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New Real Estate Agents Guide to Getting Started Profitably

admin — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:50:18 +0000

Now that you have earned your real estate license, you may be wondering just how you can go about making sure that you are a complete success. There is a fear that a real estate new agent may have and that is being able to compete with the competition out there. If you are new and just getting started, there are tips and hints to follow in order to make sure that you are going to come out on top. Success will not just happen on it’s own. You have to push hard and keep yourself focused on your goal. Within enough time you will be able to see just how much your patience pays off.

The first thing you want to do is to find the right real estate company for you to hang your license up at. Even though most of your success will be dependent on your personal drive, it is important to make sure that you have a reputable real estate company backing you up. Look around your neighborhood and see which real estate company has their name all over the place. Spot the yard signs, the ads in the newspapers, and the houses listed on the Internet. Discover which local company gets more attention from those wanting to list their house for sale.

Besides wanting to make sure that you end up with a real estate company that gets a lot of business, you want to make sure that you will receive the training you need. The more of a success you end up to be, the more money the office makes as a whole. Companies who are on top of their game will realize this and will invest time and money into making sure that you get all of the training you need to make it to the top.

Now that you have established where you are going to work, it is important to make sure that you are creating a business plan for yourself. The real estate new agent must make sure that he or she is creating a goal for their first year. This means that you will want to set yourself up with goals that are realistic. Discover ways that you will be reaching out to prospects and dedicate a certain amount of your resources to marketing and professional development. By following such simple steps you can make sure that you are off on the right foot towards making your career a successful one.

Learn more about becoming a new real estate agent and how you can get started right away and be profitable

Losing Money In Real Estate

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:02:10 +0000

What if you were able to buy a decent two bedroom home for about $30,000, fix it up a little and put it on the market for $80,000? Do you think you could make some money that way? This is the story of a man who lost it all that way, followed by a few lessons to be learned from his sad tale.

The story takes place in 2002, in a mountain town in Montana, where the last of the good jobs had left town twenty-two years earlier when the copper smelter closed. It is a beautiful town, but the resulting economic decline caused a population decline of more than 30%, down to about 7,000 or 8,000 people. My wife and I bought a great little house there for $17,500, so home prices had obviously tumbled along with the population.

A neighbor, at eighty-years-old, decided to become a real estate investor. He bought the house next to us for around $30,000, and borrowed more from the bank to fix the place up. Given the price of our own home and the fact that this other house wasn’t nearly as nice, I wondered if he had overpaid. He seemed sure that he had a good deal, though and could make some money.

As the weeks went by, he did get the place looking better. He put in an incredible fireplace, and new carpeting. The electricians worked on the old wiring on and off for a long time, always finding something else that needed to be done, and then taking their time doing it. The old guy was paying by the hour, with no contract, of course. The heating system needed replacing, at which point our neighbor mentioned, “I didn’t know the house had so many problems.” At some point his enthusiasm started to fail.

His bank account started to fail too. Eventually he admitted to me that he had over $65,000 into the place, but still seemed certain he could sell the home for $80,000. I politely nodded. It was too late to say anything anyhow. He didn’t even have money to fix up the rusty iron fence around the house. In fact, from the outside, the appearance had hardly changed at all, since all his money went into the interior.

The sign went up, though I am not sure why the real estate agent wanted such a listing. Perhaps it was with the hope that he would maintain the listing when the bank took the house and dropped the price. In the end, that is exactly what happened. “I gave the house back to the bank,” the old guy told me one day.

A Few Real Estate Lessons

I like this story because my old neighbor did so many things wrong. This makes it a great teaching story. Often real estate success consists as much in avoiding common mistakes as knowing intricate techniques. Here, then are some of the mistakes he made.

1. He had no plan. He had only a vague idea about what he would do and how much the home would sell for.

2. He had no idea of how to value a house. If he had compared the home to recent sales (like our $17,500 purchase next door) he would have realized that the most he would get for the home was probably around $30,000, if that.

3. He had no concept of his market. This was a two bedroom starter home. Buyers for these homes are not looking for a fancy fireplace.

4. He had no contracts or firm quotes from contractors. He let them find as much as they wanted to do and charge him by the hour.

5. He didn’t get an inspection. Had he gotten the home inspected, he might have had some idea of how many problems it had, and how much it would take to correct them.

6. He didn’t understand the concept of return on investment. Even if buyers liked the fireplace and other features he put into the home, these features probably increased the value less than what they cost.

7. He didn’t have enough money or financing lined up. This was a fortunate mistake, perhaps. Since the project was doomed to fail, it may have been good that he ran out of money.

Why not learn from the mistakes of others? As a side note, we selectively put $1,900 into our home there for a total investment (with purchase price and closing costs) of $19,800, and sold it for $28,000 four months after we bought it. We might have been lucky, but we also avoided some common real estate investing mistakes.

Why Become A Real Estate Agent?

admin — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:13:36 +0000

It may seem that if you become a real estate agent you can make a lot of money with little risk, just by selling other people’s property for them. This is almost true. You also can get the inside scoop on possibly profitable investments. The part that isn’t entirely true, is the low-risk part. It can be a tough business to start out in, especially if you don’t know many people. It takes money and time (and time is money as well, right?).

I hated being a real estate agent. I was young (17 years ago). It wasn’t that I didn’t sell anything. In the few months I was actually trying I sold seven or eight properties. But I also realized that I would never learn to enjoy the process.

It was simply that it doesn’t fit my personality. I didn’t like being in the middle of transactions. I remember people crying at closings and yelling on the phone. I remember struggling to advise sellers on what was best for them, even though if I were in their shoes I would have found it easy to say what was best for me. I operate best as buyer or seller – not as the person bringing them together.

On the other hand, I met a lot of great people who love the stress and busyness and action of being a real estate agent. They are mostly people who love to help people. Some of them just enjoy the business, while others enjoy it and make a lot of money.

Then there was poor Henry. He was there when I first started, at the desk in front of mine. He was there months later when I was quitting, and he was finally making his first and last sale (he quit shortly afterwards). He was one of the nicest guys I have ever worked with, but he didn’t know how to sell real estate.

I think Henry hated the business more than I. Keeping the money in mind, I could at least make myself get on that phone and start calling hundreds of people who didn’t want to hear from me, just to find the one or two that did want to. I got listings this way while Henry sat there waiting for the phone to ring. But I found it harder and harder to do.
Bottom line? It will help greatly if you actually enjoy this business – that way you can motivate yourself to do the things you need to do.

How To Become a Real Estate Agent

In most states it is relatively inexpensive to get licensed. It will be somewhat different in each, but when I was licensed in Michigan, it was necessary to be sponsored by a broker. There are always brokers looking for new agents, so this shouldn’t present a problem. Then you may take a class that teaches you everything you need to know for the test. This too isn’t too expensive.

After you pass the state exam, you go to work, but you are not an employee. You are provided a desk by your brokerage, but you are an independent contractor. Despite not being in business for yourself, you cannot go off and sell on your own. Usually the law requires that you work for a time (three years is common) as an agent for a broker before you can become a broker yourself and own your own real estate company.

You will have to pay for your own business cards, signs, supplies, and dues. You might even need some new clothes. The dues to join and remain a member of the MLS, or “Multiple Listing Service,” as well as any other memberships required or “suggested” by your employing broker, is where it starts to get more expensive.

You have to be financially prepared for the transition. If you have no other job at the time, you may have no income for at least several months. Unless you have a lot of contacts or are coming into the business from a related one, it may take a month or more to get your first listing. If that property sells in just two months (3 or 4 month is common in many areas), and closes a month after selling, that means that at the start you are four months away from your first paycheck.

Obviously, apart from the couple thousand dollars needed for direct expenses, you need to plan for this lag time before you start collecting commissions. If you are the sole provider for your household, I recommend that you have at least six months income set aside before you quit your job and start selling real estate.

How much can you make? This depends on where you work and what you sell. At the time I was selling real estate in Northern Michigan, all the real estate companies were charging 7% commission on residential properties. My broker split the commission with agents, so if I sold the house, I got half the commission. If an agent from another broker sold the house, that broker took 50%, and my broker split the other 50% with me. In other words, I got 1.75%. This was common then.

Lower commissions are more common now. In some areas, they are as low as 3% for full service brokers. This is because of increased competition, and because home prices have gone up faster than wages or inflation in recent years. 3% of a $500,000 sale (In California, for example) is still a hefty commission: $15,000, to be precise.

Brokers each have their own commission structures. There are brokers that let you keep 100% of the commission, and then charge you for the use of the office, including perhaps a secretary for the common use of a dozen agents. You might pay $15,000 per year under this arrangement, so obviously it would be best to wait until you are selling enough real estate before considering working under this kind of broker.

How do you sell a lot of real estate? That is a book-sized subject, but here are a few basics:
1. List a lot of property for sale. You can spend weeks showing a young couple homes just to have them go to another agent or not buy anything. Get a listing of a home, however, and no matter who buys it or sells it, you will be paid. Concentrate on working with sellers more than buyers (although you will always do both).

2. Get high-priced fast-selling properties. You can spend as much time and effort selling a $100,000 property as you will selling a $400,000 home. But you will make four times as much money with the latter. Too unusual and expensive can mean a long time to sell, however, so balance it out. Sell the most expensive properties that are selling relatively quickly.
3. Specialize. Work an area or type of property until you are the expert. Then the sellers will start to come to you.

4. Learn how to sell. It doesn’t matter if you just want to list those properties and let others sell them. You still need the sales skills to get the seller to list with you. Read, take advice from top sellers, and go to seminars. You can always learn more.

Investing As A Real Estate Agent

About the only disadvantage to having a real estate license as an investor is that in most states you have to identify yourself as an agent when you advertise your properties for sale. This may make some people feel that you – as the expert – can take advantage of them.

The big advantages, however, are two. First, you get the inside scoop on properties coming to market. You may have an offer in on that new rental property even before there is an ad in the paper or a listing in the MLS.

The other advantage is that you effectively get a discount on any MLS listing. Suppose you see a nice little house for $100,000 for sale. If it is listed with another office and the commission is 6%, your broker may get half of that, and give you 60% of that as the selling agent (you are selling it to yourself). That is $1,800 that you make as a commission when you buy – perhaps enough to cover closing costs.

Copyright Steve Gillman. For a Free Real Estate Investing Course, and to see a photo of the home we bought for $17,500, visit: http://www.HousesUnderFiftyThousand.com

Arizona Real Estate Agent

admin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:20:26 +0000

A real estate agent is someone who facilitates real estate deals. Real estate agents market a property to be sold and try to get the best possible price and terms for their clients. If a client wants to buy a property, the agent ensures that the client gets the best possible deal. According to US law, a person needs a permit to act as a real estate agent in Scottsdale.

Scottsdale is the fifth largest city in the US. Scottsdale is growing fast especially in the northern regions of the city. There is a huge increase in the number of new residents every year. Increase in population directly results in an increasing demand for accommodation. This makes the real estate business a thriving business opportunity and many real estate agencies make use of this opportunity. Excellent climatic conditions, low tax rates and low housing costs are some of the other factors that contribute to the growth of the real estate industry in Scottsdale.

In a booming real estate industry, contrary to expectations buying or selling is not an easy task. Though there is sufficient demand, an amateur would find it a challenge to reach out to more buyers or sellers or strike a fair price on a deal. This is the chief reason for many property owners and buyers deciding to deal with an agent. Agents work on a commission basis but this does not deter people from dealing with them as long as they are able to strike lucrative deals. A single real estate agent can handle the case of both the buyer and the seller, provided he has the consent of both parties to do so. An agent is more experienced in property matters, trends and market conditions and will use this expertise to negotiate on behalf of clients. A large number of real estate agents operate in all the major cities of Arizona including Scottsdale Research on the Web or a quick scanning of the local Yellow Pages can help find an agent. It is important to talk to more than one agent simultaneously for a better chance of either buying or selling a property.

Scottsdale Real Estate provides detailed information on Scottsdale Real Estate, Scottsdale Arizona Real Estate, Scottsdale Arizona Real Estate Agent, Scottsdale Real Estate Agent and more. Scottsdale Real Estate is affiliated with Tucson Residential Real Estate