Spent some time this morning looking back at all the deals we’ve done to see if I could learn anything about how we have historically sourced.
Here are the numbers:
Total deals done (as a buyer myself or as part of our fee-for-service business): 81
Of the total, number that were brokered: 74
Total number of different agents representing those sellers: 65
Agents who sold us three deals: 1
Agents who sold us two deals: 6
The above is a pretty surprising result, right?
While there are extraordinarily active agents working in our markets, almost all of our deals were done with agents who only ever sold us that one deal.
If I wanted to do a ton of work, I could look up each of those agents on the MLS to see how many deals they’ve done. I suspect I’d find that the vast majority of them very rarely sell apartment buildings.
What does this mean for our deal sourcing efforts? Well, it turns out that we should probably not spend our time focusing on the most active agents in our markets. They get tons of listings, but, because they’re sophisticated, their deals end up selling at prices we would not pay.
Instead, we need to figure out how best to reach those one-off agents, the ones who only get an apartment deal once in a blue moon. That’s where the bargains are.