Real Estate Investment Brokers — Not Many of Us
Posted @ 9:11 am - Filed under 1031 Exchanges, Capital Growth, Cash Flow, Depreciation, EIUL, IRS, RE investment strategies, San Diego Property Owners
Sorry for not posting yesterday, as the day got away from me. Between takin’ care of Mom’s needed visits to her eye surgeon (recent cataract removal/lens implant) and attending what’s known as a real estate ‘barcamp’, my day began at 6 AM and ended at 9 PM when I finally landed back home. The checkup couldn’t have gone better, as Mom’s eye, sans blinders plus the newly installed custom designed lens has reopened the world she used to know. Still can’t believe she was driving, but that’s another story. Geez.
A barcamp is a gathering of experts, in this case real estate related. TechnoGeeks talk about the web, design, various marketing techniques and the like. Brokers/agents do the same but for real estate in general. Blogging is, of course, a hot topic. Contrary to what you might think, only about 2-4% of the agent population blogs or has an active website worthy of the name. When it comes to technology, most in my industry haven’t moved beyond about 1990’s or so.
I was lucky enough to speak to one of a truly rare species, a real estate agent with over 20 years experience who’s also literally a world class web/marketing expert. (He’ll remain anonymous here, as he likes to keep his ‘web side’ under the radar.) We’ve been friends online for quite awhile, but hadn’t met personally ’till yesterday. Though we talked for literally over two hours in which I learned more than my little brain could possibly absorb, it was one comment he made that stopped me in my tracks.
He said he’d been following me for quite some time, while searching the country for others that do what I do. He told me he couldn’t find one who does what I do, or if they did, hadn’t nearly the knowledge/expertise/experience and ability to apply. He continued, saying in five minutes I’d already told him several things about tax deferred exchanges, depreciation, IRS rules, and general real estate investment strategies he never knew about, and he’d been in an active agent for over 20 years. I was very appreciative of the compliment, but initially doubted his conclusion, whereupon he challenged me to name somebody who does what I do.
I named a few, but to be honest, they either lack depth of specific investment training, years of experience in application, or it’s in addition to listing and selling homes for a living.
He then countered with the fact that though he believed there were probably a few hundred in the country who do what I do daily, as bona fide specialists, experts if you will. But his point was that they refuse to deal with what’s essentially the profile of 80% of my clientele — what I’ve always called Regular Folk.
They have no desire to deal with either ‘Newbie Investors’ or those who can’t buy at least $1Mil properties or better — much better. I’ve found this to be true every place I’ve visited, but it never dawned on me what it really meant — that most folks end up relying on brokers/agents who mean well, but simply don’t know many if not most of the information needed to give world class quality advice. Why is that? It’s pretty simple — they can’t know the answers to questions they don’t even know to ask. Yet they’re still doing their best to help their ‘house clients’ with their investments.
How crazy is that?
I began thinking back to all the regions in which I’ve led seminars, spoken at conferences, been on panels, or simply done business. The #1 most repeated comment I heard from people was that I was the first person they’d ever met who seemed to know which way was north on the map so to speak. That always puzzled me cuz every one of those places had real estate investment brokerages with very qualified, experienced agents. But as mentioned earlier, if you’re either just starting out, or own only small properties, they consider you pretty much a bad investment time wise.
I’ll be talking with this rare ‘double expert’ much more now. I’m eager to hear what he has to say. There’s also a huge plus in talking with him as he loves baseball and his daughter is a stud athlete.
If you’re tired of wondering what to do, and/or wondering ‘what happened’, it makes sense to email me, or better yet, call me. I’m at 619 889-7100. Have a great weekend.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 9:11 am and is filed under 1031 Exchanges, Capital Growth, Cash Flow, Depreciation, EIUL, IRS, RE investment strategies, San Diego Property Owners. 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.
