Agents: Attracting Business to You Every Time You Leave the House.

Agents: Attracting Business to You Every Time You Leave the House

Most real estate prospecting strategies focus on the pursuit of business, or going out there and actively looking for targets to prospect. Fair enough.

But you can also generate a significant amount of business for yourself using attraction-based strategies that don’t require you to pursue anyone. Imagine, a business where good prospects come to you looking for help. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

If you love being a real estate agent and you know your market, you can attract business left and right, as long as you’re out there in the world with your antenna up and a smile on your face. You don’t need to shove your business card at everyone you meet, or dazzle them with a fantastic elevator speech. If your enthusiasm and expertise shine through in your casual conversations, the people you know and the people you meet will want to do business with you, if they have business to do.

The trick to an attraction-based real estate business is to always be doing a couple of things.

First, always be mastering your market. The more intelligently you can speak about the local real estate market, the more magnetic you’ll be when you’re talking to people. For example, when you’re invited to a party, try to check out the market in the area of the party ahead of time. That way when you’re mingling at the party and real estate comes up, you can talk about “that house down the block that’s been on the market for 9 months,” and you’ll know why it hasn’t sold. You’ll also know about the one around the corner that just came on the market last week. Even if you don’t use the knowledge you obtained during your pre-party previewing, karma seems to work with you and will put you in a position to use it soon.

Seriously, a real estate agent who knows his market exudes a confidence that will draw people to him.

Second, you should always be looking for opportunities to put your smiling face and your market expertise in front of other people. Now when I say this, I don’t mean that you should make a nuisance out of yourself in public on a regular basis. Do that and you might find yourself avoided. Instead, open up room in your calendar for casual socializing. Accept invitations you might normally decline. Make a concerted effort to go to lunch with friends two or three times a week. Pick up the phone to ask a friend a question instead of shooting off an email. Go into the bank instead of through the drive-thru lane.

Every single person you meet every single day has the potential to bring you a paycheck. And you have no idea who that person will be. It could be your mailman, your hairdresser, or your dog-sitter. It could be the lady you sat next to at the nail salon. Every time you venture out into the world with your antenna up and a smile on your face, you could meet your next biggest client.

But, that probably won’t happen if when you venture out into the world you don’t come across to people as someone who loves and is good at their job. And that’s not the impression you leave when you’re always in sales-pitch mode. So, leave the sales pitch at home, focus on being a great real estate agent who loves her job and knows her market and stays in touch with the people she knows without ever pestering them for business and referrals. I think you’ll find that you’ll attract far more business than you have in the past, and have a heck of a lot more fun doing it.

Source: realty times / Jennifer Allan

Home Builders Are Feeling More Optimistic.

Builders Are Feeling More Optimistic

Signs are improving in the new-home market and builders are feeling more optimistic about where the real estate market is heading, after coming off last year’s worst year on record for new home construction.

For the fifth consecutive month, builders confidence in the single-family home market increased in February, reaching its highest level in four years.

“Builders confidence has doubled since September,” says Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders. “Given the recent improvements in new home starts and the increasing number of markets included in the NAHB/First American Improving Market Index, this consistency suggests that the housing market is moving toward more sustainable growth.”

While the jumps in builders confidence have been an encouraging sign for the industry, housing experts warn that confidence is still historically low, and that foreclosures, low appraisals, and more stringent credit standards continue to hamper the new-home market’s full recovery.

Could the Mortgage Deal Lead to a Jump in Foreclosures?

Could the Mortgage Deal Lead to a Jump in Foreclosures?

A $25 billion mortgage settlement announced between major banks and state and government officials is supposed to bring aid to troubled home owners, but it could also bring a wave of new foreclosures, CNN Money reports.

During the yearlong negotiations, some banks slowed down repossessing homes, and now they may have a backlog of troubled loans on the books — loans that can’t be saved by the deal’s aid on refinancing or mortgage principal reduction.

“The bottom line is that 2012 will see a lot of foreclosures that should have taken place in 2011 and didn’t,” Rick Sharga, executive vice president for Carrington Holdings, told CNNMoney.

Last year, foreclosure filings dropped 34 percent. This year, Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac, estimates that new foreclosure filings will increase to between 2.2 million and 2.5 million compared to last year’s 1.9 million filings in 2011.

The mortgage deal is aimed at helping home owners avoid foreclosure. One million struggling home owners may see their mortgage principal reduced as part of the deal. But the home owners must be able to afford new, lower payments. The banks will have no choice but to foreclose on home owners who stop making payments altogether or cannot afford a new payment structure on their loan.

But the spike in the backlog of foreclosures may not be all bad for the housing market, experts say.

“The market needs to clear out a lot of the distressed inventory before prices start to come back,” Sharga said. There are more than 3 million home owners seriously delinquent on their mortgage or in foreclosure currently.

The five banks part of the settlement are Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial.

Source: “Mortgage Deal Means More Foreclosures,” CNNMoney (Feb. 10, 2012)