Friday, June 03, 2011

Young Realtors: Be Free Tonight, Buyers Are on Your Side

It's counterintuitive but the current changes in the way the American housing market functions can actually mean increased advantages for those just starting out in the real estate business. There's no denying that home buying is way down and foreclosures are way up. Home ownership is once again an exceptional undertaking. But agents who have built their entire careers and livelihoods on a now obsolete model of real estate are the ones who are in the fight of their lives. Rookie real estate agents with a knack for adaptability have been observing the recent events of the last few years and stand a far better chance in today's real estate marketing arena than those who are in some ways forced to cling onto a dying strategy.

Conventional real estate agents used to be able to rely on the endless number of new buyers on the market. It's not often that a realtor gets a return customer and so reputable success was based on who could get homes sold, not find the right one for a potential buyer. In fact much of the pseudo-fraud committed inside the real state arena was based on the fact that nobody made money anymore from helping people buy homes and instead the money was in getting homes bought. This caused realtors to maximize moneymaking efficiency by caring less about whether their clients found a right home and more about how many homes could be sold in a the shortest amount of time possible. In the wake of the housing bubble this tactic is dead, and realtors are now more reliant on finding the right home for the right person in order to maintain their reputation but more importantly maintain their survival.

So, in a sense, the playing field has been leveled. Prove you're a savvy realtor by getting a reputation early on as someone who doesn't try to push a homestead lemon and who does the extra legwork to find the best fits for you. Another way to bank off the errors of your elders is to seek out expired leads. If you know what properties are about to be taken off the market, introduce yourself to the seller as a better agent who will get the mission accomplished. This is a great way to build the reputation of being a great seller as well as a great finder.

The real estate market is probably the hardest field to get into right now when you consider how just a few years ago it was one of the easiest. But that right there is the key to your success. If you can thrive as a start up realtor in as unforgiving a market as this one, what won't you be able to do once the market improves? You're young. Time is on your side.

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