All Forum Posts by: James Hamling

 DOGE is hands down, without a doubt, the #1 BEST thing and most needed thing for this country. 

Mandating how a product/service is conveyed to the public NEVER works to lower cost of goods to public, EVER.    History has well proven this out time and time again. 

Gov. mandates, laws, regulations, these are tools to control WHAT the product/service is, think safety focused. mandating no lead in toys, or fall-arrest gear for roofers, things like that, THAT is where it works. 

But to mandate or regulate how a auto manufacturer sells there goods is insanity, at best, and I'd argue quazi-communist at worst. 

The American system is designed for choice, FREE choice. 

It was literally designed to facilitate failure. 

Yes, you read that right, the American system was designed to best facilitate FAILURE not success. because when there is freedom to FAIL, it comes from consumers ability to choose, choose who is worth it, who isnt, and the poor performers fail and the good performers are rewarded. 

And it all thus incentivizes the correct future actions of others. 

The wheels started coming off when we started building in these safety net's against failure. We the people now support a ridiculous number of failures across a myriad of industries. 

Remember all the fantasy promises of ethanol? What a lead balloon that's been, but here we are, still supporting the whole scheme. Why? 

Failure is the required ingredient. Freedom to fail. 

'08' could have been one of the greatest cleansings of our nation in generations but instead we got scammed and then force feed the kool-aid of how good it was that wall-street won out over main-street. 

Now people's minds have been so polluted with this marxist-socialist drum beat for decades that people now default to a socialist answer of "Make Them ____, that's the answer, MAKE EM DO IT MY WAY" and that will fail every time because the very framework is designed to operate opposite. 

Start cutting the favoritism, the golden net's, remove hurdles for small business launch, remove corporate favoritism and watch things correct themself. 

We don't need to "make homes cheaper", we just gotta remove the barriers and special interests that support monopolies, limited competition, centralization, corporate over private, and take things back to middle America, small business, main street over wall street. 

Here is one, remove corporate anonymity. Make corporate leaders criminally and civilly liable for the actions of their organization. ACCOUNTABILITY. This is how it operates in those other countries so often cited as working better. Accountability. 

Government will never succeed in "making" anything cheaper. But it can make things fairer, more liberty centric and that will always achieve the best VALUE in market available. 

There will always be bad actors, you will never regulate malintent away. You have to drowned it out by making fertile ground for good actors to sprout up. 

Would you call it difficult, or easy, to go pick out a target area this weekend. Print off some contact cards, and literally walk door to door. yes, literally knock, introduce yourself, not selling anything, actually looking for some help. Your a local investor and looking to do some investing int hat area because you really like it and think it a good place. And do they know anyone who maybe could use your services or could be a good fit for what you're looking for. 

Yes, back in the day when I was brand spankin new this is literally what I did, every flippin weekend. I walked, knocked doors, meet people, shot-the-breeze on the lawn. 

I was pizz-poor, totally clueless on how to find a deal so I just did what I could, knock doors and ask. 

I would call it easy. Not all that complicated, really. 

Take a bunch of time, sure did. Did it suck at times, oh hell-yes it did. But there was good times too. And I fumbled myself right into some amazing deals just simply walking around, knocking doors, talking to people. 

@Joe S. 

Is it "easy" to find "off market deals"? If your using the word "easy" in place of "simple", well heck-yeah! 

Proof? The MLS.

Fun fact, >98% of every property on the MLS, was an off-market property until the agent/broker put it on the market.

And, ok let's just be honest here, just gonna say the silent truth of it, theres a reason no real estate agent has ever won a Nobel prize.... 

I mean come on, we all know it don't we, Mensa is not exactly swelling with ranks of real estate agents right. So great levels of intelligence it does not take. 

So, how is it daily that this league of "Joe Dirt's" can source literally thousands of off market properties across that nation if it's not "simple"? 

The rub is, just because it's "simple" does not mean work is not required...... And that the work is simple, easy, fun or enjoyable. 

Can mailers work? Yes they can.... IF you put in the work. 

Can door knocking work? Yes, again, IF you put in the work. 

SEO, cold calling, networking, hitting up probate attorneys, hanging outside the funeral parlor..... ok maybe not that one but point is the strategies are all but endless AND THEY ALL REQUIRE WORK. 

Some are more efficient than others, some WAY more efficient (shout out to @Jerryll Noorden) but with 1,000% certainty THEY ALL REQUIRE EFFORT. 

Why is it said to seek "Off-Market"? Because first and foremost it requires you getting INVOLVED, putting in some rep's, and if you won't get involved and won't put in the rep's you will never, I repeat you will NEVER succeed in investment real estate or any business venture EVER, full-stop. 

Second, because when you are connected 1-2-1 as you will be in an off-market potential, there is a flow of information that can never happen with intermediaries in between. Rapport can be built. Ideas bounced back n fourth. It can be a conversation in search of a win-win, a mutual effort vs adversarial negotiation as on-market is designed to be. 

Success requires effort people, always has and always will, there is no work around. 

@Jay Hinrichs wouldn't eliminating Brokers decrease competition, and access to competitive offerings? 

Isn't the exact opposite what we need? More competition, more competitive offerings? 

Yeah, 100% agree. 

And I'd hope people have enough wit's to figure if someone BS's their way to get "biz leads" there probably going to BS their way through/around anything/everything else.     

It's deceptive practice, plain n simple. 

It's people Bruce. 

Almost daily I get a phone call of: "Hey, I am calling on your property listed for rent (that they are obviously reading because that's how they got my #), I was wondering, is it available?". 

It's been years on end I have been doing this and still, to this day every time I get asked this question, I so desperately want to say "Nope! Not available. I just like to list places and keep them posted so I get a chance to talk to nice new people, like you. So, how's it going?" Lol. 

But I get it, plenty do keep places posted that are no longer available, so I am nice, I answer. But, then when they ask me the rent, the terms, available date...... I tell them it's one quarter inch away from where they looked at my #, READ THE LISTING. No, they don't almost never.     Because it's too much energy to take 2min to read it, instead they just read for a #, and call me to ask everything they just refused to read in looking for my #........ 

I assure that's what's happening here, it's a generational thing. 

I miss the good ole days, when you could tell an idiot there being an idiot.... 

@Jonathan Greene I think it's all about intent. 

For example, if the guy with the CRM company is asking the CRM questions because he actually is seeking the info from the public, what they like, hate, need, want, so he can go back and use that info to better what he's doing, hey high-5.

Unfortunately, that's maybe what, 1:1,000.... 

Other than that, yeah, it's annoying. But, I bet-ya it's also effective.  

BE - OF - SERVICE ....... 

Yes, it really is that simple. 

Literally everything one should, or shouldn't be, do, know, act, will all be correctly guided from those 3 words. 

Because you can't be of service, if you are not skilled, so one will get skilled. 

And you can't be of service if you don't communicate well, so one will communicate well. 

And you can't be of service, if your not delivering value, so one will make themselves of value. 

So it really is just that, BE OF SERVICE. 

No jazzy tools, BS booklets, word-salad info whatever's, just BE OF SERVICE. 

And it also means to attack everything like it's your Mom's, like it matters, truly matters, because if you only care about a paycheck you are not serving your looking to be served. 

Most fail because that exact reason, there why is SELF-serving. GIVE 2 get. Ignore the get just focus on the GIVE, everything else will take care of itself. 

BE OF SERVICE ....

 Lol, Twin Cities experiencing growth, that's the understatement of the century. 

Here is a few suggestions to help whittle down focus a bit more. 

Do you want to be in dense developed urban (such as Minneapolis), or surrounding urban (Bloomington, Richfield, Edina etc.) suburbs (Maple Grove / Plymouth) or semi-rural "path of progress" (Otsego, Monticello). 

And this should be a "living and working in ___ environment fit's good with my life" kind of things. 

Next, and you may be surprised, what hobbies and other interests are important?    Look, it matters being happy where you live, it does. So if your big into water sports, living in the desert could have all the profit in the world but it's going to be miserable hell and odd's are after some months the profits wont matter. And vice versa. So, it matters to also have a life style fit. 

Lastly; NUT-UP! At some point your just gonna have to jump, perfect is a process not a place. If you don't hold you accountable, if you don't push you, well, the worlds happy letting you be a bystander to life. 

You missed my point. 

Point is, by your own statement you already have the best resource available, at hand, to answer all of this, and then some. 

That PM, if they are what you say they are, would be you're "Obi-wan". 

PM's know a hell of a lot more than transactional agents do in vast majority. Ugly truth is the vast majority of agents out there have no knowledge, conceptual knowledge, or exceptionally limited knowledge in this regard. 

 A PM of worth at let's say yr7, has done hundred upon hundreds of listings, and dealt with a range of properties and tenant situations most transactional agents will never experience in their entire life time. Just a fact of the #'s. 

Take my office for example, we have over 1,400 doors under management in just my office alone. We see more and experience more in 1yr than any transactional agent in our market ever does in their career.

We can answer those question from in-the-moment 1st hand experience, what is happening now, what happened before, and where it's all leading. From real-world, not theory or something we heard or read, but from DOING. 

A transactional agent is best for exactly that, the transaction, how to in contract negotiations, how to get under contract, get best deal in contract and sometimes how to dig up and create a purchase potential or how to best sell. 

if you want to know about operational wise, speak to those in the operations side of things.