To ho­n­our his fa­ther, Gre­go­ry Lou­saing, af­ter his pass­ing, Jo­van Lou­saing re­cent­ly took a leap of faith that his dad had en­cour­aged him to make: start his own re­al es­tate busi­ness.

“I used to work for a com­pa­ny be­fore. I worked there for about three and a half years. And while I was work­ing there, my dad was ac­tu­al­ly mo­ti­vat­ing me con­stant­ly to do my own thing. He said, you know, why work for some­one when you’re more than ca­pa­ble of open­ing your own bro­ker­age be­cause you have the ex­pe­ri­ence with sales and work­ing with clients. So why not just open your own bro­ker­age?” said 22-year-old Lou­siang in a Zoom in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day.

Two months in­to launch­ing op­er­a­tions at Lou­saings Re­al­ty Ltd, he cred­it­ed the les­son’s his fa­ther taught him as well as his own ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try in the past four years.

Lou­saing start­ed de­vel­op­ing his busi­ness acu­men with his fa­ther from the age of 13, aid­ing him in the de­vel­op­ment of a whole­sale co­conut wa­ter busi­ness be­fore part­ner­ing with him in a land­scap­ing com­pa­ny. He said it was dur­ing this de­vel­op­men­tal process that he dis­cov­ered he had an en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it.

“There was this one time that we need­ed a new ve­hi­cle be­cause the car was kind of giv­ing trou­ble. And in­stead of cut­ting back on costs, we de­cid­ed to try to fig­ure out a way to make some ex­tra cash to be able to af­ford this ve­hi­cle. So he and I start­ed look­ing around for some con­tracts for the land­scape com­pa­ny. And we both strate­gised, ne­go­ti­at­ed with the man­age­ment at those de­vel­op­ments. And we even­tu­al­ly got the con­tracts. So I’ve had a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence with ne­go­ti­a­tion, sales from a young age,” said Lou­saing.

His de­ci­sion to open his own busi­ness was so­lid­i­fied when back­pack­ing through Eu­rope last year, he was al­most de­port­ed as French of­fi­cials ini­tial­ly mis­took him for an il­le­gal im­mi­grant at­tempt­ing to sneak in­to the coun­try.

“I had to try to nav­i­gate how to get out of that sit­u­a­tion on my own. I couldn’t call any­body be­cause they would not al­low me to use my phone. So, I had to try and fig­ure out how to get out of the sit­u­a­tion,” said Lou­saing, “That is to say, if I can nav­i­gate those dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, I’m more than able to nav­i­gate open­ing my own bro­ker­age in the re­al es­tate in­dus­try in Trinidad. Be­cause I know how to deal with dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions un­der pres­sure.”

He has recog­nised that pres­sure in his own busi­ness in the re­al es­tate mar­ket is chal­leng­ing, as he agreed with sev­er­al in­dus­try stake­hold­ers that it is cur­rent­ly a buy­er’s mar­ket with many po­ten­tial buy­ers locked out by pric­ing and mort­gage re­quire­ments.

Lou­saing told the Busi­ness Guardian that the role of the re­al­tor has changed as a re­sult of the mar­ket.

“Yes, I am def­i­nite­ly see­ing some buy­ers have trou­ble ac­cess­ing mort­gages. But I wouldn’t say fi­nanc­ing has dis­ap­peared. The mar­ket is evolv­ing, and it’s en­cour­ag­ing buy­ers to be more fi­nan­cial­ly in­formed and strate­gic from the be­gin­ning of the process. As agents, our job has be­come much more con­sul­ta­tive. It’s not just about show­ing homes any­more,” he said, “It’s about guid­ing clients through fi­nanc­ing op­tions, ex­plor­ing, en­cour­ag­ing ear­ly pre-ap­provals and help­ing clients make re­al­is­tic de­ci­sions based on their fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion.”

He al­so not­ed the adop­tion of mod­ern strate­gies to reach clients.

“I’m able to do that through dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and tak­ing a new ap­proach to mar­ket­ing to clients. So I try sto­ry­telling, I try re­lat­ing to clients a bit more, mak­ing the trans­ac­tion as smooth as pos­si­ble as I can,” said Lou­saing, “I would say that I mea­sure suc­cess in see­ing the smile on my client’s face af­ter they col­lect their keys for their new prop­er­ty, for their new in­vest­ment. I would say that this is how I would mea­sure my suc­cess, just see­ing my clients hap­py and sat­is­fied with the ser­vices that I pro­vide.”

Lou­saing has sold prop­er­ties through­out the coun­try, in­clud­ing down the is­lands, but he notes he has sold a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of prop­er­ties in Cen­tral Trinidad. This falls in line with re­cent da­ta re­leased by Ter­ra Caribbean and con­firmed by its CEO Jean Paul de Meil­lac that in­creased avail­abil­i­ty of and ease of build­ing have made Ch­agua­nas and Cen­tral the high­est vol­ume in terms of sales in the T&T mar­ket.

The young re­al­tor al­so con­firmed an­oth­er trend iden­ti­fied by the Ter­ra team, that buy­ers were in­creas­ing­ly spend­ing on in­vest­ment prop­er­ties.

“I’m see­ing that there are a lot more in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties out there. A lot of in­vestors are re­al­ly start­ing to push more in­vest­ment-style de­vel­op­ments. I’ve been see­ing a lot of Airbnb’s be­ing pushed to the mar­ket, a lot of rental prop­er­ties. I would say it’s re­al­ly a buy­er’s mar­ket these days,” Lou­saing said.

In a June 12 in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, de Meil­lac had not­ed this was a grow­ing trend in the mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go.

“We’ve seen a re­fo­cus or re­newed fo­cus on Airbnbs. Trinida­di­ans are buy­ing prop­er­ties over there to rent as Airbnbs to get US dol­lars com­ing in. We’ve ac­tu­al­ly seen the di­as­po­ra fo­cus­ing on To­ba­go once more with Tri­nis look­ing at com­ing back home at some stage, and they tend to like To­ba­go.”

With this in mind, Lou­saing said it was clear there were still op­por­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket, but he al­so urged young busi­ness own­ers to fol­low his fa­ther’s ad­vice and take the leap.

“I would tell young peo­ple my age, try not to put so much pres­sure on your­self and try not to have every­thing fig­ured out. So­cial me­dia can make it seem like every­one is ahead of you, but every­one has their own time­line. Start where you are,” said Lou­saing.

He said the most im­por­tant things are to take ac­tion, be will­ing to learn and stay as con­sis­tent as pos­si­ble.

“I would like to say I’m very ex­cit­ed for what’s ahead, not just for me, but for young peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have so much tal­ent and po­ten­tial here. I hope my sto­ry en­cour­ages some­one else to take that leap of faith and re­alise that op­por­tu­ni­ties don’t al­ways have to be found. Some­times you just have to cre­ate it your­self. If there’s some­thing that you’re pas­sion­ate about, start it. Take that trip, launch a busi­ness, make the call. Life is too short to live with re­grets.”

But, for now, the ear­ly suc­cess of Lou­saing’s fledg­ling busi­ness serves as a trib­ute to his fa­ther on his first Fa­ther’s Day with­out his pres­ence.