Alexander Diaz de Villegas was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He went to Miami Dade Community College for a little over a year before switching to Lynn University. Diaz de Villegas spent the next 26 years of his career in public service. He served as chairman of the board for the South Dade Venture Community Development District for seven years.
In his free time, Diaz de Villegas enjoys travelling. He’s visited around a dozen different countries, including Canada, France, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, Italy, Spain, Cuba (where his parents are from), England, Turkey, and Thailand.
Two and a half years before his retirement from public service, Diaz de Villegas received his realtor license two and a half years before he retired from public service. He first dabbled in real estate part-time, and after his retirement, he pursued it full time.
Diaz de Villegas is currently working for Battlefield Investment Group in Homestead, Florida.
1.You and John Reasor were recently named the most successful team of realtors for Battlefield Investment Group in Homestead, Florida. How did you achieve this impressive title?
Two words: customer service. It’s our attention to detail with every aspect of the entire transaction that gives us credibility with our clients, who then refer us to new clients.
2.How does working as a team of realtors differ from working on your own?
You have to be more adaptable to various levels of experience or expertise. When you’re working alone, you don’t have someone to fall back to. There’s a redundancy in the type and the level of service that you provide.
3.What trends are you noticing in real estate that excite you?
It’s not so much a trend but the marketing of real estate is what currently excites me. It’s generating new leads. It’s finding new, innovative ways to get new leads is always exciting for me.
4.How do you capitalize on opportunities?
The first thing you need to do is recognize that there is an opportunity. I think timing is crucial. Once you’ve identified an opportunity, you have to identify what resources you have, your availability to capitalize and then secure that opportunity.
5.What advice do you have for someone entering a career in real estate?
My advice is to team up with experienced people as quickly as possible. Mentoring is sometimes tricky in the field, but it is always a benefit to an agent. If you can link yourself with someone who was a top seller or has a lot of experience and they’re willing to mentor you, it’s worth more than any course you can take.
6.Besides your career, what defines you as a person?
I’m the father of two, and I make my family my priority. I would also say that my integrity defines me. I believe in my moral compass.
7.What advice do you have for handling demanding clients who are inflexible with their budget?
I think you have to work hard to demonstrate to them what may or may not be a reality. In other words, you need to change their perception or perspective by bringing them to a more realistic point of view or outlook on what it is they’re going to be getting from their budget. To do something like this, we would run comparables of other homes in the area. We would take the time to explain why one particular home was worth less than another, why another home undersold. We’ve also had clients who believed their homes were worth a lot more because of what they put into it, and we had to explain step by step what exactly makes the necessity of a home, regardless of what the personal investments are.
8.How do you manage to achieve success in balancing your career and personal life?
I think in this business, or any field of business, you’re most successful when the two intermingle with each other. I’ve kept in contact with several of my clients for many years, and it’s had nothing to do with business. We developed a relationship, and like any relationship, it bleeds into your work environment and productivity. So, I think the short answer to this is that sometimes there isn’t much of a difference between the two.
9.What predictions do you have for the 2020 real estate market?
I think it’s going to get even better. It’s an upward trend. Despite many people predicting there will be another, smaller crash, in the housing market, the trends have broken every single prediction from the “experts” for 2018 and 2019. Everything I’ve seen is going in an upward trend, which was the reason for the big housing crisis in 2008. The trends are where they should be now, moving up about 2% each year.
10. How has technology changed the way you conduct business?
It has made it a lot more efficient. The majority of transactions nowadays are done digitally with things like digital signatures. However, depending on your clients, it can be difficult to have them catch up with technology, so you may have to spend more time with the older clients who aren’t as savvy with technology. This means that sometimes you have to spend more time on printing things out, driving over to whatever location you need to go to, getting the hand signatures, and then scanning the file and putting it back into a digital system. If that’s what it takes, that’s what we do. Technology has both helped and hindered.