Charles Beshara is a Realtor with REALM Real Estate Professionals working in Houston.

Every week, we ask a Houston real estate professional for their thoughts on the top three stories from the week before. This week, we spoke with Charles Beshara, a Realtor with REALM Real Estate Professionals. 

Houston Agent (HA): You’ve said that providing the best service means putting your clients first. Can you elaborate on what that means? And how do you deal with situations where what is best for your client isn’t exactly what they want?

Charles Beshara (CB): We place our clients first by making sure we keep strong lines of communication during all stages of our relationship with our client. To us communication is the key ingredient to making sure we 1) understand our client’s needs, 2) provide available options for our clients to fulfil those needs, 3) facilitate the negotiation to acquire their chosen option.

It is an astonishing statistic reported by the National Association of Realtors that the majority of clients leave their realtors due to lack of communication, but it makes sense! When a realtor represents a client during any part of the transaction, it is expected that the realtor should be looking out for the clients’ specific needs; but how would a realtor be able to do so without first asking questions, listening to their responses, presenting alternative options and then listening to the feedback explaining each response again? It takes strong communication skills to fully understand a client’s needs. Especially because often times a client is not yet sure of what they want themselves. It is our duty as a Reatlor to provide the service of LISTENING to our client so that in some cases both the client and the realtor can figure out what the client really wants.

Often times, our service provided as realtors involves exactly that: Listening to all of the client’s believed wants, and helping them consolidate all of their perceived desires so that what they really NEED becomes apparent. This careful, perceptive, communication skill, is really what makes us become successful at providing our Realtor services; that along with the also very important skill of being able to negotiate the best price for our clients.

HA: You work largely in the inner loop. What can buyers expect from the area in 2015?

CB: As more-and-more residents continue to move into the Houston area, traffic, and thus long commute times continue to increase. As a result, the suburbs are beginning to look less attractive as buyers prefer the convenience of urban living. While the inventory is still low, we believe that more inventories will become available in 2015 making a slight improvement for buyers, but still staying a seller’s market.

HA:  What do you look for in a good mortgage banker? How can other agents form good relationships with their mortgage partners?

CB: Good mortgage bankers are hard to come by. Keeping in mind that they are essential to our business, it is utterly important to have a ‘go-to’ person for all types of your buyers. We believe that 3 go-to bankers are critical, one banker that specializes in FHA and VA loans. A second banker that specializes in helping your ‘credit challenged’ buyers, and a third that specializes in jumbo loans. Though many will advertise as ‘Doing it All’ you will find each has a niche and it is our job to have a go-to lender in each of the niches to minimize the potential of blowing a deal up for you due to lack of funding.

However, with this in mind, building a strong relationship with each of your bankers it crucial to your success. It just stands to reason that if you are sending them referrals, they should be doing the same for you. Therefore, if you are working with a banker that you know is sending their referrals to another realtor; I would suggest finding a different banker just as strong in this niche who will equally refer business back to you.

Building a good relationship with a banker is handled the same way as you would follow up with any other lead. Set a time once a week and follow up with the banker with a phone call. Get to know them personally; you want to make sure that when they get a file that you’re on, they are going to be sure that this file will get to the closing table. Let them know that you are working to get them referrals, but at the same time if they had anyone come to them for a preaproval in your area who is not working with a realtor that they also send you that referral in return. This should be a mutually beneficial relationship looking to serve the client in the most beneficial way possible.