George Bunassar is a Realtor with Century 21 Premier Elite Realty in Miami
Every week, we ask a Miami real estate professional for their thoughts on the top three stories from the week before.
This week, we talked with George Bunassar, a Realtor with Century 21 Premier Elite Realty in Miami who has worked in real estate for more than 30 years and trained more than 2,000 agents. George’s gross sales were $30 million in 2012, and thus far in 2013, his sales exceed $12 million.
Miami Agent (MA): The National Association of Realtors found in its 2012 Member Profile that only 2 percent of all Realtors are younger than 30; is that detail consistent with the agents you’ve worked with?
George Bunassar (GB): I’ve been in the business for 30 years and have trained over 2,000 Realtors, and from that point of view, I can tell you that the nature of the real estate business has a high turnover, and a lot of the young people, it’s difficult for them to adapt to the business; they’re more comfortable with a salary jobs. There are exceptions, but the majority are more mature and older than 31.
MA: Our coverage of appraisals continues to generate interest from our readers; do you find that appraisals are still problematic for your agents?
GB: That’s a very touchy subject; appraisals have gone from one extreme to another. We all know what happened the last six years: before they were very flexible, and now they are extremely rigid. They’re really more difficult now, and it’s not helping the industry, even though real estate has come back very strong, especially here in South Florida. But I think they’re being very difficult, and they’re not as flexible. I understand where they’re coming from, but extremes are usually not the right way to go about anything.
About 86 percent of all the sales down here were cash sales. In a way, that’s good; we were able to have those cash buyers. Without that, it would have made it much more difficult for the market to come back.
MA: We had an article that looked at how agents can deal with fellow agents who are difficult to deal with, whether it be through slow communication, uncooperative behavior, etc. What advice do you give agents when they are dealing with difficult professionals?
GB: It is unfortunate that we do face that in this industry, and I always make sure that the agent has a commitment level for the long term, not the short term; it’s not worth it for an agent to look at an exception as the norm. When one of those exceptions come up, they just have to deal with it as professional as possible and let it go; you cannot allow a few people to push you out of the business. Fortunately, that does not happen as often as people think it does, but even one incident is too much for us – we try to get every transaction we can, but when we run into a situation like that, we try to deal with it as professionally as we can. It’s part of the business.