Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
As a realtor, you know and understand the excitement that homeowners experience when selling their homes. For lots of people, whether it’s a single or multi-family home, selling their home is a fresh start… a new beginning, and it’s just as exciting for you as it is for them! The fact that you can work with a client, have them tell you what they’re looking for in a home, and then be able to give them that is a rewarding feeling.
Some realtors may look at it as just selling a house but if you’re a true realtor, you don’t see it as just selling a house… you see it as giving someone or a family, a new chapter in their life.
To be fair, real estate isn’t all flowers and rainbows either… From finicky buyers to broken contracts, real estate definitely comes with its own unique set of challenges, for sure, and those are challenges you’ll face whether you’re working as an independent agent or working for a realty company.
As an independent agent, you’ll definitely need to take the necessary steps to insure your business because you have a higher chance of getting sued by a client. What if you sold a house to a couple but it slipped your mind to warn them that the basement floods with every heavy rain… They could sue you for negligence! To protect yourself against claims of negligence, invest in professional liability insurance.
According to becomealocalleader.com, low inventory is one of the biggest challenges that realtors face. If you don’t have enough properties to show, you might have to consider financing rental properties to boost your inventory and to ensure you have a steady income coming in. Marketing your property as pet-friendly will also help attract renters to your newly acquired properties as well Those are challenges you know and deal with on a daily basis and the longer you’ve been a realtor, you know exactly how to overcome those challenges.
From the perspective of a homeowner trying to sell their home, they’re going to experience their own set of challenges as well. Some of the challenges they’re going to face are to be expected and some of them are challenges they won’t see coming, which can be pretty frustrating for them. That’s why it’s up to you as their realtor to set the expectations and prepare them for the frustrations that come with selling their home.
This is probably the most annoying aspect that homeowners face during the selling process. As a realtor, you set scheduled showings and let the homeowners know of those scheduled showings so that they can have their home ready to show. But there are times where potential buyers will contact you wanting to see a property outside of the scheduled showings.
As a realtor, that’s something that comes with it… you know that just because you’ve set a schedule for showings, that doesn’t mean people adhere to it. But it can be particularly frustrating for the homeowner, especially if they’re still living in the home, because if they want to sell their home, they have to show it off and that can sometimes mean jumping up and making their home presentable within an hour.
Inform your clients of this upfront so they can be aware and take the extra efforts to try and maintain their home in case something like that does happen.
Homeowners work very hard to make sure their home is nice and clean for showings and when people don’t show up, it can be very frustrating and it can even make the homeowner feel defeated, like no one is going to want to buy their home.
Because you know that the selling process can be an emotional roller coaster, talk to your clients about the emotional journey it can take them down. In their minds, they’re excited about selling their home and starting a new life but sometimes that new life doesn’t happen as quickly as they hoped it would.
Again, the homeowner has worked very hard to make sure their home is prepared to show but you also need to prepare them to have a thick skin. When potential buyers look at homes, you have to help your clients understand that they’re potentially making a major purchase and if the home being showcased isn’t up to their standards, they’re not going to want to buy it.
Sure, they might say that the house smells like dog lives in it or that the bathrooms look like it came out of the 70s but that’s something that comes with it… people are going to give their opinion, whether your client likes it or not, and the sooner you help them realize that, the sooner they can get a thicker skin and make the necessary changes to make their home more appealing.
