We’ve already covered why you should date or marry a real estate agent (hint: most of them are pretty awesome).

But you should also know that real estate agents are a special breed. Their success requires an incredible amount of time and commitment, making them difficult to understand for some people. But the work they do is important – helping people to find homes and make some of the biggest financial transactions of their lives. So if there’s a Realtor in your life (in any capacity), they could use your support because they’re juggling too many balls to do everything on their own.

Here are 17 things to remember:

1. They are busy

Few jobs are as time intensive as being a real estate agent. It’s somewhat like being an executive in an office, a luxury car salesperson, a delivery driver, and a psychologist all in one. They have to handle all the tasks of running a business (phone calls, meetings, etc.) while also learning everything they can about neighborhoods and the homes they’re selling or buying. They also have to run all around town to be with their clients.

2. They are detail oriented

Market trends, home features, neighborhood features, buyer preferences – there are hundreds of things the average real estate agent is keeping track of. Expect him or her to either have a fantastic memory, or a detailed note system. And if you spot them taking notes on the back of a McDonald’s hamburger wrapper, don’t be surprised.

3. They may struggle with organization

All of these details need to be kept in an accessible system, but not every Realtor is naturally organized. They may love helping people find houses, but struggle to keep up with all the paperwork. An assistant can be helpful, but they can also use support from loved ones. If the Realtor in your life isn’t organized, maybe you can help with tidying up and putting things in the right place.

4. They like being treated like humans

Helping people find a home is a big deal. Realtors like getting paid, but more than that they love respect. So if by chance your Realtor friend/significant other/family member is helping you buy a home, don’t do the typical things buyers do that Realtors hate.

5. Networking is vital to their work

Getting people the perfect home, or finding the perfect buyer, requires being connected. It means knowing and befriending other Realtors and service providers in the real estate industry. Understand this is one of the biggest parts of their business, so do your best to humor them if they start talking shop at every opportunity. Remember, when you’re in a restaurant having dinner and you hear someone say “real estate”, they’ll no longer remember who you are.

6. They may not unwind easily

All this work can make play a difficult concept. If you have a Realtor in your life, encourage him or her to chill out once in a while. Plan a trip or outing, or even a dinner in with your favorite show. Give them endless back rubs until they have perma-grin on their face.

7. They need to look good

It’s hard to sell a home when you look disheveled. Understand, real estate pros need to remain well-kept. Nice clothes, good grooming and fitness are part of the package. Don’t let them leave the house with egg on their face. Help fix the mistakes you see that they don’t. And if you really want to make them look good, buy them one of these real estate t-shirts.

8. Exercise needs to be stressed

If you are close to a Realtor, try to remind him or her of the importance of exercise. Everyone is prone to making the “no time” excuse, but Realtors may genuinely have very little free time. They may need to be reminded that working out can help them in their jobs. Just make sure they don’t forget to take off the spandex if they need to go back to work.

9. They may be control freaks

Most real estate agents have to work very hard to climb from a new agent to a successful Realtor. This can lead to control issues. If your Realtor is doing well enough, encourage him or her to hire an assistant.

10. They need sleep

Another problem with busy real estate agents – not enough sleep. They’re human and need an average of 8 hours a night, just like everyone else. Try to encourage healthy sleep patterns. If they won’t listen chop up some No-Doz and put it into your favorite hamburger helper dish — they will love you for it.

11. They need vacations

Leaving it all behind will be hard for some agents, but it needs to be done periodically. Distance allows for different perspectives, and tends to improve results upon return. Plan a vacation and demand your Realtor comes along. Feed him or her Coronas all day long (with a lime, of course) and fan them periodically while they lie by the pool. After all, they deserve it.

12. They may forget about important events

Like all busy people, Realtors may forget about dates that are actually quite important. Birthdays, anniversaries, etc. If this happens, try to be understanding. Realtors tend to remember closing dates and not much else.

13. Romance may need encouragement

If you’re dating or married to a Realtor, you may need to be proactive about planning together time. They love you, really. But they are driven people and can have trouble balancing priorities. Gazing into a computer screen filled with homes for sale is their lightning in a bottle.

14. They need hobbies

Work is important, but so is personal time. Encourage the Realtor in your life to take up at least one hobby to unwind. Heads up, though — they may try to convince you that social media is a hobby.

15. They may need to vent occasionally

If you’re close to a Realtor, expect some venting occasionally. Not every client is willing to let the agent do his or her best work, which can be frustrating. Realtors have to deal with issues ranging from low ball offers to overpriced homes, and everything in between. Make sure you have plenty of Kleenex on hand.

16. They’re always learning

The real estate market changes every day. Real estate agents are always learning, which means they can make mistakes. Just like you, they will not always be right. As long as they get back up and keep going, you should do your best to be understanding. Last but not least, if you catch your favorite real estate agent saying something they shouldn’t, always forgive them. Realtors rock and always deserve a second chance!

The post 16 Things to Remember If You Love A Real Estate Agent appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

A good real estate agent is always focused on delivering value to his or her clients. While different markets sometimes demand different things, ultimately the work of a Realtor revolves around some core principles based on how buying and selling real estate works. That’s why you will never hear your Realtor say things like:

1. “Buyers are going to love your Bull Mastiff!”

Your agent may love your dog as much as you do, but he or she will ask you to remove it when showing the house. This is one of the hardest things for pet lovers to hear, but buyers probably don’t want to meet your dog. In fact, if you have pets in the house when people come to view it, you are not helping your sale. This is why you can expect any Realtor to ask you to remove the animal, preferably to another home. Moving your pet is just smart business. Pets imply that there were accidents in the house, and that buyers can expect to find pet hair everywhere. Not the image you want to deliver.

2. “Stick around for the showing. I want to be sure I don’t miss anything when talking to buyers.”

Even if you and your agent are best friends, he or she is not going to want you around when showing the house. If the agent has done their homework, then there will be no questions he or she can’t answer. Homeowners tend to get in the way at showings, distracting agents from really doing their job. If your agent is good, he or she will have a way of selling a home – one that doesn’t include a teammate.

3. “You should probably try to sell the home by yourself. You’ll save money, and the Internet makes you just as good as an experienced agent.”

Now you might not expect a Realtor to say this out of self interest, but the fact is, you are not a real estate agent. (Unless you actually are, in which case, sell away!) But seriously, the training and experience that a real estate agent has is not something the everyday person can match. Selling a home by owner is not easy! You wouldn’t expect your agent to walk into your job and take over for you, would you?

Agents understand the market you are selling in and have connections that you just don’t have. They also know how to price a home to sell. This is important if you want to actually sell the home, instead of seeing it sit on the market for months.

4. “Vacuuming and dusting should be enough. Don’t worry about hiring a professional cleaner.”

You may be a really great cleaner, and feel like you keep a pristine house. But imagine this. If you were selling a $300,000 car, would you feel like your detailing was good enough? That a wipe down and a run through the automatic car wash was sufficient? No way.

This is why your Realtor is going to tell you to get the house cleaned professionally if you need it. There is just too much riding on the sale, and you want the house to look GREAT. Not just good enough.

5. “Don’t waste your money on landscaping. Buyers only care about the inside of the house.”

First impressions are everything. Granted, you don’t have to spend thousands on a new landscaping job if your exterior is already passable. But if you are stuck right now with dead, patchy grass and withered trees, you are going to have to do something.

Fortunately, sprucing up your landscaping doesn’t have to be difficult. New sod, a few new plantings and a layer of mulch can do wonders for your home. When buyers pull up, they will be looking at everything, so don’t skimp on the landscape.

6. “Don’t say anything about all that mold in the basement. Just throw a coat of paint over it and keep moving.”

If you have a major mold issue in your home, you have to disclose it to buyers. You can spend the money now to bring in a mold remediation service and get rid of an issues that can be easily fixed.

Mold is a big deal to people, and not something you can reasonably ignore. However, it is not a sale killer either. Mold can be taken care of, so don’t ignore it.

7. “How much do you want to sell the home for? For $50,000 more than any other home in the area? Perfect, let’s do it!”

Pricing a home competitively is a necessity if you want to actually sell the home. For many sellers, though, the competitive price is not the same as the price they imagine their home is worth. This is one of the most important jobs of a real estate agent – telling sellers how it is. You need to know what the market will deliver for you property. Anyone who tells you differently is not helping you.

A home that is priced too high will sit, unsold, for a very long time. Even if you manage to convince a buyer that your home is worth that much, the bank that lends him or her money will not pay if the numbers don’t add up. You have to respect the market if you want to actually sell. If you want more than you can get, you should probably wait until the market is more cooperative.

8. “Don’t worry about those cigarette and pet smells when you walk into your house. Buyers probably won’t notice.”

Humans can adapt to a lot of unpleasant things, especially smells. You may not notice that your house smells bad when you are inside of it, especially if the smell has been around for a while. But new people coming into the home do notice it, and smells are one of the most off putting things to most people. If the buyer thinks your house stinks, he or she will not make an offer.

Your Realtor is an outsider, and he or she will notice any strange odors immediately. Before you show the house, you have to address the odor – by cleaning the carpets, removing furniture, or doing more thorough renovations.

9. “I will use whatever camera I have available to photograph your home. Buyers don’t care about picture quality.”

The photos of your home are the first thing buyers see when they discover your listing. This means they better be good. A skilled real estate agent will know how to take photos that wow buyers, or will have a photographer he or she uses. You want the best photos you can get, so defer to your agent in this area. After all, you don’t want your home on this list of bad MLS photos! I know what you are thinking. How in the world could these even be real? Trust me they are and they belong to clueless real estate agents who should have a different job!

The post 9 Things You’ll Never Catch Your Real Estate Agent Saying appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

Real estate open houses are one sales tactic that may be more about the hype than about results. Some real estate agents play up the benefits far more than they should, considering how many drawbacks there are to the process. The fact is, open houses are rarely conducted to sell a home. Sure, there are agents that still believe that the open house has a place in the sale of a home. There will always be home owners that do not know any better. However, the facts about open houses should discourage anyone from bothering with the process.

The debate with whether an open house is a good marketing activity almost always boils down to a battle between real estate agents who are at the pinnacle of their game (top producers) and those agents who need to do open houses in order to generate additional clients. In other words real estate open houses can be great prospecting activities for Realtors. Do open houses sell homes? The answer statistically is clear cut and dry – Rarely!

There are some real estate agents that have to do open houses or they wouldn’t know where to find their next prospect if it hit them in the face. What consumers need to understand is that “real buyers” schedule appointments to see homes they are interested in viewing.

How many buyers who are ready, willing and able to purchase a home say to themselves – if those Realtors don’t have an open house – forget about it I’m not interested!” Sounds pretty moronic doesn’t it? That’s because it is. When weighing the pro’s and con’s of an open house the con’s come in ahead by a large margin!

Why You Shouldn’t Have an Open House

1. Security issues – One of the biggest drawbacks of an open house is the potential for theft. Letting strangers in off the street to wander around your home carries some obvious security risks. While the majority of visitors will most likely be there to view your home and learn more about it, some may be there for more nefarious reasons. The fact is, during an open house anyone can come in – even people who are looking for access points, security weaknesses and valuables. This is something most real estate agents who tout open houses ever want to discuss. They will sweep this fact right under the rug at the sellers expense just to keep the prospecting train rolling.

Last year in Hopkinton Massachusetts during the peak Spring selling season one of the agents in my office held an open house on a Sunday. The home however, was listed on the prior Wednesday with no showings allowed until the open house. This by the way is the only truly effective means of holding an open house as it sets up the possibility of a frenzy of potentially interested buyers viewing the home at once.

The delay in showings creates pent up demand for the home and the chance for multiple offers. The downside however was great. There were thirty to forty couples who visited the open house during the two hour viewing window. The agent, God bless her, could not possibly watch every individual walking through the home at all times. This unfortunately cost the seller big time, as a $5000 dollar painting was stolen right off the wall! The agent of course had no idea who could have stolen the art work and neither could the police after visiting the home. Good thing for home insurance!

2. Risk of theft – This ties in to security issues, but it deserves its own section. There have been documented cases of people breaking into houses for sale and stealing things, such as in this New York Times article on open houses. Sometimes they do it in unoccupied homes and sometimes they do it in homes that people are still living in. The temptation is too much – they can walk into the open house, see what they want to take and how they can get in, and then they later burglarize the place. Folks this is not just an isolated example – this happens all around the country! An open house is an open invitation to make theft more probable.

3. Unqualified prospects – Have you ever driven through a nice neighborhood and seen an open house – a really nice house – and thought about stopping in to check it out? Most people have at least considered it. There is not really anything wrong with doing so – how often do you get the chance to see how other people live and decorate? The problem is, often the people coming into your open house are doing the same thing. Just stopping in to check things out, not to buy. The ironic thing about this is that Realtors are constantly preaching to homeowners how they will go out of their way to make sure a buyer is qualified to buy their home. Yet when it comes to an open house this line of thinking is thrown out the window. Come on in everybody! As long as you have a pulse you are welcome here.

4. Nosy neighbors – An open house is like a beacon to neighbors curious about your home. They may be great neighbors or not so great neighbors. However good they are to live by, you may not want them wandering around your house. Unfortunately, there is no real way to stop them. Once you open your house, most anyone can walk though the doors. Expect the busy bees stopping by your home to be discussing it with all the rest of the neighbors who failed to show up. Yes this means you need to be doubly certain not to leave your underwear and bra’s hanging around for everyone to see.

5. Lack of one on one attention – Your Realtor may be really motivated to sell your home, but he or she only has the ability to communicate with one set of buyers at a time. This means that if things get busy, there will be a lot of missed opportunities – people that may have been good prospective buyers that never even get to speak to the real estate agent. There is no way for an open house visit to compare to an actual home viewing with your agent. Most people who come by and visit are probably going to want to return at a later date to really check things out if they are serious buyers anyways.

6. Seller competition – Other people selling their homes are likely to stop by and see what you are doing with yours. This only makes sense, especially if they are in a similar neighborhood with a similar home to sell. However, these visitors do you no good. They will simply see what you are doing and take what works for them.

In fact if they look over your home and think it looks pretty darn good they will probably be dropping the price of their home to be more competitive. This is a good example of helping the competition. Most sellers who are competing against you wouldn’t schedule a showing to do the same snooping they would do at an open house.

7. Agent’s ulterior motives – Some agents may be really excited to do an open house and be firmly convinced that it is a valid sales method. However, a lot of agents actually use open houses to meet other clients. All of those unwanted visitors – with the exception of the burglars – are potential clients for the agent.

Your nosy neighbors may want to sell later so the open house is a great place to build rapport with these people. More than anything else the agent will be meeting people who are not qualified to purchase your home but they are buyers none the less. If you are selling a $500,000 home a buyer who can only spend $400,000 is not going to be buying your place. Right? Guess what though – this $400,000 buyer is going to buy a home at that price point somewhere else. The agent holding the open house at your place knows this. This is a prospect for the Realtor. Does it help you in anyway – no it certainly doesn’t. Plenty of agents know that open houses are a good way to look busy while seeking other clients for future work.

8. Rarely results in sales – This is the biggest reason to be wary of an agent that lauds his or her open house practices. The fact is, homes are rarely sold as a result of an open house. According to the National Association of Realtors, the number of homes sold due to an open house is staggeringly low – a measly 2%. NO – you did not read that wrong. This is not a promising number. If fact, it is low enough to make you question the worth of even having an open house.

The Positives of an Open House

After reading about the drawbacks of an open house you are hopefully questioning the validity of why they are important. The fact of the matter is they are clearly not necessary to sell a home. They are an archaic means of marketing a property. Could you get lucky and sell your home at an open house? Anything is possible but if you are planning on it you are setting yourself up for disappointment. From a sellers standpoint there really is only one positive that an open house provides – the ability to set a certain time on a particular day where people are allowed to come and look.

This is beneficial to some sellers who may work out of the home and have a hard time vacating the property during the week. By setting up a day/time in advance some buyers may choose just to come by on the day of the scheduled open house. There are also some homeowners who have moved out of their home prior to selling and could care less about having their weekend interrupted by an open house. For these sellers an agent hanging around their home all Sunday afternoon is perfectly fine. Bang your head against the wall and have a grand ole time!

For those of you who don’t fall into these categories and are convinced you still need to have one make sure you don’t make any of the most common open house mistakes. Be wary of not making your home as presentable as possible. Just like any other showing, your home should sparkle.

Final Thoughts on Open Houses and Real Estate Agents

If you have interviewed a few real estate agents and you are choosing one because open houses are a big part of their marketing plan then you are making a mistake! This clearly should not be the basis for selecting a Realtor to work with. When deciding on which real estate agent to choose look for these qualities instead:

• Has a dominant online presence locally – An agent that appears in competitive local searches understand what’s important for bringing in business.
• Provides exceptional photography – First impressions are everything in real estate sales. You want your home to standout online as a property people want come and view.
• Uses vivid descriptions of your home in all of their marketing – Does the agent take the time to really craft something that captures the essence of your homes best features or did they just slap something together?
• Goes above and beyond with other creative forms of real estate marketing such as video tours, floor plans, feature sheets, improvement lists, etc.
• Clearly has good communications skills – how quickly does the agent call or email you back. I am talking about before you hire them. This will be an indication of things to come if you select them.
• Is honest, trustworthy and doesn’t care where their next sale comes from – What this means is you will always get the best advice from an agent that doesn’t need a sale not one that is dependent on their next commission check.

As you can see the drawbacks far out weigh the benefits when it comes to an open house. The serious buyers looking for a home in your area will be calling to see your place with their agent. Don’t fall for one of the greatest Realtor myths of all time – open houses not are necessary to sell homes!

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