Page 9 - From Ghetto to Gucci: The Basic Principles of Flipping Houses

However, before you can get access to the MLS, you’ve got to make sure that you’re going to
the right realtor! I’ve worked with many realtors in my time, and I can tell you that there are a
wide variety of strategies that can be used. Some realtors will offer to take 1% off their
commission, some realtors will impress you with their personality, and still others will impress
you with their knowledge of the market.

A word of warning: don’t be fooled by cut-rate realtors! Unless you’ve proven yourself as a
flipper, and are offering them a pretty significant amount of houses you’ll be flipping every year,
the type of realtors who work at a discount tend to be lower-quality realtors. Their goal is to
attract business, and thus invest much less time in each client. As a beginning flipper, that’s
something that will not work for you.

As a beginning flipper, what you want to do is watch out for someone with both knowledge of
the market and a personality that’s going to go over well at open houses. To get a feel for the
realtor, I recommend going to open houses, and seeing what the realtors are like in action.
Collect some cards, and get a feel for what the realtor is like in person. Watch how they interact
with the interested customers, and what sort of knowledge their responses convey.

Do they make customers feel comfortable and informed as they look at the house? There’s
nothing worse than a real estate agent who rubs customers the wrong way. In my time, I’ve
come across real estate agents who have been drinking on the job, have insulted realtors
representing customers and generally acted like jerks. You’ll want to avoid these realtors like
the plague.

When you’re looking for realtors, one of the other things you’ll want to look out for is what kind of
houses the realtor represents. Are they representing run-down junkers? Or are they
representing fabulous finished houses? Some realtors specialize in million-dollar houses, some
realtors specialize in bank-owned properties. You’ll want to find a realtor that tends to specialize
in the geographic area you’re flipping in, and in the particular housing that you’ll be flipping. An
agent who represents exclusively cheap houses 20 miles away from where you want to work is
going to be useless if you’re looking at a mid-level neighborhood near you.

At the same time, some agents will have a broader area of expertise. If there’s not much
inventory in your market, you may find that agents will tend to have a broader scope
geographically and in the type of housing that they represent. If that is the case, you can go with
a generalist real estate agent, but you will want to make sure that the agent has experience
selling houses of the type that you will be selling.

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