may just be the most small-minded real estate agent I’ve met so far. One of the things I teach and practice is that most agents in the business do NOT understand real estate investing, nor do they understand what it is that drives investors. That’s why so few agent/investor relationships ever work out – I equate it being similar to the Mars and Venus books, because investors and agents speak different languages. I called this agent based on the fact they had spoken to some of my students, and expressed concern about what we were doing, as through we were somehow up to no good. She muttered things like “pyramid schemes” and misrepresentation, so it was clear going into the conversation that she had no idea what investing is about, nor what my training involves. On the surface, she claims to be concerned about “the industry” and wants to uphold the integrity and reputation of real estate agents, yet I believe she is doing no such thing. She immediately started demanding that I tell her everything about the program, my students, and give her lists of people I’ve training so she could check for herself whether I was “real”. I told aside from the fact that it would be inappropriate for me to share confidential information like that, it was also none of her business and I had nothing to prove to her. What I found most interesting about her is that I think she believes she is doing the right thing, but because she just doesn’t “get it”, all she ends up doing is frustrating herself and annoying those who know a lot more about real estate than she does. Her claim is that she’s “concerned about anyone who doesn’t represent the industry properly”.. yet, her own website has statistics from 2002, and 1996. It’s obvious she hasn’t updated her website for a LONG time, which to me would be a simple thing for someone who is “concerned” about clients getting good information. I tried to be patient and positive with her, but every time I tried to understand where she was coming from, she got even more defensive and venomous. She proceeded to tell me why what I teach simply “doesn’t work in this market“, and that investors are doing are not “the culture” here. Given the incredible feedback we get from our clients, notwithstanding the fact that I own and manage about $35 Million dollars of real estate in Calgary, the claim that what we do “doesn’t work” apparently doesn’t hold much water. She demanded to know “what numbers” I am telling investors to look at in my training, when I told her that offers are written based on what works for an investor – and that list price on a house is often just the seller’s wish and dream, not based specifically in reality (especially in a fast growing market like Calgary). The fact that the President of the Calgary Real Estate Board here in December confirmed that more than 40% of houses on the market dropped their prices more than 5% to sell them recently seemed to have been lost on her. I then asked her how many investment properties she owns. She reacted like I had asked for her social insurance number or age, or maybe her credit card number. She said it was none of my business, and that she has a lot of experience in real estate. I explained that in order to tell her what numbers I teach, I needed to understand what level of investment knowledge she had. This apparently was a very offensive question, which she refused to answer. She never did tell me about her investment experience, which tells me she has none. Perhaps the funniest part of the call came when she made up some word and said “I specialized in potage investing, do you know what that is?”, asking it as though I would be an idiot if I didn’t know. I told her I had no idea what it was, and then she laughed and said “because I made it up, there is no such thing“. Huh? She’s trying to catch me on things she’s making up? I still don’t understand what she was even trying to do. I don’t know if this was a way for a sad, lonely agent to entertain herself one night, or if she actually thinks she knows what she’s talking about. However, the point I am trying to make here is important .. be careful what agents you choose to talk to and work with as an investor. The simple fact is, most agents have no experience in real estate investing, nor do they own investment real estate .. and, most have never taken any kind of real estate investing course. While this agent (and her embarrassing lack of knowledge) was particularly entertaining for me since she was so rude to me (I have thick skin), it also saddens me that so many agents who think they’re doing a service to their clients, their industry and themselves end up souring what could have been great relationships with great clients. Why the real estate industry doesn’t require agents to take at least a basic real estate investing course, I have no idea. In fact, how I came across this agent was that one of our clients from the U.S. had contacted her to go and look at real estate in Calgary. They had intended to stay extra time in Calgary specifically to buy one or more properties. But, because this agent was so small-minded, she assumed they were not “real” investors who intended to buy anything, and basically told them to get lost. My other concern is that real estate agents are NOT required to take ANY courses in marketing, sales or negotiation — which I believe to be the 3 most important skills an agent requires to be successful. It’s not coincidental — if you look at all the top producing agents — that all of them have skills in at least 2, if not 3, of these areas. There are so many good real estate agents, and the vast majority of agents do their best to represent the interests of their clients. Unforunately, due to a lack of knowledge, they’re simply unable to do so in many cases. And then you get agents like this woman who thinks she is a great agent, but really does NOT get it. In this case, it’s probably best for our client, since this kind of ninny is not going to help anyone in real estate investing. We’ll refer them to a professional agent who actually understands what real estate investing is about, and is happy to work with a positive, enthusiastic client who’s serious about buying property in Alberta. And that agent will lose out on building a relationship with a serious client, and generating one or more commissions for her work. She’d rather be on the phone chastising me for teaching things that don’t work.. even though hundreds of students are out doing exactly what I teach and watching it work! The concept of scarcity vs. abundance comes to mind here as well. This agent is so fixed in her scarcity thinking, she just can’t imagine that perhaps there’s a different (and BETTER) way to do things than what she does. That’s fine with us .. it’s agents like that who leave so much market and opportunity to the rest of us who really DO get it!]]>