The opportunities are massive in real estate this year. How can you move faster to take advantage of them?

According to Realtor.com 10% of all US homeowners plan to move this year. Around 75% have already taken steps to prepare to sell. That’s the makings of a record year. Don’t miss out on it.

For many this means being able to work faster. To get more done in less time, and to shorten the sales cycle. Here are five ways to work on that.

Automate Your Content

As we covered in one of our recent blog posts, all of today’s biggest and fastest growing businesses are now really content businesses. So is yours. It is just a matter of how well you are doing at this critical part of your business. How much quality and interesting content are you putting out each week?

Hire great people, tell them the goals you want to achieve, empower them to do their best work, and get out of the way so it is automated as much as possible.

Create Channel Partnerships

Going big and fast in wholesaling is about having a consistent flow of deals on the buy and sell side. Can you find sources and partners who can give you and take from you 10 or more deals each and every month?

Delegate More

Chances are that you are still the one that is slowing down your business the most. There is little if anything you can’t or shouldn’t delegate today. As a real estate business owner, you are more like an investor or orchestra conductor. Your job is to help others scale and go faster in their roles. The results you get will scale directly in line with that.

Offer Tax Saving Opportunities

People are already being smashed with historically high new taxes this year, and it probably is just warming up. Between new taxes, higher income, property and sales taxes, and capital gains taxes potentially reaching close to 60% in some states this year, people are desperately looking for solutions. How can you help them legally pay less tax when they sell a property to your, or buy one from you?

Remove The #1 Risk Factor For Buyers

What is the number one perceived risk and fear that is preventing more buyers from buying your deals? How can you take that risk out of the equation to move more units faster?

 

Customer service may seem like a lost art in the world today. Yet, it will make or break your real estate wholesaling business. Here’s how to master it in a few steps…

Respect Its Importance

Customer service is especially important in real estate. Great service is vital. No matter how big your company is, poor service will eventually bankrupt you. Once you have a bad reputation for it, it can be too late to shake it. In contrast, great service can make your entire business and make it grow fast.

More than just barely scratching through customer satisfaction, you should be shooting for customer happiness. Delighted customers are repeat customers, referral agents and brand ambassadors.

It is also important to get that this isn’t just about serving your buyers and sellers either. It equally applies to your team, vendors, investors and everyone else your business touches.

Make It A Priority

Most companies and business owners know that you should be striving for good customer service, but don’t really do anything about it.

To make it happen, it must be made a priority.

It should also be a decision guide. If you aren’t sure what to do in a given situation, choose the option that will deliver the best customer service experience.

Hire For It

Unless you are naturally a super social person who loves delighting even difficult customers, and will be on the frontlines dealing with them all the time, then you need to hire someone to champion this part of your business. Their number one job role is just to make customers happy and ensure they have good experiences.

Empower It

Where the real problems happen is the gap between talking and doing. Every company says they care about and deliver good service. As you’ve already experienced, very few do.

This void comes between hiring people and giving them the wrong priorities, and simply not empowering them to deliver good service. They aren’t given the ability to do the job.

Hiring well is useless unless you actually empower them to do a great job. That probably includes giving your teams decision making authority and the ability to make customers happy, even if it costs you a few dollars extra.

Reward It

As a real estate business owner you’ll get more of what you reward and less of what you punish. So, if you want your teams to deliver better customer service, make sure you reward them when they do. Come up with penalties for those who sour your customer relationships.

Practice Empathy

When there are problems, great customer service comes from empathy. It’s easy to put down bad customer behavior to bad people or crazy customers. They might be. Or they may just have a different world view, or you didn’t set the expectations well. In any case, it usually pays to practice empathy, and err of on the side of making them happy anyway. Do the math on what’s better for your business long term. You can always blacklist them from doing business with your company in the future if they are the problem. Just make them happy this time.

Build Relationships, Not Transactions

Another major disconnect is when companies just focus on transactions. What if you focused on building long term relationships and providing value instead? How would that change the dynamics of your service?

 

 

How can you boost your deal volume and the dollars coming in as a real estate wholesaler right now?

Many property investors are struggling to adapt to the new landscape. For many, their normal channels of business may have been disrupted and may or may not be for quite some time. The good news is that you can keep up and even grow your deal flow and income.

One way to do this immediately is to step up to help other investors. They are struggling too.

One of the most significant members of this group are landlords. Many have tried to step into this business since 2008. Many were tricked into thinking we wouldn’t face another turn in the cycle. Or they grossly overpaid for properties. They had no sustainability plan for something like this.

Many bought places relying on overpriced Airbnb rents. Most of that market has disappeared. It’s even illegal in many places right now. With unemployment heading for 50% or more, at least 30% of renters didn’t pay their April rents by the 9th of the month. Eviction bans mean they can’t get occupants out. Even more than not being able to weather this financially, landlords are scared.

They want their cash out. They can’t get good terms on refinancing, if they can even get loans at all. They need liquidity. You can buy their properties and bail them out.

Then flip  them to investors who are buying. There are plenty who are. Especially big funds. In NYC one family just bought 8 condos they plan to rent out after the crisis. You can even do this in bulk. Put together the portfolios to sell at once to a bigger buyer.

Best Transaction Funding is still funding deals. We find 100% of your purchase price when wholesaling properties.

How are you growing your business now?

 

Google is a fickle beast. It can be one of your best tools for real estate marketing and your wholesaling business. It can also be one of your biggest headaches. If your income, wealth, sanity and peace of mind relies on Google, you’re going to be in for a wild ride.

Here’s how to Google-proof your wholesaling business…

It’s not just Google and its constant algorithm changes either. We’ve seen the same happen with Zillow and Facebook too. They lure you in and get your to invest everything in building them up, and then use it against you. Savvy investors and venture capitalists have learned that a business that relies on third party platforms like this to survive and thrive are normally doomed. Use them. Just don’t count on them. Don’t bet everything on any one of them.

Build Your Own Assets

Trying to rely on just a Facebook page as a website is a serious flaw today. So is basing all your finances on current Google Ads costs and conversion rates. Be sure you are building your own brand and online business assets with your own website.

Ignore Common Content Myths

How long does your content need to be? Forget about it.

Ask ten SEO ‘experts’ and you’ll get ten different answers. Most often someone will quote a myth from a couple years ago. Something that worked for a few weeks during a temporary Google experiment. Like your articles need to be 1,000 or 2,000 words long.

Forget length. Don’t worry about it when it comes to blogs, articles, videos or podcasts. Otherwise you are going to get hit hard when Google penalizes those same lengths next week.

Pour Out the Value

Giving real value is far more when it comes to content. That’s true of everything you do on and offline through all parts of your wholesaling business.

When it comes to online content, if you just create and publish what is truly valuable, actionable, shareable and worth bookmarking for your ideal customers you’ll do just fine. You’ll do great over the short and long term. It may be 300 word blogs one week, 4,000 word resources, 15 second video clips or 30 minute educational audio. Just focus on the value. Put yourself in your prospects’ shoes, not Google’s

Leverage Other Search Engines

Online search engines can be valuable. Just don’t bet everything on the biggest one or two of today. Use sub-search engines on other sites. Like Meetup.com or other social networks.

Be Offline Too

Offline and real world in-person is becoming even more important. Virtual is powerful and even a must. Yet, it is also making real connection even more desirable and valuable. Build real world relationships by hosting networking events, experiential events like camping trips or property tours.

Can Pokémon Go make you a better real estate wholesaler?

The new Pokémon Go game has taken over the news, web, mobile devices, and the streets. After years of fighting our kids for how much time they spent locked onto the Xbox we’ve been gradually waking up to the fact that video games can actually be beneficial. With the hi-tech environment we live in some video games may actually be teaching practical skills. Look at how the military recruits and uses drones today. Other games are proving valuable for people of all ages to boost creative thinking, problem solving, and brain power. So what does Pokémon have to offer real estate investors?

Searching for Properties

The main part of the new Pokémon Go game is getting out there in the real world to hunt for Pokémon via your mobile device. You walk or drive in the real world and find virtual assets on your phone. If you did any traveling at the end of this summer you’ve probably seen kids, teens, adults, and whole families out there eagerly hunting down Pokémon characters to add to their inventory.

12 months ago you might not have been able to get these kids off the couch. Now they are putting in the miles and are highly self-motivated. The two takeaways here are one; that you can gain a lot of traction in real estate as a family too, if you make it fun and provide the right motivation for getting everyone out in the field and spotting deals. Two; if you can hustle to find virtual game characters you can certainly get out of bed, take action, and go out and find house deals. You can motivate others to hustle in this way for you too.

The most successful wholesalers are those that are out there actively hunting deals every day. You can exponentially grow those efforts by recruiting others to help in your search too.

Branding

Pokémon has done an amazing job at making a comeback and reviving the game franchise. Within weeks Pokémon merchandise has hit the stores and is being proudly rocked by everyone. You can even find Pokémon t-shirts for sale all the way down at the tip of Key West. Kids and teens are already trained to know the shirts and what teams others are one, and whether they should like them or not. Where are your shirts? Where is your merchandise? Are you advertising for Pokémon or Tommy Hilfiger or Fendi every day? Or are you promoting awareness for your own real estate brand?

The Buzz

From the web to daily conversations on the street Pokémon Go is everywhere. The brand has done well harnessing internet marketing, but also word of mouth. Are you using these tactics for your real estate wholesaling business? How much are you talking to others about your wholesale business and deals? How much are you giving them that is worth talking about in their own conversations? Are they posting hashtags and @ messages with your real estate brand in them?

You don’t have to play Pokemon to become a better real estate wholesaler. But there are a lot of takeaways for many wholesalers to think about and put into play…

 

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding and hard money loans for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.

Analysts are predicting a massive new wave of real estate purchases ahead. Is your real estate wholesaling business ready?

Boomerang Home Buyers

In addition to new millennial buyers, move up buyers, and downsizing boomers, RealtyTrac estimates a 7.3 million strong wave of boomerang home buyers is beginning to hit the US housing market in 2015. This activity is expected to peak in 2018, and flow through 2022. These are the home buyers winged by the foreclosure crisis, who are now returning to the market. A TransUnion report estimates 700,000 of those negatively impacted by the crisis will already qualify for new home loans in 2015. 2.2 million should be eligible to buy again within the next 5 years. California, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan, are expected to hold the highest concentrations of boomerang buyers.

There are several other factors likely to drive robust purchase activity ahead too…

Refinances are Dead

Freddie Mac has projected that mortgage refinance activity will have fallen over 70% to a new low by 2016. Even though we haven’t experienced a dramatic fed rate hike spree yet, they will have to increase by double just to get back to 2009 territory. With consumers shunning student debt and credit card debt, big banks and lenders are going to desperately need purchase mortgage loans to stay alive.

This will certainly make lenders more aggressive about breaking down underwriting barriers and making new loans. With homeownership are horrible lows, and housing and lending so important to the national economy we shouldn’t be surprised if the government rolls out a variety of new incentives to drive purchase activity to bolster and prop up the economy either.

Summary

With new construction levels low over the past few years, and inventory still tight, a new buyer boom is likely to give property values a significant lift too. Those real estate wholesalers armed with transactional funding, and able to act quickly, could benefit from a great boost to deal volume ahead.

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding and hard money loans for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.

If you want to fully maximize your potential as a real estate wholesaler you’ll want a team. So how do you grow, and optimize a rock star wholesaling sales team that will result in massive market share and revenue gains, sustainably?

If real estate investors and entrepreneurs really want to fully capitalize on the potential out there, they’ll eventually want to expand as a business. Bringing on a sales team can help boost revenues, while ensuring more free time. So where do you start with building a real estate sales team? How do you ensure great and sustainable growth?

1. Know What You Want

Take time out to really think and clarify what you want. What do you want to achieve through wholesaling real estate? What do you want your business to be known for? How will you stand out? Take serious thinking and planning time. This might be a weekend, or a couple hours a day for a week. Everything else depends on this. Make sure your compass is set right.

2. Know Your Clients

The success of all of your real estate marketing, sales team performance, and business relationships will all fall on how well you know your buyer and seller clients. This should be incredibly easy today. Too many business owners skimp on it. But with all the data from Google, Facebook, and other third parties this should be easy to put together.

3. Hire Great

Armed with the above information you’ll be able to hire the best sales talent for your real estate wholesaling business. This doesn’t just mean the slickest speaking phone rock stars or door to door salespeople. They have to be the right fit for your organization, clients, and brand. They can be in-house or remote workers, full or part time.

4. Set Standards & Quotas

Make sure everyone is moving in the right direction. Make sure the whole team is working in the right direction for sales goals, bottom line profit, and brand preservation. Everyone should know where they stand and where they are going. Keep this visible, and hold them accountable all the time.

5. Set Up Great Reports

Reports are crucial for tracking and measuring progress, performance, and identifying both areas of opportunity, and those that need work. Spending too much time deep in numbers and spreadsheets is rarely the most fun job for entrepreneurs. San Diego wholesaler and his podcast co-host Rich Cohen recommend that as soon as you can delegate this task to someone that will enjoy owning it.

6. Use the Right Metrics, Right

Be wary of metrics. They can be your best ally or worst enemy. You have to make sure you are tracking the right sales metrics, in context. Demanding all salespeople meet certain call quotas or talk time quotas, or lead quotas can be counterproductive if it isn’t improving the bottom line, and strengthening the team.

7. Maintain a Strong Team Bond

Hiring great, having tons of reports, and making rapid progress to sales, market share, and profit goals won’t mean much if you don’t proactivity work on team building and sustainability. Make sure you are making gains you can keep, and optimize sales team hiring and costs by retaining the best.

 

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding and hard money loans for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.