The chorus: Do you want to resurrect some golden age? Be honest with yourself, it wasn’t all that great.
I have a version of this conversation almost every week.
“I remember when I could buy a house in that neighborhood for $50,000. I’m not paying you $150,000.”
They’re not wrong about the $50,000 — that was a real number once. But the market they’re trying to live in hasn’t existed for fifteen years.
And it’s not just the price tag. People miss the low interest rates. The insurance that cost half what it costs now. The property taxes that weren’t climbing every other year. The skilled tradespeople who used to be everywhere. The lumber and materials that didn’t cost what they cost today. The permits that didn’t take six months. The regulations that didn’t exist yet. The general assumption that private enterprise was a good thing — and not something to be policed and slowed down.
Every conversation has its own version. Everybody is mourning a different piece of it.
And the same trap catches the agents and investors who came up during the low-interest-rate years — when nearly every deal papered. You didn’t have to be particularly great. Cheap money was doing half the heavy lifting. That was its own kind of golden age too, and a lot of people are still sitting on their hands waiting for it to come back.
Be honest with yourself. It wasn’t all that great.
What I actually want to talk about today is what to DO with all of this. Because while other people are stuck in their golden age, there is sooooo much opportunity sitting on the other side of it.
Start with the stuck seller. There’s a property that won’t move. Maybe it’s tired. Maybe it needs work the seller can’t afford and won’t finance. Maybe the comps don’t support the price they need. The agent is frustrated. The seller is frustrated. The property just sits.
If you’re a GC, a lender, an operator — go put lipstick on the pig. Partner with the seller. Do the work. Take a lien on the property to protect yourself. Get the price up. The seller nets more. Higher sales price, more commission for the agent. You get paid on the contracting AND you’re insulated by the lien. Everyone wins. The property finally moves.
That’s real money sitting in plain sight.
What about writing offers contingent on getting land commercially zoned? Then go do the actual work of getting it rezoned. You just created value out of nothing but a willingness to navigate the planning commission to elevate the properties highest and best use.
There is real money in data centers right now — but they have their own buy box. Reach out to me and I’ll tell you what we’re looking for. Bring the correct zoning, land, energy, fiber, and tenant to the same table. Line up those ducks and you’re very likely to have a Winner. It’s wholesaling on steroids.
Walk into the churches in your area and ask if they own any land that could be developed. I bet a lot of them say yes. People donate estates to their churches all the time. The church often doesn’t know what to do with it, or doesn’t have the bandwidth to figure it out. Go help them figure it out. Help them create. Help them serve the community.
That’s a deal, a relationship, and a community contribution wrapped into one.
If you’re a realtor, this is the year to learn how to navigate short sales. There is real pressure in the $300,000–$500,000 space in our market right now. Lots of preforeclosures. Lots of people quietly drowning. Bring them a solution. That’s the whole job. If you have a property that needs to go short sale, hit me up.
And honestly — I love it when y’all bring me a problem to solve. It’s the best part of this work. We figure it out, and almost every time, the answer can be duplicated and applied somewhere else. Solve it once and you have a system.
If I don’t know the solution, I’d love to learn it with you. That’s how I’ve gotten better at this for twelve-plus years — smart, motivated people walk in with problems I haven’t seen, and I go figure it out alongside them.
Working on aligning some ducks in the 3D-printed homes and modular homes space right now. More on that soon. :)This is the part of the song I like best — be honest with yourself.
Same with the rest of your life. The job you had ten years ago that you keep romanticizing — was it actually better, or did it just have less weight on top of it? The city that “used to be cool” — was it cooler, or were you just younger? The friends you don’t really identify with anymore?
The past is fine to visit. Just don’t move there.
Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
PS: Bring me your problems. Bottlenecks. Things that need AI automation. Hit reply and let’s navigate it together.
PSS: Better and Coinbase just issued the first Fannie Mae–backed conventional mortgage collateralized by crypto. Joe and Amy in Ann Arbor are the first borrowers. Somebody just used their digital assets to buy one. This is the future. It doesn’t ask permission. Tokenization of real estate is here!