Real Estate Is Full of Characters
Anybody that has been in real estate for longer than 10 minutes knows that real estate is full of characters. I think because of the diverse nature of real estate, and the unstructured nature of a lot of real estate companies, characters seem to thrive in real estate more than any other field. A lot of the characters that find success in real estate wouldn’t last in structured corporate America.
A few of my favorite characters:
- Guy that can never seem to get his earnest money or deposits into escrow at the right time.
- Guy that faxes you 15 illegible pages about the property he owns.
- Guy that claims access to a $200 million fund and yet writes offers with $5,000 earnest money deposits.
- Guy that has some made-up legal reason why he doesn’t make earnest money deposits.
- Guy that tries to re-trade price, isn’t successful, asks for extensions to feasibility period, then tries to re-trade again.
- Guy that sends his company brochure with offers.
- Guy that spends 20 minutes telling you what a great buyer he is, and then won’t spend 1 minute telling you the price and terms he would offer on the property he’s interested in.
- Guy that is somehow in 60 different deals and yet is always broke.
- Guy that claims to be extremely motivated, but isn’t.
- Guy that thinks his deal is worth more than every other deal in the market, for no reason other than it’s his deal.
- Guy that has never met a property he didn’t want to overleverage.
- Guy that always needs to have a meeting with Sellers in order to try to sell them on taking a below market offer (these are usually former brokers that think they could sell ice to an Eskimo).
- Guy that cites “the holidays” as a general go-to excuse.
- Guy that offers to seller-finance the part of the purchase price that is clearly above market. As if to say, “We know this is expensive, but don’t worry, we’ll give you a loan for all of the money you’re throwing away.”
- Guy that has his assistant call you and ask if you have time to hold for Mr. So and So. Thereby wasting the exact same amount of your time that he just saved by having his assistant call.
- Guy that cites all of the other deals he is working on as a general go-to excuse.
- Guy that cites his frequent travel as a general go-to excuse.
- Guy that doesn’t understand the words “I’ll get back to you.”
- Guy that doesn’t speak English suddenly during key negotiating times, when the inability to speak English somehow suddenly favors him.
- Guy that consistently submits below market offers, consistently misses out on the deal, and then tells you why the other buyers are dumb… as if you can do anything about it.
- Guy that says derogatory things about other buyers’ behavior, and then does those exact same things. Example: Those other buyers will probably just tie it up and re-trade it. (Followed by that guy just tying the deal up and re-trading it.)
I’m sure some readers of this blog have some favorite characters. Feel free to post them in the comments.
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