Robert OHaugherty, REALTOR, ABR

One of my evaluation customers who sends me work indicated that when I get to 60 total BPOs I will begin to receive BPOs directly to my email, exclusively, with a time limit to respond before it goes to the "free-for-all". I'm on my 13th one now and at this rate I should get to my 60th one maybe by the summer of 2010. Here's my evaluation of BPO's so far:

1. Some were so easy I had completed them within one afternoon in about 3 hrs.

2. Others, and most of them, require a moderate amount of work to get completed before the deadline, 1 to two days.

3. Then there are the rejects which all were late completing and took several days beyond the due date.

The Good: payment by the evaluating company has been excellent, the pay fair but alittle extra pays for realty fees; learning new neighborhoods and subdivisions; generates a few leads to followup to a listing or sale. My ranking is all above 91% to 100%, so far a clean record.

The Bad: time consuming when the valuation is tough to complete or is rejected to needing more comps or explainations.

At least for me, it's nice to have the extra coin, and I talk with a lot of prospective people about BPOs values and I find and seek out a lot of FSBOs.

After spending several months away from AR with medical problems, I'm back at least for now. Do the rest of you guys have medical insurance as a realtor? Are you on your spouses insurance plan? I hope so. I'm with United Health Care which includes both major medical, hospitalization and prescriptions, dental, life and disability. Copay usually of between $20 to $45 per visit to a provider. Without it, I could have just spent $50,000. As it was, I was out only $2,500 for the deductible and minor associate fees that averaged $12 to $20. This is not an advertisement but I was just wondering what other realtors are doing for health care.

Already the new year is off to a great start. If you're an agent contemplating your next move to quit I recommend you do as I do when it looks like it's time to throw in the towel. Wait 24hours, get some sleep, see a movie, take a trip, go to lunch with someone you can't stand to be around, go to a restaurant you've never been in or a new food group, and even better yet, find someone to help - take $50.00 and go to an orphanage or a nursing home, a cancer center, make a donation. I once visited a assisted living home and was greeted by 10 wheel chaired old people wanting to talk to a living person. When I finally got out of the nursing home, I had forgotten my problems all together, and I set out to start again and continue on.

Just a heads up on items I found going through real estate journals. A well respected agency here in the Dallas area was noted in the Dallas Business Journal (pg 3, Dec 5-11, 2008 issue) of another idea from thinking outside the box. They have gone to banks and have solicited their REO departments to handle the new construction residential REO's (foreclosed on builders and/or builder inventories) and have contracted with them to not only list the REO (like normal), but to also add a service of "property management". I had to work an new construction REO priced at $825,000 back in the summer and my first open house the AC didn't work (92 degrees inside the house), but also the lawn was being burned up from lack of water, entire inside was dusty and cob-webbed, light bulbs burned out, smoke alarm beeping, etc. I called the bank REO department and passed on a rather lengthy list of items that needed to be correct and it took them 3 months for them to repair "most" of the items.

So I think I know where this agency above is going with this. Just like in managing an apartment without a tenant, an agent gets an REO, new construction, empty house listing agreement signed and gets a property management agreement signed as well. There will be two incomes on this one: at the sale of the listing and monthly checks for managing the property, calling the yard man, calling the AC man, weekly checks on the property for cleaning for showing purposes, and generally get the property in showing condition to sell. More later on this one....

One of the first tasks that my first agency firm wanted all new agents to do was to write a quick, brief business plan. From my business background, I kicked one out in no time and set about doing the plan. I started by writing a summary, a description of the entire plan, and then I wrote out the marketing plan, my expectations of income, total sales, a resume, financial actuals and projections over 3 years and finished with a wrapup or conclusion. My first year I didn't even come close to meeting my goals or projections in the business plan but I wrote another one my second year and have been ever since. It wasn't until my 3rd year as an agent that I wrote my plan that I actually met several of my goals. What a year! I've been and still write a business plan to this day. I complete it during the span of time between Christmas and New Years. I first update the previous year's business plan and then just make adjustments to marketing and goals, add new info on designations, education and include goals that were accomplished.

I encourage you and others to buy a book on business plans if you have never done one and set about writing it. Maybe this way might seem a bit too much work, but it works well with me. Once it's written down, aim at completing every goal and doing the plan. I think you'll be amazed with the results.