Bernice Ross

For decades, I taught real estate licensing and CE classes at the college level as well as for associations and companies across the country. When I first started my Coach U training to become a Master Certified Coach, an important cornerstone of their training was learning how to set boundaries in both your business and personal life. In other words, that means learning to say “no” to clients who are overly demanding, don’t respect you and are emotionally abusive.

For decades we have trained our agents and consumers to believe that if you have a fixed-rate mortgage, your monthly loan payment will not change. But for the 80 percent of borrowers who have mortgage escrow accounts, that’s simply not true. Instead, these borrowers must pay their private mortgage insurance (PMI) if required, property taxes and their homeowner’s insurance statement – prorated monthly – along with their mortgage payment.

Private listings, “coming soon” strategies, the portal wars, syndication rules, the never-ending lawsuits – the trench warfare in today’s real estate industry is loud and endless. The industry keeps fighting over platforms, policies and control while agents struggle to do more transactions. Yet traditional real estate is overlooking hundreds of thousands of potential buyers and sellers hiding in plain sight. The reason? We’ve lost our North Star upon which true, lasting success is built.