How I wish I were a doctor. When you’re a doctor and you travel, you get to tell people what you do. You’re a doctor. That’s what you do. It doesn’t matter what sort of doctor, because if you’re a doctor that’s really all that matters. In the same way that if you’re a mechanic and you work on cars, no one cars that you’re a BMW mechanic, with some credintials abbreviated below where your stitched name adorns your company provided shirt. You might as well be a small town garage mechanic where you specialize in tire changing because you’re not any good at anything else, and you don’t own one of those plug in car doctors that they advertise on television and in trade magazines. Doctors are doctors and mechanics are mechanics and Realtors, well, we’re Realtors.
That’s why when I visit an open house in a far away land, I feel obligated to tell the Realtor that I, too, am a Realtor. I don’t want them thinking I’m a doctor, or something otherwise noble, so I tell them early enough and I remind them often. I’m just a Realtor. But I listen when these other Realtors talk, and I try to learn what it’s like to be a consumer, which is why I only tell the host Realtor that I’m also a Realtor after they’ve given me some information. How else can I learn if I don’t subject myself to the Realtor schtick?
And learn I do. I learned on Sunday that there are three distinct markets on this island, three different places where everyone wants to be. I found that I’m skeptical of this direction. I’m skeptical because I don’t know if this Realtor who just so happened to be holding open this house is any good. How could I know? I see their car, I see their sign, I see their face. I see these things but I have no idea if they’re good or not, and so I ask questions and look for clues. One guy I met on Sunday seemed nice, but I wouldn’t ever work with him. One lady seemed nice, but I wouldn’t work with her either. How could I work with someone whom I had just met on a lark because the day was too cold to do anything else but explore houses I have no intention of buying?
It dawned on me today that what a Realtor needs to do is be present. They just, really, have to be there. This is generally enough. But there should be more to this game, more than just showing up and hoping. The more should be the aptitude that only comes with experience. The knowledge that can only be gleaned from the day to day, from the work that must be done. I traveled an island full of open houses, full of Realtors, full of expectations and hopes and whims and I wonder what it’s all about. Is real estate really this unsophisticated? Is this business really still just this?
At the end of day I decided that, yes, that’s exactly what this business is. That’s why success is fleeting, and that’s why someone else who desires to be present longer can, and will, be as successful as someone who knows why they’re present. Skill in real estate is measured by the ability to be present, to be there when the phone rings on floor and to be there when a buyer in a sports car pulls up to tour houses that he only thought about on the drive up. From my perspective as a veteran of this game, how can I best express to you, to the buyer that I haven’t yet met, that I am in your best interests?
That’s the question of real estate. Some choose to ask and answer the question in full page newspaper ads, with a smiling or pouty face and a promise of glittery success. Some answer it by simply being, by hoping that if they exist long enough, they’ll find success. Some, like me, hope to prove worth over time, by being discerning in all things, by pointing out the positive and the negative, the good and the bad, no matter who it might offend. By doing that and mixing it with a track record of unrivaled success. At the end of this and every day, each approach is the right one. Each approach will have some success. Just like the guy at the open house today who will, after some number of more Sunday’s, sell that house to someone who drove onto the island on a whim. This is real estate, and I don’t have to like it.