Real Estate Consultants usually work at their hardest with a new client who has never bought a home before and with whom there is no previous relationship of trust. From my experience, most serious buyers and sellers review news data and use it to temper their decisions. Then they buy or sell regardless of the data and according to their personal wants and needs. This translates into allowing news data to help time their actions but rarely prevents them from accomplishing their goals.
Today we hear a great deal of negative information in the newspapers and on tv about our industry, about foreclosures, sub-prime loan problems ad nauseum. They represent data culled by "experts" most of whom have never sold a home in their lives. Sometimes I feel I could pick out their conclusions according to their author before I read their "data".
My challenge is often one of educating potential home buyers and sellers to the local market data and weening them away from generalized news data that often does not pertain to our local market. If I can help someone see immediate advantages, money saving opportunities and the fulfillment of their family dreams - to lead them through the fog of news misinformation, I feel I have done my job.
We are at our best when we serve our individual clients needs. We might be compared to tailors. You buy a suit or dress and we make it fit. Larger statistics are very subjective and prone to the writers point of view. I think you can sometimes tell a newspaper by the tone of its editorial. I have a science background myself and I do understand the importance of data, but when you focus on a specific market, the sharper you cut, the more you must qualify your results. Smaller markets act differently from larger markets. There is a science to statistical analysis, but many authors have a tendency to salt their large market data with smaller market characteristics. That’s like buying a suit off the rack at Target, tailoring one leg and calling it a tailored suit. It is, but it isn’t, and it looks pretty silly.
Some trends are easy to recognize and warn people about. The fall of hard money lenders and the subsequent tightening of lender standards. It’s easy to see day to day interest rate changes and catch short term trends. However, our current market is going through some very fundamental changes. Between falling home prices, tightening credit standards, the utter failure of the hard money lenders and uncertain interest rates, things are really changing from a few months ago. How long will interest rates continue upward? They just started trending upwards a few months ago, now they are easing back again. Conforming loans are having a significant impact on the cost of a home loan. Still, we have buyers waiting for homes to fall in price before they will committ to finding a new home. They simply do not understand the cost of a home is the cost of 2 things – the house itself and the mortgage for that home. They both have a price. Right now the cost of a mortgage is having a huge impact on monthly payments. Much more than the falling price of homes. I have tried to warn every one of my clients about this situation, I have even widely circulated an email article about this phenomenon, but it seems that few people recognize the danger.
As a Real Estate Consultant my job is to make people’s dreams come true. I work very hard to find the right home for each of my clients. Selling a home is a real challenge and often the marketing can be costly for realtors. I am totally committed to doing the best job I can for everyone I represent during the escrow process which follows. That is where the true value of my work is really felt. Most home buyers and sellers haven’t a clue of all the difficulties and complications that must be sorted through for an escrow to be successful. We have a list of 88 specific emergencies that can jeopardize an escrow and terminate a clients dreams for home ownership. We train hard to learn to recognize, plan for, and avoid these difficulties.
There are many excellent Realtors and Real Estate Consultants who feel the same way I do about putting our clients needs before our own. That usually translates into added marketing expense, time and effort to pave the road so my clients make their trip to home ownership or sales on a smooth comfortable roadway.
I specialize in looking for micro trends. I must know specific neighborhoods, and know how to find the data on any home and neighborhood. I will never suggest a sales price for a home seller or purchase price for a home buyer, without personally doing a Comparative Market Analysis for that specific home. If you ask me specific questions about a specific neighborhood, I can find you good data. If you ask me general questions about a town of 180,000 people, with various wildly different neighborhoods, my data will generalize. Does that make sense? I think if you would have asked me for price trend data in December of 2005, I would have shown you a very steep upwards curve that had already lasted several years. A buyer or seller would (and often did) make very critical decisions about their life savings that only a few months later proved to be very unfortunate. We have seen people as late as six months ago who still thought their home was on that same home value curve. People made very expensive decisions based on real but invalid trends. They were invalid because they were long term trends in a volatile market. Now we see all the foreclosures, all the bankruptcies and short sales.
Real Estate is as much to do with emotions, relationships and wants as it is about data. We must learn our clients personal needs and match them with the home market data. I can only find the right home if I take the time to get to know my clients. During consultations, we must go in depth to find motivations for buying a home. It is not unusual for a husband and wife to look at each other and remark that they were surprised at the answers the other gave.
If my clients are clear on their needs and expectations, I will be most likely successful in helping them. I will make sure the suit fits perfectly.That is when data for that specific home or neighborhood or loan program can become extremely relevant. On the other hand, a home must “feel right”. It can match the search criteria exactly, but if it does not “feel right” to my clients, they usually will not buy it. That is where knowing my clients “wants” is going to save us both a lot of time & effort. This is often very personal information and requires a great deal of mutual trust.
I want your business in the future. I will only have your business if your experience with me is beyond your expectations. I must protect your best interests by attending to over 100 pages of contractual details, negotiate and minimize your expenses, diligently consult with you to eliminate your frustrations and produce extraordinary results. If you are not outrageously happy with the level of my service to you, I will never see you again. Period. That is why I must temper data with your wants and needs. When you bring me your life savings and ask for my help, I intend to give you my very best.
For more commentaries and market surveys, you are invited to visit my website blog at http://www.markthorngren.com
Warmest Regards,
Mark Thorngren
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