Luxury Florida Condos & Market Tips from Doug Wood

Doug Wood (00:00)
So I think the biggest thing we’re looking to solve is as the market is transitioned from the very frenzied pace, you know, two, three, four years ago to what we term a more normalized sales pace to really help the sellers understand that your home isn’t likely to sell within a few days or a few weeks. It’s going to take some time, but also help educate the buyers that we may be working with that.

Really any time’s a good time to buy real estate. If you’re looking for a longer hold period, then one of the adages is when’s the best time to buy real estate? It was last year or today. But waiting for two months, six months down the road for the perfect time, there never will be a perfect time. So trying to help people understand now could be the perfect time if you’re gonna be in the property for a while.

Michelle Kesil (02:22)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Doug Wood, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate space. So really glad to have you here with us today, Doug. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching your real estate business. So let’s dive into all of that.

Doug Wood (02:49)
Great. Thank you for having me, Michelle.

Michelle Kesil (02:51)
Sure. So first off, for people who may not be familiar with you and your world, can you give us the short version of what’s your main focus these days?

Doug Wood (03:01)
Sure, well, my wife and myself, we’re the wood team and we sell real estate in the Tampa Bay market. We’ve been selling residential, commercial investment for just over 20 years now.

Michelle Kesil (03:15)
Great, yeah, and can you expand upon your business? What kind of got you into it and where are you guys heading?

Doug Wood (03:24)
Sure, so about 20 years ago, we had just moved to the Tampa area and my wife wanted to get her real estate license. So she got hers, I got mine. Certain things happened with my employment and we decided to jump in both feet and get into the real estate business together. We market ourselves as the art and science of real estate. So she is more artistic.

customer focused, very relationship aspect of it. And I come in with the details and the contracts and the negotiation skills. And over the years, we’ve blended a pretty strong business. We’ve sold over 1,500 properties during that time, a half a billion dollars in sales volume, and learned quite a bit and really like to impart our knowledge and wisdom to our customers.

Michelle Kesil (04:19)
Amazing and are you only mark operating in the Tampa area?

Doug Wood (04:26)
Right, we are licensed in the state of Florida, so we’re able to sell anywhere in the state of Florida, but our main focus is the Tampa Bay. So it’s Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater, Sarasota, Northern counties. So it probably covers, you know, a 50 some odd mile radius.

Michelle Kesil (05:31)
Awesome, love it. So yeah, what has been like the key to keeping your business running smoothly?

Doug Wood (05:39)
think the biggest key that we’ve been working on the last few years is our administrative support. So no longer are we the ones that are doing all the paperwork, all the detailed tasks. We’ve hired people to do that and they’re doing a fantastic job. One of the things that we like to do is make sure our customers are communicated to and keeping them in tune with what’s going on in the sales process or the contract to close process.

And by doing that, that’s allowed Nancy and I, who’s my wife, to really focus on our customers, to be able to touch base with them and see what questions they may have or help them with their needs or find them just the right property that they’re looking for.

Michelle Kesil (06:24)
Absolutely, that’s important. yeah, what’s a lot of like the people that listen to this show are investors. So do you support investors as well?

Doug Wood (06:38)
Now, absolutely. And we’ve worked with ⁓ many of them over the years. It’s more on a property property basis. A lot of times the investors are looking for certain things that they’re either looking to, you know, rehab, so it needs to have, I’ll say enough margin in it for them. And then, you know, the end user. So once the investor’s done with their work on the property, then we’ll have buyers often that’ll come in and look to purchase that property.

From time to time, we’ll have customers or owners that come to us and say, I really need help with this property and it really needs a lot of work. And so we’ve got a few investors that we work with that we’ll go directly to and help put them together for that transaction without even going on the market.

Michelle Kesil (07:23)
Yeah, that’s great. So what are you most focused on solving or scaling next in your business?

Doug Wood (07:32)
So I think the biggest thing we’re looking to solve is as the market is transitioned from the very frenzied pace, you know, two, three, four years ago to what we term a more normalized sales pace to really help the sellers understand that your home isn’t likely to sell within a few days or a few weeks. It’s going to take some time, but also help educate the buyers that we may be working with that.

Really any time’s a good time to buy real estate. If you’re looking for a longer hold period, then one of the adages is when’s the best time to buy real estate? It was last year or today. But waiting for two months, six months down the road for the perfect time, there never will be a perfect time. So trying to help people understand now could be the perfect time if you’re gonna be in the property for a while.

Michelle Kesil (08:24)
Yeah, absolutely. So every operator I know had a moment in their business where things got real, maybe a deal went sideways, or you had to pivot fast. Would you mind sharing one of those experiences for you?

Doug Wood (08:43)
Let me see. So as far as pivoting fast on a deal, a couple of stories we’ve had where we’ve had customers during the process, they passed away, unfortunately. And so trying to make sure that that was a home that was being sold, that makes sure that the buyer who was not our customer was still able to buy. So we had to work pretty fast on one transaction in particular.

to make sure that that customer is able to close the property. Sometimes if it goes into probate or gets involved with other situations, it could definitely take a lot longer and that customer may not look to purchase the property. So we’ve had a few of those over the years and they’re always something that you really wanna get on and deal with quickly.

Michelle Kesil (09:32)
Yeah, and what’s like something you’ve learned from those situations?

Doug Wood (09:37)
Whether it’s those type situations or some of the other instances where there’s been challenges is really a couple things is A, keep your head. There’s almost always a solution as long as both parties really want to get the sale completed. Comer heads typically prevail. And so there’s ways to work through whatever needs to be done as long as everyone’s wanting to get things done.

If someone doesn’t want to, there’s really not much you can do. You can’t pull someone over a goal line, but you really want to make sure everyone is at least satisfied with the result.

Michelle Kesil (10:48)
So what are some tips you would give to maybe people that are newer in this industry?

Doug Wood (10:56)
From a real estate agent perspective, I think one of the most important things for new agents in the business, outside of the marketing they’re to do to create new customers and clients, is to really understand the sales contracts and the addendums that go with it. There’s so much information in there that as an agent, when you can really explain that to your customer and show them how it

Michelle Kesil (11:00)
Sure, yeah.

Doug Wood (11:26)
benefits you as a buyer or benefits you as a seller or how this process will really work, it shows much more value to that customer than they would even expect to get from you. So showing value beyond just knowledge of the area or marketing really comes in handy when you’re working with customers.

Michelle Kesil (11:49)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s quite important. So what’s something unique about the market in Florida?

Doug Wood (11:59)
So the market in Florida and in particular area, you know, during the COVID time period and just after it was like a lot of places in United States, extremely hot. Homes were on the market hours or were sold off market. Now it’s cooled some, the prices are still elevated from where it was five years ago by a significant amount. But trying to work through the, it’s gonna take longer to sell a home for a seller.

And for a buyer, helping them understand that there are definitely options. And if you want to, you know, make a good offer or make an offer to get a discussion, you know, it’s definitely worth doing. We’ve had in the recent past, you know, negotiations that, you know, used to take one or two days and then a deal would come together. Now, sometimes it’ll take a week or two weeks. And that’s OK, because each side is now adjusting to

kind of the new market dynamics. And it doesn’t have to be a fast-paced. People can be more thoughtful on what they’re looking to accomplish on both sides. And we’re here to help them do that.

Michelle Kesil (13:08)
Yeah, that’s great. yeah, what’s like something that you really enjoy or excel at when it comes to supporting your clients?

Doug Wood (13:19)
So for my purposes, my enjoyment is really to help customers understand the nuances of offers and in the contract and negotiation and negotiation tactics and really help them work through their own thought processes and what their goals are to really achieve the result that they’re looking to. My wife, as I said before, really is the customer relationship part of it. And combining those two,

⁓ we really think helps our customers reach what they’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes if it’s a husband and wife, for instance, one of those persons may gravitate to my personality and that’s perfectly fine or the other may gravitate to Nancy’s personality. But more often than not, the personalities are definitely not the same. So we have a really good way of interacting with our customers and having them feel comfortable.

with us, with the process, and with the end result.

Michelle Kesil (14:14)
Yeah, absolutely. That is so important. So let me ask you this. What is the next big goal for you?

Doug Wood (14:26)
So what we are trying to do is expand our business into a new area. We’ve had our main farm areas now that we’re looking at the beach properties. So condominiums on the beach, beach properties. We’ve done them over the years, but we’re looking to expand in that area, especially new construction condominiums. Our brokerage is well known for high rise luxury condominiums.

and we’re looking to help customers find out about those, get to see those, whether it’s an investment, which they can be fantastic investments, or whether it’s someplace that they want to live. Tampa downtown, St. Pete, the beaches along the Gulf are really having a great opportunity for folks that are interested in luxury high-rise condominiums.

Michelle Kesil (15:56)
Yeah, absolutely. And what kind of actions are you taking in order to reach that goal?

Doug Wood (16:05)
Well, the first thing is based on a situation that happened with a home in Tampa, it was unfortunately affected by one of the hurricanes. So we’ve now moved to the beach side. So we are here physically, whereas we weren’t before. The other is we’re looking to have some events at some of these luxury condominiums that our company is representing. We’re actually having one at the end of August where we’re inviting everybody we know.

to come and take a look at a property that’s called the Viceroy. It’s down in Clearwater on Clearwater Beach. So, you know, do different events to get people interested, see what the product is like, see if they like it, see if they know some people that like it, and really get them excited about the opportunity that they may be able to own one of these beautiful condominiums.

Michelle Kesil (16:53)
Yeah, amazing. That’s really beautiful. So when it comes to like building relationships and growing your network and your business, what do you feel has made the biggest difference for you?

Doug Wood (17:09)
think the personalities of who Nancy and I are in keeping in touch with people, not so much from the networking perspective, but just from the relationship. One of the things that she’s involved in different organizations and she’s got a book club. I’ve instituted what I call a gentleman’s group where, you know, once a month, once a quarter, I’ll have a little event on something that I would like to go do that I think would be fun.

You know, one of them was a cigar rolling event where I invited, you know, guy friends that I know to go and do that. One that I’m looking at doing is a dirt track racing event where locally here there’s, you know, a dirt track where cars run, drive around. And so I’m going to have probably 20 or 30 guys come out to that and just have a good time and meet each other as well. So I think that’s something that we really look to do is we may know all the people.

But they may not know each other, so we can introduce them to each other and friendships develop or even business relationships develop. So that’s how we really look at developing and networking in that respect.

Michelle Kesil (18:16)
Yeah, I love that. Relationships are everything in this space. Awesome. So when it comes to like working on real estate, I know that when we chatted, you mentioned you mostly work with residential, but you’re also tapping into the commercial space. Is that like a preference or yeah, why are you deciding to expand into that?

Doug Wood (18:38)
Mm-hmm.

Well, we’ve been doing residential for over 20 years and it’s just become a natural migration where, you know, different customers I’ve had have owned businesses and so they’ve looked for either warehouse space or retail space or they’ve looked to lease different aspects. you know, before I would, you know, refer them out to, you know, a more direct commercial agent, but they really wanted to work with me. They’ve enjoyed.

was working on the residential side. And my knowledge and experience in the real estate field really felt comfortable working with me. So that’s been a migration that gives me something else to work on and delve deeply into and helps our customers. And they seem to enjoy it and have been successful with.

Michelle Kesil (19:37)
Yeah, that’s so important, especially when you’re serving those people that you already have relationships with. I think it just comes back to show how important that is in this space.

Doug Wood (19:49)
Exactly.

Michelle Kesil (19:50)
Amazing. Well, all right, before we wrap up here, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or just learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Doug Wood (20:06)
Well, I’m kind of old school. Direct phone calls are always great. My direct cell number is 813-451-9760. Or if they want to find us on the web, it’s the woodteamrealty.com is another way. We’re on the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. We can be found at the Wood Team.

Typically, a Wood Team Tampa Bay will be able to one way to find us. So, you know, if anybody’s looking in the Tampa Bay area, we’d love to have a discussion and help you out answering any questions you may have.

Michelle Kesil (20:40)
Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story and perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing things in this right way. So thank you again for being here.

Doug Wood (20:52)
Okay, thank you, Michelle. Really appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (20:55)
Absolutely. for those of you that are tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations coming with operators just like Doug, who are out here building real businesses. And we’ll see you all in the next episode.