Success Story – Doing Your Due Diligence Upfront

If your service professional does not respond to you in a timely manner, you probably want to look elsewhere. This is just something that was passed down to me a long time ago. Whether it's a real estate agent, you're looking for, an insurance agent, a mechanic, a property management company, I don't care what it is. But if you have a team of people you're looking for and you're trying to get a hold of them, trying to give them business and they aren't responding to you in a quick, efficient, timely manner, you probably should look somewhere else. Because really it means one of two things, truthfully. Again, there's the emergency, there are the one-off issues, I get it, right? We all have those things come up, but really it means that they're either one too busy for you, which pay good for them, but they're just too busy for you. They can't provide good enough service to you. They've got other things we're dealing with or they're just too out of sorts and they just can't handle business efficiently, unfortunately.

So this is the evidence of success. Success stories this week just because there are so many people out there. The first couple of months of this year as a real estate team, our real estate team is going through and calling all kinds of past clients. We're starting to give them current values for their home and because they haven't seen them for a year or two years whenever it depending on when they bought their home. So we're starting to give them updates in their home and what their situation looks like financially. And we're also getting a hold of people that didn't end up doing things last year and seeing how we can help them, how we can provide them this year. It's just interesting because doing that for a couple of hours every day, it's something that a vast majority of service providers don't do especially real estate agents. We've done it now for weeks since the new year and we've set many mail appointments with people because they appreciate the follow. They appreciate good professional due diligence. There are some people that don't want to do anything and that's fine. You're going to have some people that were a lead that was generated or something like that, that they did something initially and then they don't want to talk to you anymore and they're not happy about you calling them. And then that's just life. You kindly say, "Hey, you know what, I appreciate your time. I'm sorry for bothering you and let us know if you need our help in the future."

Due diligence

Doing those little things is what a service provider should do especially a real estate team. A real estate team is a function of a local area that really should kind of have their hands or pulse on what is going on in the area. They really should be able to provide you with referrals for good other service providers in the area, good vendors, and that's really what a good real estate team does. Not only answering queries. Speaking of this - answering inquiries, 50% of real estate inquiries go unanswered. That is a stat I just read the other day. It was one of the national publications. I can't remember what exactly it was now, but 50% of leads or 50% of inquiries go unanswered by real estate professionals. So whether it's a real estate agent or real estate broker, a real estate investor, 50%. So one of two people that reach out for more information on a home. That means if you're a seller and you're looking at your home sold, you got to make sure you do due diligence and pick the right people to sell your home because one out of every two leads that come in for that agent, one out of two inquiries, it might be an inquiry on your home, a lead for your home, they are not being called. And that's being done by a vast majority of realtors, right? That is the 80- 20 rule to operate those laws. Eighty percent of the agents or the service providers, whatever it is, aren't doing the work. Twenty percent and 20% do 80% of the business. You could probably knock that down even five percent or 10 percent, it's probably even less than 20 percent.

Work with those who give you value

So make sure you're doing your due diligence to find who is doing what they say they're doing and who is doing, living and breathing that business and that philosophy every single day. That is super, super important. Again, just a little tip, a little success tip for those of you that are looking to find a service provider, to find our real estate team, to find a real estate agent, an insurance agent, mechanic. Like I said, anything that has to do with service and communication and people skills, you've got to find people who are willing to communicate. The number one complaint in the real estate industry and I'm sure this is most industries, the number one complaint is lack of communication. It's always a lack of communication between humans that breaks things down. It's really probably the number one complaint, if not, I know it's the top couple in broken down marriages, broken down relationships. It's a lack of communication, poor communication, bad communication, no communication, and it's the same thing. Humans tend to have a problem when they go into business and then they go into other areas.

Make sure you are doing your due diligence of finding people that are efficient and who are going to be able to give you the proper time, service and a level of respect that you needed. So I appreciate you guys more than anything and I look forward to giving you guys your market update here soon for January going forward. It's going to be an interesting year here in the markets, especially here in Metro Detroit. We'll see. It's going to be a very interesting year with interest rates and all this going on. All the bubbles that are blowing up everywhere in credit and student loan debt and the bond market's gonna be interesting, so stay tuned.

We'll have a lot for you this year and it's going to be a wild ride, but it's gonna be fun and make sure. As I said, make sure you're doing your due diligence upfront. The number one problem I see with people across the board, whether it's here locally or here or anywhere around the country, doesn't matter, talking to other investors, talking to other realtors, is that people don't do their due diligence upfront so then they have a hard time trusting that professional that they hire makes the whole process a lot more challenging. When you don't trust your advisor, whether it's your CPA or an insurance provider, your bookkeeper or your spouse. It doesn't matter what it is. If you can't trust that person, you don't do your due diligence up front and asked her questions up front. You're gonna have a hard time through the whole process because you're not going to trust the advice that they're giving you, so do your due diligence upfront. You will appreciate it later on. We'll see you guys soon.