Getting educated by the market

From the Jack’s Winning Words Blog come this little gem - “There’s no education like adversity.” (Disraeli). Well, if Disraeli were a Realtor today he’d have earned a PhD by now. From the sames source, Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, put it a different way - “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think that they can’t lose.”

I guess Realtors are all getting a free education in the current market. Just think of all of the things that we’ve all learned about foreclosures and short sales; things that most of us probably thought we just didn’t need to know before this market downturn. And how many of us regularly dealt with HUD sales or even FHA and VA sales before the current crisis? How well-versed were we on Sheriff’s Sales and redemption periods or on helping to write hardship letters to lenders? How many of us had ever negotiated with a second mortgage holder to accept a partial payment on a short sale? Were we equipped to advise clients on buying houses that had been stripped or damaged by vandals or used as crack houses? Did we know how to look for the signs of real estate fraud and other sleazy practices?

I suspect that the answers to most of the questions above would be that we didn’t really have to know about any of those things before the current real estate crisis and recession hit. We were likely all fat, dumb and happy with success in the “normal” real estate market. Now, like a character out of some Charles Dickens novel, we’ve been thrust out on the street to fend for ourselves in a strange world full of empty, foreclosed houses, shady operators and new organizations and new rules, which many times are made up by each individual lender.

While most of us have found ways to cope with the new world of real estate, many have found it to be too confusing and too complex and have exited the business. New agents, who have never experienced a normal, balanced market in a normal, non-recessionary market, are learning the business under a worst-case scenario, but will likely be better equipped than most old-times to role with future market changes – assuming that they stay in the business that long. I only hope that they don’t see the temporary success of some of the sleazy operators on the fringe of the business as role models for their careers.

It’s hard sometimes to explain to the new people how things should be done (or would be done) in more normal real estate deals. This is, after all, the “new normal” that we are living through right now. There’s another old saying that probably applies to our current environment – “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Those who survive the “Great Recession” will be some of the smartest and strongest Realtors ever.