S.E.C. Real Estate Observer

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During the many years that I have been practicing counseling and the Equity Marketing business model of focusing on ownership BENEFITS of real estate, there has been one major barrier to success. The single greatest barrier to overcome in serving my clients seems to have been the lack of even an introduction to transaction methods other than a “sale” on the part of the client and almost always on the part of their attorney, CPA or other investment advisors. In many cases, the action of greatest benefit to the client would have been something other than a sale. During some real estate market down cycles, for some properties no sales were available. Often, a conservative but “not-a-sale” action was recommended to a client that was rejected without even consideration. They had never heard of such a method or transaction structure. Attorneys, CPAs and other investment advisors who have no previous exposure to “creative” transaction structures seem to immediately dismiss them because those methods do not exist in their education, training and operating paradigm.

I suggest this situation is mostly the fault of the Equity Marketing segment of the real estate world. We have not made the effort to make our methods and technology common knowledge. We have no reason to keep our knowledge and methods from being exposed to the broader population of real estate principals and their advisors. Principals and their advisors all know how to put up a sign, advertise property for sale and complete a sale. But just because they know, does not mean that they want to do it or even really have enough knowledge and expertise in marketing and negotiating transactions to do their own selling of real estate. Most principals still employ a professional real estate broker or agent to market their property and complete the sale. Equity marketing methods and technology are no different than sale methods and technology, except that principals and their advisors will probably be even more inclined to employ a professional Equity Marketer to accomplish the action(s) to improve their “Benefit” positions. A byproduct of teaching Equity Marketing methods and technology will be the spreading of the understanding of the concept of “BENEFITS,” which often has nothing to do with the zero-sum game of price and terms of a sale.

It seems to me that it would be a great benefit to all S.E.C.s and the Equity Marketing segment of real estate in general if we did nothing other than open our classes whenever scheduled to principals, attorneys, CPAs and other investment advisors and promote the classes to those groups. The next step would be to adapt the language and examples in our classes away from Realtor jargon so that the material might be more easily understood and related to by participants other than real estate professionals. The inference here is that we would ultimately put education, training and materials in the field (on the Internet, on DVD, etc.) targeted to principals, attorneys, CPAs and investment advisors.

IT IS MY STRONG OPINION THAT IF OUR FORMULAS, METHODS, TRANSACTION STRUTURES AND BENEFIT SOLUTIONS THAT ARE NOT A SALE WERE MORE COMMON KNOWLEDGE AMONG PRINCIPALS AND THEIR ADVISORS, THE BUSINESS AND SUCCESS OF EQUITY MARKETING PROFESSIONALS WOULD EXPLODE. How soon such a tipping point of common knowledge could be achieved is not known. However, if the work and effort to accomplish that common knowledge tipping point is not started and pursued, the tipping point will never be achieved. The Society is the premier repository of Equity Marketing knowledge, experience, skill and technology. Maybe the Society should give some consideration to expanding our educational efforts outside the real estate license holder world.