How to find a realtor for a quick sale, successful purchase of an apartment, house or other objects? The responsibilities of intermediaries include not only selecting options, but also checking them, conducting negotiations and much more. An individual approach allows you to create good conditions and minimize risks during transactions. This is why it is so important to choose the right real estate office. The tips given in this article will help you choose a reliable real estate agency in St. Petersburg and other cities, cooperation with which will be not only safe, but profitable.
Need
real estate
agent Choose the best agent
Simple ways to find a good realtor
Real estate agents do not just find sellers or buyers, they accompany the tenant until the transaction is fully completed. Professional realtors also provide assistance in legal and financial matters relating to the project
What documents are needed
Before 2002, realtors required a license to operate. Now all that is needed to open a real estate agency is simply to register a legal entity. For single realtors who are going to work only with citizens and residential properties, an individual entrepreneur will be enough. But if you plan to work with development companies or commercial real estate, you will have to open an LLC. Registration with the tax office will take three days and will require payment of a state fee: 4,000 rubles for an LLC and 800 rubles for an individual entrepreneur.
Once the registration documents are in hand, you will need to open bank account The cost of this service for individual entrepreneurs is 3,000 rubles, for LLCs – 10,000 rubles.
But it is not necessary to join the Guild of Realtors. This is more of an image decision that can increase the status of the realtor in the eyes of the client.
And one more important point at the start: when you decide to open a real estate agency, work out your business plan in detail, otherwise you risk losing all your investments and closing down, as happens every year with thousands of real estate companies throughout Russia.
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Advantages of organizations
To better understand how a real estate agency works, we suggest you familiarize yourself with the list of undeniable advantages of this organization, which is presented below:
- no need to negotiate with the buyer or seller;
- no need to spend a lot of time and money on advertising your real estate;
- you won’t waste time searching for the best deal;
- A lawyer monitors compliance with all legal formalities.
Many novice entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that a real estate agency is just a seller or buyer of houses and apartments, but this is not entirely true. It would be most relevant to compare such an organization with a law firm providing various services, and not with an individual who buys real estate and then resells it at a higher price.
How to rent an office
When registration is completed, you can select an office. First, you need to decide on the customer segment . If these are successful and wealthy people, it is better to choose an office in the city center near the business district. This way, clients will spend a minimum of travel time, and they will also treat the agency as respectable, on the same level as them.
It is better to open an economy class agency in a public place, so that you can easily be reached by public transport, and the sign is visible.
Dmitry Ivanov, director of the real estate agency “New Apartment”: – Previously, if the office was located on the second floor or higher, the number of visitors decreased to almost zero. My friends in 2013, when the market was on the rise, rented an office on the second floor next to the market, bought furniture, hung a huge banner... and for six months not a single person came in from the street! As a result, they closed the company. But good advertising can compensate for a poor office location. People will now go up to the 2-3 floor based on advertising on the Internet.
It is worth paying attention to the area of the office and the number of rooms. It will be strange if the arriving client simply has nowhere to sit, because every piece of the tiny room is lined with tables. A normal person from such an agency would immediately want to run away.
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Rental of property
The question of how real estate agencies for renting apartments work is one of the most popular among entrepreneurs who decide to open their own real estate agency. However, there is nothing complicated about it. The client simply submits an application to the organization indicating the requirements for the housing that he intends to rent. After this, the realtor selects several suitable options from the list of apartments in the database and makes an appointment with the client. Of course, such a service can be provided without an intermediary, but the participation of a professional lawyer completely eliminates the possibility of fraud on the part of either party.
How many and what kind of employees to hire?
Administrative staff
To operate a real estate company you will need an accountant, a personnel officer and a lawyer. At first, an experienced manager can perform all these functions himself, or he can outsource this work to freelancers. Once the agency gets on its feet, you can think about having a full-time accountant, a lawyer and a personnel officer, or even entire departments for each area.
Realtors
The founder of a real estate agency can work alone for the first time, while the client base is small, and the risk of getting into salary debt is high.
Dmitry Ivanov, director of the real estate agency “New Apartment”: – They often do this. Only this is no longer a business, but a craft. And it is impossible to grow into a serious company without creating a team. You need to hire employees as soon as the conditions for this are created: there is traffic to the company, there are calls, there is a database of apartments, and all this needs to be processed. There is a golden rule: it is better to have excess client traffic to the company, some of which is lost, than to have realtors on staff for whom there is not enough work.
Even before opening a real estate agency, you can find freelance agents and entrust them with routine work. They are paid by the piece. Usually this is a percentage of the transaction with the client whom they brought to the company, or a fixed tariff for each action performed, for example, showing an apartment, consulting a client by phone, collecting a package of documents, real estate valuation.
To protect the company, full access to the database and transactions is trusted only to full-time employees , and when selecting them, emphasis should be placed on personal qualities.
Yakov Volkov, CEO of the Active group of companies: – When hiring a specialist, we pay attention not only to his professional potential, but also to his personal qualities. We try to hire people who share our values. We are very demanding about the atmosphere and maintain a culture of mutual trust and respect.
In addition, we have to develop our own training system for realtors. It is necessary because it is extremely rare to find a ready-made specialist on the labor market.
Dmitry Ivanov, director of the real estate agency “New Apartment”: – In order not to waste time on training, you can develop a written program in the form of a book, create several videos with limited access on your YouTube channel, organize a closed group on social networks. The attrition rate is always high - to recruit 2 employees, you need to train ten times as many.
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Results
Cooperation with real estate agencies can significantly simplify the process of conducting various types of transactions.
To choose the most professional and competent real estate agency, you must adhere to the following tips:
- - study all the documents that you sign; if you cannot cope with this task on your own, seek help from a lawyer;
- — if you have any doubts regarding the work of the agency or the transaction being carried out, then study the information again, or consult an independent professional;
- — check the accuracy and reality of documents in government services.
By following the above rules, you will be able to choose a competent agency for yourself and conduct your real estate transaction quickly and profitably.
What else is needed to open an agency?
Technique
At a minimum, it is worth taking care of a computer and an office software package for each realtor on the staff. But if the starting capital is small, you can hire agents with their own laptops.
IP telephony
You need to connect your phone as soon as you open a real estate agency - it’s impossible to imagine the work of realtors without it.
Dmitry Ivanov, director of the real estate agency “New Apartment”: – It is better to register the telephone numbers of employees with the company, so that when they leave, they do not “take away” regular clients who often call familiar numbers. You need to have one city number that will flash everywhere, so that all clients get used to it, so that it is listed in all directories. Therefore, it must be multi-channel and always available.
You can improve your work using IP telephony. Firstly, in it the signal travels over the Internet. Therefore, communication will most likely be cheaper. Secondly, you can set up internal numbers, voice dialing, and forwarding between employees if someone is unavailable. Thirdly, record calls and then listen to them. In addition, you can make calls from any device connected to the Internet. Fourthly, IP telephony can be integrated with a CRM system. Then, when there is an incoming call, the manager will automatically open a client card with a communication history and complete information about previous transactions.
Read on topic It turns out that the integration of a CRM system and IP telephony can increase sales by 227%! We described how this happens in our blog.
Access to multi-listing
This is a system that contains all verified and legally clean real estate properties offered for sale and rent. Multilisting makes it possible to start working in real estate even without an established base of clients and objects. Access to the system is paid, and only the head of the agency receives it - and only after he provides the registration documents of his company and proves that he really is a real estate agent. Once you have access to a multilisting, you can open and close access rights to your employees.
Specialized software
RBC expert Ildar Khusainov believes that insufficient use of CRM systems is the main problem of real estate agencies, which leads to bankruptcy of companies. In second place is the low level of process automation. Therefore, as soon as you open a real estate agency, it is better to immediately implement an industry-specific CRM system for realtors . We’ll tell you what it can do using SalesapCRM as an example:
- Allows you to maintain a unified database of objects so that in one card you can see all the information about the apartment, its owner, the layout diagram, the history of working with it, photographs.
- Creates a PDF presentation of an object in 5 seconds. Just click on the icon directly in the object card, and all the data about it, along with photographs, are formed into a beautiful presentation in PDF format. It can be printed or sent to the client by email without leaving the card.
- It automatically selects objects at the client’s request, and he does not have to wait while the realtor looks for a one-room apartment on the ground floor among thousands of other offers.
- Automates agency business processes: reminds about calls, sends SMS notifications to clients, assigns tasks to employees and controls deadlines for their implementation.
- Draws up documents and letters according to a template: from a commercial proposal to a purchase and sale agreement.
- Prepares analytical reports on the agency's work. For example, it shows the most effective customer sources or how many applications resulted in sales.
- Uploads ads to 213 sites simultaneously. Realtors do not go to each site separately, but send them directly from the system in just 4 clicks. And on websites they are published automatically.
This is how ads are uploaded to real estate websites from SalesapCRM.
We found out how to open a real estate agency and gave step-by-step instructions. Filling out a package of documents, finding an office and hiring staff is not so difficult. It is important to provide clients with quality services and control transaction processes. Automation of routine processes will help you not to miss important things. Evaluate the effectiveness of the SalesapCRM cloud system specifically for your business. Register in the system and test it for free for 7 days.
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Author : Maria Stepanova
Advice from a seasoned businessman
Many of those who open a real estate agency face the same mistake - understanding the agency as an enterprise. This thought immediately begins to dominate over the fact that, after all, a business is being created, the goal of which is always to make money.
They want to do good to their employees, they want to make their brainchild popular, and at the same time they forget one thing - the task of creating any business: the money invested must work and bring income to the owner. Therefore, my advice is: think about your money and your original goal. The real estate agencies we surveyed note: of course, you can get by with the minimum, that is, save on literally everything: renting premises, advertising, etc. We will take the example of a large-scale opening of an Academy of Sciences with all the necessary components. Go…
