BEING a real estate agent is a bit like being
a doctor. Real estate agents, like doctors, are bombarded
at parties with questions. Only, instead of getting the ‘Ooooh,
you’re a doctor? Well, I have a weird fungus on my
foot’, they get the ‘Ooooh, you’re a real
estate agent? Well, I was thinking about selling my house …’ Real
estate agents, like doctors, are constantly bracing and consoling
their clients when they sell a home. ‘Now, this is
probably going to be painful. This is what you can expect …’ and
real estate agents, like doctors, also make loyal, long lasting
relationships with their clients.
Les Nunez, for example, is president of RE/MAX Costa Rica,
the biggest grossing real estate franchise in Costa Rica.
About 99% of RE/MAX clients are foreign. Nunez cannot drive
through Escazu without
seeing a client.
Black BMWs honk at him and sunglasses wearing silver Mercedes
drivers wave. Some clients give him hugs. “When can
we take you out for drinks?” they ask. Nunez, a short,
bespectacled Canadian with graying hair, has X-ray vision.
He can drive through neighborhoods and tell you what the
inside of a house looks like: three bed, 2500 square feet,
large patio. Vaulted ceilings, two car garage, Jacuzzi.
Lots of tile, Spanish style, newly remodeled. He points
out buildings and names prices. “Those houses cost
a million two.” Or he’ll announce, “There’s
not a home on this street that’s less than half a
mil,”
or he’ll point and say, “Those
condos over there cost 320 for 280 square feet.”
HE knows the families: Cuban Americans that lived in Miami
and moved here 10 years ago. They’ve got two kids.
(See Condo
resales in Costa Rica)
He golfs and she is an interior designer. U.S. citizens
from Phoenix, Ariz. who just moved here last week. She’s
an ex realtor and he’s an investor. They’ve got
a dog and their two kids go to Country Day School.
There’s a secretive type of guy from Los Angeles,
Calif. living in a three bedroom in Escazú that he
designed. It’s got a killer view and he’s looking
to move to Santa Ana to be near family. “After nine
years here I know all the houses in these three neighborhoods
Cariari, Santa Ana and Escazú and if I haven’t
sold the house, I saw it or I previewed it with other realtors,” he
said.
New buyers to be meet with Nunez in the mornings to be profiled
and after a quick interview he knows their buying potential,
the area they’re looking for and how serious they are
about buying. With that information Nunez knows what houses
to show them.
Nunez spends other mornings driving around what he calls
the golden triangle – Properties
in Cariari, Escazu
Condos and Santa
Ana Homes – and the afternoons filing paperwork,
going to meetings and answering the 180 emails the office
receives each day. “We get so many emails a day that
we have to prioritize them,” Nunez says. “The
lowest priorities are the ones saying, ‘We’re
thinking about moving to Costa Rica when we retire in the
next five years.
What’s it like?’ I mean, come on. E-mail me
in five years.” On the selling end, he visits homes
to do “comparative market analysis,” which is
real estate talk for evaluating a realist price of the home.
Nunez lugs his digital camera around the home snapping photos
for the RE/MAX international Web site.
If a seller is asking for too much, Nunez says, “Get
real.” Too often, he says, foreigners with no idea
of Costa Rican home values overpay for their homes and when
they need to sell, they may end up losing money. This happens
fairly often because real estate agents don’t need
to be licensed in Costa Rica. “Any old Joe or José can
wake up one day and decide to be a real estate agent, but
without the proper training it makes it very, very tough
for the general public to understand what they’re getting
into,” Nunez says. “It’s unfair to the
public.” And it bugs him to no end. Nunez is licensed
in Washington, Colorado and British Columbia and he renews
his license every year.
After 22 years in the business, Nunez can take a family
he doesn’t know to a house he does know and he knows
exactly what they will say. It’s the light in the living
room or the backyard pool.
He’s gotten to the point where he now hands new clients
a sheet of paper with 10 questions. “You’re going
to ask me these 10 questions and so let’s go over the
answers,” he tells them.
One day when Nunez was struggling to get over a cold he
caught on a business trip to Panama, he visited the Cubans
who build three homes a year in Cariari to sell them through
RE/MAX. They decided they didn’t want to sell the house
they were living in four days after Nunez put it on the market.
But they assured him they had another home that would be
ready in about three weeks.
The commission rate on a house like that usually runs around
6-7%. On a house like that that means $27,000. That’s
when people say, woah. That’s a lot of money, but out
of that money the franchise fee has to be paid once a month.
RE/MAX also gets one and a half percent of the commission,
Nunez explained. That might leave Nunez with a bit over $20,000,
which he says, is “nothing to sneeze at” but
for example, the Cubans’ house, which wasn’t
even on the market for a week before they changed their mind,
has already cost him $600 in marketing. Whether or not the
house sells, he still has to pay for the advertising.
Early that afternoon he sat outside the newly rented Escazú home
of the couple from Arizona who are looking to buy. “I
know of a large four bedroom in Cariari in the $450,000 range
that you should look at,” he said. The woman’s
eyes raised, obviously interested. “Is it nice?” she
asked. Nunez gave her a look as if to say, ‘come on.’
If you want more information about the best real
estate affordable, please contact Costa
Rica real estate and retirement properties or call toll
free 1 888 581 1786.
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