The Real Estate Sonata

In my twenties I composed music and fully expected to have a career in the creative arts. Then I was waylaid by a fascination for real estate and it ate my life. Now, thirty years after I began, I am struck by the many ways in which music and real estate are similar. The successful broker is both enterprising and out-of-the-box, the way the successful artist has to be. Both work in highly competitive fields against formidable odds. Both are more likely to be successful if they develop a signature style. Here are a few examples of real estate creativity which have impressed me over the years:

• A great agent makes listening a creative skill.  Frankly, in today’s world, listening at all seems like a big skill. But the top agent has to go further – she has to hear the nuance in what she has been told which leads her to conclude what the buyer’s REAL agenda is. Sometimes the buyer doesn’t yet know what he wants, and sometimes he is too embarrassed to admit what is really driving him. Is it a prestige purchase? Is it a competitive purchase? No one feels comfortable admitting these things, but if the agent is a creative enough listener she will hear the subtext interwoven into the conversation which will give her the clues she needs.

• Neighborhood placement offers a world of creative opportunity. Often buyers are shopping in the wrong part of town, or for the wrong sort of property. The creative challenge is figuring out what really WOULD work for them and bringing them around to a different point of view. In my years as an active agent I liked to “kidnap” my buyers in these situations.  I would say “Humor me. I want to put you into a cab and take you to a neighborhood you never considered, or a property type you never considered. It’ll only take a half hour.” And off we would go. It is remarkable how often that property became the one they bought. Often THEY didn’t know that was what they wanted, or even that such a thing existed, so it was up to me to figure it out and get them there.

•  I have written a lot in recent months about marketing. In the Web 2.0 world the creative agent is ALWAYS thinking about how to extend his personal brand. Has he amassed a large group of Twitter followers? Is she a blogger? Is he leveraging school and family networks? Does he arrive at a dinner party with a list of recent sales in the building, since recent sales are EVERY New Yorker’s favorite dinner party topic?

• Finally there is the question of interpersonal psychology, something I NEVER had to deal with when writing music. What’s the dynamic between the couple? Is one of them actually the decision maker? How does the agent play it if one member of the couple is doing the looking but their agendas are different and the agent senses that the other one is actually going to drive the decision? What about the parent purchasing for a child who hates everything the parent likes, and vice versa? There is probably no area of the brokerage business in which creativity plays such an important part as relationship management. And every situation is different.

My years in real estate, like my years in music, have all been about problem solving. The burst of inspiration, which can come in either career, is exciting but not determinative. In both, it is not your great idea but what you DO with it that counts. 

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