9 ways to Fail at Real Estate - a Conversation for a Potential Agent
To succeed in real estate one has to have experience. Experiences are mistakes corrected over time mixed with truth and careful planning.
FAIL 1: Agents pretending to know when they don’t
No one person can know everything about everything. If you are not sure, ask, then verify. What may be truth today, may not be truth tomorrow.
When one pretends to know something about a place or a business at some point the buyer, seller, or potential client will find out. Life is too short and the real estate world is too small to not be upfront, clear, concise, and honest.
FAIL #2: Agents not understanding financing
Financing changes almost daily. Know the elements that make up the parts and pieces of the equations of change.
At the end of the day, financing revolves around leveraging someone’s credit-worthiness together with cash, to pay people to facilitate a loan in purchasing a property over a specific period of time.
As an agent, their PRIMARY job is to be trusted by you. They must be willing to take the time so that you, the buyer has a clear understanding of the whole financing process. If the agent does not understand how to get you financed, get another agent.
FAIL #3: Agents not building relationships, just handing out cards or egos.
Relationships can last from 1 second long to a lifetime. Within real estate one’s role evolves each and every time one communicates with others. It may start the first time one hands a prospective person a business card. It may be someone who found your website or via social media.
As an agent, their responsibility is to nurture each and every customer to make them a client. This is where many fail to follow up with a phone call to see how the other person is doing on a personal level... on a human level.
This responsibility goes further. If an agent only takes on a short term/instant gratification approach by treating the buyer or seller as a one time “deal”, they will have burned bridges now and later.
FAIL #4: Agents not listening
We have been given two ears and one mouth for a reason. The biggest advantage one agent has over another is when one takes time to genuinely care.
Is it possible to truly listen the first time an agent meets a buyer at a house to show? Not really. Not ever.
When the agent and you first meet you are both standing in the middle of a public place, both uneasy, now waiting for the listing agent. The whole experience can turn awkward really quickly.
It is hard for your mind to comprehend these new people in your life (the agents), while trying to figure out a house, while trying to grasp one hundred and one sensibilities, and checklists of what one thinks you want or need.
To listen and thus communicate effectively, there needs to be uninterrupted eye contact, a one-on-one connection from one person to another before ever looking at any houses. The middle of the street or random building is not the place to do that.
When an agent repeats the clients’ needs and desires back to them, it reinforces that need. And oftentimes, that need is expressed as the client wanting someone to listen to them.
FAIL #5: Agents not knowing a client
We are in a time of constant rapid change, of people, cultures, jobs, and businesses. There was a time when cookie cutter “one size fits all” houses worked. Now, however, houses are often more than homes. The home can be part office, entertainment centers, and storage for big boy and girl toys. Does the agent really know what will satisfy your needs and lifestyle?
FAIL #6: Agents allowing anxiety monsters to control their business
How does the agent run their business? Do they operate from the seat of their pants? How do they behave under pressure? Can they stay focused on the objective on hand? Does their experience help them focus when inspections go badly or do they get all bent out of shape? A buyer needs someone that will bend but not break.
FAIL #7: Agents being scared of the unknown
Part of being a human is being afraid. It is our defense mechanism for survival. Surviving the onslaught of buyers, sellers, loan officers, insurance agents and contractors one enters the jungle of surprises around every corner.
To be effective in real estate, an agent must consistently and progressively be unafraid to take on surprises, during inspections, questions, and sudden changes to people or places. You as a buyer have enough to think about.
FAIL #8: Agents unable to manage anxiety
In a time where taking anxiety medication is the norm, most fail to realize the need for these medications is a recent phenomenon for us humans.
We appear to live in a fast food culture of emotions. “Ill have one anxiety attack with a large order of antidepressants” and another side of “I am so surprised that the 30 year old roof was leaking!”
When an agent has a written plan of how they understand the real estate process, the anxiety behavior is unnecessary. They have a plan to work through for that.
FAIL #9: Agents unfamiliar with a neighborhood
We all come in different colors, creeds, and races. We also come in different flavors of income, lifestyles, and living day-to-day. Why then would some people in the real estate world want to not take the time to care about what is the inventory they sell and who is part of that inventory?
If one was selling a house on its own island with only one house you would not need to care about the neighborhood.
For most of us that is not the case. You are buying more than a box made of sticks or bricks with tar paper on the top. You are buying an entire environment both inside and outside of that box.
It is less that people acting as agents are not smart, and more that they do not understand the process. A well-defined sales process that works is based on education and experience with a foundation of trust and clarity.