Scott StartsmanExperience: 16 years Specializations: Luxury Home Sales, Investments, Development Areas Served: Honolulu, Waikiki, Diamond Head, Manoa, Hawaii Kai, Kailua Q: What made you become interested in real estate? A: My family has been doing investing for 40 years. I grew up around it and had purchased 2 investments for myself before getting my license. I enjoy helping people and teaching them about the financial benefits of real estate. Q: What is the most interesting thing that happened with a client? A: I was on vacation on the outer islands and I got my client into escrow on a $2.6 mil home that needed $500-$600K in renovation work. The client was going to be going out of the country and needed to not only understand the property from a standard buying standpoint but then needed to understand what was going to be done from a renovation standpoint and how much it was going to cost, while being able to close in 12 days. I had to line up inspectors, contractors, architects, electricians, plumbers, window people, flooring people, kitchen design people, pool people, landscape design people. I lined them all up on the inspection day starting at 9:00am every hour on the hour until all came through that day and then fly back early in the morning to manage everyone. We finished around 6:00pm with our appointments. Surprisingly everyone showed up when they were supposed to. I flew back out for my vacation that night. We got it done and closed on time, but which what was more amazing than anything was that my client was able to absorb that much information, process it and be able to make a sound decision about a $3.0mil+ purchase in such a short period of time. I had to scramble and pull favors from my connections but the buyer had to do most of the hard work. Q: What was your favorite moment in your career so far? A: It is always when you see how happy people are when they close on their perfect home. It brings great satisfaction. Also, when I had the highest priced residential lot ever to sell the house fast on the North Shore. That happened two times with the same lot. It sold for $3.0mil and then sold it for $3.5mil two years later. Q: What do you wish you had known when you first got your real estate license? A: It’s all about relationships. Relationships with other agents, vendors and contractors, and ultimately the consumer. If you have good relationships with people you can move mountains to make things work for your client. I would also have loved to be able to give a seller good tips for selling his house as I know now. Q: What’s the most challenging part of your job? A: I say I am in the psychology business, it just happens to be called real estate. Handling the emotions of clients when they are buying or selling their house is the toughest part. There is a lot of money at stake so it is a high involvement decision with a lot of emotions and my job is to help make that process as smooth and stress-free as possible through my guidance and talking through situations.
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