Offered $600 to write a market summary, three weeks before my license exam

I'm three weeks from my license exam and a guy I used to work with called me Sunday. He's got about $250k he wants to put into a small rental somewhere cheaper than where he lives, and he asked if I'd spend a couple weekends pulling together a written summary of two markets I know well. Rent ranges by bedroom count, what taxes look like, which submarkets flooded in 2019, which streets the property managers refuse to work. He offered $600 flat.

I want to take it. I've been reading these markets for two years for free and this is the first time anyone has offered money for it.

What I can't work out is where the line sits. I'm not showing him property. I'm not negotiating anything. But at some point in that document I'd be saying "this submarket looks better than that one at your price point," and I don't know if that reads as advice a licensed person gives or as research anybody can sell.

The other half of it is what I actually deliver. $600 for two weekends is maybe $15 an hour if I'm honest about how long I take. And if he buys something and it goes badly, is that document sitting in his file with my name on it?

Decision in front of me is whether I say yes this week or tell him to wait until I'm licensed.

Answer

1derekj19SB1B

The question of whether this needs a license depends on your state and on what the document does, so this is one to put to your state commission directly before you take the money. Generally the licensing trigger is activity on behalf of someone in a transaction, showing, negotiating, or being paid in connection with a purchase or sale, and pure written research isn't that. But some states draw the line closer in than others and a few treat compensation tied to a deal very broadly, so get the answer from the commission in writing, not from me.

What you control is the shape of the deliverable. Two things I'd change:

Strip anything that reads as an opinion of value on a specific address. "Two bed units in this submarket rented between $1,150 and $1,340 across these 14 listings I pulled" is data. "This house is worth $210k" is an appraisal opinion and in most states that's a separate license entirely.

Put a scope line at the top saying what the document is and what it isn't, and that he makes his own decisions and should have his own attorney and inspector. That doesn't make you bulletproof but it makes the record clear about what he bought.

On the $600. Bill it as a fixed scope with a page count and a delivery date, and tell him revisions past one round are billed separately. You'll learn more from writing the scope than from the research.

7 replies

1stephen_ok9CO2CPRO6

The $600 is the least interesting number in your post. Two weekends of your time is the real cost, and you'd be spending it building a document you can't reuse for anyone else because it's written to one guy's budget.

If you do it, write the market summary so 80% of it is a template you can run again in six weeks for a different person. That's the difference between a favor and the start of something.

2nataliehsuSO1BPRO7

beacon's split between data and opinion is the part I'd hold onto. I've been circling the same question from the other direction, and the thing that finally made it click for me is that people pay for the second one and the second one is where all the exposure is. So you either get very good at sourcing the data and let the client draw the conclusion, or you go get the credentials that let you say the conclusion out loud.

2mitchell_ray4 Get yoursPRO6

$600 for two weekends, come on. I quote a service call at more than that. Charge $1,200 and if he balks, cut the scope to one market instead of two.

3paulgrant17PassivePRO5

The bit that would keep me up is the flood question. You said you know which submarkets flooded in 2019. If you write that down and you're wrong about one street, or right about the street but wrong about the year, that's the sentence he quotes back at you. I'd cite the source for every factual claim in the document, even the ones you're sure of.

1devon_pierce Get yoursPRO5

I'd take it, and I'd take it partly because the exam is three weeks out and you'll never have a cleaner test of whether you like this work. Writing a market summary for a stranger's money is very different from reading listings at night for yourself. Some people find out they hate it.

One push on solder: raising the price to $1,200 on a friend who already named a number is a good way to lose the first client you ever had. Take the $600, do it well, and price the second one properly.

2tonyv88SO4CPRO6

Two weekends is optimistic. Rent comps you can pull in an afternoon. The part that eats you is the property manager question, because you can't answer that from data, you have to call five managers and get three of them to talk honestly about which streets they won't take on. Budget for the phone calls or leave that section out, because a soft version of it is worse than nothing.