By now you should have watched the video below on the first step to becoming a local area expert. The video walks you through how to set up the tools of the trade that help make seeing houses easier for you. Your goal is to list more houses while gaining control of your real estate business so that you achieve consistent income.

Rewatch the video here.

The 2nd step to becoming a real estate local area expert is to create an active and coming soon business plan. Jeff breaks it down here:...

CRITICAL COMPONENTS TO LIST 50+ HOMES PER YEAR

The key to getting more listings is becoming a “Local Market Expert.” The hard thing about real estate is that no one teaches you how to market yourself. As the numbers of agents available continue to increase, it becomes increasingly important to become an expert.

LOCAL MARKET EXPERTISE

When having a conversation with a friend, a neighbor, a family member, or an open house visitor, most realtors will usually start a conversation by...

How to run comparables for the listing price and hopefully the selling price of a home is more challenging than it sounds. The real estate industry has brokers and MLS trainers teaching classes how to run comps. Yet, my motto on running comps is similar to the comp methods that industry Russell Shaw equated. His motto, as well as mine, is that comps were independently determined. Over the past five years, I’ve tracked my sales, during this time my comps have been about 95% accurate.

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Being able to estimate renovation costs for home updates is impactful for both the buyer and the seller side. When working with buyers, they may see a home they’re interested in online but they’re concerned that the updates they desire won’t fit within their budget. They may overestimate the costs required for those updates and perhaps won’t consider homes at a higher price point because of this inaccurate information.

When working with sellers, being able to estimate...

I feel marketing may be the most underused, misunderstood, and underappreciated thing in real estate. Most REALTORS® use traditional methods of marketing such as advertisements in newspapers and magazines and calling the neighbors. I believe the traditional marketing methods do not drive enough traffic to effectively sell a house.

LEARN HOW TO MARKET YOUR LISTINGS

So when I talk about marketing for listings, I’m talking about getting more potential buyers through the house. For...

When I speak around the country or around my town, every time I ask the audience if they want listing leads, everyone vigorously raises their hands. I won’t be able to cover all of my tips for becoming a Listing Pro in this short blog, but I would like to introduce a couple of key components.

MARKETING

A challenge for many in the real estate industry is marketing. I cover marketing under “How to Become a Listings Pro” because this is our chance to change and put the...

It is easy for real estate agents to get complacent in the marketing of their own listings beyond the hundreds of relationships their brokers and the association have already concreted for them. The past success of this is still winning new listings and sales. The majority of the time in the recent past, another agent would bring their client after the REALTOR® emailed them the home or they found limited information online and contacted their agent to show them and get...

Before putting their homes on the market, Zillow reports sellers to spend about seven months on average thinking about their decision. The older the seller, the longer they spend thinking about it, with the oldest generation spending twice as much time as the youngest sellers to commit to selling their home. On average, Millennials spend five months in contemplation, while Gen Xers spend six months, Boomers spend eight months and Silent Gen sellers spend 10 months.

MILE-LONG LIST BEFORE THE...

I think the key to understanding how to make your house sexy is recognizing the fact that selling homes is very similar to online dating. This is because the way to get the most people interested is to make the house attractive, or in this case sexy. The key is understanding what housing trends are the most desirable. There are certain looks in real estate most people find attractive, just like in dating, there are certain looks most people find attractive.

Buying a house is often an...

Why do I call this CMA Mania? Because I am looking to the evolution of the CMA (Comparative Market Analysis.) Frankly, there are too many elaborate CMAs being used by real estate agents today. Elaborate CMAs were necessary up until the early 2000s before Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com existed. Today, the consumer has access to all of these sites to easily learn how many homes in their neighborhood have sold and for how much. So, it’s really no longer necessary for realtors to spend...