Uncommon Work Yields Uncommon Results

As those of you who have read my books know, I really like aphorisms, those little sayings my dictionary defines as “A tersely phrased statement of a truth.” One of my favorites, attributed to many authors, is this one: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

The real estate market in many areas of the country exhibits many frantic qualities. In those areas there simply have not been enough homes on the market to meet the demand of the many buyers who are searching for homes. Of course, the effect on the pricing has been dramatic, especially when there are multiple bids. Some homes sell higher than the asking price, and frequently more than they are worth.

In a normal market, a buyer finds an agent, the agent scrutinizes the many homes that are on the market, selects some that appear to meet the buyers’ criteria, shows them the homes, and they make an offer on one of them. Not so anymore. That just doesn’t work now. There are too many other buyers, people who, very frankly, are your competitors.

In the midst of these problems, however, I have clients that are able to find and buy reasonably priced properties. What they do, however, is different than what many homebuyers have been expected to do. I thought it might be instructive to see what these successful people have done. Perhaps you can learn from this.

First, you will note that in the traditional model, the real estate agent did most of the work. Today, if you want to be successful, you need to shoulder a larger percentage of the burden. What I am seeing is that those who are willing to work harder than the other buyers, or do things that others are unwilling to do.

One buyer goes to tax sales, to see properties that are up for sale due to delinquent taxes. There aren’t usually too many of these because, if there is equity in the home, someone has sold it. But there are times that, due to death, incapacitation, or negligence, properties become available. One client found such a property in Los Angeles County and was able to buy it for just over $110,000. The home is really worth about $300,000. Bingo!

Another buyer doesn’t have enough cash to participate in foreclosure sales, but he went to them and when a property was not bought and reverted to the lender, he called that lender and said, “Let’s make a deal.” The lender was willing to sell them the home for their old loan balance, modestly less than what the home is worth. Bingo!

Another buyer spent his weekends going to estate sales. His reasoning was that in most cases, an estate sale involved selling the belongings of someone who is deceased. When the estate sale was over, then the heirs would be interested in selling the home. So he would go to estate sales and ask the people, “Will this home be available for sale soon?” At his eighteenth estate sale, he found out-of-state heirs, in town to wrap up the affairs of the party who had passed away, and who were anxious to make a deal on the house and go home. Bingo!

Another homebuyer who had found a neighborhood he really liked, spend his weekends knocking on doors to ask, “Are you interested in selling your home anytime soon? Do you know a neighbor who might be moving?” You can imagine that it is a numbers game: he knocked on a lot of doors and one day he got the answer he was looking for. Bingo!

You will notice also in these cases a traditional real estate agent wasn’t involved. I don’t have anything against real estate agents; it’s just that they didn’t bring anything to the table in these scenarios. In all honesty, a real estate agent could have done the work the buyers did in these cases and when s/he found a home this way, they could have called their clients and said, “Guess what I found?” But most agents aren’t willing to do that!

So we’re now back where we started. The bottom line is that if you want to buy a home in a competitive market, you can do it if you are willing to work harder and smarter than your competitors, the other buyers. Let them be the ones that see you move into your dream home and say, “I would have bought that home!” True, but you worked harder and you got it.

Go for it!