The past five years have been the most challenging time frame in my 22 years in real estate services industries. Looking back to 2005, bank-owned properties were a tiny percentage of the business, leases were just as rare and the terms “short-sale” and “buy-side” didn’t even exist. Those items went from being less than 5% of our market to dominating the landscape in less than 30 months with “distressed” sellers peaking at about 85% of the marketplace. Not to mention that both lenders and title underwriters dramatically tightened their requirements in reaction to the tremendous fraud and defalcations that were exposed, those that survived bankruptcy anyway.
