A real estate agent is who and what he does

Recently, people have entrusted many issues related to real estate to professionals who have knowledge and skills in this field. In this article we will talk in detail about such a specialty as a real estate agent - who is he?
This information will be useful not only for children, but also for adults, because it is never too late to change your field of activity.

Let’s take the exact definition of profession from Wikipedia and translate it into a language accessible to the average person.

Definition

Recently, a huge number of transactions in various directions have been carried out in the real estate market, such as purchase and sale, rent, donation, and so on.

Based on this, we conclude that a real estate agent (realtor) is a specially trained specialist with developed communication skills who helps clients in concluding various contracts, searching for clients or premises for residential and non-residential purposes, and also provides consultations.

Thanks to this specialist, clients not only solve some problems and free up personal time, but also avoid mistakes and deception in transactions.

Why is the real estate market overcrowded with real estate agencies?

It is believed that the real estate business is easy money. The supply market is full, the city is being actively developed, and there are more and more sellers and developers. So it seems to novice realtors that if they open their own business, the money will flow like a river. Most of the real estate agencies we surveyed claim that in the modern real estate market, a newcomer will have a very difficult time. Why? Let's look at the path a novice owner (founder) or director of a real estate agency must take from opening a company from scratch to making a profit. Let's take the following as the initial situation. A businessman with no experience in the real estate field wants to open his own or LLC.

What does a real estate agent do?

Let's now take a closer look at what the responsibilities of a real estate agent are:

Assistance in selling real estate. To do this, the specialist enters into a service agreement with the client and begins organizing activities for the speedy sale of the property. He takes photographs, places advertisements on websites, hangs banners, shows the premises and carries out the transaction procedure.
Assistance in purchasing real estate. Finds out the client’s wishes and needs, demonstrates the premises, and helps in concluding a deal.
Assistance with renting real estate. The same thing happens here, but a lease agreement is concluded.
Checks real estate for legal purity.
Provides consultations in the field of real estate.

Agency corporate culture

Active investments are far from a guarantee of success. A well-formed, well-coordinated team plays a significant role. Even if you managed to assemble a team of high-quality realtors, do not forget that retaining them is not so easy.

In the real estate business, as in any other, there are common cases when key specialists either leave for a competitor or start their own business. Almost 80% of specialists leave for competitors due to the fact that the company’s management simply does not fulfill its promises, for example, the specialist was not paid the promised increased fee for a successful deal.

It’s another matter when a realtor decided to leave the company in order to open his own business. It is very difficult to retain such a specialist in the company: one of the possible solutions is to promote him in his position. In addition, in order to retain a professional in the company, it is necessary to develop a corporate culture that provides for collegial decision-making and a democratic atmosphere.

Qualities a realtor should have

This profession is quite specific, so it is not suitable for everyone, but only for those people who have the following set of qualities:

Well delivered speech . Clients prefer to see a competent specialist with excellent diction. This inspires trust and recognition of professionalism.
High level of communication . A realtor does not work for a salary, but for a percentage of closed transactions. From this we can conclude that the ability to win over potential clients makes them real, generating financial income.
Excellent memory . A real estate agent must remember as much information as possible not only for each property, but also remember clients, their names and psychotypes. Thanks to this, the percentage of successful transactions increases.
Presentable appearance . It's no secret that people who are not only literate, but also have external rigor and attractiveness attract people. Human psychology is designed in such a way that we trust beautiful people.

What problems await a novice real estate agency owner?

As large agencies warn newcomers, entering this area of business will not be easy. Difficulties await both in the struggle for a client in a highly competitive market, and from government agencies. Comment from the director of the Yort Academy, Dina Moiseevna Zhuravleva, more than 17 years in the Kazan market: “In the past, setting up a real estate agency was much more difficult than it is now. We started working even before privatization and remember how many procedures a beginner NA had to go through. And now anyone and everyone can start their own company.

It seems to everyone that all they have to do is open an office, advertise, and money will pour in from all sides. This is, of course, an illusion. Now there are a lot of different private entrepreneurs and single realtors, and their number is growing every day. This is bad for the consumer, since the number of so-called black brokers is increasing, and no one is immune from unfair treatment. And such realtors easily go unpunished.

However, before, when the Registration Chamber did not exist, there were much more loopholes for unscrupulous realtors. It happened that one apartment was sold several times at the same time, and then several owners dealt with the situation. Now this is unacceptable. However, there are loopholes in registering participation in shared construction.”

Egorov Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich, director of the Avangard-Realt Academy of Sciences, also noted relations with government agencies as one of the major problems of a start-up real estate agency: “Recently, the market has become tougher, a lot of agencies are opening and leaving the fight. Control by government agencies, in particular the tax service, has been tightened. This is due to the development of black brokerage.

There is such a subtle point: it is difficult for a new AN to maintain an official staff of realtors until they have gained a sufficient client base. Therefore, many start-up agencies work in “black” and “gray” ways, and the tax service can easily shut down such an agency. And for effective development, the real estate market must be as clean as possible.”

Indeed, many agencies now exist due to high staff turnover. Realtors come to the agency and leave after a month or two, without receiving any return from their work, and the company is slowly building up a client base. It goes without saying how dishonest this form of activity is and, in principle, ineffective.

Competent selection of the team is noted as one of the difficult tasks for a newly appointed director. As already noted, the amount of agency profit directly depends on the experience and talent of the realtor. The agency simply needs ace realtors, otherwise the agency most likely will not make a profit for several months.

A comment on this is given by the director of Regional Real Estate Agency - Kazan LLC, Galiullina Gulnaz Raifovna: “Even if a realtor has experience and an established client base, it will be difficult for him to competently select a team - a working team that will generate income. And a manager without experience has no place at all on the Kazan market. Even if he hires specialists, the employees themselves could force him out of business.”

All these problems are very familiar to any agency owner. However, of course, the main headache for the new agency is the fight against competition. The real estate market is oversaturated, there are too many sellers. According to experts, there are 4-5 apartments per buyer.

This excess of supply over demand against the backdrop of a constant increase in housing prices and tightening mortgage conditions in Kazan led to stagnation in the real estate market of Kazan. This fact is noted by the agencies we surveyed. “In such a stagnant period, a new Academy of Sciences will need a large financial reserve for development. If I were now thinking of opening my own agency from scratch, I probably would hardly have decided to do so,” noted Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich Egorov, director of the Avangard-Realt Academy of Sciences.

Pros and cons of the profession

And now about the most interesting thing, about what can influence acceptance in favor of a profession or against it. Namely, about the pros and cons of working in real estate.

Let's start the analysis with a list of positive aspects:

There is no need to study for a long time and receive an expensive education;
There are no age or gender restrictions;
Flexible work schedule;
There is no need to constantly be in the office;
With the right approach, a high level of financial reward

Flaws:

Not everyone can overcome the barrier of active communication with potential clients and resist multiple refusals;
There is no wage rate. You may not have material rewards for a long time.
High level of competition.

What does promotion consist of?

Now you will “plunge” into the work process of a specialist who launches real estate advertising.

Market research

Perhaps not a single new business is complete without market research. What exactly do marketers pay attention to when they sit down to study the state of the real estate market?

Marketing market research includes both the study and collection of various information and statistics, as well as communication with experts (market participants).

Let’s say we want to find out the price situation on the market so that a sales specialist can at any time determine the average cost of an object for sale or select suitable housing for a client. To analyze this indicator, a marketer needs to study the average prices for a certain period from closed transactions on primary and secondary properties, distinguish them by region, type of object and other points.

In addition, it would be useful for specialists to find out the state of the market, the situation with supply and demand, purchasing power, the economic situation in the country, as well as the liquidity of objects. On the portal of the Russian Guild of Realtors you can find a whole article about market research with a detailed action plan.

Market research includes not only analysis of the current situation, but also forecasting of upcoming changes. To do this, you need to have direct contact with lawyers, mortgage brokers, banks, realtors and other specialists. Changes in rates, the law, the mechanism of work of government agencies - it is better to learn about all this from professionals.

Almost all the necessary basis for research can be provided by:

a) realtors;

b) lawyers and mortgage holders;

c) transaction statistics.

Realtors will provide feedback, news and experience from the front lines. This information will provide insight into audience sentiments and trends. In addition, these stories will be useful to your SMM specialist for posts on social networks.

Lawyers and mortgage holders can provide news on possible changes in legislation and provide fresh analysis of current events from a specialist perspective. Predicting accurately by yourself by reading the law is not very effective. Sometimes our theory and practice diverge too much.

Let's go back to statistics, because no matter what changes, revives or dies, statistics will reflect the real situation. It will show what is happening in the market at the moment and what trend is visible in this. Therefore, specialists need to keep as detailed statistics as possible, especially since there are now many opportunities for this in the form of convenient services and programs.

Each company has its own rules for collecting statistics. In some places this is done exclusively by a marketer, and in others – specialists from various departments. For example, a mortgage broker himself collects statistics on transactions involving borrowed funds; the head of the sales department can provide statistics on sold objects. But in any case, all of it needs to be transferred to the marketer so that he can use this information for further promotion of the company or objects.

Try to get as much statistical data as possible not only from your tools (agency statistics, advertising statistics), but also from partners and competitors. Yes, you need to be interested in your competitors. The real estate community is tightly knit, and companies are not too different from each other.

When I worked at a real estate agency, I was also responsible for collecting statistics on properties, the number of calls, the number of sales, prices, and so on. This kind of information really shows a lot. For example, thanks to the statistics I collected, the head of the sales department always knew who received fewer calls on objects (later an automatic system was set up), and then they worked together to correct the errors.

There is nothing complicated or useless about collecting. You will be able to influence a huge number of aspects in the process of work. This needs to be understood.

Thanks to the Dom.RF study, it became known that prices for new buildings have increased since the beginning of the year by an average of 10.5% throughout Russia. This is all due to the increased demand for the purchase of this type of real estate due to the introduction of preferential mortgages in the amount of 6.5%. If marketers sensed the increase in demand and prices in time, they could create an excellent advertising campaign. Just imagine: a low rate, a rapid rise in prices and a quick redemption - it seems that three ideal factors have come together here to attract customers.

Statistics will always be of help. Let's talk about advertising and promotion next.

Launch of advertising

Promotion in real estate can be divided into two types: advertising of a company or personal brand (to declare or remind about yourself, launch a product, service, promotion, etc.) and advertising of the property. Each type of advertising involves working with specific audience segments. Some are waiting for more favorable conditions, some are already looking for an apartment with all their might, and some simply like to study useful information.

Target audience: why know your client

To promote in the real estate industry, you can use SEO optimization, targeted and contextual advertising. SEO in real estate works worse than in most other areas: large ad aggregator sites spend huge budgets on promotion in this way, so it is almost impossible to overtake them in search results. Therefore, advertising is used to improve visibility.

Next, we will look at more detailed examples of launching advertising campaigns.

Advertising a company or personal brand

Let's start by analyzing the first type of advertising - reminders about ourselves, i.e. we launch advertising that talks about how good, fast, profitable we are, and about what events and news have happened. It is aimed at those who are looking for a real estate agency or realtor for further work. In this type of advertising, any means are good. Both targeting and advertising with a blogger on social networks are suitable for us.

Don’t confuse “make yourself known” advertising with “remind yourself” advertising. In the second option, you will need minimal investment, and the content may include news from specialists, profitable offers, events, and so on - that is, something that may be of interest to your audience in terms of information and benefits. But making a name for yourself when entering the market requires large investments, a cool advertising campaign and an equally cool team of specialists.

Warm up We choose relatively inexpensive or even free tools. Posts and stories, as well as a minimum advertising budget. If you wish, you can meet the amount of up to 10,000 rubles. In case of warming up before launching a new product or event, the budget can be increased by ~2 times in the short term.

Launching an advertisement about a new offer, product, or promotion will require more careful work and a larger budget. For example, the promotion you offer is valid for only a month, so you need to set up your advertising in such a way that it reaches the people you need as much as possible. This is where targeting, of course, comes to the rescue. But a lot also depends on the wording of the proposal.

What is targeted advertising: a complete guide for beginners

The headline should be so enticing that the potential client has no choice but to click on the “Learn More” button. I offer a few examples that, in my opinion, do a good job of attracting users’ attention:

Examples of good headlines

With the help of advertising, you can promote not only the brand or object itself, but also services (mortgage, lawyer, etc.).

Promotion through advertising in highly competitive topics is a very difficult task. If you have little experience, there is a risk of simply wasting your advertising budget and not receiving a single application. TexTerra specialists will help you launch an effective advertising campaign - leave a request for a consultation.

Advertising of the object

Advertising an object begins not when you launch an advertising campaign on it, but when it is uploaded to specialized sites. The fact is that even if there is no promotion set up for a product, posting it online is already considered a kind of advertising.

Let's say you are responsible for placing objects on the network (each agency/realtor has its own work scheme). The realtor brings you the property, its characteristics and other points, and you must upload it to where it will be advertised. There are a huge number of such places on the Internet, and they can be divided into the following groups:

Ad aggregator sites or applications - “Avito”, “Domklik”, “N1”, “Cyan”, “Yula”, “Domofond”, “Yandex.Real Estate”, “From Hand to Hand”, etc.

Social networks - many companies and individual realtors create so-called catalogs on social networks, since a large number of people search for real estate on social networks. The most suitable ones here are Instagram, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, VKontakte.

Personal website – don’t forget about your personal website (agency website), which must have a catalog. This is exactly what you will need for advertising through targeting.

From the already mentioned Mail.ru Group study, it became known that specialists began to more often prefer advertising objects on social networks and on specialized platforms. The video format has the fastest growth in usage. Here is one example video:

In the case of a huge flow of advertisements, it will simply be impossible to load all objects on all sites. Let's say you have five sites where you need to load 50 objects (per site). Manually adding objects will take a lot of time. And you need to constantly monitor the ads: change the price somewhere, remove something, add something.

For convenient placement of advertisements, CRM systems have been invented - programs designed to automate work with clients and within the company. You can upload an ad into such a system once and duplicate it on all the platforms you need. Any changes will also be displayed everywhere. Convenient and practical. Such programs include YUcrm, HomeCRM, BazisCRM, Real Estate CRM, etc.

We know how to implement CRM with minimal stress for employees. If you want to automate the work of your sales department, contact TexTerra.

Don't take in quantity. Placing a large number of objects on several sites will “eat up” the budget every month, while some sites, I will not name out loud, practically do not receive applications.

You will need to post everything manually on social networks. But in order not to do this from your phone every time, there are special auto-posting sites for PCs through which you can easily publish any object. Among the most famous ones, I would suggest trying SMMplanner, Amplifer, NovaPress.

As for the description of the object, it is necessary to indicate as many characteristics of the product as possible so as not to irritate the client. The description text should not be too large or artistic. People don't like to read a lot. They need specifics. The photo is also of great importance. The clearer the better. Just don't use filters, they can embellish the photo too much. The apartment in the photographs should be as presentable as possible, but you should not mislead potential clients.

Ways to promote an object

Well, the ads are loaded, but the feedback is not very encouraging. Then it’s worth making an effort to promote the objects. In this case, you can consider three options:

Targeted advertising for a specific object. Most often, this method of promotion is used on social networks. Marketers or SMM specialists can set up advertising for a specific object. This is done rarely and only if the property needs to be sold urgently. Targeting a specific object outside the social network is done even less often.
Targeted advertising on a catalog of objects. But this method of promotion can be found much more often. It can be considered a large-scale advertising campaign, especially if the catalog is on the official website. The main thing is to set everything up correctly. The results of a study from Mail.ru Group show that the most popular criteria for reaching an interested audience are age and geotargeting, with targeting by interests in third place.

Paid promotion on advertising platforms. The most popular way to promote a specific object. You pay the site, and it shows the property in the top or in a specially designated block. This is a very effective method, but you need to understand that not every site is suitable for a specific type of real estate and region. Everything is learned through experience.

1) Submission to several large ad aggregators is required.

2) You need to follow all advertisements.

3) Aggregators offer discounts on packages of several advertisements.

4) Each aggregator constantly changes its publication conditions and prices, not in favor of those who post them.

5) Aggregators have a lot of conditions that cannot be violated.

How much does it cost to place an object?

The price of listing an object on aggregator sites varies. Many agents and companies have package placements on sites - this is very profitable for publishing a large number of advertisements.

For example, judging by the price list “N1”, the cost of placing one advertisement for sale can vary from 320 rubles. to the minimum possible (less than 100 rubles). The more ads in the package, the lower the cost per object. The package may include not only paid placements, but also various types of promotion.

At the Cyan site, tariffs depend on the region, as well as on the type of object. For example, in Moscow, the minimum cost of listing one property for sale is 540 rubles. per month, when in Kemerovo you don’t have to pay at all for a single placement. The price of promotion also depends on the region.

The cost of posting rental advertisements on most sites is usually several times lower than for sale advertisements. Again, the larger the package, the lower the unit cost.

Price per call

Contact means any way a client communicates with you through a call, message, comment or personal meeting. According to a study from CoMagic, among other types of calls, calls take a leading position, dominating in all classes of housing, regardless of region. For any class of housing, calls range from 67% to 90% of the total number of calls.

The circulation price indicator allows you to determine how rationally the funds used to promote objects are spent. This value is calculated using the formula: total cost of the advertising campaign/number of hits. Accordingly, the lower the number, the more profitable. Then they look at how many of these requests were taken into account, and how many left without being assigned to the company/realtor.

In statistics, only the first requests are usually considered, i.e. calls from the same number to the same object are not taken into account. If a client is lost at the first contact stage, management tries to improve the quality of call processing, attention to detail and the individual needs of customers.

People often confuse two indicators – the cost of circulation and the cost of attracting one client. They talk about the second when the client has already been hired. This indicator is also calculated based on the number of requests.

In the segment of regular transactions, the price per transaction can be about 50 rubles. In the premium segment - from 500 to 2,000 rubles. In the commercial segment - from 2,000 rubles and more. Depends heavily on the object.

Types of real estate

Each market participant has its own real estate segmentation. For example, realtors/agencies primarily divide it into rental and purchase/sale. Rentals can then be divided into residential, commercial, etc. Residential properties for sale/purchase are first divided into primary and secondary housing, and then can be filtered straight down to the floor number.

For developers, there is a slightly different segmentation system. First of all, they work with the primary market, as they erect buildings, and with purchase/sale. The construction class system is also taken into account.

The company's assortment includes economy, comfort and premium real estate. Each of these segments requires a separate approach and its own marketing strategy.

When working as a marketer with different types of real estate, I realized that there are both easy objects and the most complex ones. There is less effort put into rentals and apartments from developers.

Renting is the easiest way to put it on stream. You can create template algorithms for similar objects, use ready-made material, etc. The situation is approximately similar with the developer’s apartments. There, the developer himself undertakes marketing. The agency’s marketers can only provide a simple, understandable and, most importantly, honest audit/comparison of various residential complexes.

But expensive country or commercial real estate will require a lot of effort from both marketers and realtors.

The more expensive the object, the more, longer and better quality advertising needs to be done. Country real estate is sold on average within two years. That is, the most advertising funds are spent on this type of real estate. The worse the condition of the apartment, the more effort needs to be made to sell it and present it in a visual form.

Commercial real estate has settled at the top of this pyramid. There are more than enough difficulties with it for the marketing department. And these are not creative riddles in the spirit of “How to create a need in a client and curb it?” or “How to make this both cool and reliable?”, but a simple routine. If you have a cataloged database and a mailing tool, this work becomes at least a little easier, but still not more interesting. Unfortunately, overly original ideas here have shown their low effectiveness. The only thing that somehow justified itself was to write a business plan for each commercial property.

Landing pages

Most likely, you have repeatedly encountered landing pages - one-page sites for collecting contact information of potential clients. The real estate market also uses a similar method of collecting a client base. The client can apply both for a specific type of real estate or residential complex, and for a specific service.

Experts say that this is a good way to attract customers, but sometimes it can be very expensive due to advertising.

We only have a landing page for individual mortgage brokerage and lawyer services. My personal record here is 16 applications priced at 5,000 rubles, of which 8 were converted into a deal. This is approximately 200,000 rubles, which was quite significant for a young agency at that time. Of course, much better can be done, this is just an example.

Preparation of contract

An agreement serves as confirmation of the agreements between the buyer and seller. The purchase and sale agreement can be drawn up directly by the realtor. In the current legislation of the Russian Federation there are no restrictions on who exactly can prepare a document. The main thing is that he is legally competent. Both a realtor on the buyer’s side and on the seller’s side can prepare the contract.

There is also an option for agreements between the parties, such as drawing up a deposit agreement. On its basis, the seller undertakes not to sell the apartment to other persons, since he receives part of the amount for the housing from the buyer. This document is developed by a realtor. Most often, the agency already has a standard version of the contract, which changes depending on the individual characteristics of the transaction.

Real estate agency business plan (financial part)

Rent of premises - from 14-15 thousand rubles.
Equipment – from 60-80 thousand rubles.
Software (1C, etc.) ~ 30 thousand rubles.
Advertising – from 4-15 thousand rubles. per month.

Remuneration for agents is set on a piece-rate basis. The remuneration amount can be 30-60% of the transaction commission. Remuneration for the manager, accountant, and cleaner is a fixed salary. Utility bills, telephone payments and other expenses - from 6 thousand rubles.

Income. The average price for real estate services is 3-6% of the transaction amount. The profit of a company with 5 people can be about 200 thousand rubles. Profitability largely depends on the amount of investment and the size of the business; the average is 25%. Payback – from 3-6 months.