Convincing Home Buyers To Buy With You And Buy Now Part 3

A $750 tax credit is also available for first-time buyers to assist with closing costs such as legal fees, land transfer taxes, disbursements, etc.  The credit is based on $5000 for first time home buyers.  A person is considered a first time buyer if neither they nor their spouse or common-law partner has owned or lived in another home in the year of the home purchase or at any time in the past 4 years.

Convincing Home Buyers To Buy With You And Buy Now Part 2

Another instance of where home prices have not declined much in recent years is areas where large amounts of property development was simply not possible.  This can be true for either the US or Canada.  Many areas (especially affluent or wealthy ones) in Toronto were built up mostly to capacity many years ago.  So when supply stays the same, prices aren’t going to be affected much unless demand goes way up or way down.  Neither has happened in Canada.

Overbuilding happened to an absurd degree in many US markets, especially in places like Florida.  In one instance a

Convincing Home Buyers To Buy With You And Buy Now Part 1

Knowledge of home financing and long term trends in your farm area can go a long way toward helping your buyer clients feel more confident about buying a home with you and doing it now.  The result: more signed buyer representation agreements. 

Making Money With Your PDA For Real Estate Professionals

Personal Digital Assistants, commonly known as PDAs, are great for keeping your business and personal matters organized and on track.  But many real estate professionals are in the dark about how to do this without spending a fortune.  Some, being technology averse, don’t understand how to use PDAs well.  Others haven’t gone beyond cell phones and perhaps text messaging, not seeing the value in having anything beyond that.  So this article will help you get on track with more effectively using your PDA and making more money with it.

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 5

The idea of sacrifice or living lean for a time doesn’t even occur to them until they’ve gone months without a sale and they’re forced to tighten their purse strings by an erratic income and waning savings.  Above all, their focus is on helping themselves, not on helping others.  So it’s no wonder most of these types of people are destined to fail in real estate.

Who we’re essentially focused on is really the acid test of any successful entrepreneur.  Those who are focused on learning about and helping others are usually successful.  Those who are always focused on helping themselves and their own interests usually live shallow, mediocre lives.

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 4

Kubrick was well known for his perfectionism in directing his movies.  He read 500 books on Napoleon for a movie on the French Emperor he never actually got to make.  Most famously, Kubrick often demanded dozens of retakes of scenes from his actors.  In particular, Kubrick’s movie The Shining gave rise to the legend of Kubrick as a megalomaniac perfectionist.  Reportedly, he demanded hundreds of re-takes of scenes.  In The Shining Kubrick had Jack Nicholson do 100 retakes of one scene.  Another scene from the movie took nearly a year to complete.  In Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick had Tom Cruise do so many scene re-takes and made the experience so stressful for the actor that Cruise developed an ulcer.

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 3

Is there a full timer alive who doesn’t encourage and welcome business from friends and family?  Getting business from a referral is not much different than friends and family because referrals are also based on people who know us.  We all know referrals are the lifeblood of a great many real estate professionals, especially the veteran ones who don’t have a consistent advertising plan and haven’t embraced technology for their business.  

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 2

It’s relatively easy to wake up in the morning, go to a job where your day is mostly planned out for you, then go home, and collect a pay check every two weeks.  It’s not so easy when you have to create your own plan for every day, face rejection on a regular basis from prospects, friends and family, not necessarily get paid anything for all of it at the end of the week, and still have the gumption to press on the next week.

Therefore, I think the ideal way for people to start in real estate who lack a substantial financial “safety net” is starting part-time.  Working part-time allows someone to take as much time as necessary to test the real estate waters, learn how to swim and find out if it’s really for them. 

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 1

The debate about whether people should be allowed to be real estate professionals on a part time basis rages on. What interests me about this issue isn’t so much who’s right and who’s wrong but what motivates the points of view from either side.  I believe when we look closely at the people arguing against part-timers we find they’re usually motivated by self-interest borne out of their own waning competitive edge in this business.  They mask their elitist, anti-competitive views in essentially hollow rhetoric.

Don’t Leave Relationships On The Table Part 1

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s
I will not reason and compare; my business is to create
- William Blake

We’ve all heard the phrase “leaving money on the table”.  For those who haven’t, it means unnecessarily giving up money in a situation when you don’t have to.  One of the biggest shortcomings of real estate professionals is leaving their business relationships on the table.  Once the closing documents are on the table, drawn up and ready for signing, the one thing most sales reps consistently leave behind on that table is the relationship.  The common thinking with real estate professionals is, “this person is moving to a new home, so there’s no point in contacting them again for at least a year or two”.  Leaving a relationship on the table like this is just like leaving money on the table.  You don’t need to do it.  More importantly, when you realize you’ve been doing it and what you’ve been losing, hopefully you’ll learn not to do it again.

I want to illustrate these points by talking about a top producing real estate professional from Philadelphia who operates an absolute paragon of a system for selling luxury condos.