General Real Estate Careers Articles

Article / Updated 04-25-2023

Buying and selling houses is the primary business of real estate brokers and salespeople. Here's an overview of a typical house sale involving real estate agents. A couple decides to sell their house and enlist the services of a real estate agent. You're one of several agents the couple invites to their home to hear your listing presentation and explain what services you offer. In addition, you probably advise the couple on what price they'll be able to get for their house. After meeting with several agents, the couple chooses you, signing a listing agreement and agreeing to allow you to represent them as their agent in the transaction. As the couple's real estate agent, you begin marketing the property. In communities that have a multiple listing service (MLS), you enter their house information into a computer so that all other agents in the community can see what you've listed for sale. In communities with no MLS, agents may spread the word around to other real estate agencies that they have a particular house for sale. An agent across town who's been working to find a house for another couple sees your house on the MLS and gets in touch with you, asking for more details and making sure the house still is for sale. The cross-town agent then contacts his buyers, and they agree to take a look at the house. After seeing the house, they agree to make an offer. The way a buyer's offer is presented varies in different communities. Sometimes the offer is made in person with the buyer's agent present. The offer usually is made in writing with a small check from the prospective buyer that's called a binder or earnest money. Assuming that your seller either accepts the offer immediately or engages in negotiations that result in a deal, a contract of sale then is prepared. Exactly who prepares the contract varies by state and region. In many places, however, the seller's real estate agent prepares the contract, sometimes filling in the blanks of a preprinted contract form, but in other places, only attorneys prepare the contract. After the contract is signed, the conditions within the contract are triggered. A typical real estate sales contract includes a provision for the buyer to obtain mortgage financing and may have provisions for the house to be inspected by a home inspector or engineer. The contract usually includes a provision that a marketable title must be conveyed. A marketable title means that a reasonable and proper search of the records has been conducted, showing that the title to the property has been documented from earlier owners to the current seller so that it can be conveyed (or transferred) without questions as to who the owner is. A records search that proves whether a title is marketable is called a title search. Title insurance also may be purchased (or even required) as part of the contract process to ensure that the title is legal. When all of the contract provisions are satisfactorily completed and met, the buyer and seller may proceed to closing, taking the real estate agent one step closer to getting paid. By general agreement, the commission usually is paid at the closing. When more than one broker is involved, the broker representing the seller distributes the preapproved share of the commission to the buyer's representative. Each broker then splits a portion or percentage of the commission with the salesperson who worked the deal.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-18-2023

Got a property to rent but worried about everything that’s involved with being a landlord? Use this Cheat Sheet for tips on marketing your property, finding the right tenant and managing the rental process from start to finish.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-20-2022

Being a landlord certainly sounds easy. All you have to do is line up responsible residents, maintain the property, and count your money as the rent rolls in, right? Actually, no. Owning and leasing residential real estate requires that you comply with a host of federal, state, and local laws. Certain residents may complicate your life by taking legal action against you or forcing you to take legal action against them. This snapshot explains some important landlord legalities and helps you avoid the most common legal pitfalls of owning and leasing residential rental property.

Article / Updated 08-16-2022

How you choose to structure your business as the landlord depends in part upon your willingness to share its future and yours with others. Forming a corporation is a fairly complex legal endeavor that involves the following steps: Choose and register a name for your corporation that complies with state requirements. Write and file your articles of incorporation. Write bylaws to govern corporate operations. Issue stock certificates to your [email protected]’s owners and investors. Obtain any business licenses and permits required by your state and local governing bodies. You can take any of the following three approaches to form your corporation: Do it yourself. If you’re the sole owner of the business and don’t intend to add owners, seek outside capital, or do business in multiple locations, you may be able to incorporate without expert assistance. Use a third-party service. Hire a reputable, local attorney. Outsourcing to a business-formation service Numerous firms offer services to help you form a business entity. Three of the best known are Legal Zoom, Rocket Attorney, and The Company Corporation. Others include Inc Authority, and Directincorporation.com. Before using a service, check with others who’ve used it, and expand your search to include LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Find out how they’re regarded by the Better Business Bureau and local consumer protection organizations to determine whether any complaints have been filed against them. Keep in mind that these firms are ordinary retailers who tend to advertise low prices “Starting at …” for only a few of the services you need. Comparison shop. Find out what’s included and what’s not. Get a price quote from a reputable local attorney, as well, for comparison purposes. Make sure you get a price quote that covers everything you need to form your corporation. Hiring an attorney and accountant We recommend that you hire a reputable, local attorney to guide you through the process of incorporating your business and an accountant to manage the corporation’s payroll, taxes, and financial reporting for several reasons, including the following: Your attorney can help evaluate your specific needs for the area where you’re setting up shop and recommend the best business structure to meet those needs. Choosing the wrong business structure may imperil your personal assets and limit your tax benefits. Your attorney makes sure all documents are filed properly with the right government agencies and in a timely manner. Your attorney can refer you to experts in accounting, banking, financial planning, insurance, and web design. A good business attorney will have an ongoing professional interest in your success. Your accountant keeps the books and creates and files financial reports in compliance with federal, state, and local laws. Running your operation as a corporation As complicated as forming a corporation is, running it requires even more attention to detail. You must fulfill the obligations of corporate governance, which include: Paying yourself and other owners and investors salaries or distributions Holding at least one director and shareholder meeting annually Typing up and filing minutes from those meetings Updating the bylaws Practicing generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) — standards and procedures for recording financial transactions and producing financial reports Producing and filing an annual report with your Secretary of State Preparing the corporation’s annual tax return

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-15-2022

Property management is a job of detail and preparation. You need to prepare empty units to show them to new tenants, be able to match potential tenants with the right unit, and, most important, be able to collect rents effectively.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-09-2022

The real estate business is a dynamic market. And to be a successful real estate agent, it helps to have a few key skills at the ready. Being prepared to use your time wisely, creating an online presence, converting online lookers into clients, and prospecting for business are important tools that every successful agent should possess.

Article / Updated 08-22-2017

Current clients are people you're actively representing, right now, in real estate transactions. Current clients are a rich pool of referral opportunity mainly because, more than any other group, they have real estate on their minds. They're in the midst of deals that they're constantly talking about with their friends, associates, family members, and neighbors. They're posting pictures of their dream home or their new home on Instagram and Facebook. They're pinning real estate pictures on Pinterest boards. Their online and offline conversations revolve around their real estate wants and needs, their moving plans, real estate trends, and market activity. They're churning the waters for your next prospect with every post, tweet, and pin. If you don't ask your current clients to recommend you to their friends or to refer their friends to you, you're really missing out on a huge opportunity to reach potential prospects. You can bet that your name comes up in your clients' conversations, even if it's just to say that they have an appointment or that they're awaiting information from you. Putting in a few good words on your behalf is a natural and easy thing for them to do. You just have to ask. You talk to your clients regularly to communicate about selling their home, finding a home, monitoring their transaction progress, or working toward closing. During the course of those conversations, ask for referrals. The following figure shows a timeline for real estate agent referrals. The following figure illustrates a winning strategy for the referral ask. Don't forget to have your clients include you in their social-media world. Getting your clients to post about their experiences and tag you on their Facebook pages brings you into their circle of friends. It opens the door to them liking your business page and forming a service relationship. Be sure to engage in posting and include your clients in your posts.

Article / Updated 08-22-2017

The purpose of prospecting is to develop prospective clients for your real estate business. The prospecting method, even in today's world where people text more than answer the phone, still has merit and success attached. The figure shows a hierarchy of pyramid of sales and communication. This pyramid shows the power of persuasion is increased, as well as the impact, the higher you move on the pyramid. As the figure shows, informational marketing strategies are the lowest level of communication and influence. The direct mail and advertising we do, for example, through billboards or other advertising mediums, require a lot of impressions because of the limited persuasion they contain. Incorporating some type of social proof or validation can increase the effectiveness, but they are at the bottom of the information zone. When you move up into email, social media, text communication, and video email, you are still in the information zone. You are transferring information — creating a connection but not selling. You will achieve a higher response rate to a Millennial prospect if you send a text. Millennials use texting to communicate. Response rate is part of selling. It's an important part of selling . . . but it's not the only part of selling. You have to persuade, handle concerns, and change thinking in order to make a sale. There is no evidence, in fact, that you can do that better via text than via phone or face-to-face conversation. All evidence is that the conversion rates are better in face-to-face and phone-to-phone voice communication than in electronic communication. All the electronic options are part of an effective sales strategy. You need to build effective social media messaging. That messaging needs to create engagement and a relationship. The text messaging needs to be short and effective and have a solid call to action (CTA). The missing element in most text communication is the CTA. All electronic communication is in the information zone of communication. Because of the image and public perception of salespeople, especially real estate salespeople, the more you can break through that consumer mind-set of agents that know little, earn a lot, don't do much, and are out for their self-interest, the more effective you will be in establishing trust and credibility. You need to smash that mental image of a salesperson that they have. This is especially true for online leads, whether that is pay-per-click, organic, Craigslist, Facebook ads, or other forms.

Article / Updated 07-03-2017

A service encounter happens any time a consumer interacts with a servicing organization. Every website hit or incoming ad or sign call is a service encounter. When a prospect talks to you, your staff, your company receptionist, your closing coordinator, or your broker, owner, lender, escrow or title attorney, or anyone on your service team, that person is having a service encounter. If one person in the long chain of people who help you get your job done says or does anything negative, it affects the impression of the nature of the service you provide. There's no way to separate yourself from your colleagues if they mess up. It's even possible for your service to be tainted by those outside your service team. For example, say that a buyer uses a lender other than the one you recommend. If the transaction closes late and with a higher interest rate than originally quoted, that client will leave with a bad impression about the whole transaction and everyone involved in it. Your future business and referral opportunities are affected by the actions of someone entirely outside your influence. To direct your service encounters toward superb outcomes, follow these steps: Control service encounters by using your own people to conduct transactions. Direct and drive as much business as possible to the best providers. Work hard to convince the client to use people on your team when securing a mortgage or closing the deal. Some may call this "steering," but I view it as taking care of your clients. Make sure your clients work with lenders who know their stuff and are responsive. Be aware that the lender triggers the choke point in most transactions. Take time to counsel your clients toward a resource you know will perform. Have a plan for recovering from service disasters if necessary. If your client is reasonable, no situation is too far gone to salvage. In fact, handle the problem well and you're apt to turn a disgruntled client into one of your most vocal supporters. Take these steps: Do what is necessary to right the wrong. Find out from the client what it will take to turn the unsatisfactory situation into a satisfactory outcome. Ask what it will take for them to be delighted. Be cautious here. I don't really believe that forgoing a fee or reducing a cost ever creates a more satisfied client. The service and the cost are not linked at this stage of customer satisfaction. Avoid the blame game. If you point out that it was the client's decision to use the service provider who caused the problem, you only make the situation worse. Conveying that "I told you so" is never a way to soothe feelings. Follow up. Eventually sore feelings will wane, but the only way to replace the negative impression is to make a better one through continuous, professional contact. In the early stages after the mishap you may not see many referrals, but when they start to come through you'll know your service recovery plan was a success. If you can't turn the situation around, don't concede your profit. Some clients only feel placated if they get into your pocketbook and win cash compensation. If you did something that caused them to be hurt financially, you may have to buck up. Most of the time, though, that won't be the case. Before you ever give up your hard-earned money, ask yourself three questions: Will offering cash really turn this client into a raving fan? Is there another way to turn this client into a raving fan? Is there a reasonable chance that I'll win future business and referrals from this person? If your answers don't cause you to feel confident that giving up money will net a future return at a low risk, keep the cash in your pocket. Developing a service plan The best way to provide the level of service you and your client agree upon is to create two checklists, a New Listing Checklist that details the steps you will follow when accepting a listing and a Sale Agreement Checklist that details all the steps that happen from contract to close. The following figures present samples of each of these checklists to guide you as you develop forms that work for your own business. Standard procedures vary from state to state and MLS board to MLS board. You need to customize them to fit the requirements of your state, region, municipality, and code of ethics. Extending extra touches that create gold Ask the agents in your office what extra touches work for them. Ask your broker what she thinks falls into this category. Following are two of my favorites: one that is extended right after the closing and one that works well for long-term clients: Right after closing, arrange for two hours of complimentary handyman repair work. The cost of this much-appreciated added value is only about $100, and the perceived value is huge. More often than not, clients use more time than the amount covered by your gift, so the handyman acquires new clients and as a result will probably give you a great deal on the time he sells to you. Also, by sending in a handyman, you help the clients resolve small issues the seller didn't handle before they fester into something bigger that leads to frustration with the transaction, which leads to frustration with you. This idea is an inexpensive win/win. For long-term clients, consider buying four season tickets to an event series you enjoy in your town — perhaps the symphony, theater, or professional or college sports games. Be sure the events are ones you enjoy attending and that the activity is consistent with your professional image. (Tickets to WWE wrestling probably won't make your list.) Shortly before each event date, invite clients to attend the event with you. Don't issue invitations when you first buy the tickets. Wait until a few days or a week before each event. At that point, your invitation will seem spontaneous and genuinely friendly. Some of your invitees will already be booked and will have to decline. You may have to call six to ten people to give the tickets away. If so, you'll win their appreciation, and you'll still have the tickets to share with another long-term client.

Article / Updated 07-03-2017

As a new real estate agent, the first, second, and third place to invest your marketing dollars is online. The two main issues you face with the Internet are quality and quantity. You want to drive visitors to your site so you can increase the odds of generating leads from it. You also want to increase the quality of the prospects so you can separate the really good buyers and sellers from all the rest. You want to achieve a reasonable conversion rate, preferably much higher than the 0.5 to 1 percent many agents now experience with web leads. You have to do a delicate balancing act in terms of quality and quantity. If you had to choose one, which would you choose to do first — quality or quantity? Before you select, let me tell you the truth of the Internet. The volume of traffic is important. At the end of the day, the one who has the most visitors usually wins. You may build a beautiful website, but you have to drive traffic to make money with the Internet. When you get the traffic, you have to convince people to stay and leave a trail of contact information. You need them to at least leave bread crumbs: their first name and email address. You can bring a couple of thousand people to your site monthly and end up with two or three prospects. I'm not talking about clients; I'm talking only about prospects. You now have to do the work of moving them up the loyalty ladder to becoming a client by converting them from web visitors to buyers or sellers. You can do this by offering a free report, a market trends report, best values list, a newsletter, or something that a potential buyer or seller deems valuable enough to give you at least their first name and email address. You need to walk them up each step of the conversion track. With each level or step they take, your probability of earning a commission check grows. The object is to move the visitors to prospects, prospects to clients, and clients to referral sources. The more complete the contact information you can get people to leave, the higher the probability you can move them up to the client stage. More information increases the opportunity to move them to a fundamental sales channel of send > call > see. The balance in this approach is you will have a higher bounce rate. A bounce happens when the online consumer bounces off your site or landing page because you have asked for too much information. Rather than filling out your form with their information, they leave your site. Getting prospects to reveal their full contact information when they make their inquiries is paramount. For example, too many Internet leads come in without phone numbers. Getting a prospect's phone number enables you to text them or call them back — these raise the conversion ratio substantially. Additionally, you have that 90-day window of opportunity for future phone contact within the confines of the National Do Not Call Registry. Most agents are chasing a lot of low-probability prospects through the Internet. They have an email address and are sending property-match searches daily. They even put prospects into a drip sequence. A drip is a series of emails over time that you send. They also have the prospects on an electronic newsletter list. These agents start the prospecting process but often let it stall at this stage. All those methods are automated, so agents invest limited time — but also reap limited rewards.