I am frequently asked, “Where is your office?” It’s like the location of my office means something. And to many people, it actually means a lot. It represents, in their minds, the not-so-subtle idea that you are limited to working only a short distance out from the geographical location of your desk.

And so, when asked the “magic” question, my response is always the same: “Where do you WANT it to be?”

Truth is, as a virtual agent, I do have an “office.” After all, our license has to hang somewhere for us to be legit. Although I have a great office in which to work, I’m not interested in “impressing” my clients with the size of the building or the fountain in the foyer. Instead … I meet them where THEY are.

In fact, I’ve discovered that “bringing them home to meet the parents” can raise questions you DON’T want them asking. Such as:

• “How much money does it take to run an operation like this?”
  • “Dang … this Realtor must be bankin’ BIG bucks … wonder if I can hit them up for part of their commission…?”
  • “If they have a building like this in this economy, are they in touch with reality…?”
  • “Why do I have to drive all the way over here when I live in ________?”

Virtual agents have virtual offices. In my “real” office I don’t even have a desk. Don’t want one. My “actual” desk, when meeting with clients, is any available table at the Starbucks closest to where my clients live. Or the table in their existing digs.

Here is why this is critical:

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I am not a top Realtor in my market, nor am I seasoned veteran.  However, I am finally at a point where I understand the business of real estate and its complex, ever challenging nature.  Real estate is not a career for people with limited resources. 

Starting a real estate career is no different than starting a new business.  The main reason that small business start ups fail is lack of proper funding and resources. 

I have looked at the careers of several highly successful agents and have found some common threads. 

Many of them were rooky of the year when they started. 

Most of them had “sponsorship” from someone who was in a position to help them build their success.  By sponsorship I mean that there was a person of influence who could essentially feed them a continuous pool of clients.  It might be a family member who worked at a corporation that was moving employees to the area, a broker in charge who was giving them relocation clients,

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I recently read an article at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) which attempted to link foreclosures and home values. The statistics cited in the article concluded that foreclosures are not affecting home values very much and that there are only a dozen or so states with enough foreclosures to induce price drops of 6 percent or more.

The article made it seem as if this was an insignificant number. I disagree that a 6 percent drop in prices in a dozen states due to foreclosures is insignificant, but, I do agree with the premise of the article to a degree – I was unable to find any real loss of value on the whole that was directly related to foreclosures.

I’m also always skeptical of “national” studies in which home values are cited because they are almost always off. As an example, I recently read an article in Forbes which ranked the most expensive ZIP codes around the country. I found the ZIP code here in Atlanta that was in the report to be off by about 30% according to my local MLS – I’m sure it’s more accurate than their numbers. With that in mind, I thought it might be worthwhile to look at a local level and see if I could determine if foreclosures are affecting local home values. I was unable to see that there was a discernable price drop, be it direct or indirect, of home values due to foreclosures.

The methodology I used was to take an area of Atlanta and looked at sales data quarter by quarter with and then without the foreclosures as a baseline from Q1 and Q2 of 2007 and 2008. There was no discernable difference in home values, but, there really weren’t enough closed foreclosures to make much of a difference anyway. That said, what I did find, did not support the idea that foreclosures are bringing down the rest of the neighborhood. So, the next thing that I did was

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I had a conversation with a new client for about 20 minutes on the phone the other night and about half way through he revealed to me that he has been looking at houses for the last 6 months, but, could not understand why real estate agents would stop contacting him after showing several homes.

Three agents had the opportunity to sell this buyer a home and would have, except they did not want to show him more than 10 houses to make it happen.

Perplexed? Amazed?

Really, I’m still not sure what I feel after having this conversation, but, one thing I did know was that I was going to find him a home and close the transaction. In a time where many real estate professionals are struggling to make ends meet, I simply cannot understand the mentality that many agents have.

Maybe it’s the water that we can drink at the cooler in the office or maybe many agents are simply demoralized after looking at their shrinking bank accounts and rising credit card balances. Either way, once we get an opportunity to work with a pre-qualified buyer who will buy a home, we need to make it happen.

Maybe the difference for some agents and teams who are successful today is that they seize the opportunity when presented while others just want things to fall in their lap – unwilling to work hard enough to make a deal happen.

If I could just offer a simple recommendation in what is generally a tough real estate market: seize every opportunity presented. Do whatever it takes.

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We have close friends who have moved in and out of real estate investments very profitably over the past few years—and it was not unusual for them to be holding several properties at once. Good friends they are, but they never took our advice about mortgage financing.

Instead, they always used some loan hack who never returned phone calls, was late on all commitments, but somehow managed to get the loan funded—several days late. According to our friends, he could “get any loan funded.” And he did.

This hack has relocated from the Los Angeles area to San Diego and is now one of those non-responsive real estate phantoms who list foreclosures.

It’s deja vu all over again.

It absolutely baffles me that the very folk who helped create this mess are now being rewarded by the lenders they duped. I am amazed at the number of listing agents who are also former loan brokers and wonder how this came to be.

And like Brian Brady and other concerned real estate professionals, I believe that separate licensing should be required of mortgage originators and real estate agents—and that banks and lenders should be vetting their foreclosure representatives more closely.

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Last week we kicked off the Lives of the Realtors series. So far we have heard from two amazing individuals, Ryan Ward and Mitch Ribak.

Later this week we will be publishing the past life of Phoenix Real Estate Guy, Jay Thompson.

Jay has had an interesting background prior to becoming a successful Realtor and one of the country’s top bloggers.

We will also be launching a new series about Realtors – A Day in the Life.
In the new series we will ask Realtors to talk about their current day to day practices, business philosophies, work habits, office set up and other daily items that make up a Realtors’ life.

Stay tuned, better yet, subscribe to the HomeGain Real Estate Blog.

Louis Cammarosano

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