I was at the San Francisco Association of REALTORS® installation dinner last night where Barbara Corcoran was the main speaker. If you haven’t had a chance to see her speak, I highly recommend you do so. I would have loved to work for her and learn everything she knows. It’s not everyday that you meet someone like Barbara, who builds a real estate business from nothing to a company that owns the New York real estate market, and then sells it to NRT for some ungodly amount of money. Since then she has written several books on how she grew her company, which I highly recommend you buy and read from cover to cover at least five times. If you’re having trouble finding inspiration or direction in your company, or life for that matter, this is the book to fix it.
During her speech last night, she posed a question to the audience that caused complete silence. It was this: “When has there been a time in the real estate industry where money is cheap to borrow and prices of homes are also cheap?” She had a really good point… because history shows that usually those two combinations aren’t in line like they are now. She went on to say that Realtors need to be doing a much better job of articulating this to buyers. Use graphs, charts, retrieve past history of records to show it, but do whatever it takes to get buyers off the fence and realize that now is actually the best time to buy real estate. Think about it… buyers waiting on the fence are making a huge mistake because when these two factors are not in line, they will be priced out of the market. Either prices go up, or interest rates go up. And inevitably, one of these two things will occur. Our entire industry has become mute in the world, dominated by mass media and negativity, and we have got to do everything possible to flood the market with knowledge they need to be hearing. The beautiful part is that you don’t have to sell someone; rather, simply educate them. If you do the math, it all makes sense. So, ask yourself this question… What have I done this week to help buyers realize these two factors are not always going to be the same?
James Dwiggins
Chief Strategy Officer
Jamesd@rwnc.net
