Starting the March in This Market?
“Welcome to our world of real estate,” our associate broker said after telling us that the metro Atlanta area had 6,000 foreclosed homes sold on the courthouse steps last Tuesday. What a market to begin your real estate career in! Well, fortunately, as Lesley has pointed out every time someone asks us about the market, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are plenty of people who are selling their homes not under the gun of their financial institution. There are buyers who realize what an opportunity there is in this market to get that dream home they have always wanted either through getting a good value and saving or by stretching it to get that “next” level of house.
Everyone told me I was crazy to start a career in this market. It’s hard to really freak out when we are busier than we have ever been. It’s one of the solaces I took when I made the jump to real estate after spending the last 8 years with the same company serving as a sales person, a manager, and finally a Vice President. So, what is the difference? How are you successful in this market? You have to do something different, right? No, not really. You focus on the only thing you can control, your service. Now, this is not to say that in a good market that your service stinks, only that service is the one characteristic that most homesellers and homebuyers look for in an agent and really one of the easiest things for an agent to control. In real estate, there’s not a lot that agents have control over. Many agents go into panic mode in this market. Our job is still the same no matter the market. We talk about over servicing and over delivering a lot, but what the heck is that?!? Treating every client as if it were our only one. Listening. Understanding. That’s why you’ll see that we go a little deeper on first consultations. Forgive us if we want to know why you want the 5 bedrooms versus the 4 bedrooms or why it’s important for you to have that open kitchen you’ve always dreamed of. We want to identify your needs, whether it be buying or selling, and help you get those needs and then some because we understand how and why they are important to you. Your need may be to get a comparitive market analysis on your neighborhood, which we do a lot by the way. Oftentimes we will provide the CMA and throw in an analysis on your area’s school system or local articles relative to your neighborhood just as a way of saying thanks for remembering us.
I’m excited to be on board, overservicing. Yes, even in this market.
-Andy Peters
