You know the cost of things you do, but do you know the cost of what you don’t do? You know what your marketing costs in terms of dollars and cents for things you purchase. When you contemplate adding a new marketing method or purchasing new equipment, it’s there in black and white. You can […]
Something to consider when you take a listing
This week I had a chat with an attorney who talked about problems that can come up because not all liens against a house show up on a title report. Your clients may not have the equity they think they have in their homes. She mentioned three trouble areas: The deferred balance on a Loan […]
Real Estate Agents – Stay safely within your field of expertise
How many times has a buyer or seller asked you a question that was legally outside of your field of expertise? More importantly, how many times did you answer one of those questions without thinking about the liability? Always Avoid the Unauthorized Practice of Law As an agent, you’ve been schooled in real estate law, […]
Could you lose all of your client contacts in one day?
That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Even scarier is that the answer is yes – you could. You could also lose all of your blog posts. (The good news is, it’s preventable.) An article I read earlier this week told the sad tale of a disabled veteran who ran his entire business through Facebook. He […]
Tell your potential real estate clients what you’ll leave out of your service
No, I’m not talking about responding to home sellers who want a discount on the commission – so you’ll agree based on leaving out some important services. From what I’ve read, that may be an effective way to bring them back to paying a full fee in exchange for full service, but that’s a whole […]
September is Realtor Safety Month…
September is Realtor Safety Month, but just as every day should be a day of Thanksgiving, every month should be Realtor Safety Month. Real estate agents are in a unique position among service providers, because you so often work alone, going into unoccupied places with people you don’t know, meeting strangers in their homes, or […]
How to Manage Hundreds of Internet Buyer Leads
Agents tell me that thanks to search functions, they have hundreds of web-generated real estate buyer leads to manage. Their systems may be automatically sending those buyers information on new listings, but they feel that isn’t good enough. After all, if those buyers have been exploring several sites, it may be the same information other […]
What can you do with fifteen minutes?
What can you do with fifteen minutes? Because a day in the life of a real estate agent is often dotted with appointments, you sometimes find yourself between things, with ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes before the next commitment. When I was an agent, I found it frustrating to have those “wasted” chunks of time. […]
Choose your real estate clients wisely
If you’re a seasoned real estate agent, you probably know what I’m going to suggest – which is that you don’t have to and should not work with every possible client who comes along. If you’re just beginning your career in real estate you may be thinking “What do you mean, choose my clients! I […]
Ask before you text!
This morning my answering machine gave me a message from a prospective client telling me that he’d sent me some information. I checked my email and no – there was no information from him. So I called to let him know it hadn’t come through. Of course it hadn’t – he’d sent a text message. […]