These are seven things you need to look for in a real estate company.
As real estate agent in today’s market, there are seven key things that you should be looking for in your real estate company:
1. Splits or financial arrangements. It’s possible for agents to pay too much to their companies, and it’s also possible to pay too little. You need to find the sweet spot in the middle. In today’s economy, you shouldn’t be paying your real estate company more than $6,000 a year. If you’re paying more than that, you should consider going to a different company.
2. Support. You should be working for a company with more than one broker. After all, you don’t want an individual broker working 15 hours a day, seven days a week. You also want support staff, like a director of technology, that can answer tough questions. As a member of a team, you’ll definitely come to rely on your support staff. At Virtual Properties, we have 10 brokers and 26 support staff members.
3. Specialized training. By this, I mean training your staff in trending areas like iBuyer programs, the lease-purchase programs, luxury homes, commercial real estate, and so on. One of the beautiful things about our company is that each of our 10 brokers specializes in a particular division. Mind you, you don’t have to train in all these areas, but they are opportunities to make more money.
4. Atmosphere/culture. An old expression states that a person tends to become like the five people they hang out with the most. If you apply that to real estate, it becomes clear why you’d want to work at a company that’s always growing, improving, and evolving. If you work in that environment, you’ll grow and improve along with the company. If you work at a stagnant company, chances are you’ll feel like you’re fighting against a current.
5. Technology and tools. There are certain tools that every company should provide their agents, like CRMs, lead generation platforms, transaction management platforms, ect. Ultimately, however, many agents can’t handle the endless number of new tools that exist in the market. Don’t get caught up in the technological flavor of the week if you don’t need it, but make sure you have the basics covered, and take advantage of new tools that fulfill a need your company has.
6. Location. Many franchises boast about having many locations, but if you went to those locations, both the franchise owners and your own broker might give you dirty looks. The only reason they’d want you to go there would be to recruit you, which is a source of tension. I generally suggest that agents try to dominate a certain geographic area, but you do need to make sure you have a presence in the area you choose to work.
7. Synergy networking. We work with a closed network of thousands of agents that allows us to find off-market properties and pocket listings owned by sellers who want to sell but don’t necessarily want to do it the traditional way with an agent. Being a part of a synergistic network allows for more opportunities that other agents won’t get.
If you have any questions about today’s topic or anything else to do with the real estate industry, feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to hear from you.
