It's an emotional roller coaster...relax and enjoy the ride

“Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” (Victoria Holt) from the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

Jack went on to say that Victoria Holt was an English Romance Novelist, but she could have come u with the same advice if she was a Realtor®. My experience has been that every deal seems to be full of both good and bad, so every deal is a learning experience.

I often tell newbie agents to be prepared for an emotional roller-coaster ride in every sale, no matter which side you are on. That seems to be especially true when one is engaged in short-sales. I’ve done a number of them this year and every day is like a suspense thriller, with a cliff-hanger ending. It’s not until you walk out of the closing that one can exhale.

This emotional ride used to bother me a lot more than it does now. It hasn’t gotten any better; but, I’ve gotten better at dealing with it. One needs to start by putting these “emergencies” into perspective and go from there. Real estate issues are seldom really at the life or death level. They just seem that way to some.

Sure real estate sales involve big, important decisions and they can’t be taken lightly; but, that don’t have the gravity of real life and death situations. Once you can say to yourself, “You know what, I’ll still be alive tomorrow, if this deal doesn’t work”, you can go on to using whatever problem solving skills you have to attack the issue, instead of wasting time in anxious worry about it. And, you’ll be banking more experience to help you in the future; plus you’ll be freer to enjoy the good parts.

Part of the “new normal?”

I wonder if squirrelly deals are a part of the “new normal” – the pattern that we have settled into as a consequence of the “Great Recession” of 2008-9? It certainly seems and feels like every deal is a little squirrelly these days, a little more difficult, with a few more issues to resolve. Now, admittedly even before the current economic problems real estate transactions were often fraught with opportunities for screw-ups or blow-ups. This is not a profession for the faint of heart; nor for the perfectionist, since it will drive them nuts.

Even though we are required to point out to the clients that we are not lawyers, just lowly Realtors, we write legally binding addendums and amendments to legal contracts on a daily basis. Thought we are not professional arbitrators we arbitrate disagreement and disputes on many contracts. And while we are neither title company employees nor mortgage brokers, we do much of the legwork for both to make sure that deals go through.

I serve as a mentor for several new agents in our office and I always try to help them understand and make sense out of the chaos that is our business. To a great extent is it part of our job to mask as much of that chaos as we can from the clients, working feverishly behind the scenes to make it appear to be a seamless and smooth process. Sometimes you get help from the agent on the other side and sometimes you end up doing the work for both sides, but the client doesn’t need to see any of that. If you can get to the end of closing and have the client say, “Wow, that was easier that I thought it would be” you have done your job well.

These days, that’s getting harder and harder, especially when the deal involves the infamous “third party” that must approve everything. Banks being involved with sales, whether it is a foreclosure or a short sale, throws a whole new monkey wrench into the process and it is one that even both agents in the deal can’t do much about. Having talked to some ex-bank employees who were involved with these things I can better understand that many times they don’t know what they’re doing or don’t have enough people on board to deal with the tsunami of distressed properties that they have to deal with these days. So, rather than add to the solution, many times they just add to the problem.

I certainly hope that this is a temporary thing, but I may have to have a very liberal definition of “temporary”, Unfortunately we seem to be only in the middle of the foreclosure mess, with another wave or two still to come and most economists still predicting no real relief around until 2011 or 2012. So maybe this is a part of the “new normal” for a while to come. Falling home values and their impact upon appraisals also appear will be sticking with us for a while yet.

There are all sorts of secondary fallout that has occurred because of the economic mess. Divorces are up, which has a big impact on our business. Leases and land contracts are up as ex-homeowners who were foreclosed look for places to live. Failed deals are up dramatically as more an more buyers find defects in the homes that they were trying to buy out of foreclosure or more and more homes fail to appraise at agreed upon prices.

The Chinese have the saying “may you live in interesting times”, which many initially took to be a positive statement, but which really is a curse that meant times that are filled with danger and challenges. We certainly are living through interesting times right now. What an interesting time to be a Realtor!

How good is good enought?

“Since nobody’s perfect, how good is good enough?” (Andy Stanley)from the Jack’s Winning Words blog. This is a tough one to call. I tend to be fairly hard on myself when I make mistakes and have a hard time letting others off the hook for their mistakes. In real estate there are so many opportunities for mistakes or something being incomplete that I suppose one could stay mad about it all the time.

So, how good is good enough in real estate? I suppose it would be that if you can get the transaction through the closing, you were good enough. What often happens behind the scenes, if one of the parties isn’t very good at it, is that someone else involved in the transaction picks up whatever piece the not-so-good agent has dropped the ball on and runs with it. Sometimes that means writing an addendum that the other agent should have written or maybe correcting a mistake that the title company people should have caught or pushing on the mortgage guy to get his people moving on the mortgage approval. You basically do whatever is necessary to keep things moving toward and through the closing.

Every now and then I have to go into my manager’s office and ask her to tell me again that it’s OK to make mistakes; that nobody’s perfect. I hate it when that happens, but it is cathartic and hopefully doesn’t happen all that often. The measure that I tend to hold up to others in my “nobody’s perfect” evaluation of them is whether or not they are really making the effort. If they are trying and doing the best that they can, that makes a big difference in the amount of slack that your can cut them. It’s the lazy agent or the truly incompetent agent that I have the hardest time dealing with, and there are certainly those types in the agent mix today.

The worst things I hear back when I’m talking to another agent within a deal is, “I don’t have time for that” or maybe, “that’s not how I do it.” Usually we are discussing some piece of documentation that is either required by state real estate law or which has a material impact on the deal. How can one not have time or just not do important addendums or amendments to a deal? Basically they are just lazy and hope that someone else will do their work for them. These same lazy agents often end up with irate clients at the closing table when the clients see their closing costs for the first time (due to the lazy agent not going over things with them ahead of time). In those cases, I guess they just aren’t good enough.

So how good is good enough? My answer would be that the agents involved were good enough if the closing goes without a hitch, resulting in two happy parties leaving the closing table. That’s a win-win situation, which should be our goal every time. To get to that end, lots of things had to be handled good enough by both agents involved between the signing of the PA and the disbursement of funds to keep the deal together. That’s my answer and I’m stickin’ to it.

Each and every day

“No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.” (Gloria Starr, Business Consultant) from my favorite source for these short quotes – Jack’s Winning Words.
I think I’ve actually used that same quote before or something close to it, but it is always good to reinforce those thoughts.

Last year some time (I don’t exactly remember when), I started wearing a tie everyday to work again. I became know as the “guy in the tie” around the office and several agents asked why I wear it every day, even if I don’t have appointments with clients that day. My retort is that I owe my fellow workers the same level of professional respect as I’m trying to show for my clients. My clients are most often dressed very casually, as is the custom these days, and that’s fine with me. I still choose to project a look of business professionalism, which I hope carries through to how I actually conduct my business.

The “show up” part of that quote above is also important. We have mostly dual-career agents in our office right now, which means that most have other, often full-time jobs. They are doing real estate either as a supplement or with the goal in mind to someday get into it full-time. That’s fine and I wish them well; however, in real estate one must show up, be visible as a Realtor, put in the time as the agent on duty or with clients, in order to be successful. Too many part-timers seem to be of the opinion that putting in a one day a weekend or a few hours here and there will do it for them. It ain’t gonna happen! To pervert an old saying – “If you want to make a dime, you gotta put in the time.”

I would also add to the quote above – “get psyched up”. It’s important to start each day with some little personal motivational exercise that can get you in the right frame of mind for success. Sometimes I forget to do that and I’ll catch myself halfway through the day all down or tired feeling. I need to go back to Go and get myself up for the day. I need to see the challenges of the day as opportunities to excel. I need to see the frustrations for what they are – small blips on the road to success. I need to remind myself of my goals and the goals of my clients and focus upon those, instead of allowing my attention to be diverted by short-term adversities. It’s not always easy to get up and to stay up, but the alternative is a real bummer that I prefer to avoid.

Sportscasters always say about Tiger Woods that one of his biggest advantages on the tour is his ability to get focused and stay focused throughout the round. I try to stay focused upon my real estate business while I have that tie on. There'll be time to relax and enjoy other things when the tie comes off at night. So, if you see the guy in the tie; say hi! You’ll feel better. I’ll feel better. And we’ll both have a great day.