Friday, September 11, 2009

Recruiting those not looking for Money

I have recently decided to start recruiting agents. I have met a few who have indicated interest since. One of my requirement of them is that they are not in it for the money. That's a difficult ask I know but I have seen too many agents doing things they should not just because they are blinded by money. My aim is to create a team that will uphold what I wanted to see in agents when I was dealing with them in the capacity of a buyer/seller/leasee/lessor: that they work on my needs first not theirs.

I recently was having coffee with a client. He recounted the agents that he worked with before and how they don't listen to what he wanted and hasten him to conclude. I certainly wouldn't want my team members to figure in that list of agent.

Boom Town Bala

Yes I do know what the last word was meant to be but I just wanted to reflect on a recent deal that I closed; it belonged to an Indian family.

I have marketed this unit for some time now but it was not until recently that there were more buyers in the market willing to pay the cash over valuation expected. We had 3 interested parties bidding for the unit. To my customer, it was a happy problem. To me, it was a difficult situation as we never intended it to be a price war. When the negotiation ended, my customer walked away with over 30K cash over valuation.

The current market is an interesting one. No one seems to remember the economic uncertainty we had (should it be past tense at all?), good news are a plenty, lots of pent up demand from buyers and coupled that with sellers holding back and therefore a lack of supply in the market; all just acting to push prices up.