Preparing Now For Your Exit Later

By Justin Stoddart

Most real estate professionals who want to grow their business start by looking for more people.

More calls. More leads. More follow-up. More marketing. There is certainly a place for all of that, but I think there is another question worth asking first: What if you could solve bigger problems for the people already in your world?

My friend Brett Swarts, founder of Capital Gains Tax Solutions, learned this lesson early in his real estate career. During the difficult market following the 2008 crash, he was struggling to get transactions across the finish line when a mentor gave him advice that changed the trajectory of his business:

“Solve a bigger problem in a better way.”

For Brett, that bigger problem became capital gains tax planning. For those of us in real estate, his story offers a useful framework for thinking differently about the value we bring to our clients.

Look Beyond the Real Estate Transaction

We tend to define our clients’ problems according to the services we provide.

An agent helps someone buy or sell a home. A lender helps someone finance it. A financial advisor manages investments. A CPA handles taxes.

Our clients don’t experience their lives in those categories.

Consider a longtime real estate investor who owns several highly appreciated properties. On paper, this person looks like a fantastic prospective seller. But when you call, you hear something familiar: I would sell, but the tax consequences don’t make sense.

It is easy for an agent to hear that and move the person into the “not selling” category.

Instead, Brett recommends asking a remarkably simple question: “If tax were off the table, how soon would you sell?”

That question changes the conversation because it gets beneath the immediate objection. Maybe this person no longer wants to manage rental properties. Maybe the large family home no longer fits their lifestyle. Maybe they want greater liquidity, more passive income or simply more time.

The obstacle may be financial, but the motivation is often deeply personal.

Brett’s work with deferred sales trusts is designed to address situations like these by providing qualifying sellers with another potential strategy for deferring capital gains taxes when exiting appreciated assets. For real estate professionals, the important point isn’t that we need to become experts in the strategy. It is that knowing these solutions exist allows us to recognize opportunities we might otherwise overlook.

You Don’t Have to Be the Expert

I think this is where many professionals hesitate.

If you introduce a sophisticated tax or financial strategy, doesn’t that mean you need to understand every technical detail?

No.

In fact, trying to become the expert on everything can work against you. Brett pointed out that one of the mistakes advisors make is believing they need to have every answer before approaching a client. Instead, our job is often to recognize the problem, ask enough good questions to uncover an opportunity and then bring the right expert into the conversation.

That is an important distinction.

Your value to a client isn’t limited to what you personally know. It also includes who you know and your ability to assemble the right people around a problem.

If you have a client sitting on highly appreciated real estate who would otherwise like to sell, you don’t need to explain the mechanics of a deferred sales trust yourself. You need to know enough to say, “There may be another option here. I know someone who specializes in this. Let’s get them into the conversation.”

That approach protects you from practicing outside your expertise while simultaneously making you more useful to the client.

Build a Team Around the Client

This philosophy extends well beyond capital gains taxes.

Near the end of our conversation, Brett described the value of collaboration using the analogy of launching a rocket. Enormous energy is required to get a rocket off the ground, just as enormous effort goes into earning a client’s trust and successfully completing a transaction. Once you’ve created that momentum, why force every other professional to start from zero?

Instead, bring trusted professionals into the relationship who can help the client solve the next problem.

That is a big part of the philosophy behind the Homeowner Concierge by ProInsight. A homeowner doesn’t need a collection of disconnected professionals constantly trying to win their attention. They need a trusted ecosystem of people who can work together on their behalf.

Very wealthy families have operated this way for years through family offices, where teams of professionals coordinate around the needs of a family. I believe there is an opportunity to bring that same collaborative mindset to more of the people we serve.

For the real estate professional, it also creates a very different value proposition. You are no longer simply the person who helped someone complete a transaction. You become the person who can connect them to trusted expertise whenever an important need arises.

Find the Bigger Problem

Take another look at your database.

Think specifically about the people you’ve mentally categorized as not ready, not interested or not able to sell. What is actually keeping them from moving forward? And if that obstacle disappeared, would selling improve their lives?

You may discover opportunities that have been sitting in your database for years.

You don’t need to personally solve every problem you uncover. You need to become good at recognizing important problems and surrounding yourself with people who know how to solve them.

If you’re a ProInsight member, Brett and Capital Gains Tax Solutions are available as a national brand partner inside the ProInsight network. I encourage you to learn more about the strategy and, more importantly, start identifying the clients for whom this kind of conversation could make a meaningful difference.

The more significant the problems you can help your clients solve, the more significant your value becomes.

Go be valuable.

At ProInsight, we help professionals build a referral engine for their business. Apply here to see if becoming a Homeowner Concierge™ Select Professional is available in your area.