A 20-year real estate industry veteran, Greg Rand began his career on the mortgage side, then moved to a tech company advocating public access to the MLS – in the early 90s, a bleeding-edge concept. He became a technology evangelist for HFS (now Realogy), pushing for technology adoption among its real estate franchisees. In 1997, Rand joined the family business, Rand Realty, working as its managing partner. The firm grew from 200 agents to 800, eventually affiliating with Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate. Rand sold most of his ownership in the brokerage to pursue
Own America on a full-time basis.
Basically, you say real estate agents need to change their thinking about being in the REAL ESTATE business rather than the HOMEOWNERSHIP business. Tell me what this paradigm shift is all about?
My key message is that the kind of economic crises we are living through right now leaves the world a different place! People change after an experience like this. There is economics, and then there is the human factor – as when the Depression left its imprint on our grandparents they still feel today. Our generation’s wild-eyed optimism on housing has turned to doubt. I hear consumers asking about the value of their homes as an investment and this creates an opportunity to do more to represent housing as an investment.
What is the Own America concept?
What we do at Own America is to equip the industry to compete. We “outfit” agents and companies with the skills, knowledge and marketing support tools to conduct real estate investment business transactions. Our training tools are Web-based, with videos to make you smarter about concepts such as housing cycles. This information is totally relevant to what you do every day.
You’re pretty passionate about this. Why is this so important?
Well, even at the market’s peak, new homes accounted for 8 percent of all sales – relo about 3 percent. Today, 23 percent of all home sales are to investors. It’s the biggest market segment and nobody is out there fighting for it. All you have to do to prove that is to type “real estate” into Google and see how many hundreds and hundreds of franchise sites and brokerages are listed. Then add “investment” to that term and you’ll see they all disappear. We have only 1,500 visitors a month and are usually in fifth place on Google along with a few investment clubs.
I’ve read that real estate professionals should promote housing as merely a roof over your head, that it was using a home as an investment is what got the country in trouble.
The mantra is wrong – a home IS an investment. But is a home’s value going to double right away? No, you don’t think that about a stock or a mutual fund, either. The real estate investment industry is characterized by the “get rich quick, buy and flip” model. But the truly successful professional investors do NOT flip! If you’re talking about wealth investment and not risky trading (which is what flipping is), then you use real estate as an investment. You accumulate a portfolio over a long period of time. You don’t buy low and sell a little higher. You buy low, improve, hold and build wealth.
I learned all this from building a commercial brokerage over the past 12 years. We teach you how identify markets that have great long term potential based on demographics, job growth, migration patterns and general population trends. Then we show you how to find that ugly duckling in that market that wants to be a beautiful swan.
It’s an exciting idea.
I’m having a lot of fun with this. But who wouldn’t? I really believe we can heal the housing crisis by simply selling off all the shadow inventory to investors, and provide an additional income stream for the thousands of real estate agents who need a new, fresh orchard where they can harvest business.
