BUILDER'S AGENT BASICS

BY MELANIE ROBITAILLE SR. STAFF WRITER & GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Supply and demand; sounds straight forward right? Unfortunately it’s an oversimplification of a serious and complex housing issue facing much of North America right now.

The truth is we’ve been facing a shortage of new, single-family, entry-level housing for decades now, and a recent Habitat for Humanity article points out, these “record housing shortages are a fundamental driver of our affordability challenges.”

Building more seems like the obvious answer but with concerns over urban sprawl, stereotyping of lowincome housing, lengthy permitting processes, not to mention skilled labor and building material shortages it’s not proving easy. However there’s light at the end, even if the tunnel is long with millions of new singleand multi-family housing permits being approved across the U.S. in 2022, and a jump in permits for both types of dwellings since mid-2020 in Canada as well.

BUILDING ANEW

Sales Representatives, Chantal Albert and husband, Marc-André Arsenault are builder’s agents in New Brunswick, Canada; where they’re currently experiencing a building boom.

“The last two and a half years have shown us that we still very much have a need for new inventory. The only way to get an increase to our supply is new home construction. In the last year, new construction made up approximately 28% of our new listings,” Chantal explained.

They work with two major builders in different market segments and Chantal sees these as less complex transactions compared to their resale counterparts saying, “[Resale homes] come with a history and it’s important for us to get to know this history before listing. There may also be some unexpected surprises during a buyer inspection or buyer requests for inclusions. New construction is generally more straight-forward; no history, and inclusions are pre-determined. Depending on the timing of the sale of the new construction home, you have to guide the clients into making choices and respecting the builder’s deadlines.”

They’ve built a rapport over six years, and builders now often look to them for valuable data and trends, right down to the type of home finishings popular with clients. This gives them an edge when selling projects they’re involved with from the start.

“Developers who are looking for real estate agents are looking for a professional they can trust to get the job done. Builders want to rid themselves of the stress of sale. When a builder decides to start a new project, we discuss in the early phases the best type of housing for the subdivision and the best target market. After the city and permit approvals, we come up with a strategy, discussing the type of homes, price point, and timeframe, etc...Once ready for sale, whether pre-sale or post-construction, we finalize our price and strategy, and get our marketing ready.”

—CHANTAL ALBERT, SALES REPRESENTATIVE

BUILDING BACK UP

Revitalization is what you get when the coin and housing are flipped, and husband/wife team, Franchisees, Rob and Shannon Malcom are established developers in the Norwood neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama specializing in breathing new life into class C communities.

Rob grew up in an old school flipper family that moved into homes, renovated, and repeated. After tough times, resulting in homelessness for the two of them, Rob started 3D Properties in 2011, and the need for a REALTOR® on his team was apparent. Leaving her medical billing job, Shannon took to real estate naturally, and the two find deep meaning in each revitalization they do.

“It parallels with our life. These houses have been discarded, which isn’t much different than how we felt when we were homeless. We felt like discarded people,” Rob admitted painfully. But just as they turned their lives around, the Malcoms are turning this 100-year-old neighborhood, with its own sordid past, around too. Just minutes from downtown Birmingham, Norwood’s history is fraught with segregation and redlining by financial institutions, which created poverty conditions that now line the streets in the form of dilapidated housing.

The first house we sold here in 2016 sold for $83,500. We just finished and sold one for $470,000 in May 2022. It’s come a long way, and people believe in this neighborhood. There isn’t a specific demographic. When people ask, we say ‘It’s good Birmingham people.’ We’ve sold to all cultures and orientations. It’s just awesome to see the neighborhood, the houses getting lived in, and then people doing stuff together.

—ROB MALCOM, FRANCHISEE

What takes Rob five-to-six weeks in a typical remodel takes roughly nine months in the historically significant community of Norwood, where homes must be returned to their former glory, down to the very windows installed, and that includes all the research Shannon does to find the history of the homes, some of which have sat abandoned for decades.

“When we first started working, we would actually go down to the basement of the library here in Birmingham and dig through the old books to figure out who owned [the home],” Shannon recalled. “By just doing a little research on the first few, we were able to kind of paint a picture of what this neighborhood used to be.”

Boasting a portfolio of over 300 home revitalizations, the Malcoms recommend interviewing with several brokerages before making a choice if you’re a REALTOR® interested in investing, simply because not all brands encourage professionals to earn passive income like EXIT. The Malcoms share their knowledge, by taking participants out into the field to train on agent safety, assessments, and what investors want, as well as during office masterclasses featuring other high-level flippers.

Whether revitalizing or building anew, there’s longevity in what these agents help do, and in the end what rings true is the undeniable value of thriving, diverse, and equitable communities.