The World of Real Estate

Did I mention that I am running a Real Estate Business, well I am. Its probably the only business that trust plays a big role in its survival. By trust, I mean, don’t trust anyone, everyone would stab you in the back the moment they have the chance. First rule of real estate do not reveal your clients name, second rule of real estate, DO NOT REVEAL YOUR CLIENTS NAME.

I learned the above rule the heard way unfortunately and what about to tell you today is something that I hope none of you would experience, so buckle up, this is one roller coaster ride you don’t want to miss.

The phone rang, a VIP voice from the other side, how did I know that it was a VIP well, it’s a amazing how much these caller ID can tell, with the power of nine in front, followed by six identical digits you can pretty much safely assume that the person owning this number must be a VIP. And that fact that he was asking for a land that cost not less than 1.2 Million Rials helps as well.

While the VIP was rambling about the size of the plot and how urgent it is, showing off that money was an object, all I can think about is the commission that I will gain for it.

Hmm, 1.2 Millions Rials, 3% commission that’s 36000 Rials, not bad for a days work huh! The challenge was, where would I find such land and how fast would I find it.
“Hello are you there? Hellooo? Damn, you just couldn’t resist me day dreaming, oh well…

“Yes Sir I am still here I replied, he went ahead and said” as I was saying, money is not an object”. There you go, money is not an object sentence again. “Sir” I said cutting his sentences short, “I understand what you need, just give me sometime and I will see what I can do”

You see, with this business, one tend to get a lot of phone calls from various estate agent, and if we attend each and every call than no work will be done and easily end up loosing everything, my motto is and has always been is to follow the 80/20 rule. Concentrate on the 20 that matters and leave out the 80 that doesn’t. The tricky part is to know which ones that matters and which ones that don’t, it’s only through experience you master this, for instance, the number that I saw on my phone automatically indicated that the person behind this phone was a VIP and he means business, hence this phone call mattered as far as my judgment is concerned. I guess in this particular incident, experience has nothing to do with it, any sane person can make out the importance of this call right?. Common sense my friends, although something’s are not so common!

Let me explain you how the commission works, If my Estate Agency manage to get the owner and the buyer than that’s a full 3% commission, i.e. there is no middle party involved in getting this deal done. However, that is not always the case, there is always another agent involved, sometime it could go up to four agents even more, a person would know a person who would know a person who would know person that knows the seller, so that 3% as you know it becomes extremely divided among the parties to a point what one end up getting not worth the work done, and for this reason my policy is not to have more than one foreign agent in a certain deal, well it’s a policy, whether its doable or not is another story altogether, especially if the amount we are talking about is 36000 Rials, policy or no policy, dividing that amount among several agents is still a good deal, rules are made to be broken after all right?.

Word of Advice people, don’t ever give away your clients name, is a mistake I made by entrusting another Agent with the name, and before I knew it, streak of agents knew about the deal, and a simple chain reaction took place after that

Poor me, I started off day dreaming a 36000 Rials commission, I ended up with 300 rials gross profit, you subtract the resource money to get this deal done, the net profit is not even worth mentioning if there is any that is. Do I need to explain what happened? Well read the above, I am sure you can figure it out yourself by now. Beat the 80/20 rule don’t it.

Ahhh, The World of Real Estate, don’t you love it!