When you work in commercial real estate brokerage today, you have quite a few choices when it comes to your establishing your career as an agent. You can be like most other agents and take what comes along in clients and property listings, or you can strive to build a great real estate business. Important choices must be made from the very start of any real estate career.
If you want to amount to ‘something significant’ in your time in the industry, then you will need a plan and a process to move ahead. Luck only has a small role to play in where you will head as a specialist property agent. In fact, if you rely on ‘luck’ to get you somewhere, then the industry can be very unforgiving, difficult and slow.
Depending on your speciality in the local area, your property focus will be on a variation or combination of the following:
- Investment sales
- Investment leasing
- Project sales and or leasing
- Property development
- Vacant land
- Tenant advocacy
- Buyers agent
- Property management
- Retail management and leasing
Many will ask about what category is better from a career perspective. The reality is that they are all quite good for both listings and commissions; that is on the understanding that you get back in results what you put in by way of effort. That is why a plan of approach is really important for all brokers and agents.
Here are some tips to help you shift up a gear and get some real momentum in your commercial real estate brokerage and territory. You can add to the list based on your location and property type.
- Existing listings – You can and should work with your existing listings to achieve better results. Condition the clients that you are working with today to the prevailing market conditions and the current levels of enquiry. An existing listing can be repackaged, refreshed, and marketed differently. It is a matter of understanding the focus of the client and helping them see the correct adjustments to move ahead.
- Track and measure – Any quality listing should be tracked and measured when it comes to current levels of enquiry and inspections. If you are not getting the results you require, then refresh and repackage the listing for better results. Don’t wait too long in your marketing process to tell the client that he or she has a problem; a listing can become stale quite soon, so help the client with marketing facts and decisions.
- Other Agents listings – Look at the other agent’s listings in your local area; assess the time on market in each case. You can use those listings as valid reasons to talk to other investors and property owners in the area. It is quite possible that other local property owners would like to compete with nearby listings held with other agencies. You can offer them that facility and then package their property with great care and attention to the current levels of enquiry locally.
- Signboard Activity – Through your area or listing territory, monitor the number of signboards for each agency and within each property type; you can do that on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Differentiate between open listings and exclusive listings in tracking the numbers. Look at the time on market in each case and determine the best methods of sale or lease for today’s property conditions. As a general rule, every quality listing and exclusive listing should have a special signboard designed and erected as part of the marketing campaign. A good signboard will help with the local market enquiry and the levels of inspections generated early in the campaign.
- Internet listings – Track the number of Internet listings for your area and do so by property type. In doing that you can identify the methods of online marketing that seem to be more effective than others. You can also track the time on market for each listing with a particular focus on exclusivity.
These four simple things will get you into the local real estate market with greater focus and direction. Soon you will see the clients and the properties creating the best levels of interest; that can help and boost your career as a commercial real estate agent. You can learn a lot by watching the activities of other top agents and the quality listings available today in your town or city.
Commercial Real Estate Online 