12/28/2001 A. Hi Michelle and Merry Christmas! 12/18/2001 A. Great Question!!!! Always question what is usual and normal in "your area" type of assumptions. All of my buyers have requested that I personally present their offers (after I have explained the benefits). Who better to put your buyers best foot forward, suggest alternatives that meet the seller's demands and still fall within the abilities of your client. Anything else is not representing the buyer to their benefit. What if the agent representing the seller has their own client, or can not explain the seller's motivation, or worst yet misrepresents your buyers intentions and alienates the negotiations. Always present your buyer's contracts. If it is a problem with the other agent, go to their broker, then your broker and if you must directly to the seller, if all other options have been exhausted. Now what if your representing the seller........I never let anyone present offers unless I had to (see above) because it is easier to make a two person appointment rather than a three person and who better to get the deal done than me? (pretty arrogant, huh?) Walter S. Sanford 12/11/2001 A. You will be hiring an assistant. I wouldn't want one in my house. The broker will be eating some overhead, toilet paper, stationary, pens, tape, faxing, phone base cost, wear and tear on some office equipment, office supplies like criss-cross directories etc. I bet that all adds up to close to the discount if you do a good job of using broker supplied assets. What is the benefit of going home and really resting Synergism of other agents (hey I got a buyer.......) is worth a couple of deals a year. The profession aspect that you mentioned. You will better able to monitor stolen clients by agents on uptime (from all our new lead generation systems). Work is work and play is play - separate them. Less travel time - you will always have to go the office during the day, you will never have to go home during the day. Move your networked computers to the office, no need for them at home. Gee, can you tell what my decision is! Walter S. Sanford 12/7/2001 A. Brenda, great question, here we go: The old "I'm a professional and can get you more money" does not work, help them, care for them, ask for the buyers that do not buy their home, ask for their client that needs to sell their home in order to buy theirs, help them buy their new home, ask for referrals and when all the smoke clears, you will find you will probably also have their listing! Thanks for asking! Walter S. Sanford 12/5/2001 A. I could ask you so many questions but I think to have more universal appeal I will answer in my usual arrogant and uppity, but very concerned and caring way. You will always have better responses from leads that want to talk about real estate so I must assume that other agents are eating your lunch on those highly competitive fsbo's and expireds. So............improve your presentation to those groups or find other hot lead groups where there is less competition. These groups may include 1.Old expireds, canceled, withdrawns 2. Absentee owners 3. Weddings, deaths, garage sales, births 4. Sphere of influence 5. Niche marketing 6. Affiliate host-parasite relationships. Bottom line: Big companies only plan marketing campaigns laser beamed to the people who care about what you offer. Cold calling is boring - give your services to the people who need them! Walter S. Sanford 11/28/2001 A. Hi Toni, You can buy leads from lead companies that do the calling for you - I have found them poor. You can tell your title company to research leads for you like mature people in large homes, absentee owners, investment owners, or you can get your own which is the best. Expireds, FSBO's, garage sales, weddings, births, etc. are all excellent leads. Now get a sales platform, a script, a mailing and a follow-up plan and own the market. Walter S. Sanford 10/15/01 A. Wow, letters like that make it all worthwhile. A larger net, more "at bats", determining what business to give up, better systems, affiliate delegation (unpaid assistants), worthwhile tech, personal real estate investment. I have alot to offer you. I can and will personally take you to the next level. I hate the word personal coaching because there are so many doing it that know less than you. If you want to evaluate whether we should work together, give me a call on Monday 18007925837. If not in, tell Cyndi, she runs my company, when and where we can find you. Its a $8000 plus investment and I bet I can add 30% to your bottom line. Lets talk and thanks for the nice words!!! Walter 10/2/01 A. Assuming that "personal marketing" is not the most productive use of your time (please question this) then here are my top ten for organizing your work time. 1. Prepare a perfect week schedule that will show your time off, lead generation time, office tours, lunch, work out time, time set aside for listing presentations and showings and all the other repeatable duties that you must commit to. You will soon see that you do not have time for the less profitable time wasters that the business throws at you and you will concentrate on the jobs at hand. 2. Use your affiliates more effectively. Have certain days and hours for contact and feedback. Let them know that silly interruptions are not time effective. Make sure they are always thinking on how they can impress you clients, get you a listing presentation or make your systems better. 3. Eat your frogs early. Do your most distasteful duties first thing in the morning. 4. Return all calls and emails before you go home. Turn off your phone and pager at 6 PM. 5. Turn down overpriced and under-motivated listings. Turn down all buyers that will not do one of the following: A. Answer at least 25 questions about their motivation 6. Inform your listings what your service policies are before you leave the listing presentation. Tell them you will only call once every 10 working days and that you do not believe in receiving cooperative agent feedback. 7. Double the amount of time that you are generating leads and get rid of your wienie head clients. 8. Evaluate where you make your money and double those efforts. See what does not make you money and stop doing those things 9. Take a one day course in the use of your software. Hire a webmaster. Get an assistant as long as they generate leads and pay for themselves 5X. 10. Stop the negotiating. If the buyer wants the property, get it for them. If the seller wants to sell, lower the price. Thanks for asking, Walter S. Sanford 10/1/01 To date, not many sellers seem to be feeling pressure to sell, however. There is a great deal of "mature money" in the Valley. Many of these sellers have bought up through out the years, and many are not leveraged. I just lost two deals with buyers scared of the stock market and prices here. How can I combat the buyers' concerns? Amy in Colorado A. Hello Amy! Great Question! You are correct; mature money is not as subject to market fluctuations and is less affected by interest rates. Your biggest challenges is to get your sellers to price their properties realistically. They are not sellers until they price to sell. Then you will have motivated buyers. There are several things that you can do to convince sellers to set a reasonable price. First, you need to help sellers identify which factors are important in setting a price. Over the years, sellers often form a strong attachment to a house. They can tell you all the wonderful things about the house, but they need to understand that square footage, emotional appeal, and comparable sales market realities are the important elements in setting the price, not their fond memories. Also, you need to understand sellers' motivation for selling the property and use that to keep the sale on track; 90 percent of real estate salespeople don't make the effort to learn why their customers are selling. For example, if a seller wants to move closer to her daughter in Wyoming, stress that while she can really wait as long as she wants before making the move, she is missing those precious moments with her family the longer she keeps the house on the market at an unrealistic price. It's also a good idea to get the sellers' commitment up front that they will reduce the price if a property doesn't sell in a certain time frame. An overpriced listing that doesn't sell in six months could cost you about $1,000 in time and business. Stop making it so easy for the second salesperson who comes in on an expired and convinces a seller to lower their price--do it right the first time. On the other side of the equation, you can help encourage buyers to close by getting giant deposits, going for short closings, and only working with motivated sellers who are willing to negotiate. Also consider what other segments you could you handle while your preferred segment is weak? Buyers' motivations are high when they believe in the investment. In your area, at this time, they simply do not. So change gears and either move vertically or horizontally syndicate, sell timeshares, sell farther out of the village, sell income properties-there are so many options. Having this flow of business will also put you in a better position to say "no" to the bad business of sellers with unrealistic expectations. Walter 10/19/2001 A. Wally, to tell you the truth, even though I went to school for financial management rates of return, internal rates of return, 5 different capitalization rates and so on...... over analysis is harmful to the deal. If it makes sense as a business after you consider market rents and subtract a fixed loan cost, vacancy and maintenance factor, landscaping, utilities, a repair and replacement factor, management, advertising, taxes, insurances and all the misc. expenses then add back in equity paydown and tax benefits go for it. Your only consideration then will be appreciation rate and the hassle of owning rentals. Generally I like to have cashflow while I own and work to have the tenants pay off the mortgages. The fancy software is usually available through the package that your MLS offers. If not contact CCIM. Keep it up, the greatest thing a real estate agent can do is buy what they sell!!!!!!! Walter S. Sanford 9/8/01 A. Dear Amy, thank you for the question. First let me answer the question quickly and then try to point you in the right direction. First there is hardly any luck in the real estate business, just lots of working smart. 99% of your business for the first five years will come from people you do not know. Now for the meat and the last of your question.....The least expensive way to market yourself is by phone, personal visits, email or directing clients to a service rich web site. But the real genius is directing your efforts to people that might need your help. These groups may include: expired listings, old expired listings, fsbo's, non-owner occupied listings, mature people in large homes, people having garages sales and so on. All these groups have one thing in common: a heightened awareness of local real estate. Now you ask, "how do I get them to trust me", well give em stuff that really helps them without obligation. Give the fsbo a contract, access to your team, or a lesson on how to tell weinie head buyers from real ones. Give the expired a free personal analysis on why their home may not have sold. Give the owner of a non-owner occupied home free management aids like lists of vendors or rental agreement forms. Tell mature people in large homes that you can find them secure, smaller homes and then tell them about how low the interest rates are and how they could invest their equities. The garage sale people are cleaning out their home prior to putting it on the market...how could you help them??? Fine a demographic group that want to talk real estate, approach them inexpensively, with an offer that knock their socks off and follow-up. The next day, start all over again. Someday you will be working with people you know... your past clients!! 8/22/01 A. Your question is genius because it begs a very under-appreciated consideration in our business...ie: how much money do you throw at a business plan having to do with reaching a certain database with direct mail? Since there are no email directories of our out of town owners (they may be letting an extended family member live there), the best way way is direct mail. Since the database is very researched and specialized, a personal offer will pay off. The most personal direct mail is a business letter with date and inside address, hand signed, may be with a personal hand written note. The offer needs to be very compelling to get them to make a phone call to you or visit your web site. From there you can correspond by email or phone which will be less expensive. Length is a function on whatever it takes to get them to go to your web site or call you. I did it in one page offering some of my best free services and promised more if they called or went web hunting. The call or visit required that they share information with me before I did more. Hope this helped and good luck. Submit your letter and if it is great, I will publish it with your name on it in my new Letter Book when it comes out. Walter S. Sanford 9/1/01 A. Dear email addressee): DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU ARE READY FOR A CHANGE. 1. If this happened at another office also, I would look very hard at your people skills before you ask anyone else for help. Try the book: HOW TO GET ALONG WITH ANYONE, I forgot the author. 2. If you are at the average price range for Northeast Florida then your production is almost under the poverty level after broker cut and expenses. Spend less time talking to agents and more time prospecting. Whether your office is cutthroat or a family is does not matter. Top agents do not spend alot of time with other agents because they do not buy from you. After family, fun, fitness, finances, faith, friends and prospecting how could you have any more time for interoffice squabble? Sexual harassment is a strong charge. Cold water, a slap, ignoring and an attorney are all appropriate solutions, but do these items quickly because you have to get back to prospecting. Sorry for being blunt with so little information, whining makes me crazy. 8/11/01 A. Good morning Marie, I think for sale by owner business is wonderful and there are many ways to approach them: However my favorite and most satisfying is helping them sell the home. Since most of your systems are already paid for, adding a fsbo to some of your marketing costs little and nets a client for life. Here is what I did for my fsbo clients: The offers go on, but you get the message. Remember, we are not just going after the listing (even though the above sounds like a great listing presentation (It is!!) but we want their purchase, the home of their eventual buyer and their family and friends. Give to get. Thanks, Walter 7/30/2001 A. Hi Melissa! I do not like door knocking, never have. Try the phone first and call people who need your help like non owner occupieds, fsbo's or expireds. As a compromise, you can knock on the doors of the the expired's doors every morning. The prospects will be a little better qualified then. Thanks for asking, Walter S. Sanford 7/30/2001 A. Dear Larry, Those are exciting demographics! First, I am assuming that gaining initiative early is to get your signs up and create public recognition with listings. Acquiring buyers is a function of having the best listings. First develop a list of all non-owner occupied properties including owners names, addresses, phone numbers and email. Start a campaign of being their "eyes and ears" Offer the following unusual services: You get the idea! You are information central for the challenges that non owner occupiers experience daily. Letters, followed up with a phone call and then the acquisition of an email address for further follow-up seems to be the best prospecting sequence. Couple this with an effective database and a follow-up system on the tickle dates and watch the signs go up and therefore the buyer calls. Walter S. Sanford 7/29/2001 7/16/2001 7/8/2001 7/6/2001 Right now, I constantly encounter Buyers thinking that our market should be very soft, and a reluctance to buy. Everyone says because the stock market has dropped so drastically in the past months, that our prices should plummet. And Owners and Sellers should be financially hemorrhaging. To date, not many Sellers seem to be feeling pressure to sell immediately. There is a great deal of "mature money" in the Valley. Many of these Sellers have bought up through out the years, and many are not leveraged. The last quarter has been an agony trying to get any one to make a decision, let alone get them to write a contract. And, although interest rates are quite good, they don't seem to affect our market as much. We have had several properties in the $5,000,000 to $9,000,000 range sell after sitting on the market for one or two years. But I just lost two deals with Buyers scared of the stock market and prices here. They both found a contingency to walk from the deal. How can I get people to buy and stay in the deals? How can I combat the Buyers concern? One walk-in told me on Friday, that a year from now it was going to get very ugly here in our market. I would love to hear your comments. Thank you. Amy A. Hello Amy! Great Questions! You are correct, mature or old money is not as subject to market fluctuations. However, "smart" money never buys at the top of a market. You are also correct that real estate markets that have alot of equity are not as effected by lower rates, but watch it run to Plan for it, it is a fact of life. Listen to your buyers and give them what they want. Syndicate, timeshare, buy farther out of the village, buy with attached income property, buy a fixer-upper - - so many options. It would be foolish to design a business plan on selling 5-9 million dollar homes forever. What other segments can you handle while your preferred segment is weak? Buyers motivations are high when they believe in the investment. They simply do not. So change gears and either move vertically or horizontally. However, the easiest solution is to get your sellers to realistically price their properties. They are not sellers until they price to sell. Then you will have motivated buyers. Get giant deposits, go for short closings, only work with motivated sellers, get buyers to sign contracts and decide whether or not you are really selling a product that has the turnover you need. Walter 7/6/2001 7/5/2001 A. Hi Brenda, the Certified Residential Property Management designation is certainly a shortcut to the learning curve. However, doing it will always be your best teacher. Here is the short course: See where they live, verify a long term income, get a large security deposit, run credit, interview the previous landlord and start eviction on the third day the rent is late. Follow those rules and 90% of your problems are cured. As for an investment club, it depends on the club. Me, I like to look in the MLS for free and clear properties and instead of trying to get a screaming deal on the price, I go for the terms and have the tenants pay off the mortgage. Good Luck,Walter Sanford 7/5/2001 1. I am trying to learn why homes expire. With your home being exposed to over ________ real estate agents in the MLS, what is your opinion on why this home or any home for that matter, not sell? 2. Where are you moving, and how soon do you have to be there. Would you like a real estate agent from that area to send, email or fax you information on you potential choices in that area? 3. What method did you use to price your home? 5. May I show you some marketing strategies that I have successfully used? 6. What will your criteria be when consider hiring another Realtor@ for the job of selling your home. When you get back from your rounds, now call all the for sale by owners and ask to see their property. Give them suggestions on how to sell their home and bring with you some contracts that they can use. Now call all the neighbors around every new sale in your office and tell them that a property on their street just sold and that you now need more homes for sale because of the buyers that the exposure of a sold sign might generate. Doing these items for 3 weeks will net you more business than you can handle. You will have to stop the prospecting because your time will be taken with listing presentations and showings. Good generation means money but there is no easy way. Sorry, the most you can do is speed up the process using tech, and experience. Let's get some money in your bank first. Walter S. Sanford 7/5/2001 But why would I want to work with a real estate agent who hates buyers and does nothing but list? Oh, sure, Top Listing Agent can counter me in on an offer, but then I'm in a contest with the buyer's Realtor's lender! A. Excellent question Catherine! Tweak your business plan to include services for more top listing agents! Walter
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