Dare to Change Things!
Make no mistake; This working from home as a real estate agent has not arisen as a result of the Corona Virus. Many real estate agents have worked from home for many years; because it is simply more profitable, more comfortable and allows you to reach your goals sooner.
Some of those real estate agents who started working from home, today have an office, (not a commercial premises at street level, because that is already obsolete), in which a secretary, an online marketing specialist and several commercials work.
They have managed to create a profitable business, because they started working from home.
But can a real estate agent do his work from home well? Yes, and sell more properties than others who work from an office at street level or work for a real estate agency.
I am a witness to it. I am proud to have several students, (I wish there were more), whom I have helped create a profitable and scalable real estate business from home.
After a few months of adjusting to her new situation, she decided to become a real estate agent. Today, 5 years later she owns a real estate agency with 4 agents. 2 years ago, in 2018, she generated more than $ 130,000 in profits. Today you go to know how much invoice.
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With a PC that she desperately needed to change, with a payment card mobile phone, not knowing what marketing was, and without a website, she sold her first apartment in 2 months, which brought in more than $ 3,200. Dollars.
I'm not going to bore you with success stories from some of my students who started in this sector working from home, following a good business plan adapted to their situation, a website that is their virtual office and making sales every month.
Well, yes, I would like to tell you the story of John in the Dominican Republic, who at age 45 left Venezuela and since he couldn't get a job, he decided to dedicate himself to “selling houses” (his words about him); to then pass the wonderful world of e-commerce once he discovered something called “Facebook”. And teleworking.
He worked as a real estate agent for 3-4 months, he sold only 1 “house” during this time, because most of the time he spent on the internet learning online marketing and earning some “little money”. The man, who had worked as a commercial for many years in Valencia, was fascinated by the number of business opportunities that could be carried out with the internet.
A couple of Christmases ago we spoke on Skype and John told me that he had repatriated his entire family to the Dominican Republic and now he was living comfortably well. Not just selling "houses", but with affiliate marketing that brought him very good profits per month.
He had discovered that real estate was not for him; that his thing was telecommuting or working from home selling digital products through platforms such as Clikbank or Hotmart.
How Working From Home Has Made the Real Estate Agent More Efficient.
It is time for real estate agencies to make it easier for their commercials to work from home and train them to be more productive in this environment.
The real estate agency in any country is being redefined thanks to the Corona Virus Pandemic that we are suffering. Working from home is not as unproductive as it was once perceived, it is only necessary to provide real estate agents with the necessary tools to do their job well.
What does a real estate agency need a place at street level? Not necessarily. This commercial approach is changing, because it is usually more profitable to have the business on the 5th floor, than to have a real estate agency at street level.
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This is not always the case, but many real estate agencies could make the transition without losing clients and gain a lot from this change. This approach becomes clearer to understand with the implementation of teleworking in a real estate agency.
Not all agencies would benefit from leaving their presence at street level for a large office in a building, but a large number of them would benefit, especially those found in city centers with a large population.
Being at street level does not give you the commercial coverage that at first seems a competitive advantage. The flow of people who pass through that street, (or rather, on your sidewalk), even if it is the main one in the city, is in a fairly small number of your potential customers.
A high percentage of the people who will buy or rent a property from you (home, office ...), do not live in that area and when they visit the area with the intention of buying, they have generally already contacted you or your competition.
“Regarding the prestige or credibility that an office at street level gives, it is not as much as it seems. An argument in favor of having an office is that it provides more credibility and trust. But I don't see it that way ”.
Credibility or prestige is not something that is created with a well-located location, but with unbeatable customer service. A potential buyer does not care how beautiful your office is, but that you can get them the house they are looking for, at a good price, and with a process without headaches.
Today you are either well positioned online or you don't exist. Simple. What really brings you qualified clients is your online office, (your website), not your office at street level.
Teleworking and the influence of the Corona Virus in the real estate business have made many owners and managers think laterally and more creatively about the survival or improvement of your business. Which ultimately translates into improving the effectiveness of all staff.
| Real Estate Agents Who Work From Home Are Usually Happier and More Productive.
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Until recently, a strong work-life balance was just a dream. Between long commutes to work and overtime at the office, it becomes a challenge to dine with your partner or go to your child's soccer game, let alone find time for yourself.
But thanks to technology that allows workers to control their own productivity, the lines between our personal and professional lives are blurring, and that's a good thing.
Today's workforce wants more control over when, where and how they work.
This convergence is a big problem, because home-based workers are living happier and more productive lives.
"Knowledge workers are today more empowered than ever to define where, when and how to work."
Businesses large and small are using technology to facilitate a smoother, location-independent way of working, hiring full-time remote employees and adopting flexible work-from-home policies.
| The Advantages of Working from Home for a Real Estate Agent.
The savings in renting a premises at street level or an office is the main advantage. If you have a space in your home where you can create your own office, don't think twice because, as an independent real estate agent, working from home is the best option and the second best option is to work in a coworking office, where the rent is low and you have a secretary who will pass the calls to you.
It is much cheaper to rent an office to sign something than to have a premises or an office. Today the client wants to see a website that is professional and where he can know who you are and what you offer.
Another advantage is the time you save on trips to work or an office, with the consequent savings on gasoline.
All this savings translates into having a larger budget to invest in promoting your properties and your personal branding.
Of course, part of your work will lead you to be on the street, but that work is only a third of all the work that a real estate agent must do. On the street you will show properties, visit owners by appointment to capture their properties, solve any administrative procedure related to your properties or your work and to accompany your clients to the notary.
From your home, from your office you do everything else that is 2 thirds of your work. First of all, you must maintain a website whose content generates credibility in whoever visits it.
For this you need to maintain a blog and apply SEO strategies to your website to position yourself well in Google. This task is a constant job that requires a few hours each week.
You need to have a good presence on a couple of social networks, which means creating valuable content for these networks, work that is also time consuming if done correctly.
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In addition, we have the inevitable administrative work of any business, promoting your properties online, prospecting online to capture properties, the time you need to be online looking for various information, (something that is not usually done and one of the factors that delays the success in this sector), and perhaps the most important activity is training.
It is not about learning only those marketing and sales strategies that you do not know; but to improve your knowledge on various topics to be more efficient.
You have to know how to adapt quickly to changes in the market to be competitive and the best example I can give is to train well in applying real estate acquisition and sales funnels or improve your commercial skills by learning real estate neuro-sales techniques.
What a Real Estate Agent Needs to Work from Home.
First of all, you need to be disciplined or disciplined. To be so obviously you need to make a commitment to yourself. A disciplined person is that person ordered with his habits and who tries to get involved and have a commitment with what he decides he is going to do. Perseverance is not enough. An order is needed. To have discipline implies to have order.
And having an order means having a plan. Prepare a plan for your real estate business that establishes a roadmap to follow and a weekly schedule of activities to carry out.
When I coach real estate agents, the first thing I do is help them with that weekly schedule so they can use their time more effectively when working from home.
We give each of these sections some activities that must be completed during that week and a maximum number of hours in which that activity must be completed.
With this information, the weekly program of all the activities or work to be carried out for 6 days a week is completed. This helps you focus, avoid wasting a lot of time, and be much more efficient in completing each task.
Yes, unforeseen events always appear, but I can assure you that, following this schedule, unforeseen events are minimal.
A real estate agent who works from home, is usually 1 to 3 days a week without having to carry out tasks on the street. There are weeks when he will be extremely busy capturing and displaying real estate and that is what it is all about, but some weeks the office work takes up whole days.
Having discipline, following a clear roadmap and with good training in online marketing and sales, a real estate agent working from home can sell 1-2 properties each month. Which represents an income of more than $ 50,000 a year before taxes. Sometimes over $ 80,000.
Does this sound a bit fanciful? Let's do the math. Or better yet; Let's do the accounts for Al Hartman, a real estate agent in CA, who has been working from home since 2016.
In 2017, Sofía, a mother of 3 children, sold 7 properties and 2 lots from March to September of that year, which brought her + $ 64,000. Only 2 of them reported slightly more than $ 28,000 dollars and the rest of her the $ 36,000 dollars. Only from March to September! Of course, Sofía is disciplined and throughout the month of February she went through preparing her plan.
She did not stop training during all those months and each month she invested less budget in online promotion, because many owners and clients brought her other clients.
The key was her plan, her roadmap, her schedule, and getting things straight. Well, and also educate her children that when mom comes into the room to work, mom is not available and dad is the one in charge.
This helped him tremendously to organize her home, her work, and maintain the discipline she needed. Although it is also true, that selling on a regular basis, seeing the fruit of your work helps you stay motivated and continue to have faith when it is usually lost.
The Real Estate Business from Home.
Not all real estate agents can work from home; not because they lack discipline; but because they do not have the adequate space to have a small office and the tranquility that is needed to work.
In Sofía's case, she ultimately had to rent a small office next to her house that she shared with a young lawyer. Working from her house was not the most convenient especially in the afternoon when she did not have visitors and on Saturday mornings.
"If you cannot work from home due to lack of tranquility, a shared office or renting an office in a coworking is the best option."
To work from home you need:
1.- The space. You need to have a safe, comfortable and stable workplace. Often remote workers in the real estate sector adapt a work table in one of the rooms of their house, the dining room table is not mandatory.
The important thing is that you have a table free of uncomfortable objects and a large space for you to place your work materials organized and comfortably. You should also find a comfortable chair, have good lighting, and nearby outlets.
2.- A routine schedule. Avoid distracting objects in your workspace, such as televisions, radio, or anything else that you think may distract or disturb you during the time you spend on your job. We recommend that you establish a routine schedule so that you approach your work in the best way, so you will perform more and make the most of your time.
3.- Good internet connection. Working as a real estate agent from your home deserves an excellent, high-capacity and reliable internet connection, since it is a key tool for any remote worker and more so for the real estate agent who must constantly contact clients, publish real estate portals, consult the web, check email among other things.
More and more workers are joining the option of teleworking in the real estate sector, precisely because of the great advantages it offers, mainly because of autonomy, flexibility and the savings in daily travel costs that face-to-face work implies.
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The impact of the Coronavirus has further promoted teleworking in the real estate sector, since it is possible to do work from home, but necessarily activating some guidelines and tools to achieve it satisfactorily.
This is a very valuable strategy that the real estate sector offers, to prevent your work community from getting “sick”.
Working from home has great advantages, it allows you to organize your work activity independently, taking into account your criteria, your dynamics and your time depending on the needs that arise, always adapting to the situation of the real estate sector.
Work from Home Thanks to Technology. Some Statistics.
Technological advancements over the past decade, ranging from wireless internet access to cloud-based file sharing, have redefined the constraints that used to bind real estate agents working independently and agents working for an agency. or franchise.
Add to that the proliferation of mobile collaboration tools for virtual meeting and job management, and you've got a workforce that is integrating into telecommuting at a rapid pace full-time.
Virtual collaboration and instant messaging tools, for example WhatsApp or Zoom, are essential for real estate agents today, and these applications are probably already on one of your many devices.
"There are already more than 20 billion connected devices and the new 5G data service standard promises to make those devices even faster."
The next generation of cellular technology is designed for the Internet to get speeds 10 to 100 times faster than what you already have. Think crisp video and audio streams and realistic meeting connectivity. All this gives quality to the service that any real estate agent can provide.
According to GoToMeeting, 70% of companies plan to increase the use of online meeting platforms over the next three to five years.
| Telework Brings Happiness. Make no mistake.
Technology has removed what used to be clear physical and mental boundaries between work and life. Sounds scary right? As if we're all a bunch of sad workaholics with no personal lives. Well, I'm happy to say that this assumption is wrong.
People are finding ways to make this convergence work for them, personally and professionally, working from home. They are fueling their careers while staying fully connected to their personal world and living happier lives along the way. More and more studies show that people who telecommute are happier.
Researchers from Stanford University found that people who work from home or remotely reported substantially higher scores for job satisfaction and psychological attitude. Another survey of more than 500 full-time homeworkers found that they feel more valued than their office colleagues.
According to GoToMeeting, you would be more likely to take a job with the option to work remotely - 28% would take it for less.
More than 40% of Millennial and Gen X workers reported that working from home has improved the overall quality of their lives, ranking it as one of their most precious job benefits. And more than 69% of those surveyed said “flexibility” was the number one benefit of working remotely.
A blurred line between work and life doesn't make people unhappy. People who work from home are doing the exact opposite! You have empowered today's workforce with the flexibility it needs to really "do it all."
More than 40% of Millennials and Gen Xers report that working from home has improved the overall quality of their lives.
More than 69% of those surveyed said "flexibility" was the number one benefit of working from home or remotely, and 2 in 5 workers said their lives would be worse without telecommuting.
41% of respondents believe that the ability to work remotely is "very important" to the future of business.
As you can see, working from home is ideal for any real estate agent in any country. So nobody think that telecommuting is a temporary situation that will end when we have defeated the Corona Virus.
"Working from home has become the best form of work you can have."
| For the Real Estate Agent who Works from Home. Last Recommendation.
You know well that maintaining a work, family and personal balance is not easy and it becomes a bit more difficult when working from home. For this reason, it is very important to go out to do sports on a daily basis. Going for a walk is fine, but sport is better.
It is also necessary to be careful with your work schedule and try to comply with it. The mental health risks of breaking the occupational balance are varied: insomnia, anxiety, stress, apathy, sadness or depression.
This seems a bit far off when working from home, but when you go a couple of months without selling a property, all kinds of thoughts run through your head and you wonder if what you're doing is worth it.
