How to start a career as a realtor? Practical instructions.

The field of real estate transactions is wide, varied and evolving daily. New ambitious realtors regularly enter the market, seeking to receive fabulous percentages from sales/renting out space. The degree of competitiveness of this business is difficult to measure, so anyone who wants to achieve success needs to know how a realtor can find clients. All the details are available right now.

• How and where can a photographer find clients?

Effective ways

Let's start with ineffective but necessary technologies, then move on to the most effective ones.

"Cold calls

Let us remember that “cold” calling is a method of expanding the base of potential buyers by calling people who have not contacted the company before. Many experienced specialists say that beginners are always assigned similar tasks. Different agencies, of course, use different technologies, but the essence is the same. Owner announcements from the press (print, electronic) are “run” through the company’s number database; previously unused positions are found that do not belong to agents of competing companies. Next, these numbers are distributed among employees and those same “cold” calls begin, the purpose of which is to expand the existing base, find out the current situation, and arrange a viewing. You need to understand that more often than not this tool is not effective enough. The problem lies in the inability to convince a potential customer, ignorance of self-presentation techniques, and the following fact is also of great importance - the owner/buyer has probably already been visited by dozens of colleagues. However, despite the obvious problems, the described method continues to be used, especially when solving the problem of how to find clients for a novice realtor.

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Mailing list

The next tool is much more enjoyable, even creative. Distribution is carried out primarily online, but many real estate professionals also take the offline environment into account. The essence of the technology is this: a commercial text is compiled about the services, the realtor himself, an email newsletter is sent, and the letter is delivered to mailboxes (if this method is chosen). The experience of many real estate workers demonstrates that the described method is much more effective than the previous one. Let's talk about several nuances separately. 1. Sales Letter We present to your attention the recommendations of Dan S. Kennedy, author of the book “The Sales Letter”:

• create the feeling that ordering a service will change the consumer’s life, solve his problems, improve it;
• orient the text style to the needs of the target audience (be sure to create an average portrait of the target buyer);
• encourage immediate ordering, offer promotions, use the “urgency effect”, creating in the reader a feeling of scarcity of options;
• stimulate the buyer's interest (using humor, humor);
• use appropriate graphics, photographs.

Separate advice - give up active self-promotion, slogans, and never mention other people’s services. If there are no guarantees, it’s better not to write; buyers quickly remember promises. They will definitely remember this later, risking ruining your reputation. Another recommendation is to write about yourself in the present tense. “I sell, help, solve problems” - such words make the text easier to understand. 2. Photo Use a personal photo. Let the potential customer see who he will be communicating with. The image must be of excellent quality, where you look advantageous, presentable, and beautiful. The person in the photo should inspire trust and respect. If there is no photo, take one. This will definitely come in handy when promoting online.

• Cold call or email (mailing): what is more effective in sales?

Internet promotion

Of course, the numerous online marketing tools cannot be neglected. There are many ways offered here, but the most profitable are two: social networks, your own web resource. Social networks are primarily a platform for two-way communication. Create a page (group), expand it, inviting target users there, publish relevant content. Use topic-related groups (for example, communities in your city), launch targeted advertising (this is more difficult, it’s unlikely to be done without the help of specialists, otherwise there is a risk of spending the entire budget). Your own landing page is a must-have tool when solving the problem of where a realtor can find clients. With its help, you can present yourself from a favorable perspective, expand your target audience, and also increase your base of potential customers. In short, there are many advantages. There are also auxiliary tools, one of them is the LPgenerator service.

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How it all works: The work of a realtor

About the profession

Many people think that this work is very simple and does not require any special skills: you just need to bring two people together, one of whom wants to buy or rent, and the other wants to sell or rent out.
Of course, this is not at all true. Try to start selling an apartment yourself and you will understand how much you were mistaken about this. Contrary to popular belief, realtors are not a professional community of monsters who deliberately heat up the real estate market and are therefore to blame for the monstrous Moscow housing prices. In market conditions this is simply impossible. Housing is worth what you are willing to pay for it. If an apartment is sold for three million euros, then there are people in nature who are ready to give that money for it. And if the ad says that renting a one-room apartment near the center costs more than a thousand dollars, then this is the market price, determined by demand, and not by the machinations of the realtor.

Of course, there are a huge number of non-professionals working in the market, not burdened with either experience or excessive scrupulousness. When you travel on the subway and listen to conversations, it seems that everyone around you is only engaged in selling or renting apartments. This doesn’t irritate or bother me: everyone earns as much as they can and as others allow them to do.

About agencies

The best way to find a good realtor is advice from friends. It’s like with a doctor, kindergarten or cafe. Here you should rely only on the personal experience of people you trust. This is not to say that agencies are better than free realtors: I know several realtors who are so professional that they simply do not need a staff of lawyers and other assistants that any agency has. But this only applies to the most experienced realtors.

Agencies are also different. There are several very large companies in Moscow, advertising of which hangs on every fence, but you should not contact them under any circumstances. Here you will find all the delights of working with an unscrupulous realtor, and, most importantly, huge hidden commissions. For example: you want to sell an apartment and go to such an agency. They sell it to you and say that they sold it for, say, ten million rubles - according to the documents, this is true. And the buyer actually pays three hundred thousand more.

About purchasing apartments

Selecting an apartment is the most difficult type of transaction for a realtor. The difficulty is that if you found an apartment that you like and gave someone money for it, this does not mean that it has become yours. In Moscow, property rights are so unclear and confusing that it may well happen that three years after the purchase, a person released from prison who used to live here will show up and start suing you. Or it turns out that the apartment should actually be sold for the debts of the previous owner.

Checking the cleanliness of documents is the most difficult thing in our work. First you receive a certificate from the registration chamber. Then you force the owner to go with you to the passport office and get an extended statement there. These are all completely legal things. But these two verification steps are not enough. Then there are different ways: some have access to the databases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and God knows who else, where you can find out anything about anything for money (it costs up to 10 thousand dollars). Someone has the right contacts in the right places.

In general, a person on the street will never be able to know for sure who can actually claim ownership of an apartment. Therefore, if you buy an apartment on the secondary housing market without a realtor, then the risk always remains, no matter how nice the sellers are. But buying new housing from developers does not guarantee safety. Sometimes the same apartment is sold two or three times. You need to know who the investors are and what their relationships are. Here, too, you need a person who understands these legal subtleties.

About sale and rental

If a realtor is selling an apartment, the first thing he must do is adequately evaluate it and agree on a price with the owner. It's quite simple: we look at the average prices in the area in houses of the same type on the same floor, look at the condition of the apartment and make an advertisement. If they start to overwhelm you with calls, it means they've sold out. If they don’t call at all, it’s too expensive. Large real estate agencies have special databases with prices, so it’s difficult to miss too much here.

No one, even the most experienced realtor, will be able to sell or rent out an apartment significantly higher than the market price. It’s another matter if a person calls who needs this particular apartment: say, he has long dreamed of living in this house, or there is a window in the toilet that he really likes. But even in this case, the price will be slightly higher than the market price.

The quality of the advertisement and the detail of the description of the apartment also play a role, but they cannot significantly increase the price. For an ad with good photos and descriptions, most likely, a buyer will simply be found faster. In general, as a rule, people can rent an apartment without a realtor, and realtors involved in renting out apartments prefer to work directly with a client rather than with a colleague. My adult children, for example, found rental apartments for themselves without resorting to my help.

About your schedule

One of the advantages of working as a realtor is that sometimes there are periods of calm when you just have to wait for weeks, and unnecessary gestures can only ruin everything. But sometimes it happens that you have a multi-million dollar deal in your hands that is about to fall apart, and you are constantly calling someone, meeting someone, someone turns off their phones, your client is all on edge, like everyone else with whom you’re dealing with a situation where everyone is ready to start screaming, and this is understandable: people don’t sell and buy apartments that often, especially in Moscow, where it’s so difficult and costs so much.

When a client comes to me, the first thing I always tell him is: “Be prepared for the deal to fall through at the very last moment and have to start all over again.” This happens very often: there are so many scammers in the real estate market that everyone is constantly on guard and very often refuses a lucrative offer simply for fear of being deceived. I can conduct, say, five trades at the same time, but there is always a risk that they will pile up at once and I will have several very difficult days. On the other hand, it happens that you manage to sell or find an apartment in two weeks (this is a record). And sometimes it takes a year to complete one transaction, and this is not the limit.

About money

The normal amount of the realtor commission when it comes to selling or buying an apartment is 3-4% of the transaction amount or 50% of the monthly rental cost. If the apartment is very expensive or, conversely, cheap, the realtor usually receives a fixed amount and not interest. At the same time, the freelancer, of course, takes the entire commission for himself, while in agencies - only half. The times when half of the realtors were bandits and half of the bandits laundered money through real estate are long gone.

A good realtor, like a good lawyer, can earn a lot; it’s difficult to name an upper ceiling. 300 thousand is a very realistic income, but this applies to realtors with extensive experience, ten years on the market, with a good reputation. And, of course, this attracts students and small clerks, who think that they can easily “make money” here. This is partly true, you can earn 30-70 thousand a month alone, without any experience, but this cannot last long. A person who does not know the rules of the game will sooner or later screw up so much that the source of easy money will be closed to him once and for all: no one will simply want to deal with him.

About nerves

The worst thing is that if you come across a nervous client, it’s just hell. He will be afraid of everything, bother you for any reason and will still be dissatisfied. And sometimes it happens that the client is pleasant, but the deal he asks to organize is so complicated that you begin to hate everyone and everything, even though the person is not to blame. Once my client wanted to sell a room in a communal apartment on Arbat and an apartment near the Prazhskaya metro station, and in return buy an apartment in the center. This all took two years and sucked all the nerves out of me. The deal of almost ten links almost fell through at the last moment, but, fortunately, everything worked out. Of course, you don’t want to remember this, although it’s not the client’s fault. A realtor, especially one specializing in rentals, needs nerves of steel, but it is, of course, impossible to communicate smoothly with everyone.

In general, the main thing in our work, in addition to purely professional skills, is the ability to communicate with the client as much and as cheerfully as possible. He should know that he can call his realtor at any time of the day; one must always convince, repeat, answer, discuss even the most insignificant details. After all, the client remembers not only the completed transaction, but also how the realtor communicated with him.

LPg Templates

If you want to achieve success, you are unlikely to succeed without your own web resource - we formulated this postulate earlier. The best idea, of course, is a landing page, with which you can briefly, succinctly and effectively present yourself. LPgenerator offers customized and universal business solutions. There are several suitable examples in the Landing Page Store.

For example, the option below, which you can read more about here.

Or this layout.

Another option is to create a custom page like this one to promote yourself as a standalone entity.

The selling structure is already done, all you have to do is create the corresponding text and visual content.

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Let's make announcements

In order to sell your apartment faster, you need to inform as many people as possible about it. The main thing is to approach this issue responsibly and seriously, and not hope that someone will react with lightning speed to an ad posted on the first pole they come across.

So, for a successful and effective sale of real estate, an advertisement can be placed in such media as:

• newspapers;
• Internet;
• TV.

There are also slightly different ways of notifying people about the sale of an apartment, namely:

• tell your neighbors or work colleagues;
• hang a poster on the window;
• Post advertisements on boards specially provided for this purpose;
• publish your ad on social networks.

Incorrectly composed ad

Literacy is one of the most important conditions when drawing up an advertisement for the sale of an apartment. It is very important to compose it correctly and, so to speak, beautifully, in order to attract the attention of potential buyers.

So, you need to pay attention to the following points:

1. What must be included in the ad:

• area where the house is located;
• what floor is the apartment on?
• number of rooms available;
• how many square meters;
• the presence of a balcony or loggia.

It is mandatory to leave your contact phone number.

1. Create a mood in your ad.

It is important that the ad beckons, attracts, attracts.

To do this, you can decorate it with the following words:

• cozy;
• comfortable;
• clean;
• many variations.

It is necessary to highlight the best aspects of the apartment so that the client comes here. In other words, it is important that the ad has some flair.

1. Avoid abbreviations.

It will be very good if the ad is written without abbreviations. Many people may simply not understand some words. An ad without abbreviations will look much livelier, more interesting, more colorful and, accordingly, more attractive.

1. Availability of photos.

The important point is that there is confirmation of what is stated in the ad. The main thing is that the photographs are of high quality and from a favorable angle. Just don’t need to make a large number of them, but 5-6 pieces will be enough.

1. The final.

It is also necessary to end the ad beautifully and skillfully so that the buyer wants to call, come or visit. The final phrase should be unique, unusual, so that you can intrigue the buyer and arouse his interest.

Incorrectly assigned price for the apartment

Therefore, it is better to entrust such a responsible matter to professionals, namely a real estate agency, so that the realtor can adequately, competently and truthfully evaluate the property being sold.

He will take into account all the important factors, such as:

• the area in which the apartment is located;
• the condition of the house and its age;
• main characteristics;
• apartment layout;
• availability and quality of repairs, etc.

Are there jobs for newcomers in a stagnant real estate market?

Many people ask:

“Should I start getting into real estate now? The market is stagnating, apartment prices are falling, Russian investors are no longer interested in real estate, agents are not earning the commissions they used to!”

I won’t dwell on dynamics and numbers. I can assure future realtors: no matter how they say that there is a real estate crisis in the yard, I do not agree: there is a lot of work, you just need the desire to work and love your job!

We are actively expanding, because we see that there is no point in standing still in our time, especially since we want to make the market noble.

Profitable market segments in 2020

A lot of work. For example, we do not work with mortgage brokers, as we can easily handle mortgage transactions ourselves. We are accredited in the largest banks in Voronezh. We have concluded direct agreements with developers for new buildings, we are currently working with the largest IT platform Nmarket, we can easily book new buildings in more than 14 cities of Russia, including Moscow, Sochi, etc.

We are focused, no matter what other colleagues say, on secondary housing. It's a buyer's market now, but we don't want to leave sellers in the lurch. But at the same time, we also work with new buildings. Priority for real estate in the Northern microdistrict of Voronezh, since we have an office in this area, ost. Monument to Glory.

Everyone knows the methods of attracting customers. We rely on the Internet and cold calls.

How much does a beginning real estate agent earn in Voronezh?

I don't like throwing around numbers. It all depends on the agent, how much time he spends on work. But I think that beginners can easily earn 20 thousand or more from the first months of work. These are real numbers. In advertisements, agencies like to write inflated numbers (from 50 thousand rubles) in order to attract a large flow of people for an interview. I wrote above why this is the wrong tactic. Naturally, people get disappointed and leave such agencies en masse. There is a lot of turnover in our business, we are trying to reduce it by soberly selecting candidates.

The best specialists earn a lot. Really a lot. The payment scheme - since we want to earn money - is not a salary, but piecework payment.

All my earnings go towards expanding my business. I don’t even count how much I personally earn. As you understand, this is enough to support a family.