Are you studying to take your real estate license examination? Great! Becoming a real estate agent is a fine way to generate a high income with plenty of work freedom.
The tips below will help you get your career off to a running start.
Send Out CMAs to Your Contacts
After you pass your online real estate license examination, you’ll want to gather as many listings as you can. You can get listings by sending out comparable market analyses of homes in your area.
This information tells homeowners what their homes may be worth in the current market. Sending out CMAs can be especially effective in a hot market when homeowners are more likely to consider selling their home.
But you can take the CMA a step further! First, you need a list of contacts for homeowners who might wish to sell their homes but haven’t committed yet. Next, pull up the property on Google Earth and record your screen.
Then walk the owner through the comparables so he or she will have detailed information about what the home is worth. This is a personalized approach that will impress homeowners.
If you send out two or three of these CMAs per day, you can follow up with a letter or phone call. Keep doing this every week, and you’ll definitely start to generate more listings.
Use Facebook Live
Do you like to do one-minute videos on your phone? Great! You can use this activity to grab more listings.
Every month, start a Facebook Live session and make a rundown of homes that have sold over the past 30 days. Next, tell people you’ll provide a free home valuation and supply your contact information.
You might want to pay to boost the video to ensure you get to people in your neighborhood or target area.
Have a Happy Hour at an Open House
Are you about to list a home? The weekend before you list, mail invitations to homeowners in the neighborhood. They might know someone who wants to move into the area. Also, people usually appreciate when a real estate agent goes to a significant effort to sell a neighbor’s home.
Circulate “Just Sold” Postcards
Many experienced real estate agents send out “Just Sold” postcards to 200 or 300 homes in the area. You can get more listings if you state how long the home was on the market and how close it ended up being to the asking price.
It’s a perfect strategy if you have a powerful success story to share. For example, the real estate market is hot in many parts of the US this year. So if you get a house sold for $20,000 above the listing price, this is information that should excite the neighbors.
Also, mention they can visit your website and get a free home valuation.
Deal With Problems Before They Arise
Making money as a real estate agent means closing deals and selling homes as fast as possible. The more organized you are, the more deals you’ll close and the faster you’ll make money.
Keeping your goals in mind helps you to eliminate obstacles that prevent you from making money, You can do that by dealing with issues before they come up.
So, don’t wait until there is a problem with a home inspection to do something. You can avoid this problem in many situations if you prepare for home inspections carefully.
One way to do this: Talk to the seller when you begin marketing and have them tell you about any known issues.
A skilled real estate agent can walk the homeowner through the process and show why it’s important to be honest with home buyers. Hiding problems isn’t a good way to do business, and it can make the sale fall through.
Market to Divorcees
Some agents are reluctant to target people who are going through a divorce. But doing that can be effective for gaining new listings. Why?
Judges often require the home to be sold as part of the divorce; that may be necessary for assets to be divided. It’s estimated that 30% of divorcing individuals will list their homes within 180 days of filing for divorce.
This presents a great opportunity for you: You can get the real estate listing and possibly land two new buyers. It’s also been estimated that 300,000 Americans list their homes for sale within six months of filing for a divorce.
Some agents have based all their business on working with divorcing couples. This could be an excellent option because some agents shy away from sellers going through this experience.
Put Relationships Ahead Of Sales
The best real estate agents put relationships ahead of sales. Why? Because you cannot make a sale without having a good relationship with the buyer or seller. If you aren’t honest with the customer, you’ll poison the relationship and lose the sale.
You can build a good relationship with the client by choosing a time of day and communication channel that works for them. Never make them guess about when you’ll contact them, and keep them in the loop about all developments in the transaction.
These are some of the proven ways to snag more real estate listings. Adopt them and you’ll be on your way to real estate success.