Dina and I had a real interesting appointment this morning. One of my clients, a couple who had bought a home with me five years ago, called last week saying that they were thinking of doing some remodeling work but wanted to compare it to instead, selling their present home and buying another. They called because they had heard about my consulting options, and that was exactly what they were looking for - unbiased advice on their options. I told them that it would probably be a couple of hours of work and that I/Dina charged $150 per hour for this type of work.
Want to hear amazing - they didn't blink an eye! In fact, the comment they made was that $300 was very reasonabe to help them get the info they needed to make a decision. The wife even told me on the phone that it "was a good thing she knew me since they would never call a regular agent - they would never trust their advice to be objective since one option would pay them and the other would not." She also could not understand why our industry doesn't offer different options like I do. I told her about ACRE and how we're tyring to change that.
The upshot of this is that, whether they go ahead and hire one of us to do the work, at the very least, she'll definitely write a testimonial on how great the consulting options are for homeowners that need to make decisions like remodeling or refinancing. One last comment she made is worth repeating: "Doesn't the real estate industry realize how much income they lose because they don't offer options in how they can get paid? If we didn't know you, we would probably make the decision without expert help and maybe make a big mistake. It's so worth it to pay a real estate professional for their time and expertise."
Me thinks that the public would be all too willing to pay us for what we're giving away for free. So unless you have all the business and money you want, I think the public is telling us loud and clear to practice consulting!
Mollie