Back to the Grind

Recently my family spend almost 3 weeks either traveling to or from, and spending time in Virginia.  Thankfully during that time, I didn't really have many things to deal with for work and I didn't have any clients who wanted to see a house (kind of a hard thing to do when you are close to 1000 miles away).

That all changed early last week.  I'd been home for a little over a week and then I started getting calls from my clients.  I had one person contact me saying she was coming into town and wanted to see as many houses as we could fit in.  So on one day we saw 18 houses and the next day I showed her 4 more.  I only showed her 4 houses that day because before I met her, I had previewed 2 houses for one client, and showed another client 5 houses.  I think it's safe to say that 18 houses in one day is my record.  How did I do it?  Planning had a lot to do with it, but I've learned mostly it was because my client knew what she wanted and knew that in order to get through all the houses that we could only spend a lot of time in the houses she really liked.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I met with another client after church.  Initially I was going to show them 6 houses and figured we could get it done in about 2 hours.  Before we could see them, 2 of the houses went under contract so we ended up seeing 4 houses.  And it took us 3 hours.  Why the difference? It was all about the client.  They are looking for an investment property so every house is a potential purchase.  At each house they would make a detailed lists of things to do for each house to make it rentable.

This was certainly a learning experience for me.  I have learned that when dealing with an investor give them more time.

Oh, and one more thing... I had a meeting with one of my partners recently and it looks like I might start handling rentals too.  That means if I sell my investors a house, I could be handling their rental too.  It means I'll be a little busier, but my mantra has always been, "I'd rather be busy than bored."