You can’t win unless you play on both sides. This is what the Internet has taught us in the recent years. Those companies that have totally neglected the Web as a production and promotion tool have lost lot of ground or have disappeared completely. Many companies that were just active online have disappeared as well. Internet by itself is not enough, it has to be combined with some traditional (offline) product, place or channel, then it can become very powerful.
Me and the legendary Lou Brown during the event in Atlanta.
Today I have been full time listening to the various presentations at the bootcamp on bank owned properties organized in Atlanta by Sam Bell and Mark Jackson. Lot of very technical stuff, which is very relevant if you want to achieve a good level of promotion on Google, but that would be useless if one didn’t have knowledge about traditional real estate evaluation and contracts. So I appreciated the fact that the presentations of today followed a whole series of lessons that yesterday were delivered on property evaluation (Mark Jackson), on closing procedures (Michelle Spalding) and on creating the most advanced type of real estate contract (Lou Brown): the land trust (which is used both to hide the owners of a property and for transferring interest in a property without a formal deed).
Dutch Mendenhall "bringing me to new heights"
Real estate is a field where you can observe the effective merge of the old culture of negotiation, evaluation and paperwork writing, with the newest Internet Marketing techniques that can bring you new buyers and sellers with less effort and more effectiveness. Yet you still see many investors fumbling with technology and shying away from it, or you see some young nerd who knows everything about setting up a blog and getting it ranked on Google, but knows nothing about buying and selling houses and yet wants to become a full time investor.
Sometimes we can see the future but we have no “proof” of what we think is going to happen. When I decided to move from Italy to the US with my family, in the beginning of 2008, I also made the transition from a very successful computer journalist and editor to an entrepreneur dealing in real estate at an international level. I was very lucky to have a wife, Maria, who was completely supportive of me and was ready to go through all the uncertainties and changes in life to make it happen.
I had imagined that the very strong euro to dollar exchange rate and the availability of cash for investment in Europe and particularly Italy would have spurred a whole new industry, connecting the two sides of the Atlantic. I had also envisioned it would have benefited both ends.
The top page of page 15 of the Financial Times dated July 21, 2009
I had no evidence of it except for the couple deals I already made myself from Italy using the capital I had obtained by selling my own home in Milan. But I was confident that my decision couldn’t be too wrong: in a market ridden with foreclosures and bank owned properties, where cash is king and where many local US investors have deserted the playing field, the chance of buying with an upfront discount of at least 20% given by the exchange rate creates big opportunities for those who are brave and competent enough.
(The meeting in Monte Carlo: Daniele introduces the speech by Mark Jackson while I translate)
It was kind of astonishing to me that I could buy a big single family home in Florida for one fourth of the money I got from the sale my house in Milan. And there are houses that cost less that a parking spot in Rome. Yet there were no marketing data that could support my idea: I was developing a brand new niche.
Recent Comments