Beach City Blog

I happened upon a post from Rhonda Porter at Rain City Guide where she shares some of the REAL numbers from her business the last couple of years and speculates on what impact the changes to the subprime mortgage market are going to have on her business in the future.

Rhonda, a mortage lender in the state of Washington, went back and looked at all the loans she had closed over the last two years to see what percentage fell into what catagories regarding types of buyers, credit score, down payment, etc . . . It’s pretty interesting.

Obviously things have changed here in the Long Beach real estate market and without a doubt there are going to be some buyers out there that were capable of buying before that won’t be buying now. That’s just the reality of what has happened . . .

But what Rhonda’s numbers also show is that there is still LOTS of business out there to be had.

So that being said, I’ve decided that I’m going to approach this NEW real estate market in 2007 by asking myself a couple of questions:

(1) How do I choose to think about it?
and,
(2) what am I going to DO about?

In otherwards, what is my ATTITUDE going to be and what ACTIONS am I going to take?

Ever heard the saying, “perception IS reality”? (Boy, do we in the real estate and mortgage industry know how true that is!) Anyone involved in working with people and providing customer service knows that what we do doesn’t matter nearly as much as what our clients perceive we do.

Yes, perception IS reality.

And the same holds true in every aspect of life, including how we look at our business and the opportunity before us when we get up and go to work every day.

When I started selling home in the early 80’s, interest rates were approaching 20%. Was it considered a great market? NO . . . But were some homes selling? YES!

You see, I was brand new and didn’t know any better. I didn’t know the difference between a good maket and a bad market. I was just glad to be in real estate! I was excited and motivated and passionate about the opportunity to be a realtor instead of having a “real job” (LOL).

You could probably say I was in the stage of learning where I would be considered an “unconscious incompetent”. In otherwards, I didn’t even “know” what I “didn’t know”.

Well, since I “didn’t know” that the market was a BAD, I just went out and prospected alot and found customers that COULD buy and COULD sell. People that were going to buy and sell real estate no matter what the market was like . . . because they had a NEED!

And the truth is, there will always be people that have a NEED to buy and sell homes. People get transferred, people get divorced, people need bigger homes because they have more kids, and people downsize when the kids move out. They always have, and always will.

There’s plenty of business out there, it’s really just a question whether or not we’re going to go out and get our share of it.

The subprime market may be gone and some things may have CHANGED but there are still people that have a NEED to buy and sell homes and need loans.

They’re out there . . . Our job is to just go find them.

So as Henry Ford so eloquently said many years ago, “if you think you can, or you think you can’t you’re RIGHT!”

It’s really pretty simple.