I'm Glad We Started When The Real Estate Market Sucked.

I was having a very interesting conversation yesterday with an agent that has been selling real estate for a lot longer than I have.

She was telling me about the good ole days. You know, the days when:

You would list a house in the morning and have a SOLD sign on it by that afternoon after multiple offers.

Anybody with a pulse could get a mortgage.

Appraisals weren't an issue.

The phones in the office were always ringing off the hook with more and more buyers.

Sellers could pay for the buyer's down payment!

As she was telling me all of these amazing stories, I tilted my head to the right and started daydreaming about how great that would be. No appraisal issues? Homes selling like hotcakes? Just sitting on my butt and getting a ton of calls??

HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE???

(Except for the buyers buying what they can't afford. That's never cool.)

Then I had a realization. I'm glad Amanda and I started selling real estate in Fort Wayne when the market SUCKED. We started with RE/MAX Home Connection back in January of 2009. A lot of local agents were starting to get out of the business because of how tough things were. Many called us crazy for starting when the market was in the toilet. They were right. We were crazy. Still are.

If we started when it was easy we would probably be out of the business too. Instead we made up our minds that we were going to succeed in a down market, no matter what.

Don't get me wrong, we don't sell eleventy billion dollars a year. You aren't going to see a picture of us in the Realtor® magazine anytime soon... but we have succeeded in a down market. For that we are thankful.

That's my thought for the day. Thanks for stopping by!