Many of us have learned to be careful what we wish for. Years ago, as a young custom homebuilder, I reached a point where these words were ringing in my ears. While I was excited my business was growing quickly, I found myself struggling to keep up with my work like the proverbial ‘one-armed paper hanger’. Job site supervision consumed my weekdays from sunup to sundown. Evenings were dedicated to customer meetings, estimating and architectural design work. On weekends, I worked my model homes ...

How Important are New Homes to Your Real Estate Business? Here’s an interesting question for brokers, managers and sales professionals: Of all current prospective homebuyers in your market, what percentage would like to at least consider the purchase of a brand new home? Certainly this number will vary from market to market, often depending on what may be realistically available and affordable. But if you had to make an educated guess, would you estimate 50%? … 70% … or even more?

When new opportunities present themselves, are you prepared to recognize them, and trained to make the most of them? When I was a boy, my father told me a story that relates: The landlord of an apartment building, woken in the middle of the night with complaints from freezing tenants, struggled for several hours trying to get a big old boiler heating system to come back to life. Exasperated, he finally called in “Bob the Boilerman” to repair the beast.

In my travels as a consultant and speaker, I hear plenty of conversation about what’s happening in the real estate market and why. Of course it’s important for all us to have this understanding as well as an educated opinion on what’s coming next. Unfortunately, too many people are so focused on the negative and unknown factors, they’re overlooking real opportunities.