Mike Browning

Tag: Honest Realtor

  • The Gap Between Stories

    The Gap Between Stories

    You’re almost never 100% right. Or wrong.

    Most people in a conflict become very, very good at one thing.

    Their version.

    I’ve watched it happen enough times to recognize the pattern early. Someone gets into a dispute, and immediately everyone assembles their case. The evidence. The timeline. Getting to others first, so they can get you on their side. They can tell you exactly what happened and exactly why the other person is wrong, and they’ve told it so many times it has the smooth, rehearsed quality of something that stopped being examined a while ago.

    What they usually can’t do is explain the other side.

    Not a real version of it anyway. Not the version the other person might actually recognize. They can do a kind of highlight-reel caricature where the other person comes off as selfish or unreasonable or oblivious, but that’s not the same thing. That’s just their own story with a different character labeled.

    Chris Voss has a line I keep coming back to. There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth. Most people spend their whole lives defending the first one.

    People forget to consider what that costs.

    It costs resolution, obviously. But it also costs information. If you can’t articulate the other person’s position in a way they’d agree with, you’re not negotiating with them. You’re negotiating with your idea of them, which is almost always a worse version than the actual person. Easier to dismiss. Easier to be right about.

    I’ve seen this play out many times where both sides are so committed to their read on what’s fair that they let something genuinely good fall apart. One side thinks the other is greedy. The other finds the offer insulting. Neither one has sat with the question of what the other person actually needs and why. The gap between the two stories is where the deal lives, but a lot of times nobody goes there.

    It shows up everywhere. Families. Business partnerships. Long friendships that quietly go cold.

    The test Voss suggests is a good one. Can you make the other person’s case as well as they could? Not a version that secretly makes you look reasonable by comparison. The real one, with their actual concerns and their actual logic and the parts of their position that, if you’re honest, have some merit.

    Most people can’t do it. Which means most people are still negotiating with their own story instead of with the situation in front of them.

    That’s not a moral failing. It’s just expensive.

    PS- Most landowners aren’t planning to sell today.

    But when the time comes, the people who already have a clear read on the market tend to make better decisions. That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details affecting value that aren’t obvious from the road.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Get Yours Here

    PPS -If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

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  • You Did All That Without Visiting the Property?

    You Did All That Without Visiting the Property?

    It can’t all be done from afar, but a lot of it can if you know what you’re doing.

    I recently did a Land Reality Check for someone in Alvarado.

    I was up front when I sent it. The property was a couple hours away so I hadn’t actually been there. What he was getting was what I call a desk valuation.

    So I did what I could from here. Pulled comparable sales, looked at competing listings, checked aerial imagery, topography, floodplain data, road access, utility providers, ownership history, and what’s been developing in the surrounding area. Put it together into a pretty good picture of both the property and the market around it.

    When I asked what surprised him most, he said it was how much data I’d been able to pull without ever setting foot on the ground.

    Here’s the thing about land. A lot of what drives value isn’t on the property. It’s around it. Who’s been buying nearby. What they’ve been paying. How much competing inventory is sitting on the market. Where the development pressure is coming from, if any. What infrastructure exists in the corridor.

    None of that requires walking the dirt. It requires understanding what’s happening in the market.

    Of course, site visits matter. There are things you won’t know until you’re there. If we get a little further along and he’s considering selling, I’ll get out there. And it could change things some if there are things I couldn’t see from hours away. A neighbor situation. A drainage problem. A view that the aerials don’t capture. A transmission line sitting just outside the frame. When talking about selling a million dollar property, you need to see it obviously.

    But the assumption that useful information only comes from physically visiting a property, that one’s not right. In a lot of cases, the most important questions get answered before anyone starts the truck.

    Which is part of why the Land Reality Check works for people who aren’t ready to sell. He is thinking about maybe selling, but not immediately. The report was still useful. He wanted to understand what he owned, what the market around it looked like, whether anything had changed.

    That’s a reasonable thing to want to know. And it’s easy to get.

    PS- Most landowners aren’t planning to sell today.

    But things can change quickly. When the time comes, the people who already understand the market tend to make better decisions.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details affecting value that aren’t obvious from the road.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Check It Out Here

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • Things Change. That’s Not the Problem.

    Things Change. That’s Not the Problem.

    The schedule changed. Nobody called.

    My daughter started her first job recently. Retail. Big store.

    She’s a couple weeks in. Shows up on time, good attitude, does what she’s asked. In retail, that combination already puts you ahead of a significant portion of the workforce. The industry runs around 60% annual turnover. No-call-no-shows are a daily problem for store managers. Someone who just reliably shows up is one less thing to worry about.

    Which means they’ll notice. And eventually they’ll start asking more of her. She’s already getting way more hours than she initially expected. That’s fine. That’s how it works. You accommodate when you can, especially when you’re new. You never know who’s watching or where people end up. I have clients who’ve hired six-figure salespeople out of fast food drive-thrus because someone made an impression.

    But there’s a line.

    She has a friend leaving the country. Going away party scheduled around my daughter’s work schedule. She was off at 4, plenty of time. Except she looked back at the schedule and her shift had been moved. Hours later. Nobody asked. Nobody called. It was just different.

    That’s not a scheduling issue. That’s a respect issue.

    She was upset. I was able to talk her through how to approach it and she got things switched back. The boss said the only reason she changed it was that my daughter had written “open to any hours” on her application. Which is true. But a reasonable person knows that if you’re scheduled off, you’re not just sitting around waiting to work. You’re living your life. Sometimes a change is no big deal. Sometimes it’s a huge deal.

    Things change. The market moves. A buyer falls through. A timeline shifts. I’ve seen deals that looked simple get complicated fast and complicated ones come together out of nowhere. That’s just how it works and there’s no point pretending otherwise.

    But there’s a difference between things changing and someone changing things on you without a conversation.

    If something shifts that affects your timeline, your plans, what you thought was going to happen, you’re going to hear it from me first. Not after the fact. Not when it’s already done. You’re not going to look at the schedule one day and find out it’s been changed.

    You control this. That part doesn’t move.

    I can’t promise everything goes according to plan. Nobody can. What I can promise is that you’re never going to feel like you woke up and someone had already decided something for you.

    PS – Most landowners aren’t planning to sell today.

    But things can change quickly. When the time comes, the people who already understand the market tend to make better decisions.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details affecting value that aren’t obvious from the road.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Get Yours Here

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • Not Ready to Sell?

    Not Ready to Sell?

    Good. Look Anyway.

    Most landowners aren’t thinking about selling. If anything, they’re thinking they never will.

    They’re at a 1 or a 2 on a 10-point scale. If that.

    But life comes at you fast. Kids going to college. Estate planning conversations you weren’t expecting. Something happening nearby that changes how you feel about owning land there. We’re seeing that a lot right now, data centers, crypto mining operations moving into rural areas. Things that weren’t on anyone’s radar two years ago.

    You can go from “I’m never selling” to “I wish I’d sold last year” faster than you’d think.

    So it’s worth having a baseline. Most people agree with that in theory. Most people still won’t do it.

    Because the last time they asked a question like this, they ended up in a conversation moving faster than they wanted to move. Some agent walking the property, running numbers, and applying list-now pressure that would make a timeshare salesman blush.

    It’s uncomfortable.

    So they wait. Market shifts. They finally get serious two years later with worse information than they would have had if they’d just asked the question when they first had it.

    That’s an expensive way to stay comfortable.

    The landowners who make good decisions are almost never the ones who acted fast. They’re the ones who started paying attention early. Understood the market before they needed to. Weren’t scrambling when the time came.

    That takes time. And it starts before you’re ready.

    Looking doesn’t mean selling. Getting a clear picture of what your land is worth, what’s selling nearby, where development pressure is headed, none of that commits you to anything. It just means you’re not guessing when it matters.

    The only thing that makes early conversations uncomfortable is working with someone who treats them like a sales call.

    That’s not how I operate. If you’re at a 3, I’d rather you know where things stand than stay in the dark because you were worried I’d push you somewhere you weren’t ready to go.

    You control the timeline. That part is on you.

    My job is simply to make sure you have the information when you’re ready to use it.

    PS – Most landowners aren’t planning to sell today.

    But things can change quickly. When the time comes, the people who already understand the market tend to make better decisions.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details affecting value that aren’t obvious from the road.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Get Yours Here

    PPS– If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • What Matters a Lot More Than Why

    What Matters a Lot More Than Why

    The why is mostly a guess anyway.

    Most people who get stuck spend too much time on why instead of just noticing what and operating accordingly.

    The why is hard to know. When you’re dealing with people it’s especially hard, because sometimes they don’t want you to know what they were thinking, so they don’t tell you. Other times they aren’t hiding anything but you still don’t get accurate information. A lot of the time people do things for reasons buried in their subconscious that they may not even be aware of. When they tell you why they did something they aren’t lying, but it’s also not accurate.

    I was reading something this week about a company selling a business opportunity. They held seminars in various towns and tried to convert interested attendees into buyers.

    They were doing well, but things got much better when someone on the team asked a simple question: what do the buyers who say yes 99% of the time have in common?

    Turned out to be middle-aged married men with crew cuts.

    Why? Nobody knew. The company’s answer was: who cares?

    Instead of trying to figure it out, they sent people ahead of their seminars to visit local barbershops and pay them for contact info on customers who got crew cuts.

    This was decades ago, so it wasn’t as creepy-sounding as it might be today. Though I always find it interesting that the people most vocal about privacy are also the ones who hand all their information to social media for free, where it gets sold in basically the same way.

    Anyway.

    When I do a Land Reality Check for someone, what you’re going to get is what has been happening, with a lot less focus on why. Because that’s what we can actually know, and it’s what helps you decide what to do next.

    That doesn’t mean there’s no explanation at all. If you own a custom home lot, that market has been slow since interest rates rose a couple of years ago. Higher rates mean higher costs. Higher costs mean fewer buyers, other things being equal. That’s a partial why.

    But I’m not getting into what caused rates to go up, when they might come down, or whether the Fed is doing a good job. That’s someone else’s job and you can find that content anywhere.

    What’s been happening is what matters. The rest is mostly guessing dressed up as analysis.

    PS- Most landowners aren’t planning to sell today. But things change, and when they do, the people who already understand their market tend to make better decisions.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details that affect value but aren’t obvious from the road.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Get It Here

    PPS -If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but like reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • Why Good Agents Ignore Most Portal Leads

    Why Good Agents Ignore Most Portal Leads

    Usually it’s in self defense…

    “Can you send me more information?”

    If you sell real estate long enough, you’ll get that message over and over.

    Usually it comes through one of the big portal sites.

    The first time I got one, Looked legitimate enough, and it was on a fairly large listing so of course I was excited.

    They wrote in a reasonably normal way and seemed interested in the property. I sent the information they requested.

    A few minutes later they responded that they were out of town and would like to schedule a Zoom call with their spouse.

    Still sounded reasonable to me, then came the link. Luckily my antivirus software had a stronger opinion about that link than I did.

    The whole thing was a scam.

    Since then I’ve seen it repeatedly.

    For whatever reason, most of mine seemed to come through a certain brokerage company’s website. I don’t blame them for it too much. It’s probably not something they can really stop, short of not showing properties on their website and having links for info.

    Once you’ve seen it a few times, you recognize the pattern pretty quickly.

    Today I got another one.

    This time it came through one of the big portals. I’d name them, but I really don’t want to hear from a lawyer.

    The message asked for additional information. I sent it. A few minutes later came the request for a Zoom call.

    At that point I already knew where the conversation was headed.

    Goodbye.

    The interesting part isn’t the scam itself.

    The interesting part is what happens when agents get flooded with junk inquiries.

    Consumers assume every inquiry is treated equally. It isn’t.

    After you’ve spent enough time sorting through spam, scammers, tire kickers, people gathering information, and people who accidentally clicked a button, you stop getting excited every time a portal notification arrives.

    You become skeptical.

    That’s not because you don’t want buyers.

    It’s because most of the signals turn out not to be real.

    The portal I mentioned above has managed to create a different problem too.

    I’ve had people call me angry because I supposedly wouldn’t stop calling them. The only problem was that I had never called them in the first place. Somewhere along the line their system apparently glitched and attached my information to something it shouldn’t have. The person was frustrated. I was confused. Neither of us knew what was going on.

    That’s what happens when technology gets between people.

    Everybody assumes the system is working. But sometimes it isn’t.

    If you’re wondering why an agent isn’t responding to your inquiry through a portal site, this may be part of the reason.

    Pick up the phone and call them. Or send an email directly. You’ll have a lot more luck.

    Do something that looks like a real person trying to have a real conversation.

    And if you’re a seller wondering why your agent isn’t sitting by the computer refreshing portal inquiries all day, this is part of the answer too.

    Most experienced agents have learned that quantity and quality are not the same thing.

    A hundred notifications can still be worth absolutely nothing.

    PS- Most landowners are not planning to sell today.

    But markets change. Development pressure changes. Buyer demand changes too.

    The people who make the best decisions usually aren’t the ones scrambling to learn everything at the last minute. They’re the ones who already have a pretty good idea of what’s happening around them.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.

    It looks at nearby sales, competing properties, market activity, and the factors affecting value that are easy to miss if you don’t spend much time in the land business.

    You don’t have to do anything with the information.

    But is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Check It Out Here.

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, negotiation, markets, and how business actually works in the real world, you can sign up below and get future posts in your inbox.

    No hype.

    No sales funnel.

    Just new posts when I write them.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • AI Won’t Save You

    AI Won’t Save You

    But it might make talented people even more dangerous.

    When talking about AI, people tend to act like it affects everyone equally.

    I don’t think that’s true.

    Look back to the steroid era in baseball. A lot of people talked as though steroids turned ordinary players into superstars. As if anyone could take a few injections and suddenly start hitting fifty home runs.

    That wasn’t really what happened.

    You still had to be able to hit a baseball. And that’s a skill most people never come close to mastering.

    The player who couldn’t hit before steroids? He couldn’t hit afterward either. The player with mediocre talent and a mediocre work ethic didn’t magically become great.

    What steroids did was amplify what was already there.

    Most people focus on the added strength. The home runs. The highlights. But the bigger advantage was recovery. A player could train harder and more often. He could deal with nagging injuries better. He could stay closer to his peak performance over a long season.

    The biggest gains went to the people who already had talent and were already willing to work. Those so keen on getting an edge they’d keep at it even after it became illegal.

    A decent player might become a good player. A good player might become a star. A star might become an all-time great. Later disgraced to hear some tell it, but at the time it was amazing to watch.

    AI is a lot like this.

    The person who doesn’t understand land values today isn’t suddenly going to understand land values because AI exists. The person who has poor judgment isn’t going to develop good judgment because a machine gives them answers.

    In some cases, the opposite may happen.

    As I said last week, there are really two groups using AI right now.

    One group is using it as an escape hatch. They don’t want to do the work, learn the subject, or develop the expertise. They want the answer without the process.

    That works right up until the machine gives them a bad answer.

    Then they’re stuck, because they never learned enough to recognize the mistake.

    The other group is still doing the work. They’re still learning, still analyzing, and still making the decisions. AI simply helps them move faster. It helps organize information, challenge assumptions, and automate things that used to consume more time than they were worth.

    That’s how I use it.

    When I’m working on a Land Reality Check, AI isn’t determining value. It isn’t selecting comparable sales. It isn’t deciding what matters and what doesn’t.

    I’m doing those things. Because I’m responsible for the answer. But because I can do things faster, I improve more quickly.

    People predicting AI will make everyone equally capable are missing something.

    The people using it to avoid thinking are going to get worse, and those using it to enhance their thinking are going to get better.

    And the gap is likely to grow a lot faster than most people expect.

    PS – Most landowners are not planning to sell today.

    But markets change. Development pressure changes. Buyer demand changes too.

    The people who make the best decisions usually aren’t the ones scrambling to learn everything at the last minute. They’re the ones who already have a pretty good idea of what’s happening around them.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.

    It looks at nearby sales, competing properties, market activity, and the factors affecting value that are easy to miss if you don’t spend much time in the land business.

    You don’t have to do anything with the information.

    But is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Check It Out Here.

    PPS – If you’re not ready for a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, negotiation, markets, and how business actually works in the real world, you can sign up below and get future posts in your inbox.

    No hype.

    No sales funnel.

    Just new posts when I write them.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • You Can Use It, But Be Careful Not To Lose It

    You Can Use It, But Be Careful Not To Lose It

    Don’t let a tool become your boss.

    On Wednesday I wrote about how someone can sound pretty smart to people who know less than they do. At least until an actual expert walks into the room.

    Most of the time it’s harmless, or close enough for government work. Nobody is really acting on what these people are saying, so a little error doesn’t matter much.

    But if they did act on it, things could get expensive.

    There’s a term for it: knowing just enough to be dangerous.

    It’s hard to go anywhere today without hearing somebody talk about AI.

    Depending on who you ask, AI is either going to make everyone rich, put everyone out of work, or both.

    I don’t know.

    But it’s obviously making the “knowing just enough to be dangerous” problem worse.

    This week Dan Kennedy mentioned a commercial real estate investor who was bragging that he had delegated all the due diligence on a deal to AI and got an answer in eight and a half minutes.

    The investor thought this was wonderful.

    Kennedy’s response was simple:

    “Have you ever done the same analysis yourself and compared the two?”

    That’s the right question.

    Because there are really two kinds of people using AI right now.

    The first group is using it to avoid doing the work.

    Those people are headed for trouble, and you should avoid doing business with them if you notice it.

    Not because AI is always wrong. It’s not.

    But because they have no reliable way to know when it’s wrong.

    And if they keep relying on it, eventually they won’t know how to do the work without it.

    Think about navigation in your car. Most people can still get around, but they’re not nearly as good at it as they used to be. The skill slowly deteriorates because they stopped using it.

    The same thing can happen with analysis, writing, valuation, negotiation, or anything else.

    If you’re not careful, before long you’re no longer using the tool. The tool is using you.

    You’re just accepting answers instead of evaluating them.

    It won’t bite you every time.

    But it doesn’t have to.

    The people getting the most value from AI tend to use it differently.

    They’re still doing the thinking.

    They’re still forming opinions.

    They’re still responsible for the answer.

    I use AI for things. I’d be crazy not to.

    But I’m using it to enhance and accelerate what I was already doing, not as an easy button like on the commercials.

    I’m able to create better reports and information for people, much faster than I could a year ago.

    Not because the AI is doing the work.

    Because I’m still doing the work.

    It helps organize information. It can challenge assumptions. Sometimes it points out something I missed. Sometimes it’s right. Other times I tell it to shove off.

    But it isn’t making the decision.

    I am.

    There’s a difference between using a tool to augment what you’re doing and letting the tool do all the work.

    Right now those two people can look very similar.

    Give it a few years.

    They won’t.

    PS – Most landowners are not planning to sell today.

    But markets change. Development pressure changes. Buyer demand changes too.

    The people who make the best decisions usually aren’t the ones scrambling to learn everything at the last minute. They’re the ones who already have a pretty good idea of what’s happening around them.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.

    It looks at nearby sales, competing properties, market activity, and the factors affecting value that are easy to miss if you don’t spend much time in the land business.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Check It Out Here.

    PPS – If you’re not ready for a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, negotiation, markets, and how business actually works in the real world, you can sign up below and get future posts in your inbox.

    No hype.

    No sales funnel.

    Just new posts when I write them.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • Just Smart Enough To Get You In Trouble

    Just Smart Enough To Get You In Trouble

    What sounds reasonable in conversation can get you in trouble in the real world.

    I just renewed my real estate license.

    I wasn’t looking forward to the mandatory continuing education classes. Thankfully it turned out I wasn’t due to take any this time.

    But it did get me thinking about all the classes I’ve taken in the past.

    I’m old enough that when I started in this business, the internet technically existed but wasn’t really part of everyday life yet. So the classes were in person.

    A memory from one of them came back to me after writing last week about staying in your lane.

    The thing about real estate licensing classes is they are designed for the average agent. And since most agents end up working in residential, that’s what almost everything revolves around.

    Most of the coursework is designed to teach you what not to say so you don’t get sued later.

    Which is useful as far as it goes.

    As for learning how to become a successful broker, I’d say the value is more questionable. You’d probably learn at least as much reading this blog for a few months.

    Especially if you understand the importance of reading between the lines.

    But anyway.

    Almost the entire course was geared toward houses.

    Contracts, disclosures, house valuations, common residential problems. Pretty boring if you already know that’s not the business you’re going to be in.

    Out of about thirty hours they spent maybe fifteen minutes one day touching on land and commercial property.

    Which was entertaining, although probably not for the reason they intended. Pretty much everything they said was backwards.

    Maybe not backwards in a technical sense. More like simplified to the point that it stopped being true in the real world.

    To a normal person, it would sound smart enough in conversation.

    But if you actually applied it the way they described, you could get yourself or your client in trouble pretty quickly.

    Luckily almost nobody else in that room was ever going to deal with serious land or commercial transactions anyway.

    So no real harm done.

    Did I say anything?

    No.

    It wasn’t worth turning a continuing education class into a debate. And I didn’t particularly feel like helping introduce the word “mansplaining” into the culture twenty years early.

    But I remember thinking even then that it was another example of why specialization matters.

    People assume broad familiarity is the same thing as expertise.

    Usually it isn’t.

    Especially in businesses where nuance is what keeps small mistakes from becoming expensive ones.

    PS- Most landowners are not planning to sell today.

    But things change. Markets change. Development pressure changes too.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.

    It looks at nearby sales, current competition, market direction, and the details affecting value that are easy to miss if you don’t spend time in the land business every day.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Check It Out Here.

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, negotiation, markets, and how business actually works in the real world, you can sign up below and get future posts in your inbox.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • You Owe It To Yourself To Work With An Expert

    You Owe It To Yourself To Work With An Expert

    And I owe it to you to let you know when it’s not me.

    One of the people I did a MBR Land Reality Check for reached out to me recently. They had a rental house coming available and asked if I’d like to handle it for them.

    Which is sort of how I always talk about this business working.

    Most people are not looking to do a real estate deal today.

    But eventually, many of them will.

    The idea is not to pressure somebody into moving before they’re ready. It’s to already be there when the time comes.

    You don’t know who, when, or what the situation will be. But if you position yourself correctly over time, opportunities tend to show up.

    At least that’s the idea.

    This probably would have been fairly easy money.

    My license allows me to handle residential leasing. I could have figured out a reasonable rent pretty quickly. Probably could have helped coordinate repairs too.

    But then you start getting into the details.

    Which upgrades actually increase rent versus just costing money? Which repairs matter most? What corners can safely be cut, and which ones become expensive later?

    That’s where specialization starts mattering. And I’m not a residential leasing guy.

    A good leasing agent already knows which improvements tenants say they want versus what they’ll actually pay extra for. They know what tends to lease quickly, what creates problems later, and which contractors consistently do solid work.

    I don’t know those things the way they do.

    And that matters.

    If I had taken the listing, I’d estimate there was probably a 90% chance everything goes smoothly and nobody ever notices the difference.

    But what about the other 10%?

    When something unusual happens, experience starts compounding very quickly. The person who has already seen that exact situation three times operates differently than the person figuring it out in real time.

    So I passed on it.

    I appreciated the opportunity. I offered to help them find somebody who focuses on residential leasing instead, and we’ll see what happens.

    I think that was the right decision.

    And not just for them, for me too.

    I’ve said before that everybody has the same amount of time. Every hour spent doing something outside your core competency is an hour not spent getting sharper at the thing you actually specialize in.

    A lot of people in this business try to be everything at once. Residential. Commercial. Land. Leasing. Investment sales. Farm and ranch. Property management.

    Sometimes they can pull it off.

    There’s usually a reason the best people narrow their focus over time.

    You owe it to yourself to work with somebody who already lives in the world you’re stepping into.

    Not somebody hoping they can figure it out as they go.

    PS – Most landowners are not planning to sell today.

    But situations change. Markets change. Development pressure changes too.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.

    It looks at nearby sales, current competition, market direction, and the details affecting value that are easy to miss if you don’t spend time in the land business every day.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Check It Out Here.

    PPS – If you’re not ready for a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, negotiation, and how markets actually work, you can sign up for the blog below and get future posts in your inbox.

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