These are the words that my first broker had for me after I closed my first deal. As luck would have it, I was in for quite the ride for my first deal and at times I thought there was no way I could actually get it closed and even worse, there was no one or nowhere I could turn for all of the answers.

It involved foreign terms to me at the time like elevation certificates, flood plains and settlement statements. Most of us who have done this for a while have had transactions where we just thought the changes would never end, but, when my broker told me “every deal was different,” I thought twice before continuing on in my real estate career.

Surely things wouldn’t always be different and if they were, I would never be able to learn enough about how to be a great real estate agent so I might as well quit now!

If you are a new agent, there is no need to have the fear I had. Instead, think of the fact that every deal is different as a blessing. Every new transaction will open up for you new and creative ways to make transactions work.

Even as real estate agents (not brokers) what we are really doing is “brokering” a transaction between a buyer and a seller.

In today’s market, things can often times become more complicated than in the past because of fickle buyers, short sales, foreclosures and wounded sellers who have seen their retirement accounts slide away right alongside the equity in their homes. These situations can make real estate in today’s environment tricky and deals harder to hold together.

Frequently, less than usual situations risk tearing apart transactions that sometimes seem only to be held together by our will. Continue reading this post

It’s a typical scenario: you get an email from a couple wanting to see a home. Adrenaline surges as a closing check flits across your mind. You eagerly set up an appointment, drive across town, show the property at the appointed hour then set up another appointment to show them more homes on the weekend.

Friday comes and you get an email with 17 MLS numbers they’d like to see. A small gnawing feeling starts working at corner of your stomach as you realize you need to do some educating. You dive into the list and quickly discover that 14 of them are short sales that can be shown by appointment only. That uncomfortable feeling in your tummy is expanding into a minor digestive disorder as you get ready to start making the calls to set up the appointments.

I could go on with scenarios all too common for too many REALTORS® … ending with the unreturned calls, failure to respond to emails and finally the devastating realization that the clients you’ve been carting around for the past three months have just purchased a home from another agent at an open house.

You’ve just been managed.

From the first moment you come in contact with a prospective client, they have expectations. In many cases, these expectations are not based on reality: they’ve been garnered from conversations with their friends, reading posts on sites like HomeGain, Zillow and Trulia and by watching HGTV. Often, their expectations are way out of alignment with reality. It’s up to you to manage their expectations and direct them forward in a positive manner. You’d think it would be easy, yet statistics state that by the time a buyer gets to you, they’ve already been in contact with numerous other Realtors. How do you get this food chain to stop with you?

Bottom line: if you don’t mange your buyers, they will manage you. Right out of business.

In reality, I’ve discovered that most buyers want to be “managed.” Used in the right context, the word “manage” is a good thing. Continue reading this post

I thought it would be worthwhile to show agents, particularly HomeGain BuyerLink and AgentEvaluator members, some true stats of Internet leads (from one Realtor to another).

My goal in gathering this data was to discover  home buyer tendencies.  I randomly took 100 of our sales this year to come up with the following stats.

I figured it’s roughly 50% of our sales this year and would be a great sampling.

The main findings were the following:

Average Number of Days to Purchase: 180.5 days

Quickest Sale: 5 days

Longest Sale: 539 days

(Last year we had approximately 20 sales from leads that were from the year 2004.)

Number of Closed Leads with Phone Numbers: 88

Number of Closed Leads with no Phone Number: 12

(This is a tough number to quantify as many of our Agents put the phone numbers in the CRM once they have obtained it.  When I worked on this stat two years ago, we were at 25% of our sales came from leads with no phone number.  I believe we are most likely still around that level.)

Continue reading this post

We have polled home buyers and sellers once again and we’re sharing the results in order to help our AgentEvaluator® agent members better meet the needs of prospects.

We sent our survey to more than 14,000 home buyers and sellers who came through AgentEvaluator in the last year -– some who closed with a HomeGain agent and some who did not choose a HomeGain agent.

5 Useful takeaways from the survey that all AgentEvaluator members should read:

1. Consumer Feedback on agents is one of the top things homebuyers and sellers are looking for when they use AgentEvaluator.

• Takeaway: If you don’t have consumer feedback (reviews to say what a great job you’ve done as a Realtor) entered in your profile, get some entered today. To upload reviews, go to the Consumer Feedback section of your Proposal Templates page.

2. Most of the consumers who worked with a HomeGain agent chose that agent because of their personal response.

• Takeaway: As shown in both this year’s and last year’s survey, personalization has consistently been the most important reason consumers select HomeGain agents. If you ARE NOT personalizing EACH proposal to address the specific situation of the prospect you’re responding to, you should start today.

3. Most consumers expect to receive their proposals within 1 to 3 days. Continue reading this post

We all know why we have websites, right? Lead generation!

With so many people using the web to find out information before even placing a call to a Realtor, we have to keep our websites up with the times.

I have made my website easy to use and full of information. From links to the MLS system for easy home searching, to a list of what to expect, to a list of preferred providers, to a mortgage calculator, it is all in one place.  I am constantly uploading new listings, price changes, and disclosures for all of my listings.

There is a fine line on providing too much info. Vs. creating a reason for the lead to call.  Continue reading this post

OK, that is a pretty pretentious title. Who am I to tell you how to use Twitter? The simple fact is (and it’s one of the true beauties of social networking) there are no “rules” about how to use Twitter. The title, and gist, of this post however, fits in with my previous post, How Not to Use Twitter. That, and Louis has been bugging me to complete this “series”…

Rules or no rules, there are some tips and techniques that you can utilize to increase your chances of “success” on Twitter.

Whoa, “success” on Twitter? How do we define “success”?

Depends. Personally, I think if you are using Twitter for the sole purpose of generating leads (and eventually commission checks), then you are making a mistake and likely wasting your time. If you want to expand your sphere of influence, if you want to get to meet and engage with people from all walks of life, if you want to share and expand your knowledge and increase your “internet presence”, then by all means, utilize social networking tools like Twitter.

Simply put, the “hard sell” doesn’t work in social media. Start with the “I’m a REALTOR!” and “I’m a top producer!” or “Look at my new listing!” talk and people will instantly tune you out (if not outright unfollow or block you). In my opinion, the single best thing to do with a tool like Twitter is use it to engage with people. Ultimately, you can use Twitter to actually meet people “IRL” (In Real Life). And let’s face it, in real life is still the best social network ever, bar none.

Continue reading this post