Five Essential Skills All Successful Real Estate Developers Have
There are certain traits and skills that a real estate developer has to have to succeed. Without these traits, they can’t hope to succeed in the real estate development field, but thankfully, these skills can be learned and perfected.
Problem Solving
When you’re buying land or property for development, there’ll be hundreds of decisions you’ll need to make per day. Contractors, workers and employees will come to you with problems that need to be solved. If you’re indecisive, that can put a halt on the progress of the project.
Negotiation
From the purchase price of the property to the final sale of the developed land, you’ll need to negotiate with buyers and sellers. You’ll have to learn to negotiate with contractors providing bids for work as well as home stagers and other real estate agents who want to buy the property for their clients. This is a necessary and vital skill for a successful real estate developer.
Leadership
You’ll have a team of people working for you from employees, assistants or interns to contractors and subcontractors on the job site. All these people will need to be motivated and directed to help you achieve your vision. Nobody is more invested in your success than you, so you’ll have to learn to lead your team to success.
Communication
Much of the other skills involve communicating your ideas, vision and desires to other people. If you can’t be clear about your vision, others won’t understand what you’re trying to do. You have to be able to communicate clearly to be effective at your career. The biggest problems occur because of miscommunication.
Organization
You’ll have more than one project in process at the same time when you’re developing real estate. One project might be in the beginning stages, another in the middle of the changes, while a third is almost ready to be sold. Developers almost always have multiple projects in various stages of completion. You’ll need to keep track of appointments, work orders, bids and other details. While you might have an assistant, you can’t rely on someone else to keep track of your business.
These five skills are the backbone of a successful real estate developer. You must be able to negotiate contracts, lead your team, communicate effectively and keep your projects organized. If you’re missing one of these important traits, there are ways to learn them, but you can never ignore these skills.
Roman Temkin is a real estate developer from NYC.
