Odd Fellow Agent or Valuable Team Member: How Do You Decide?

[Kristyn Grimes]

Ok, so as the day approaches where I take all my research and finally start making offers, I have been putting together my team for my BRRRR goals. Everyone is at the starting line except my investment-friendly agent. I know a guy (lol) and he's been great when we've looked for our own rental houses. He was great with answering questions when I had them almost 2 years ago when I decided I would become an investor. The more I talked to him about investing the more I realised he knew about it and did a little himself. Not to mention he's a marketing genius. We look forward to his Christmas photo on Santa's lap that he sends out every year reminding us it's always a good time to buy.

Now, with that being said, there were some incidents with him that at the time I thought were unprofessional. For example, I received a text message during the middle of a weekday saying he had a hot deal and needed someone to invest with him 10K each. I called him no more than 30 minutes later and he said don't worry about it he already found someone for the deal and thanks anyway. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about investing and I thought it was brash and unprofessional to just text someone for 10k randomly. Two years and thousands of research hours later, I know a heck of a lot more and realize that he probably just sent out a mass text to investors he knew which is how you play the game, right? I haven't really spoken to him since that and we used a family friend to purchase our house recently instead of him because it put a bad taste in my husband's mouth.

I say all this because I am in the process of getting my own real estate license but I really feel like I need someone a hell of a lot more seasoned than I am on these first couple of deals to learn the ropes. I really enjoyed this specific agent's tenacity and he was able to always tell me what I needed to hear and give me a very rough estimate of the things that might need to be replaced on all of the walk-throughs we ever did. How do you know if you have a good real estate investment friendly agent or just some douchebag that's trying to grab deals out from under you for his buddies?

To be candid, I feel really silly based on the things I discussed with him regarding investing as if I knew what the heck I was talking about back then. The numbers that I was giving him on properties to find for me were nowhere close to what would be positive cash flow and I know that now. So I kind of wonder now if he thought I was just one of the umpteen million people who must tell him they're investors but couldn't even tell you the definition of ROI or cash flow.

As always thank you in advance for your insight, BP friends!