Lee Whistler

A New Way In Real Estate

Regardless of minor differences, real estate has up to now been a creature of the broker operatingwithin the regulations of the DRE and the rules of the local MLS and the local association.

The business model has been to pursue sellers and buyers through opening offices, advertising, open houses, farming, networking, and web pages on the Internet. Brokers may participate as agents, as well as licensing agents to represent them.

Agents who survive and stay in real estate for periods exceeding 5 or 6 years develop a following among a group, groups or communities. At that point, the competency of the individual agent is relatively unimportant. Brokers are either inattentive to incompetence or staffed to supervise their agents and enforce compliance.

Agents with little time in real estate are tempted to follow the lead of the more senior agents, falling into a trap which has been set for them by failing to anticipate a changed market. This changed market is obvious to all yet there has been little practical response to it by the leaders in the industry.

Broker support for agents is limited to promoting the acquisition of listings - inventory - which become the property of the broker. Thus, broker focus is upon the sale of their listings. Secondarily, brokers support the sale of other broker's listings; agents are also encouraged to seek buyers for the broker-owned listings.

Initial and subsequent training and preparation of agents is varied since it is left to the discretion of the brokers. The field is abundant with special sales and marketing programs and levels of coaching from sources outside the community and aligned with it. Again, the brokers may be more or less supportive of such ancillary programs.

Team building is relatively common among real estate agents but is not often promoted by the brokers. Because of the commission scales, the brokers are better served by more agents at lower commission scales producing the same number of sales than they are with fewer agents at higher commission levels.

The critical market change is this: both buyers and sellers have learned to avoid the traditional means of shopping such as visiting a real estate office, responding to an ad, following up on a brochure left at their door, leaving information on a web page, etc. They go online and do all of their initial searching without any personal contact with the real estate agent. This has eclipsed the old broker marketing model.

The dilemma for the agent is how to produce more income at a lower acquisition cost and avoid the personnel issues of building, supervising, monitoring and reporting involved with a team. More affluent agents have learned to buy relatively good quality leads by using pay-per-click on the WWW. It's expensive, but more cost effective than the old ways. Several guerrilla marketing methods are effective, but little known.

A New Way

Agents, using very simple activities, make contact with future buyers and sellers long before the buyers and sellers go online to buy or sell. The agents offer to provide a newly available system for building personal wealth with no risk, no cost, and little time involvement by the individual. Due to the close personal relationships developed by using this system, users are motivated to introduce the agents to family, friends and associates who are also prospects. In the process, the agents build a larger and larger base of future real estate transactions.

Once the relationships are established, agents use another unique system to foster those relationships and position themselves as the Number One agent for all future real estate sales and purchases, becoming a valued personal advisor and consultant in the process. None of these activities are difficult or time consuming. Actually, their use will make the agents more productive and thus able to have more time for themselves as they make more money. Agents quickly build a referral-based practice with potentially greater current and residual income.

Agents can decide how deeply to become involved with print and television advertising. They can focus marketing expenditures on the lower-cost, more effective tools which are now available to them. There is no need to farm or to buy leads from any source.

Both systems are available directly to the agents, require no special licensing, and are simple to learn and employ. Training and support in the use of both systems is complete and readily available online and in person. Both systems can be used as support for the agents or employed to build a current and residual stream of income separate from the agent's real estate commission earnings. There is no conflict with the DRE or the local association rules.

A New Way In Real Estate is not an abandonment of the old way. It's an agent-centric means of catapulting the agents who embrace the New Way into a position where they are the ultimate trusted family real estate consultant. Along the way, agents earn an excellent income while they position themselves for future transactions with the people they have helped and the relationships they have fostered.