Hazel Goldman is a Realtor with RE/MAX Advance Realty working 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 spoke with Hazel Goldman, Realtor at RE/MAX Advance Realty.

Miami Agent (MA): One of our recent articles touches on the impact crippling student loan debt has had on young hopeful homebuyers. Do a lot of your young buyers come in with student loan debt, and, in your experience, how difficult is it in finding a property they can afford in Miami?

Hazel Goldman (HG): The short answer is “yes, it is a problem.” Right now, for example, I have an attorney who’s trying to secure a mortgage to buy a house with his fiancé and he’s having trouble getting approved because he has so much student loan debt. Both the fiancé and the attorney have good jobs and salaries, but the debt is still dragging them down.

The people who aren’t as affected by this, are young physicians. I know of, at least, three banks in the area that offer special loans with 95 percent financing with only 5 percent down at exceedingly good rate. No other occupation that I’m aware of have that option.

I have started to see lawyers and businessman who want to buy a startup house in downtown Miami, which will run around $400,000, and they can’t because they’re having trouble getting qualified.

MA: A new survey found that 70 percent of U.S. adults still believe the country’s housing market is in the middle of a crisis. Have you noticed a similar trend of ill-information in your clients and, if so, how do you deal with it?

HG: Most of my clients are not ill-informed, but if they do come to me with misinformation I’ll straighten them out with the truth. I’m very forthright with my customers, very honest as to what the current market is. There are people that believe there’s going to be another boom in this bubble, and what I tell them is to wait it out if they really believe that. However, I make sure they know that if they’re wrong and decide to buy in another year or two, the prices could be further up.

It’s an educated gamble we all take – no one has a crystal ball. I’d like to believe, and I do think the dramatic increases we’re seeing in home prices will come down, maybe to five or ten percent max and that would be more of the norm.

Miami’s market has a lot of possibilities in causing disruption to the flow of “normal” economics. One is Hurricanes. Once we get a storm, all bets are off. How it effects the market depends on where it hits, how it hits and what the insurance companies will do with the next one. The second is flood insurance. Earlier this year, Congress avoided a crisis when they approved legislation to address the dramatic increases to flood insurance premiums, but there are still lingering issues. I think it will very much affect us here in Florida, as well as all coastal communities, and what happens with it will be big.

Lastly, the windstorm factor, which is tied to hurricanes, is also a big issue in Miami. For example, I myself was denied windstorm coverage because my side door

MA: One of our recent features discusses different tips and tricks for distinguishing yourself from the local competition. In Miami, where the market is pretty hot, how do you make sure your name and brand stand out?

HG: First of all, my name is Hazel, so that helps. I hated it when I was a kid, there was Hazel the witch and Hurricane Hazel, and it was not fun then. But now, it’s good for me. All of my marketing uses Hazel’s Homes.

My son, who I work with, and I decided the best nomenclature for the business was Hazel’s Homes. We even came up with a little tagline we use, which is: Opening doors across south Florida. It’s accompanied by a logo, an H with a little key in the middle, and we use it all the time.

We stand out in the market by avoiding too many vanity shots – if you’ve seen one pretty face you’ve seen them all. We’re trying to cultivate Hazel’s Homes into a very recognizable brand.

In 1995, when Pinecrest became a village, I ran for public office and my name was on every piece of campaign literature and posters, so everyone learned my name.

Also, a few years back, I got a revolving billboard on one of Miami’s busiest intersections. I purchased the ad space six months at a time, and over the course of five years, had my name and logo on it for a combined 18 months. Even though I wasn’t on it the whole time, since it was revolving, even when people didn’t see our logo on it, they still thought of me, just assuming the Hazel’s Homes logo was on the other side.

Now the ad space runs something like $8,000 a month, so we don’t use it anymore, but I still get recognized from it.