It’s no secret that a real estate investor is completely different from your average home buyer or seller. But what makes them different? How do you need to position yourself to gear your business toward serving real estate investors?
Think Like an Investor
Real estate investors are very particular with who they do business with. It’s not enough to just be a friend or acquaintance of an investor. It’s nothing personal, just business. They are looking for someone who understands what being an investor is really like.
The best way to start thinking like an investor is to become an investor yourself. Now I’m not talking about actually buying and renting your own properties. Even if you have the funding to accomplish this, it’s foolish to jump right into real estate investing without knowing what you are doing.
Rather than investing your money, invest your time. Start with looking at properties that could be good potential investments. Analyze them like you would if you were going to invest yourself. Don’t know what to analyze? Check out our Calculating Investment Value Episode of Ask The Instructor.
The more you can understand real estate investment terms, figures, and values, the more valuable you will be to your real estate investor clients.
Understand Your Investors Goals
Once you have an understanding of some of the fundamentals of real estate investing, it’s time to turn your attention to your investor clients. Don’t have investor clients yet? Make your focus the type of investor you are looking to target.
If you’re trying to sell potential investors on your services, you need to already have your pitch to them dialed in. You can’t just say that you’re a real estate investor specialist and expect them to just use your services blindly. These are investors, not only do they do due diligence on the properties they invest in, but also the people they use in their business.
So once you have in mind your investor who you are trying to target, identify what they are trying to achieve. Are they looking to buy a property and turn around and flip it? If they are, that’s an entirely different goal set than someone who is buying property to hold and lease out over the long-term.
What type of property is your investor interested in? An investor in retail plazas is completely different from an investor in single family homes. Understand what your investor’s real estate investment goals are and what type of property they want to invest in.
When you know who you are working with and what they want, you can tailor your pitch to them to prove that you are the only logical choice for their needs.
Be Valuable to Your Investor Clients
Being valuable to your investor clients is the running theme throughout this article. If you don’t understand the details of real estate investing, you will have no value to your investor clients. Maybe you do know everything about real estate investing, but are you specializing yourself for what your particular real estate investor client is trying to achieve?
The more knowledge you can obtain about the intricacies of real estate investing, the better equipped you’ll be to serve your clients. Real estate investors are typically much needier than a typical real estate consumer. They’re running a business, not just trying to find a home they like.
The skill set real estate investors are looking for in a real estate agent is geared specifically to their real estate investment goals.
Learn More About Real Estate Investment Value
Check out our Calculating Investment Value Episode of Ask The Instructor. In this episode, we cover how to determine real estate investment value for properties.
