Entry by Mollie Wasserman

A Consulting Niche That's Growing

I got a call from my sister over the weekend. Unfortunately, she'd getting divorced and needs to start looking for a new house in the Spring. But she was at the gym and ran into a friend who's neighbor would like to sell her house. Turns out that the neighbor had her house on the market a year or so ago, it didn't sell and she took it off.

To make a long story short...

My sister has driven by the house, heard the description and wants to go see the inside. If she likes it as much as she thinks, she'll want to go forward. Her question to me is: what do I do now?

Ah is she lucky that I know a local ACRE! I explained to her that her situation is an ideal one to hire a consultant. My colleague, Dina Raneri, can be hired for her time to investigate the comps, negotiate the offer and troubleshoot the transaction to close. The seller should be thrilled because she gets her home sold with no time on the market. My sister, for short money, can get the best fiduciary care. And Dina can get paid very well for limited time invested with the certainly that she will be paid.

After explaining how it would work, my sister said: "Wow, with Craig's list and other like services, where people are increasingly advertising their homes and their needs, it seems like there will be more and more demand for consultants where buyers and sellers can get the expert fiduciary counsel they need without a lot of "stuff" that they don't. An hourly rate makes so much more sense in this situation!"

Time will tell whether this particular situation will work out - we'll be all waiting to hear from Dina if and when it does - but it's a great example where by offering choices you can get business you never would have had. My last year of doing client work, I made the majority of my income from representing sellers that never formally put their home on the market because they found their own buyer. In years past, this business would be lost to us, but as trained consultants, it's not!

This page contains a single entry by Mollie Wasserman published on January 26, 2011 11:07 AM.

Consulting Compensation was the previous entry in this blog.

The dilemma of working Short Sales on a "Consulting" basis is the next entry in this blog.

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