When the Market Changes, You Find Out Who Really Knows Real Estate

By Vena Jones-Cox

I think we’ve now seen, in a very public fashion, that people who are good at making money in a particular market aren’t necessarily “good at real estate.” To wit:

There are a whole lot of big-time real estate influencers who learned the business, did deals, and got financially successful during that 10-year run-up in prices and rents from 2012–2022.

And I’m not taking that away from them, because successful is successful.

They made money, built businesses, and attracted huge followings of people who wanted to do the same. Getting a million people to pay attention to you is ALSO a big job, and one that most of us wouldn’t be willing to undertake. So kudos.

But now that conditions have changed, it turns out that a whole lot of those super-successful businesses depended on interest rates staying low, investor buyers staying excited, and prices and rents going up every year.

And I’m ALSO not blaming them for not realizing that at the time, or for struggling to adapt during their first market shift.

We all remember that first time our cheese was moved. It was scary, because the money stopped coming in and we had no idea how to turn the spigot back on. We’d gotten really good at one thing, and thought that made us really good, and were completely adrift when it just…stopped…working.

It was frustrating, because we were sure things would go back to “normal,” but not sure when. And embarrassing, because with the tide out, some of us discovered we were swimming naked.

But most of us didn’t have the ADDITIONAL handicap of tens or hundreds of thousands of worshipful followers who believed us when we said we had real estate figured out.

We didn’t live in an echo chamber where everyone told us, all day long, how amazing we were. And we didn’t depend on their continued adoration—in the form of likes, clicks, shares, and purchases—for our income or sense of self-worth.

So we could dismount our high horses and go out, proverbial hat in hand, looking for advice from people who’d been through market changes before. People doing things that actually WORKED, albeit sometimes on a smaller scale than we pictured ourselves doing them.

We struggled for a bit, learned new skills, and got better.

I’m not sure some of the influencers can pull that off.

I mean, it’s been FOUR YEARS.

I’m not seeing a bunch of them saying, “Yeah, so what I’ve been saying about buying profitable apartments since 2017 doesn’t work under these conditions. Here’s the harder, more skill-based thing I’ve learned to do to find, finance, and manage profitable deals now.”

Instead, I’m seeing something more like, “Hey, I’m raising money again, even though investors lost millions on my last project! Also, join my closed-door mastermind for just $50k a year to learn all MY secrets for successful apartment investing!”

I’m not seeing the wholesale gurus saying, “It turns out my 50-deal-a-month business depended on overly excited buyers paying 90 cents on the dollar. I’m figuring out how to do fewer deals with lower expenses and higher per-deal profits. Come learn with me!”

Instead, I’m seeing them create courses, start REIAs, or, in one case, if I’m understanding right, shut down a flipping business in favor of an expensive mastermind about…how to flip properties??

There’s a little schadenfreude here, for sure.

But mainly, I feel bad for them.

They built big businesses—and often big lifestyles—on a hot market and a following that believed they could do no wrong. Now, admitting they don’t have it figured out means admitting it to the people who fund their deals, buy their properties, and pay for their advice.

That’s gotta suck, especially if you’re self-aware enough to know you’re peddling success while desperately trying to hang onto the lifestyle the hot market built and that the slow market is telling you you can’t afford.

If you’re reading this, it’s unlikely that you’re a big-time influencer.

Most of those people have teams that produce and post all their content, and they’re so busy making it that they spend little time following or trying to learn from NPCs like me.

But that gives you a big advantage.

It means that you CAN learn, and adapt, without losing face in front of a kajillion followers.

You CAN choose to be around people whose bills get paid by their real estate, whether or not you think they’re good-looking and entertaining and always “Thanking God” and being #Blessed for their amazing vacations and wives and cars and houses.

You can seek out people who’ve got the battle scars from the long, hard slog through multiple markets.

They’ve already had the experience of watching something they were good at stop working. They’ve had to learn new things, change their minds, and occasionally eat some humble pie. And they’re still doing deals.

You won’t necessarily be impressed.

Some have almost no social media presence. Some would find the idea of filming themselves next to an expensive car to explain how rich they are pretty embarrassing. Some of them haven’t done 600 deals total in 25 years, much less 600 in a year. Most have never written a book, don’t have a mentoring program, and have never shared a stage with anyone you’ve ever heard of.

But what they have done is build a business that gives them freedom, that’s resilient through multiple markets, and that will support them for the rest of their lives even if they never do another deal.

You have to look beyond the internet to find them.

But you can find them.

Your local REIA might be a good place to start. COREE definitely is. The National Summit is overrun with people like I’m describing, and I mean the audience as well as the speakers.

But they’re not going to show up in your feed or inbox.

You have to make the effort to go find the rooms THEY’RE in.

And if you do, you’ll be rewarded in ways that the influencers might never get to experience, much less pass on to you.

Because when your cheese gets moved, you want friends who know how to find more cheese—not someone trying to sell you a $50,000 map to where it used to be.