Market Knowledge Expert

[Jonathan Schneider]

I'm a pretty new real estate agent and a beginning investor. I want to specialize in helping investors find deals. From what I've been reading, one of the main things investors look for in an agent to work with is market knowledge.  A few questions:

1. What does that mean exactly? 

2. Is it possible or recommended to gain this knowledge about a large metro area, or should I narrow it down to:

• zip code
• geographic area
• demographic area
• property type
• neighborhood
• etc...?

3. Can this knowledge be gained rapidly?

4. Where do I get it?

The Kansas City metro area is so big and diverse, despite my growing up in the area, there are many places I've never been and I feel slightly overwhelmed by the glut of information I've been trying to absorb. I want to be an expert. Help me get there.

[Kim Tucker]

Being an agent and focusing on investors is going to be very tough to make a lot in commissions unless you invest as well or you act as an investor somewhere in the transaction on behalf of a busy investor or out of state investor.

Yes there are investors who know what they are doing and work well with agents.  However most experienced investors are already agents or they have their agent they work with already.  So as a new Realtor you would need to find newer investors and get them trained on how to work with you as a buyer and most new investors are just like you - they don't know what they are doing and some have even been trained by the gurus to waste your time and never buy anything.  So to get to a good core of 4 or 5 investors that you can buy houses for will take time.

If you focus on the listing side - marketing like a wholesaler does to find motivated sellers, only instead of buying low and selling high, you list it and then sell it to an investor buyer - then you can get started with out having to find an investor looking for a buyers agent.

If you focus on the buying side - work as boots on the ground for the out of state investors. They learn the area, the house, the rehab, etc and then they go find houses, make offers, and manage the renovation for the out of state investor - usually for a fee on top of commission.  But you have to find that investor who will trust you to run their business for them in the area.

Many agents have good luck with investors by finding the niche that they are expert in - be it an area of town - Mid-town, Waldo, Blue Springs, JOCO, etc or a type of listing - rental property, bank owned properties, auctions, short sales, or type of property - houses, multi family, apartments.  Then they focus on that niche and work that niche for who ever is buying or selling in that niche - might be investors and it might be non-investors.

For myself, when I started I got a job on a team that sold bank owned properties - that was their niche,  my job was to do BPOs (so I learned values fast) and to work with a core group of buyers they provided me and let them know when we had houses that met their criteria - again we focused on the listing side.

Now we market for motivated sellers for houses we can buy and then sell, however we often get a property we are not comfortable buying or that the seller would be better served in listing and we list it.  Typically when we list our commission is basically what we would have been able to earn on the deal if we had gone the traditional wholesale route.  We do all the same things only our contract is a listing agreement instead of a purchase agreement, time spent is about the same, marketing is about the same.

Hopefully this will give you some ideas.