Longtime real estate consumer advocate and buyer-side entrepreneur Barry
Miller is announcing publication of his first book, a consumer guide to home
buying that almost certainly will provide insights that home hunters won't
find in the average text about "how to buy a house."
The book is "Smart Home Buying For Smart Home Buyers" ($22.95, 140 pgs).
Miller has been a licensed real estate agent in Colorado since 1978 and an
exclusive buyer agent for almost 15 years.
He is the founder of the Real Estate Buyer's Agent Council, created the
Buyer's Resource EBA franchise and is a co-founder of the National
Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents.
While the book is obviously directed to home buyers, Miller has included
several pages of "winning thoughts" directed to the buyer agent working with
the consumer, any attorneys who might be involved in the deal, and lenders
who are making the loan.
In a sense, says Miller, the book is the culmination of 13 years of work on
behalf of real estate buyers. It is not, he emphasizes, a "war stories" book
about buyer broker confrontations with traditional real estate companies and
the National Association of Realtors.
"This isn't a book about that and, really, the consumer doesn't need to know
about all that" history, Miller says. "This book is focused on the process."
The modern home buyer, says Miller, finds himself at a fork in the road of
real estate. "There are two systems at work in real estate today," he says.
"One is caveat emptor (buyer beware), and the other system is based on buyers
having certain advantages."
Miller clearly intends to move his reader to the more enlightened path.
"When I work with a buyer, that's what they report back to me. When they work
with us (his company, Home Buyer Champion in Denver), they feel like first
class citizens.
"When they work in the other system," he said, "they feel like they are being
kept in the dark."
While Miller believes the book could have been written any time in the last
decade, he feels strongly that it could only be published now.
"I wanted to wait for a couple of things to happen. One, I wanted consumers
to have a general recognition that there's a difference between buyer agency
and exclusive buyer agency," he said.
"Second, before finishing the book, I wanted to make sure the real estate
brokerage industry was positioned to accept the difference between the
'exclusive business attributes' of our system versus their system.
"I think those two things are in place now."
For more information about the book, contact Miller at: barrymill@aol.com
Published: November 13, 2000
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