buy at a wholesale price. If you’re going to form a
relationship with an agent they have to know you’re serious because these
agents get hundreds and hundreds of buyers every month or every 6 months,
depending how busy they are, coming into their office. Thus real estate
agents must know how to size up buyers. They know how to qualify buyers
without the buyers even realizing they’re being qualified! Real estate
agents question buyers and the answers they hear tell them how serious the
buyers are about purchasing.
When you’re out property investing, here are some common questions a real
estate agent will ask: “Hello Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, are you buying, selling or
looking?” And if they say, “Oh, we’re just looking.” The agent will ask,“How many properties have you looked at so far?” The buyers may respond that
they’ve looked at a couple of properties. The agent will ask if they made an
offer on any of the properties they’ve looked at. If the buyers answer no,
the agent will inquire why not? This line of questioning just rolls off the
agent’s tongue. The buyers get bamboozled. They don’t even know that they’re
being qualified. And if the agent decides the buyer is too difficult, they
will put them into the “too hard basket”.
It is important to note that an agent has one commodity to sell and that is
not houses but their time. I iscovered this early while property investing.
If a real estate agent has only 8 or 9 hours in the day, they want to get
the best return on their time. So it is up to the investor to make it easy
for the agent to make their money. Of course an agent will say they work for
the seller, but the agents also have wives and kids sitting at home to feed.
While the agent may say they’re working for the seller, quite often they’re
working for themselves and you have to harness the agent’s desire to make a
sale and use it for yourself to get-not steal-but secure a discount to
purchase the property.
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