Hasan Ibrahim is a commercial and residential real estate professional, with many years of highly recognized and well-rewarded experience in the Northern Virginia market.

Given today's real estate situation and many people's questions and concerns about the fate and future of their properties, we sought an exclusive interview with Hasan.  In this Rendezvous, you will learn about Hasan as a person as well as his views on the real estate situation.  

Q1 - How would you introduce yourself to our readers?

I am a native of The Big Apple - born in Queens, New York City. A few years of my early life I lived in Islamabad, Pakistan; completed my secondary education in Virginia; later joined WVU and graduated with a degree in Business Administration and Economics. My concentration in college was entrepreneurship and real estate. I have been a resident of Loudoun County since 1992 and have been working in real estate since I graduated from University. When I am not involved in my real estate practice, I indulge myself in my other passion of being an outdoorsman. I enjoy stream fishing, canoeing, hiking, and skeet shooting. Twice a year a few friends and I charter a large boat and go deep sea fishing; I have been an avid bird hunter, with the most well trained dogs since my youth. During the two months of Big Game hunting my day usually starts at 3am in search of Whitetail Deer. And of course every once in a while I catch an episode of Deal or No Deal!

Q2 - How did you get started in real estate?

I was fortunate to have a very healthy head start in my career. Since I was already involved in understating the economics of real estate in college, I was able to build strong relations with long time veteran real estate brokers in northern Virginia even before I started my practice. I had the pleasure of working independently with Jim Brooks, an extremely sharp and polished commercial real estate practitioner, who later launched a residential real estate brokerage known as Keller Williams. Jim Brooks, my late friend in 2002 offered me the option of creating my own individual corporation within his new umbrella brokerage. This allowed me to practice both Commercial and Residential real estate from one central location, and I have since done my part in making our office one of the strongest producing real estate offices.

Q3 - How has the real estate experience been so far?

God has indeed been very kind to me; my experience has been very rewarding and gratifying. I had the advantage of coming into this business with a wealth of theoretical knowledge and very strong support from senior, experienced colleagues, which has truly been an asset. Individually, from the very first year I was nominated for “Rookie of the Year” in my company. I received a carrier launch award from amongst nine thousand individuals. I later received numerous awards and have consistently been a top producing real estate agent with the Dulles Area Association of Realtors. I am a proud recipient of the honors society award from DAAR. I also was nominated and have been the youngest member of the ALC (Agent Leadership Council) going on three years.

Q4 - What are the services you offer to buyers and sellers (respectively) and how do you differentiate yourself from other realtors?

In essence, I am an expert negotiator and lead a team of expert negotiators in structuring fantastic residential and commercial real estate transactions. When buying a house, having an aggressive, knowledgeable, experienced, and a result oriented agent, in my opinion, is vital for any buyer or seller. When selling a house of course experience can be weighed by a few fundamental benchmarks. We achieve the highest results for our clients. Our philosophy is transaction driven and not transaction-amount driven. Some of the most challenging and at the same time most rewarding cases are of first-time home buyers. Often times there is more coaching, strategizing, and planning that takes place for a $300,000 condo than a $3million estate. Buying a home is a very sensitive matter, and is often the most expensive purchase; and I believe everyone deserves the absolute best service and the most experienced agent on their side, working for their best interest. Actually, even if someone is not buying or selling real estate, but just has a question in regards to real estate, we welcome them to call us..

Q5 - What can you tell our readers about the real estate market? Has the bubble burst?

Unfortunately, I hate to burst the bubble, but if you ask me about real estate, I don’t think the bubble theory exists here and I will explain why. Historically real estate has produced more millionaires than any other investment avenue. I say that open ended since by default even one’s primary residence ends up, over time, being more of an investment. Now there is the phenomenon of a real estate cycle that circulates its way around over time in response to market conditions and that is actually very healthy on a lot of different levels. There have always been sellers and buyers in the market, no matter what the conditions; sometimes due to circumstances and other times for calculated investment decision. Even when most think of market conditions being not so great, there are people buying as well as selling. To put it simply for sellers and buyers it is never a question of a good market or bad market, it’s simply the ONLY market they have. Compared to that, a burst bubble is where nothing is being done and a particular industry collapses with no transactions. So that is why I think there is no bubble per se, just cyclical movements and they are an ongoing, natural trend.

Q6 - Should investors hold on to their investment property or try to sell them as soon as they can?

It depends on the investment purpose – long term holding or flipping (which profited many investors in recent years, including myself). However, patience in real estate always pays off good! So if an investor has the capacity to hold on to their purchase for a bit longer, it could potentially be beneficial. To evaluate the individual situation, it is best that your readers consult a real estate professional. They are welcome to call me directly and given their circumstances we will make sensible adjustments or decisions as needed. Panic is not the answer to anything!! Sit back, relax and ask an expert for advice and guidance; it’s a lot of hard earned money on the table!

Q7 - How can one sell a home in a stagnant market like we have these days, what words of advice would you give to the sellers? And what are the common mistakes people make when selling their home??

Each home is unique in its own way. I am not just saying that to paint a soft picture here, it’s actually stipulated in State Law. Having said that, let’s narrow down the list to 5 bullet points that sell your house, I call these the Five P’s - 1) Presentation, 2) People, 3) Promotion, 4) Product, and 5) Price. In the current market, with such immense competition when selling a house, there is literally no margin of error if you ask me. The houses selling today are properly presented, sometimes even professionally staged and if that’s what it takes to sell a house, that’s what you do to sell a house. You definitely need an active, energetic agent to represent you, available to do what it takes to attract buyers to sell your house. A proper and effective marketing packet needs to be in place. Of course the house needs to be in good shape. Last but not least, the place where a majority of people suffered in the recent past is the price. Your house is worth exactly what the market is willing to bear for it today. The single most common mistake I see people and their agents make is over pricing the house. The fact is that we have had an adjustment in the market. One needs to accept the fact that pricing the house accurately is a far better approach than playing catch up by lowering the price as the market declines.

Q8 - What kind of housing market can we hope to see this year in the spring and summer? Any chance of the market picking up?

I don’t know if there is anyone that has a true answer to this question, but we can use data provided by market trend changes to speculate about Northern Virginia. We are probably the most recession resistant area, being surrounded by what the federal government has to offer along with our tremendous information technology sector, etc. We are truly in a strong, secure and promising real estate demographic to say the least. It’s a matter of time that things make a turn around and if you study previous market shifts it always does make a tremendous come back. Now on ground reality as of March, 2007, market condition has improved over the past few months and the results of spring 2007 will be reflected in the third quarter of 2007. You have to understand that market conditions fluctuate on a continual basis. Keeping an optimistic approach, having economic data to support predictions, I believe that third quarter 2007 should start an upwards incline in the market.

Q9 - You also deal with commercial properties; educate us on how one should go about investing commercially?

Commercial real estate is a whole different animal all together. It is however not something to be intimidated by. One common misconception is that in order to indulge yourself in commercial real estate, one is required to have enormous amounts of liquid capital. The fundamental difference between the two kinds of transaction is that commercial is not as black and white in comparison to residential. What I mean by this is commercial transactions have a lot of flexibility in how they can be structured. The key is how the deal is structured individually from start to finish. We have already determined that carrying the deal through is a complex matter and requires someone competent to successfully execute it. There are certain benchmarks that can be plugged into different mathematical equations to critically evaluate and justify weather a transaction makes sense or not.

Q10 - What are the best and worst investments one can make in the real estate market?

I think it has more to do with one’s investment strategy then the investment itself. There should be adequate homework done prior to any investment decision. Real estate ventures rarely disappoint anyone in the long run. However, if a financially bad real estate decision is made and is having a negative impact, then it should be remedied right away. Having a conservative approach and making a sound, secure and sensible investment over a longer period of time pays a much higher return on investment than a haphazard, impulsive, and uncalculated purchase.

Q11 - What message would you like to give to the readers of The Saturday Post?

When buying or selling any real estate one must have on their side an aggressive, enthusiastic, and competent real estate professional to execute a flawless transaction. It matters little if the purchase is a primary residence or large commercial investment; the financial homework before the purchase and the dedication in achieving the highest results are a universal standard for our firm. The bottom line is, no matter what the budget, it is usually the largest purchase for most people and it should be treated with such respect!! I urge your readers to call us for any and all of their real estate questions and services. In all honesty and sincerity it is better to ask someone than to practice trial and error and take a chance. I would request your readers, if they find themselves in a situation in which they would just so much as get a professional second opinion, please do not hesitate in contacting us. Your readers are most welcome to contact me directly at HasanMIbrahim@yahoo.com or 703 944 8447