Being a real estate agent is one of those coveted professions that allows you complete autonomy. You don’t have regular 9 to 5 office hours, you’re your own boss, you meet interesting people and help make their dreams of finding the perfect home become a reality. That being said, there are pitfalls. It’s inevitable that you will experience a slow season in which the market is dry, the hours may disrupt your home life and without a safety net of funds, you risk having to severely tighten your budget.
With the right real estate marketing tools and strategies, a talented real estate agent stands to make a lot of money. There are, thankfully, some helpful real estate agent tricks to ensure success in the field. Below are seven real estate agent tricks to help you succeed. There are some that border on unethical, but if you’re always honest, you avoid being labeled a cheat or a con artist.
1. Psychological Games
Real estate agents know how to put pressure on a buyer, and there are ways to persuade someone to reconsider walking out the door. The most obvious is applying a little pressure; let the buyer know the house is a hot commodity that only has a short window of availability. Nothing motivates a buyer like a sense of urgency. If you’re uncomfortable with this, make sure you’re actually telling the truth before attempting it.
2. Staging
The old joke about an agent making a home smell like chocolate chip cookies may be a cliche, but there’s some truth behind it. A good agent is a master at orchestrating every inch of a house to be as appealing as possible. Music and interior design play a key role in an open house. Some realtors have used freshly popped popcorn to make the house more enticing.
The key here is to make the open house – essentially an empty shell waiting to be filled – feel lived-in. Occasionally, the opposite is true. One might depersonalize a space so the prospective buyer can envision themselves living there, mentally placing their own furniture around a room.
As for music, you should experiment and attempt different types depending on the house. What you play in a duplex in mid-town will be different than a rustic property in the country.
3. Don’t Tell Them It’s Haunted
You’ve all seen movies where the dishonest realtor forgets to mention spooky happenings in a home, leading to plenty of scares for the new owners. The truth is, a realtor simply isn’t allowed to stigmatize a property, only to disclose any material defects. If ever a particular house goes up for sale in Amityville, you don’t have to worry about notifying the buyer.
4. Be Ready To Be On Call 24/7
Believe it or not, a good real estate agent is part salesman and part therapist. You’ll have to manage late night calls from nervous buyers, and it’s your job to comfort them. Brushing up on a bit of psychology would be wise. You’ll also often have to manage a compromise between couples at odds with what their looking for in a home. In a way, having a degree in psychology may be the best training for the job.
You will no doubt see the extremes of human emotion. Prepare yourself as best you can to manage expectations, negotiate with a squabbling couple and calm the nerves of a buyer who believes your only job is to bamboozle them.
5. Be Creative With Language
One of the best real estate agent tricks is demonstrating a creative flair with your language. This is another one often joked about in movies, but it can be extremely helpful in finalizing a sale. “Small” is “Cozy”. “Old” is “Rustic”. It’s a subtle manipulation, but it can make all the difference. Communicating through simple wordplay can make all the difference.
6. Have Referrals At the Ready
When a buyer is looking at a home, they aren’t just considering one decision that will change their lives, but many. It would behoove you to have a list of referrals of reliable mortgage brokers, interior designers and home inspectors. The more well connected you are in the industry, not only will it help the buyer trust you, but those referrals could also result in symbiotic relationships.
7. Become an Amateur Photographer
To be a successful agent, you wear many hats. One thing that can turn off a prospective buyer before even walking in the door are unflattering pictures of a property online. Good photography isn’t hard, and there are dozens of online articles and youtube videos that can teach about lighting and composition. The better a property looks, the more clients will be at the doorstep.
