Finding an investor friendly realtor is not as easy as finding a realtor to help complete the typical home purchase or sale. When working with realtors as an investor, your first thought might be that you should receive a discount on the commission you pay but that’s nowhere near the truth. Although it is repeat business if anything, you may need to pay him or her a bonus.
Working With Realtors as an Investor Causes Extra Work
The standards and requirements an investor has for a realtor are different from what most homebuyers or sellers have. The skills and knowledge required when working with realtors as an investor are not possessed by every realtor and some that have the skills simply don’t want to be involved with investors.
Investors are usually very demanding. They want realtors to review every listing as soon as it comes on the MLS, if not search out the best listings before they are entered into the MLS. Investors know that the best deals go fast and the early bird gets the worm.
However, investors won’t buy 99 percent of the houses that come on to the market. Successful investors only buy the few houses that desperate sellers offer at a deep discount. That means realtors look at thousands of listings and forward hundreds of possibilities to the investor but only occasionally complete a sale.
For traditional buyers, a realtor might show a dozen or so houses before making a sale. When working with realtors as an investor, investors try sweetening the deal by giving the realtor a “round trip” – both a buying commission and a selling commission. That does help encourage realtors to work with investors but constantly being on the lookout for deeply discounted houses while making few sales is a lot more work for the realtor.
Working With Realtors as an Investor – Finding the Right Realtor
Seldom do realtors understand the mind set of investors. Realtors are used to working with people that want to buy a home to live in long term. Investors have different motives. Some want to invest in rental homes, while others want to flip a house, and still others want to sell with lease options. The bottom-line is investors are looking for a profit which means only buying deeply discounted properties that come along very seldom.
Working with a realtor as an investor means first finding the right realtors. That means first finding realtors that think they have an interest in working with an investor. You do that by making telephone calls or sending out emails asking the question. Another good technique is stopping by the real estate offices serving the neighborhoods where you’re interested in investing.
Once you have a shortlist of realtors wanting to work with you, the next step is having a face-to-face conversation. You need to be clear about what it means to be working with a realtor as an investor. You need to be clear about your investing strategy. You need to let him or her know what price range, what neighborhoods, and what your exist strategy is. You need to let them know if you expect to be shown the interior of every potential house when you’ll make few decisions to buy or if the realtor only needs to forward you prospective houses and you’ll drive by to view the outside but only ask for access to the interiors when you are truly thinking about making the purchase.
Ultimately, working with a realtor as an investor, often works best when the realtor is an investor them self. There is a possible conflict of interest here because the realtor might scoop up investments that you would have been interested in. However, there are usually enough to go around. Another work around to this issue is having more than one realtor working with you. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding as many investment grade properties as you want.
By Wendy Patton
For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.
If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.
For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.
What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.
