Belt Auction

Real Estate Professionals: In what situations do you most often employ the services of an attorney?

Hello, I am a real estate attorney. I am consistently looking to develop professional relationships with other real estate professionals, such as realtors, brokers, title agents, investment property owners, etc. In what situations do you most often find the need to employ the services of a real estate attorney? How could a real estate most effectively develop a professional relationship with you? What services would you like a real estate attorney to offer? When you do need a real estate attorneys services, how do you chose which attorney to go to? Any insight or advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. I am in Ohio.

Public Comments

1. in what state are you? Am an innovator in the biz world and a RE broker. I have a project I am taking nationwide. IT could keep you busy for a long time. get to my bio
2. Hi, I used to work in my father's mortgage company. I've also flipped property in Franklin County, Ohio. Here's a few random thoughts. "What services would you like a real estate attorney to offer?" As an investor -- and as an occasional consumer of legal services for non-related reasons -- something that I want and I think a lot of potential clients want is some sort of possible pricing certainty *before* they have to pick up the phone and talk to the lawyer or his office. By no means am I suggesting you become to first attorney in Ohio to throw reason out the window and suggest you can price a case where you are not in control of the many variables that you simply do not control. But have you considered offering a "flat fee closing" service, for example? Or maybe flat fee with one or two major but infrequent exceptions? I'm unclear on the professional and ethical boundaries you have in front of you, but simply taking the guesswork out of a common transaction type (like closings) for potential clients is a lifesaver, in my opinion. You're trying to reach clients who have no attorney referral, after all (if they were referred to you, they already called you and you don't need to make an effort to reach them, and if they were referred to someone else, they likely won't be calling your office). So if you take probably the most stressful factor for a new potential client -- pricing and/or uncertainty over total price -- off the table, you're making it very easy for potential clients to say yes to you. In fact, if they call your office with that information then you've probably just gotten a new client. Of course since the universe of people that will use a real estate attorney's services is relatively small, I of course agree with you that networking is something you don't have a choice but to engage in. But if you're looking to make it rain a little in the meantime, have you considered consulting public records and doing a simple mailing to the tax mailing address of real estate investors in counties you'd like to have clients in? Those names are public record, if you have someone to compile them (listsource.com is also a great source for this information and the cheapest high quality source I know about). The great part is even if you get a 1-2% response rate from your mailing, you've got repeat customers, since you know they close at least a few transactions per year. Steady work for you. A small but successful campaign like that may be able to keep the lights on. I suppose this is obvious, but have you tried linkedin.com? I don't have an account there myself, but it sounds like a must do for you, and a great way to network virtually. What are your other proclivities? In the end you're probably going to have to develop a "marketing plan" that pleases your own personality, so it'd be helpful to know this to come up with additional suggestions. Since I assume you have an obligation to remain informed about local real estate law, there's an awful lot of people -- most of them potential future clients -- who would loooove to receive infrequent updates from you about real estate law. Something goofy is always coming out of the General Assembly anyway, right? But instead of bothering yourself with a writing a newsletter, why not just doing it all on an email list. Whenever you have a thought, email it once and it goes out to the whole list. Include a very soft sell tagline at the end of each of your emails. Looking for representation or know someone who does? The Law Office of Me is specializes in Ohio real estate law. Free initial consultation. 614-123-4567. You get the point, but there's several advantages to doing this: it's virtually free to setup and run, it's easy to use once you get the hang of it, even if you've never "ran an email list" before, it positions you as an expert, it puts you in front of as many potential clients as you can get on your list, it provides information that is in demand and that people who are potential paying clients want -- access to your expertise, and so on. I'd expect it to make money for you. And it's probably the easiest part of your networking strategy. You don't have any obligation to send a message to the list unless something both happens and you feel like writing up a brief message about your thoughts on it. But if you need to increase the odds you'll drum up business that week, send out a message to your list and remind people you're there. I hope this helps. Contact me if you have any thoughts of your own.
3. In a short sale situation where I am the listing agent, I advise the sellers to talk to a real estate attorney. I think the best thing you can do is talk to some Realtors and give their clients some kind of discount, so they can use that to market their services and their sellers will benefit as well.
4. The situation would be if a client is in need of a legal counsel which the real estate professional can't handle it alone. Getting pre-foreclosure leads and having them alone is not enough to help such situations wherein a client needed the most. So, having an lawyer by his side can ease the burden the client carries.