As your real estate agent, my job is to help you find the home of your dreams! While some agents focus solely on closings, I also have the highest responsibility in the business – to keep you as a client for next year. That means helping you find a house or investing in more services to aid you in finding your dream home.
I know that may sound like a lot, but it’s what I take pride in doing and I’m good at it. I have to be, because I depend on my clients to come back every month and yearly!
That’s why I spend time outside of our meetings talking about how to get new listings. I want you to succeed in finding your perfect home, and I’ll do everything I can to help you achieve that.
So if you’re looking to invest in my service, here are all the ways I can help you find the house of your dreams!
There’s one major thing I will not do as your agent – sell something else instead of a house. So if I sense that you’re thinking about buying a boat instead of a condo, I’ll try hard to change your mind- including bringing up all the reasons a condo is better than a boat.
They work with a property manager
As we mentioned before, most real estate agents are not self-employed. That means they are usually paid by a property management company or firm that has them as an agent. These companies pay the agent a certain amount of money to promote their properties and represent their interests in negotiations and sales.
The more houses and apartments you sell, the higher your earnings will be, and thus it is important for agents to be very productive with time they invest into your house sale.
Agents have to deal with different property managers who may give limited access to information, even about the same property they’re promoting. This can sometimes lead to wasted effort trying to gather details about a listing that no one seems to know anything about.
There are some brokers that make use of technology to help you find listings, but these tools often cost money to use effectively. Some don’t provide full coverage either, so it is up to you whether or not this is worth the expense.
They find the property themselves
As such, one of the most important roles real estate agents play in the housing market is finding new properties to sell or rent. This is typically done through three main strategies.
Some agents spend their time going from showroom to showroom looking at properties they like, while others search online sites for potential homes. The third strategy is actually showing houses that the agent has found previously and being poached to list them again!
Agents also take it upon themselves to visit landlords and ask if there are any vacancies or leases up for renewal. Sometimes this requires meeting with people face-to-face, sometimes not until later when you can get their attention.
What about hard sales? Some agents will push harder than other’s to close a sale, but all have different strengths. Different individuals succeed by using different tactics.
They hire a photographer
As mentioned before, agents usually have to pay for their own photoshoots and editing of pictures. However, they are not alone in this expense!
Agents must also find you a home (this is called listing it), take photos outside the house, and then edit all these pictures into one beautiful picture that sells your house effectively.
These costs can add up quickly if you’re doing it yourself or hiring someone else to do it for you. Luckily, there are some great free resources available to real estate photographers.
There are many sites with free stock photo libraries that you can use without having to purchase anything extra. These image databases are rich in quality images such as scenery, people, and things necessary when photographing houses.
Realtor.com has an incredible resource known as Realtor Photo Stocks where you can gain access to over 100,000 royalty-free photos and illustrations. This is by far the largest collection of free agent photography anywhere. You get 2 GB of storage space too which is more than enough to start building your library.
They hire a contractor
As we mentioned before, agents are not their own sellers’ biggest advocates. This is due to two main reasons. The first is that as buyers’ agents, they are hired by seller representatives to find new homes for them to sell.
The second reason is that as listing agents, they are paid by home owners to get those houses sold. So unless the owner gives permission, the agent can’t use her or his skills to promote your house.
That means no advertising, no touring, and no cold calls. It also means no going up to strangers in public places and asking if they know anyone who might be interested in buying a property.
As brokers, some of you may already have someone who works with you as an agent. If you don’t, it’s time to think about hiring one!
A broker without an agent is like having a car but being forced to walk everywhere you want to go – you’ll spend much more time walking than driving, and probably won’t enjoy the activity very much.
Same thing with real estate — you’ll be spending lots of time working instead of hanging out, interacting with people, and exploring different areas. You’ll feel stressed and overwhelmed most of the time.
They do the initial listing
As mentioned before, being able to list your house is one of the most important things agents must learn how to do. Unfortunately, not all agents have this skill set under control yet. Some are only focused on bringing in new listings while ignoring the ones that have been gathered already.
Agents who can manage their own lists will find it much easier to succeed in the real estate business. This includes finding new listings, responding to messages and calls about properties, and putting together a solid sales pitch for each property.
They do all the marketing
As we mentioned before, most real estate agents have their own social media accounts where they advertise your home for you! This is one of the biggest reasons why it is so expensive to be a seller agent or buyer agent — the other being that pay per click advertising fees.
Most agents have access to some type of listing service such as Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, etc. These services are very popularly used by people to find homes and therefore are well marketed and paid attention to.
Agents take advantage of these services by adding themselves as “Public Users” which gives them access to all the listings on that site. This way they can easily search through many lists at a low cost.
By doing this, they are already spending money to market your house! The more marketers you have, the better chance yours has of getting found. It is important to pick your battles though – investing in A+ ads will only really matter if there are no lower budget competitors available.
They choose the perfect listing
As mentioned before, finding a home to buy or sell is an expensive process that can easily waste your money unless you find a good real estate agent who knows their market well. The price of the house comes down to how hard agents work to get it!
The cost of a property usually includes the agent’s commission, any other fees such as legal fees, and the seller’s fee which are all paid by the sellers. The rest is up to the agent!
Agents spend time looking through listings and attending open houses to gain information about the home and the area so they know what features make this house different from others. This also gives them an idea of whether the house is undervalued or overpriced depending on what similar homes sold for in the past.
Agents must be careful not to put too much pressure on the sellers to list with them because if they don’t, then someone else will and the seller won’t feel comfortable with that. It’s important to establish trust at the beginning.
They find the perfect buyer
As mentioned before, finding your dream home is like looking for gold- you’ll need to put in some effort. Luckily, most real estate agents have their own specialties that help them do this more efficiently.
Some agents are great at talking about properties with potential buyers, while others are better with negotiating or even giving advice to other professionals such as interior designers or architects.
Agents who can sell typically focus on describing the property and its features rather than listing price. This is because selling a house depends mostly on how attractive it is and not what number it carries!
These sales skills will be very helpful if you ever decide to become an agent yourself.
