I've been working on the Madison Monroe website. It's not easy-going. We have a lot of different properties and services, and I'd like to get them all online in a very organized and interesting way. The page hierarchy needs some major work. We have to put ourselves in the place of the consumer; and the different consumers, when it comes to real estate, are extremely different.
As it is right now, in my limited experience in real estate, I see our prospective consumers as follows:
- The Investor
The real estate investor may want to buy a piece of property and sit on it, they might want to buy a property that is already generating revenue, they might want to take a piece of property and spruce it up into a property that generates revenue. And then, they might want you to manage it, or they might want to manage it, and they want you to lease it. Maybe they just want to flip it. "The investor" might need its own blog entry to really get into comprehensively. - The Would-be Home-owner
The would-be home-owner is someone who wants a house to live in. But they want to OWN it for whatever reason. Maybe they think that there's an investment opportunity there. Maybe they think they're fulfilling the American Dream, or they just want to do what their parents did or what their parents always told them they should do. Whatever the reason, they want a house that's theirs. They usually are in the midst of becoming experts on the subject and will quiz you. They'll also want to show you how much they know. - The Residential Lessee
The residential lessee wants a place to live. But do they want a house or an apartment. How many people will be living there? How much do they want to spend. What neighborhood do they want to be in. It's hard to get lessees what they want. You have to check their credit and criminal reports and it's a dice-roll for a lot of them. - The Commercial Tenant
The commercial tenant wants a place to do business. The best ones have clean business plans and think about bottom lines and square feet. They think about utilities and labor and all the things it takes to do as much as you can with as little as possible. The worst ones are dreamers who have ideas that sidetrack the real estate professional. They will sit in your office and tell you all the impossible things they want and how unwilling they are to compromise. But they don't ever have enough to build. The ones with enough to build sometimes do, but they often realize that what they've built is more than they need or less they need, and then they're stuck with a building they can't really use.The commercial tenant is very interesting because they are business people. Sometimes you can see which ones will make it and which ones will be unsuccessful in the first few moments talking with them. - The Developer
The developer wants to buy land and improve it. The developer is either a gambler or a scientist or a scientific gambler. They want to put a lot of money on the table, and the best ones have studied the game. They know soils and rocks and angles and laws and the cost of almost everything. Developers are good people to know because they know a lot about the whole business. They are interesting and know a lot of people. They move millions and billions of dollars sometimes just to make a little bit in comparison.
