I just had a realtor call me all freaked out. She had a seller call and say they were not going to their closing because their Hud sheet showed $17,000 net instead of the $21,000 net she had expected; further she was not going to pay any realtor's fee. Needless to say this realtor was NOT happy. This had been a long, drawn out sale, which included this seller buying a new home from the same realtors and getting a discount on that home because she was selling with them also. Now she was threatening not to come to closing at all.
At the same time, I too had a complaint about a client and was sharing my problem. So just while thinking about blogging, I thought, Why not share what we do all day so people know how we earn our money!!
How to get started seemed the big problem. Do I start with one particular event, like a listing, or do I cover my day from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Let's just look at a few regular days.
But first, let's go over the $$$ thing. A realtor usually gets zero if someone doesn't buy a house from them or if the realtor doesn't sell a listing. Would you take a job like that; that means you might work 18 hours with one set of customers and then they find a realtor at an open house they like, and switch. The fact you've spent time and gas on them and have earned nothing financially, doesn't bother them. My husband often says, "Oh, the life of a realtor." You could market a house for 4 months, spend hundreds of dollars on advertising, lots of money on open houses and gas and flyers, etc., and the house not sell because the seller won't lower the price to what the market will pay.
Then another misconception is that the realtor gets 6%. Every 2 party sale is split 4 ways. Realtor A represents a seller who sells a house for $100,000. Realtor B represents the buyer. The fee is $6,000. You then give Realtor A $3,000; and Realtor B $3000 and then they split with their broker. So the person who marketed your house for months, being at your beck and call, dropping everything to show your house at a moment's notice, putting her own family on hold, gets $1,500, and if it took four months to get it sold, she made less than $400 a month. Would you work for that salary, knowing it's not a proven thing. That house may not sell no matter how good the marketing, price and location, because the right person just doesn't come along, but that realtor gets nothing for their time and expense.
So why would a person take such a job? Because they enjoy real estate, people, helping people reach a dream, the unpredictability and excitement of each day being different.
So now it's time to take you through a realtor's typical day. Sorry, I can't. The very thing that makes the job interesting, the unpredictability makes it to where there are no typical days. Now there are some routines that exist, like open houses being on certain days at certain times, training and tour days, but all in all each day is unique and different.
One Saturday I gased up my car, went by the office and made a folder of things to do in Amarillo, including a current map, and then I picked up a lady I'd never met at 10 a.m. She had moved to Amarillo and used a different realtor when she bought a house; however, her company has a contract with a relocation firm that my company services, and she was entitled to a tour of the Amarillo area. I was paid a small fee to take her on a 4 hour tour of Amarillo. She wanted to see things she could do with her small children. So we went to the 3 parks in Amarillo, the zoo, amusement park, 2 libraries, shopping centers and malls, eating areas, post offices, golf courses and disk golf course, and then we still had time so I took her out to Lake Tanglewood. I dropped her off at 2 p.m. at her doorstep, went back to my office, and got another folder.
I had an appointment at 2:30 to meet some out-of-town people who I had met at an open house. I'd been communicating by email with them, sending them listings that met their criteria, and they had come up with a list of 20 listings to visit. The previous afternoon I had run off all the listings, called all the other realtors and set up appointments, run off the Potter Randall Appraisal sheets on each listing, and now I fixed them a folder, put in a notepad and pen so we could keep notes. They met me on my parking lot, we got in my car, and the tour began. We saw 15 houses during that afternoon and evening, stopping for about 30 minutes to get a Wendy's hamburger. We didn't nail down one particular house, but several were put into the running. We named each house by a particular feature that set it a part and rated it on a scale of 1-10. (Example: one was the blue kitchen, and one was the swimming pool house) They didn't share those ratings with each other, but I did find out later that he had several 8's and they were newer homes; and she only had a couple of 8's and they were older large homes that needed remodelling. They left to go back home at 9 p.m. planning to put their home on the market, and we'll keep in touch.
Later the next week I found a house that seemed to be like the ones she had rated 8, a new listing at a fantastic price. So I sent her a note by email. It turned out she was in town at that moment, saw the email on her phone, and called me to show her the house.
I had had an open house that Sunday after I showed them the 15 homes. A wonderful carpet store had loaned me an expensive silk rug to place in my house I was sitting at. So I had gone by the house, saw the carpet was still in the home, and had run by the store to see about getting them to pick the rug up. When I came out of the house, I got the call from the lady to show her the new listing I had just sent her the email about.
On Sunday night after I had the open house, I had gone to a friend's home and listed her house, measured all the rooms, and made plans to show her a condo the next days. On Monday I went back to her house and took pictures, put the house pictures into mls, did the paperwork for the secretary to get the property listed, and tried to make arrangements to get a professional photographer to do my virtual tour. After 5 I showed her 2 condos. On Tuesday I had decided to do the virtual tour myself. I atttended a class for 2 hours and then spent the afternoon doing the virtual tour, getting it on multiple websites, sending it out to various people.
On Wednesday my office went on tour of all the new listings, from 9:30 to 11:30, after having a guest speaker at our Wednesday morning sales meeting. At 11:30 we got back from the tour, and I went to a class for 2 hours about Contracts and Closings. After that I prepared mailouts about the new listing to send to the neighbors letting them know the house was on the market. I did my social media stuff: twitters, blogs, facebook.....as you can see, no two days are the same.
During those 5 days did I make any money? No, but was preparing the way for it - except the tour, I did get paid for that. However, on Thursday, I had a closing on a sale I made back in June on a listing I had listed in November. So 8 months of marketing resulted in a paycheck. That is how it is. No set paydays, no hourly wage, and it can take months to see any results from your work. But when all is said and done, a person who chooses to do this job knows about this aspect of the job, but they get such joy from seeing someone's face light up when they see "that perfect house" and when "the contract is accepted" that it is worth it. Plus it keeps life exciting. I love what I do. I love the fact I can stop and go get my 88 year old mom and take her to eat with me or sit in an open house with me. I love that I can take off and see my grandkids once a month and not have to have a bosses' permission. I love the people I meet, the people in my office, and even the other realtors who are my competitors but also who work with me to make 'deals" work. All in all, it's a emotional job, an exciting job, and one I love.
No comments:
Post a Comment