By Dave Robison When the Focus is On Getting More Money: Recently, I talked to an agent who, unfortunately, didn’t quite know where their focus should be. It can be really tough to know. If more agents did, they would be selling a lot more homes. If you can learn these secrets, though, you could be consistently successful. As John …
Keeping Up With The Joneses
By Heather Soldonia It’s the secret that’s driving every client — social comparison. The Social Comparison Theory explains how individuals evaluate their own opinions and desires by comparing themselves to others in either an upward or downward direction. An upward comparison example: “Our friends, the Joneses, purchased a brand new 3,000-square-foot home. We don’t want to consider anything smaller than …
Agent/Broker Relationships: Who Wears the Pants?
By Brandon Rodriguez When I first became an agent just shy over 7 years ago, I was a novice and this dichotomy was not apparent to me. I was under the impression brokers were in charge. They gave you a desk space or office, nice decorated conference rooms, brochures, and you could even do desk duty for them. Not to …
Real Estate is ‘Easy Money’
By Jonathan Osman Step 1: Find a buyer. In my market, the unemployment rate is 11.1 percent and the under-employment rate is around 16-20 percent. While a few years ago, one could conceivably purchase a house without a job; today, employment is essential. Step 2: Find the buyer a loan. As long as the buyer has a job, modest credit …
Pre-Counseling Lessons From The Trenches
By Brian Copeland Anyone who knows my business knows I pride myself on strong counseling of all my clients prior to any signed documents. It’s the secret sauce of my business. This week, I messed up…bad! During the hustle and bustle of NAR Midyear, I had a remote buyer counseling session. I was so busy that I condensed the normal …
Time to Brush Up on the Fees and GFEs
By Nobu Hata With the down market and the inevitable mass exodus of “those” loan officers, you’d think we could rest easy knowing that the loan officers left would be – for lack of a better word – decent. Holy Hannah, would we be wrong. In the last couple weeks, I’ve had various buyers shop their loan around, including those …
Saving My Business, My Community, and Our Industry
By Jonathan Osman If you ever want to start a heated discussion among agents in my area, ask them their opinion of short sales. What will pour forth is the most draw-dropping tales of sheer lunacy; always ending with “I’ll never show or sell another short sale again.” This presents a problem for me on a number of levels. First, …
Good Is Just Not Good Enough
By Jason O’Neil Last month I had the privilege of going to Nashville’s RE Bar Camp. The event was exciting, informative and inspirational. But beyond the unrestricted walls of the camp, I found more inspiration — in a real bar. The night before the event, I took my brother out for a couple of rounds at one of Nashville’s most …
‘Mr. Seller, Tear Down That Wall!’
By Brandon Rodriguez Barriers are never good when selling a house. I know that all the good agents know this and have instructed to their clients the harm this can cause. However, the barriers are still up. One weekend, I scheduled property to show for a client. The list was ready and the phone calls to our Centralized Showing System …
Sometimes It’s Just Not Worth It
By Jeremy Williams I have heard other real estate practitioners say, “If you don’t take the listing, someone else will end up listing the home, selling it and making a commission.” I recently fell into that mindset and regretfully so. After months of actively marketing a property using both my time and money, the seller pulled their listing agreement saying …