Change Is Hard, But Essential

Old dogs can indeed learn new tricks.

I’ve been an REO (bank-owned real estate) broker in Miami, FL since 1994, and back then business was great! So great that I (and a few partners) opened our own Real Estate office, and acquired several large clients, quickly becoming one of the premier REO brokers in South Florida. We also did a substantial number of short sales long before they were as common as they are now. We were so successful at short sales that I was prominently featured in an issue of the Miami Daily Business Review. Our sales were rapidly increasing and the future looked very bright indeed.

Then came the “BOOM” of the early 2000’s and it all came apart. Properties were appreciating in value so quickly that REOs & short sales virtually disappeared overnight. Foreclosures were still being filed, but properties didn’t revert to the lenders because they had appreciated enough during the foreclosure process that investors were gobbling them up at the courthouse! People started lining up at developer sales offices to snap up new properties just to flip them for quick profits. Homeowners got equity lines of credit in record numbers just to buy investment properties, thinking the boom would never end (but that’s another story.)

By this time my partners had left the business for greener pastures. Instead of shifting over to traditional real estate, for which I unfortunately do not have the temperament, I doubled down and became a BPO (Broker Price Opinion) machine and was able to continue making a living, barely, by doing 100-150 BPOs a month. I was working practically all day every day just to make ends meet, but stayed the course because I knew from as early as 2003 that this boom had to collapse because our demographics did not support the artificially inflated property values. Ultimately I was proven right, but it took much longer than anticipated.

When the bottom started falling out in 2007, REOs started trickling in. In 2008 we closed 96 REO sales worth over $18 million. In 2009 we exploded with over 200 closed REOs worth over $26 million! So at the behest of my clients I added staff & overhead expecting even more business in 2010, but then came the “robo-signing” scandal that slowed everything down toward the end of the year. Still, we sold 148 REOs but the dollar value was just over $17 million. It got worse in 2011: 97 sales worth $12 million. I know, that seems like a dream year for most realtors. One doesn’t have to be an economist to see that when you staff up to handle 300 transactions and only close 97, you’ve got problems.

So last year, this old dog realized he had to learn new tricks and learn them fast. I started working with investors as a buyer’s agent. I encouraged my assistant to get her license and now she’s my buyer’s agent, helping capture leads that come in off our REO listings. I began courting short sales again and that’s starting to bear fruit. I’m sourcing properties for a national hedge fund, and will start handling some property management on their rentals. And I’m learning how to leverage social media to gain more exposure for our services, and having fun with it too! While I’m still an REO guy at heart, and still don’t have the temperament to deal with “people”, I’ve surrounded myself with people whose strengths make up for my weaknesses.

I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it has been to change 20 years of doing things a certain way, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.