Real Estate is About MEA CULPA

It’s my Fault

Over the years, I find that people handle problems and successes differently. There are people who take responsibility for their success and their failures equally. These people are in my experience usually pretty confident and successful. They have found a balance in life. Too often people accept responsibility for their success but avoid responsibility for their failures. These people can also be successful, but I think they lack the balance that would allow them to really enjoy the success they achieve, and probably limits that success.

And then there is a third category of people that are modest about whatever success they have individually (though they may brag like anyone about their company or their achievements), but will take responsibility for things that may even have been out of their control – mainly because they feel they should have anticipated the problem or known that there was a wild card element that might need ot be addressed.

I Worry all the Time

Even when things go well, I tend to worry. I want to know that I have not only done everything I could to reach my intended result, if I don’t reach it, I want to learn why so I have a better result next time.

I don’t worry about making a mistake (If its noon and I haven’t made at least two mistakes I figure I wasn’t working or I didn’t get up yet) I just don’t want to make the same mistakes again and again. And I am not uncomfortable admitting that I made a mistake. That may be because I am confident that I can correct the problem, or at least that I am not defined by the mistakes I make.

I tend to trust people too much. According to one of my partners, I am literally “loyal to a fault” – but that’s a fault I am willing to own. But most importantly I don’t blame other people for the problems affecting me, and I look to myself for the solution

Last year Benn Rosales wrote a post about minimum standards and the Right to Practice. I agree with much of what was said in that post, and was interested in his suggestions for mandating minimum standards. But the real problem is that we as brokers (or managing brokers depending on your state) often don’t take responsibility for our agents because its too tough, or we want the licensing authority to do it, or our trade association, or someone else to mandate it so that we’re not the hard nosed bad guys. Maybe we don’t want to impose our standards on others even though we want other people will live up to our standards.

Everyone doesn’t do things the way I do – and they don’t have to. When I blog, it takes me a while because I don’t want to say something that I can’t back up factually. And I get nuts when someone else does that. I hate rhetoric without facts to back it up. I hate when people talk about what they think instead of what they know and I hate it when they speak in generalities instead of specifics. We can work on specifics, we can’t fix generalities.

If Its Your Problem, You can Fix it

If you aren’t accountable for something, you can’t fix it. If you give up the power of the problem, you give yp the power to solve the problem. Let’s take that aggravating listing you took 5 months ago and see how this theory plays.

You aren’t getting much activity through the listing, even though you’re advertising it and holding open houses. Its just that the market is so bad. There aren’t any serious buyers. The sellers arent cooperatvie. The house doesn’t show well. So obviously its not your fault that the home didn’t sell. Right? Wrong!

None of those things are your fault, but it is your fault that you took a listing that isn’t selling.

If buyers aren’t going through the property, then perhaps it isn’t priced properly?

If the property is being shown, but there are no offers, you need to re-examine the price and determine if there are issues with the physical condition of the home that need to be addressed. If the phyical issues with the property cant be addressed, then perhaps we need to.. you guessed it, review the price again.

If there are inquiries about the property but you aren’t able to show the home when you need to perhaps you need to get a key to show the property or install a lock box.

I could go on and on, but when you review the activity on a property, the home itself, and the terms you are offering , you can usually find the answer to the problem – and the key to that is being responsible for the problem, and therefore having the power to find a solution to the problem. And if you have a seller who will not cooperate, then the solution may be to solve the problem by firing the unreasonable seller ad moving on to a seller who wants to listen to your advice and get their home sold.

In any event, taking control of your life by being accountable for your problems should empower you in a manner that I’m sure you will find envigorating and enlightening. Now that you own your problems – go forth and solve them!