Do you have many contacts and skills to sell? Are you interested in architecture? Can you give very good investment advice? Aren’t you afraid of a possible housing bubble? Well, perhaps this article will serve as a guide to everything you need to know to set up a real estate agency from scratch.
Many people believe that a real estate agency is only about being intermediaries between sellers and potential buyers of real estate (sometimes obtaining reasonable profits).
However, it goes much further than that: from buying advice, studying the market, anticipating what can and cannot be sold, and taking advantage of each characteristic of a building to excite potential buyers (without exaggeration).
Options to make money with a real estate agency as a business
A real estate agency can have various approaches, such as:
Table of Contents
1. Real Estate Brokerage Agency
It is a business that allows customers to contact you to buy, sell or rent their properties. That is, you can negotiate available properties in exchange for a commission.
“Service is first, commission is the consequence”
Keep in mind that to start a real estate brokerage you will most likely need to be affiliated with your local Chamber of Real Estate brokers.
2. Construction agency
It is a business that consists of developing and promoting housing solutions. You don’t have to start with a residential complex of 100 houses, you can start with one or two houses and then expand little by little.
For this type of business you must take into account the capital, the investors, the permits of your community, a designer, an engineer and the optimal land.
A good alternative to start with may be making reforms. Carrying out reforms does not require an investment in land and facilitates learning prior to creating a construction company or a developer company.
3. Investment companies in real estate
They are generally made up of investors with risk capital or crowdfunding companies for real estate projects.
Before getting involved with this proposal you should ask yourself:
- How much money are you willing to invest comfortably?
- What is the future wealth you expect and for what term?
- What type of property is more effective to invest: residential, commercial, social?
Is a real estate agency really a good business?
It all depends, as we have already explained on numerous occasions, the important thing is the execution and not the idea:
What does a real estate agency need?
- You need a Business Plan to define all the details of your real estate agency.
- Carry out the registration procedures for your company. I recommend that you seek help from a professional adviser to help you define whether you will do it as an independent or through a Limited Company.
- You need real estate agents also called “brokers”, realtors or brokers who understand the business and who, of course, are good at selling.
Key elements of a real estate agency
Take note:
The location
You must have a “headquarters” where you can regroup your employees, receive your partners and your customers. Every good real estate agency must be located in a strategic, accessible and profitable place, in addition to having premises in perfect condition, with good decoration. Well, nobody trusts a real estate agency that seems anything but a site that knows real estate.
“Cheap is expensive”
“Who does not teach, does not sell #Real Estate”
Presence in Internet 2.0
This is a no-brainer. So being on the Internet is not optional for a real estate agency. The most effective networks for this type of business are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
In addition, in order to achieve a better impact on the Internet, your real estate agency must have:
- A blog (to achieve the necessary web positioning).
- Search engine within your website and blog.
- Email marketing strategy.
- Images of the real estate.
- Collect and keep the personal data of sellers and buyers well.
- Use Google Analytics to measure what works on your website.
- Tools to schedule content on social networks.
- A tag (#) with which you can collect your own content on the Internet.
In addition to… trying to go further, I mean, maybe you can show a lifestyle? Or maybe reports? Take a look at this video of a prestigious real estate company on the Spanish Costa del Sol:
Web alliances
If you are a daring real estate agency, you will surely find new ways of doing things, however, what works best are alliances on the Internet. Look for the companies (not direct competitors) that share a part of your target audience to create exchanges, for example, blogs and/or web pages of:
- travels
- diy
- Honeymooners, families, etc.
- removals
- construction
- Interior decoration.
Remember that you must structure your website and blog in the most coherent way possible so that your clients and future clients can find what they are looking for. Organize the sections by areas of interest, spaces, location, price, requirements, parts, etc.
Advertising
In order for you to survive in the real and virtual world where there is so much competition for a real estate agency, you must do the basic things and dare to experiment. In the case of doing the traditional thing is advertising. Here you have to be willing to invest money in all the media where your potential buyers really are. In other words, you are not going to advertise on a young radio (because the profile of that audience is not focused on buying a house or property).
Traditional advertising
You cannot forget about the means that we all know:
- the written press
- Radio
- a billboard
- Television.
Web advertising
You must bear in mind that the Internet is the main tool to attract customers today. So for that you will have to invest in Google advertising and social media advertising. If you want to know more, here are the links to get started:
- Google AdWords (advertising across the web)
- Google AdWords Express (advertise in your locality)
- Create your first Twitter Ads campaign
- The guide to Facebook Ads
Now that you know the basics of what your real estate agency needs, but you could not be successful without a system that optimizes all the time and tedious tasks of your business. That is why if you have (or want to have) a real estate agency with many sellers, I advise you to use a CRM system:
What does a CRM do for a real estate agency?
The first advantage of having a CRM is the total control of your business in one place. In addition, it allows you to optimize the time of repetitive tasks, assign tasks, reminders, backup information automatically, etc. The CRM is an excellent tool for all sellers (especially those from a real estate agency) because in general with a CRM you can:
- Detect prospects, in which part of the purchase cycle they are.
- Define your Buyer Persona.
- Better your sales process.
- Write down the information of all your clients and prospects.
- Have at hand the interests, concerns and needs of your customers.
- Save the “sales pitch” that each salesperson used for each prospect and client.
- Assign scheduled appointments on a calendar.
- Improve your customer service and cross-selling.
- Coordinate projects and campaigns, monitor them.
- See in graphs how your real estate agency is doing.
- Make billing, accounting and maintenance tasks easier.
- Send mass emails.
- And many more things that would make your real estate agency a more bearable business.
Skills a Real Estate Agent Must Have
Sales skills: a real estate agency must have a work team capable of persuading clients to make decisions.
“Tip of the day: Don’t sell houses, sell homes #RealEstate”
Persistent and patient: have you shown the properties to several people and nobody buys? Nobody said that sales (especially if they are of this size) would be easy. Keep trying, don’t give up and little by little you will learn from your mistakes and improve your virtues.
“Prestige is not bought, you work”
Customer service: the way you serve potential customers, your partners and your users is what will define whether your business will grow or not. Use all the means available to you: phone calls, traditional or email, use Internet calls or a mobile messaging service to always be present for what is needed.
“If you don’t serve your customer, your competition will”
Good presence: it may sound like a cliché, but it is true that good presence greatly influences the purchase of real estate. Take care of your appearance, dress very professionally, keep your company clean and organized and use all the argumentation strategies to convince your buyers.
“How they see you, they treat you. A professional dresses like one.
Opportunity for innovation in a real estate agency
I recommend you: although you believe that this business sticks to the traditional, the added value that you can find in this type of business lies in the innovative architectural projects.
You can venture into the purchase, sale or rental of:
- Ecological enclosures.
- Sustainable buildings.
- Avant-garde projects (technological buildings).
- Sale of buildings built with recyclable materials and new technologies.
- Finance or ally yourself with unconventional architects.
- Partner with the Mayor’s Office or the government of a city to finance architectural projects that attract tourism.
- Using drones to make aerial visits to tall buildings or gigantic parks (they will go viral on the Internet).
- Include 360º virtual tours of the properties you want to promote on your website.
- Stay up-to-date with architecture schools, awards, projects, etc.
All architectural projects that are different from what is being done are a good option.
I guess you have a better idea of how to start your real estate agency on the right foot.
Do not try to become a millionaire with a single sale: look for underserved urban areas and, the more small sales at the beginning, the more productive business you will have in the long term.
That’s all for now… Thank you very much for reading us!
