A really big deal or no big deal at all.
This blog was inspired by Barbara Todaro, Realtor extraordinaire from Franklin, Ma.
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When I first opened my real estate office, I was unsure about going after new home construction business. At the time I didn’t know a heck of a lot about new home construction, but what I did know was how to sell real estate.
I asked many folks who the players in my area were. The same few names kept showing up, but at the time many of them had a number of unsold homes.
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There was one street that had a total of 16 new houses and only one was sold, the 15 remaining homes were owned by 5 builders, each owned 2-4 houses and all were finished and sitting empty. None of them had real estate signs, all had the builder signs in the front of the homes.
I decided to contact all of the builders to see if I could get a breakthrough. I invited each of them to meet at a local restaurant and had each invitation hand delivered. I did not tell any of them that I was inviting anyone else. The invitation had my name and the message, “I can sell your house”.
These guys figured out that I sent an invitation to each of them. They all showed up and were all together. I was a bit intimidated, but asked them all to join me for lunch. Lunch and the meeting took 3 hours. I explained to them what I saw as the issues.
The first problem was there was no landscaping of any kind, no curb appeal of any kind and all the homes looked alike. I wanted them to give these homes some appeal, but they had already spent their construction money and any investment would take away from whatever profit might still be possible.
For whatever reason, they must have thought I knew what I was talking about and all made a decision to list all the properties with me. They spent about $2,000 extra for each house. I ran open houses on a different house each weekend and within 6 months had all of the houses sold.
I was now on my way and totally focusing on the listing and builder market. I worked exclusively with each of these builders until I sold my real estate company.
