop Shops Just Don’t Measure Up — Pitchers Aren’t Shortstops

Posted @ 10:49 pm - Filed under Real Estate Investing, Boise, Real Estate Brokerage

As a lifetime baseball guy, I realize having my pitcher fill in for my shortstop is a recipe for chaos. I know this because in baseball, someone playing out of position will be found out — and usually sooner rather than later. You can put an infielder in right field, where a ball hasn’t been hit all day. Invariably the ball will find him, and his lack of experience and expertise will cost his team. It can even transform what looks like a sure win into a loss. Mediocre players are kept on the bench for a reason. There are players with expert skills ahead of them.

The same principle applies to investment real estate.

It’s so easy to talk about our team here, and our team there. In fact, before the middle of 2003, when I decided the end was near for San Diego income property, establishing a team in another state wasn’t on the menu. Now? We’re just now in the earliest stage of our third new region. The first task is to establish the local players on our team. As usual, our team’s local agent is the first team member, as without them, we won’t even try to do business in a new region. Local knowledge can’t be faked, and it’s a fool who tries.

Also the norm is the local agent recommending a title company, which is the one he uses — of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be? In Phoenix we were 1 fer two with escrows. Our second choice turned out to be superb. We even assisted, indirectly, in getting her headhunted to the company with whom we preferred she work. She got a raise out of it too.

So I ask the guy in the proposed new region, (name being withheld by my request, along with the area) what escrow he likes. He says, “We don’t use escrows here.” Come again? Yup, seems they just let the agents take care of the contract, get things taken care of in a timely manner, and then close the dang thing. Seriously? He swears he isn’t pulling my leg. I gotta get out more.

One Stop Shops

In all my years, I’ve yet to see a one stop in real estate that did a all-star job in all areas. They say they offer real estate brokerage, mortgage brokerage, property management, and transaction coordination. And they do — just not in an excellent fashion. Even if they’re pretty good at everything, it’s not excellent. And when you’re handling other folks’ money, pretty good just doesn’t cut it.

In the one stop shops, there inevitably is a mixing of responsibilities. Everybody helps everybody else. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t work that way. I want my lender to have their head in that part of the business all day every day. Same way in spades with professional property managers. They usually don’t have enough time in the day as it is, without having to assist the agent with an open house for Heaven’s sake.

This approach skews the job descriptions. As that happens, you end up with a bunch of happy talking, Kumbaya-singing champions of barely acceptable results. We insist on amazing results — or we make changes.
Merely acceptable results, over time, will bury you as surely as it’ll be over 70˚in Phoenix at noon on July 4th.

Captain Obvious says this is what we want to avoid. Duh

What we create is a modified one stop shop. Instead of having everyone under one roof, every team member is a stand-alone company specializing in one thing, and one thing only. They know their field inside and out. When they say something, we can rely on it, and forget about it. I can’t even begin to tell you how valuable that’s proven to be over time. There’s no confusion or blurring of responsibilities whatsoever. Brown and Brown oversees everything. They all report to us.

And the results are indeed, amazing.

Here’s our Idaho Team

We have one company that coordinates all of our transactions. When Becky calls one of our team lenders, escrow, or property manager, they know she’s speaking for me or Josh. She’s not only the best we’ve found in Idaho, she’s the best I’ve seen since the position of transaction coordinator came into being sometime in the early 90’s. She’s that good. Our clients love her.

Possibly the most critical long term teammate is the professional property manager — at least that’s what our clients will tell you. When you’ve invested not only outa town, but in another state altogether, they want to have very warm feelings about their property’s manager. Patty does that for us. Whenever I’m asked to describe her, I tell clients she’s death on misbehaving tenants, and has a BS detector second to none. She flat takes care of business with a no-nonsense approach that would be appreciated by any investor. One of my favorite phone calls is the 90 day check-up. I ask how things are going, and want to know their candid opinion of the job Patty’s doing for them. Almost every time they begin the ‘praise Patty’ chorus. Music to my ears.

Gerald Dalton and Antoinette Roth are my Boise agents. Josh is now a believer in letting the cream rise to the top. Both Gerald and Antoinette are consummate pros. They go about their business in different ways, and with very different styles. The results are predictably the same though. I may have forgotten one, but I can’t remember a transaction we’ve begun in Boise that hasn’t closed — and they’ve been the agents for all of them.

I’ll leave the lenders, our inspector, and the folks at the title/escrow company for later. But you get the point.

Instead of a one-stop shop under one roof, we’ve created a modified one-stop shop under our umbrella.

Better service — Better product — BETTER RESULTS.

Our pitchers pitch, and our shortstops play shortstop.

And we win.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Real Estate Investing, Boise, Real Estate Brokerage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.