Three More Letters and Lessons Learned Negotiating Real Estate Deals in Chicago
A few months back I opted to shine up a facet of my real estate repetoire. With nearly a decade of experience assisting folks in the Chicago area buy and sell homes ranging from a toe nail north of six figures into the mid seven figures, I am comfortable negotiating contracts with my team at The Real Estate Lounge Chicago.
Across the board my clients, whether list side or sell side, have been pleased with my efforts. Steeped in the school of good reason and fairness I tend to integrate statistics into the process and apply good measures of my South Side Irish heritage – balancing charm, grace and pugnaciousness – to push forward my clients’ agenda. The good-to-great relations I enjoy with my clients reflect that our efforts tend to yield positive results.
Anyway, turn the hands of our Chicago-oriented clock back a couple of months and there I was sitting in a Certified Negotiation Expert class. Sponsored by my top shelf brokerage, @properties, the session was two days long and rife with case studies, data, flow charts and graphics. The good news is I was a model student enjoying the presentation and information as much as my son Jackson enjoys a taste of chocolate or a piece of candy. And while I can’t say that I learned anything new I can earnestly express my gratitude for the reminders brought to the table.
For my efforts I received a nifty three-letter designation to tag on my business card – CNE.
One might ask does the class or the acronym make me any smarter? Probably not. But the acronym AND the sheer volume of experience adds up to what I call a “tends to.”
And what exactly is a “tends to”? A “tends to” is this – education/information (reflected by the acronym) augmented by experience “tends to” make your life a heckuva lot easier when you are participating in the Chicago real estate market (or wherever you are buying a home).
But I will grant you this – while negotiating skills can be enhanced through coursework or practice, there are some folks who are natural born negotiators.
To make my point I simply consider my three-and-half-year-old son Jackson.
Right before he turned three Jackson hit the ground running as far as expanding his vocabulary and manifesting his expressiveness. This loquaciousness simply amplifies his negotiating skills. And whether it’s early in the morning when he would make the case for a candy for the ride to Lycee Francaise, his pre-pre-school, or late at night coming home from Target or wherever and he would insert the good reason for a cartoon when we got home, Jackson is what I perceive as a born natural negotiator.
It never ceases to amaze me. Even last night following a rugged day of a microburst storm leaving us without power most of the day after bruised skies unleashed savage winds that literally shredded the tops of dozens of trees surrounding our Edgewater home. After regaining a degree of normalcy in our lovely brick home we headed out to Oak Park for dinner with my brother and his family to celebrate his son Colin’s birthday.
No sooner had we finished desert at Fuego Loco and gotten Jackson and Lucas into their “cowmouglage” carseats than old Jaybird piped up, “Can I have just one cartoon when we get home?” Long meal, longer day, and like any battle-tested negotiator he zooms in on his desired outcome and doesn’t flinch in making his case.
Identifying the goal may be the chief element in the negotiator’s toolkit. But a close second is being able to communicate the desired goal. And while some crafty types may try to use sleights of hand or what Elvis Costello so graciously referred to as “verbal gymnastics,” the true negotiator is just that – true.
Identify what you want, let the other side know that you want it, explain to the other side why what you want makes good sense, move forward.
Do people complicate it? All the time. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve received offers and responses to my clients’ offers that have puzzled me and left me shaking my head.
But at the end of the day good reason tends to prevail. And when all is said and done we hear the good reason of Jackson’s request and then we watch cartoons.
By the way, Happy Father’s Day.
A Sunday Stroll Before a Chicago Open House
Sunday emerges superbly this day, shining on the denizens of this metropolis we call Chicago.
Hallelujah.
And as Jackson, Lucas and I took a spin around the block before I head to my open house in a contemporary single family home in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago – Jackson on his brilliantly beautiful blue bike and Lucas with feet propped up on his Kettler trike, me pushing with one hand and balancing a cup of Metropolis coffee in the other – we heard the congregation lifting their voices in St. Gertrude’s at the corner of Granville and Glenwood.
Read the rest of this entry »
A Compliment Received and Google Page One for “chicago real estate”
Below? It’s a chart of our Saturday itinerary. From here to there and back again, checking out possibilities toward the goal of a new home picked from the heap of the Chicago real estate market.
I received a great compliment a few days back.
A few weeks ago my phone rang. A nice young man had seen me online. Originally searching in the Wicker Park area he told me I was the top listing agent in the area. Based on that he took a deeper look and the looking led to a phone call.
Without delving too much into specifics he said he was calling real estate professionals working in the Chicago market to figure out who he wanted to represent him with his upcoming purchase. As is the case with satisfying conversations, there was an unscripted and generous give and take. He mentioned a few areas that interested him and I gave him my sense of what these Chicago neighborhoods were like with insights based on my direct experiences.
To make a long story short we met Wednesday afternoon to chart an itinerary as we investigate real estate prospects ranging from Edgewater to Lakeview, from Roscoe Village to Albany Park. Where we are going is inscribed in the map above. In the course of conversation two he was nice enough to tell me something along the lines that he was pleased to finally have his expectations surpassed by somebody he met as he was preparing to make what promises to be his first very significant investment.
Evidently some of his phone calls didn’t have the same result with some phone calls going unreturned. And evidently some folks “working” the Chicago real estate market didn’t seem to be working after all. His exact words were “They don’t seem to want my business.”
And the words of one his classmates at The Kellogg School of Business who also is making a real estate purchase were “not many realtors seemed hungry.”
I understand what he and his associate are saying. And it’s not so much that I am hungry as I am motivated by the simple truth that it is my job to do my job the best that I can. And I will. And I do.
Just as I expect him and all of my clients to have questions and want their real estate professional to be able to respond with knowledge, authenticity and authority.
And so I am lucky enough to have nice people like this new client of mine praising me. Just as I have been fortunate for nearly ten years to have similar laudatory praises offered by folks buying houses, selling condos, purchasing two-flats and looking for someone they can trust in the Chicago real estate market.
And that has been me. And that’s something for which I am thankful. Thankful to my clients. But thankful also to the way that I am wired.
Wired to work harder than seems reasonable. To know as much as possible. To freely share my knowledge (thereby enabling my clients to make decisions – whether yes or no). And to never deviate from what is in my clients’ (and my family’s) best interests.
It’s a good way to live. And in fact I like it so much that I intend to do it again tomorrow.
By the way, can you tell how pleased I am with my page one ranking for “chicago real estate” at both google and bing? As one of Jackson’s favorite cartoons would say – “Wow wow Wubzie! Wubzie Wubzie WOW WOW!”
White Noise, Common sense and The Chicago Real Estate Market
White noise.
It’s there. And there. And over there.
It’s the radio playing in my 4-Runner as I veer down Lake Shore Drive to show listings of The Real Estate Lounge Chicago.
It’s the music seeping out of my laptop from the “scrobbler” at Last FM or random selections at Pandora or selected singles at Blip FM or something I liked and wanted to find at Songza.
For years and years it has been the ubiquitous tv, growing ever bigger and larger to dominate living rooms, family rooms, great rooms and what rooms have you in Chicago and wherever your piece of real estate might be. And with the popularity of shows like The Bachelorette and American Idol, it appears to continue to be a source of white noise.
Sometimes apparently credible sources of information are themselves sources of white noise. Take for instance the real estate site zillow as it freely and happily spews forth nonsensical numbers that it says your home is worth today. I thought of this earlier in the week when a younger and less experienced real estate agent affiliated with my Chicago brokerage (mistakenly) sent a mass email seeking assistance with a client who noticed that zillow evaluated the property he was under contract to buy for more than 10% less than the price he had agreed to pay.
The client apparently wanted to either kill the real estate contract or renegotiate the agreement that already had been reached for his soon-to-be Chicago home.
The white noise of zillow evidently had hypnotized the buyer of this Lakeview condo and compelled him to want to ditch the specific information he already had considered in making and consummating an offer.
If I were advising the newer, younger and less experienced real estate agent and his home buying client I would simply say that zillow is inaccurate.
The difficulty with zillow, if you don’t already know, is that it provides what I call a polyglot approach to something that merits and demands specificity. Attributing a value to the home you are selling or the home you are purchasing demands “capturing” local and comparable values, not dropping a fishing net that fails to distinguish between (significant) differences.
If you have read The Real Estate Lounge Chicago blog for any length of time you may recall sporadic references I have made to the process of establishing value. I have done the same on numerous instances in responding to inquiries by Chicago home buyers and sellers at Trulia regarding value.
I don’t doubt the brilliance of what zillow does – to generate a number as quickly as snapping your fingers based on an address is simple genius. But, dear friends, don’t mistake quickness with accuracy.
To the point:- zillow doesn’t distinguish between my clients’ two-year-old home in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago (brick with limestone accents, five bedrooms and three full and two half baths realized to perfection by Materials Marketing Design, full gourmet kitchen with Wolf, Subzero and hand-crafted Amish cabinets and rooftop and garage top decks) from a boarded up two-flat three doors down whose owners were trying to and failed to convert to a single family home from a circa 1955 bungalow a block over from a rehabbed frame single family home with central air and new plumbing another block away.
Doesn’t make sense to me – does it to you?
Hmm. Without thrashing it out too much I suppose diminishing the adverse impact of white noise boils down to applying another two word beckoning to thought and call to action – common sense.
Whether you are a passionate participant in the Chicago real estate market as am I or your passions bloom in the classroom or the board room or take root in the cubicle or the home office, the means of turning down the volume of white noise is to inflate and make paramount common sense.
When you think about it, this is how things happen. Whether it’s down the street or across the country or somewhere difficult to pronounce in a land far away.
Ah! A groundswell!
Things happen when people come together. Look at last fall’s presidential election. A synergy is established and we move forward, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes lurching, sometimes clumsily, and sometimes gracefully. Sometimes it’s cultural, sometimes intellectual, sometimes spiritual and punctuated by a slender wristband inscribed by a “wwjd.”
Whatever the impetus, movement is the description of the people powering it and the goal achieved.
So what I propose here as I turn down the volume on a delightful country and western tune People are Crazy by Billy Currington is that we wipe the metaphorical fog from the window to take a closer look at how we weigh ourselves down with white noise.
A man wiser than me years ago told me that the first step is to recognize that there’s a problem. And once we identify it, then we can set about tackling it. Bearing this in mind what I propose is that we apply common sense principles from the time we rise until our heads hit our soft, comfy pillows late at night.
And then we do it again the next day, and then the next day, and on and on, living one day at a time until we have a whole string of ‘em together. And then we look back and contemplate the difference a whole bunch of single days have made when considered together.
Yeah, this sounds good to me. And as I finish pulling the filaments of white noise from my ears that’s just what I am about to set out to do. I hope you will join me.
And in the interim, if you have any questions about how this common sense approach relates to the Chicago real estate market, give me a call or text me at 773.848.9241 to commence the conversation.
Finding a Real Cup of Coffee in Chicago, but not a Working Outlet
So the lances have been drawn and the steeds mounted as the coffee battles are being waged.
In billboards and full-page ads in income-deprived dailies like the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times we are witness to the skirmishes as grinding teeth of corporate titans have been supplanted by grinding coffee and lots of lattes that are being tipped to and from Starbucks and the cafe of the masses simmering under McDonald’s Golden Arches and the double “d” of Dunkin’ Donuts.
And while I will be the first to admit that I have enjoyed more than a few specialty coffees that I have snagged from Mickey D drive-thrus in-between showings of pristine (and less than) pieces of real estate in Chicago, I’d like to tell you of an adventure of sorts that I had earlier today as Lucas shimmied through the playground
Read the rest of this entry »
