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washingtonpost.com
Rookie Agent Looks Back On 1st
Year
By Malcolm N. Carter
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, May 10, 2003; Page F01
Selling houses is the easy part.
The hard part is building a business.
How little I knew about that when I decided last year
to become a real estate agent. What an education it has
been. It also has been a financial drain, an emotional
strain and an insistent claim on the hours of each day.
When I told friends and family that I was heading in
the direction of real estate, they invariably
volunteered that I would be good at it. In their
opinion, I get along pretty well with people and have a
flair for decorating. In their minds, checking out
houses and charming clients would be just the thing for
my third career.
Not one person remarked that I would be the perfect
entrepreneur.
"It's not too hard to make a little money, but it
takes a tremendous amount of understanding and
organization to make a reasonable living in an area like
Washington and to do it year and year out," said Michael
Briggs, vice president of professional development at
McEnearney Associates in Alexandria. "You have to have a
good head for business."
Briggs, a widely respected guru in the business, is a
strong advocate for agents having an annual business
plan, focusing on profit, embracing technology and
creating systems for everything. "How else do you spend
time working for clients rather than time looking for
clients?" he asked.
That is a lesson we all have to learn.
Said Susan Claus, another rookie who works in my Long
& Foster office: "It's a lot harder than I ever thought
it would be, and I thought I had a realistic
understanding of what I was getting into. I was told it
was going to be very difficult, but I had no idea."
Although real estate agents may seem to be employees
of their brokerage, most are independent contractors. We
have a desk, often shared, plus a range of support --
telephone, training, back office operations, lots of
advice and access to marketing materials.
But we work for ourselves, and our sole source of
income is the commissions we earn on the sale of a home.
As friendly as we might be to each other, as supportive
and helpful, we are all competitors. Most of us are
fierce competitors.
Moreover, we are legion. In the District of Columbia,
the number of agents licensed to sell real estate was
4,511 as of October, the latest figure available. One
year earlier, it was 3,752. Membership in the National
Association of Realtors has boomed 11 percent, to
840,000, in the last two years.
While there is plenty of competition, in my office a
generous amount of camaraderie leavens that aspect of
being an agent. It helps that the more experienced
agents are free with their advice, materials they have
already prepared, and even the opportunity for us to
hold open houses for their listings so we have the
potential of making a sale and meeting new clients.
We get what can be an overwhelming amount of advice
-- things to do and do right away, some of them
conflicting.
Among the myriad choices that inundate, frustrate and
sometimes ultimately defeat new agents are these: Reach
out to your sphere of influence (friends, family,
doctors, everyone you know); write your profile; have a
photograph taken of yourself; buy business cards;
purchase a video camera; take this course or that;
create a database; keep in touch with the database;
pursue listings by cold calling homeowners; go see as
many properties as possible; learn graphics software;
work past the point of being too tired to work.
"If you don't come from a business background, then
it's kind of a stunner," McEnearney's Briggs observed.
Fairfax agent Maria Valverde, who was licensed in
February while running a housecleaning business,
concedes that she is "kind of confused," even with her
business background. "I don't know yet where I belong,
but I believe you make your own business -- everything
depends on you," she said.
Certainly, despite one brief career as an independent
communications consultant, I was and often still am
overwhelmed. Yet some of the best advice I have received
has helped me feel more in control of my typically
70-hour, seven-day weeks. That advice was to write a
business plan and, along with it, a marketing plan,
budget and timetable -- which, ironically, I haven't had
the time or perhaps energy to review in months.
Although many agents skip this part of the process, I
view it as an essential building block. One successful
agent I know, Stephen Howell of Annapolis, is so taken
with the exercise that he rewrites his plan every three
months.
What drafting the plan did for me was help me define
markets and ways of reaching them. By listing the ways I
will do my prospecting, defining systems I feel I need,
reminding me of real estate Web sites to check and
courses to take, instructing me to manage my time, the
business plan forces priorities on me.
The marketing plan also establishes priorities.
Should I advertise? In what publications? How do I
balance that cost against the cost of postcard mailings
to my neighbors or the neighbors of my listings? Does it
make sense to invest in door hangers or sign riders?
Without the discipline of a marketing plan, costs could
escalate irrationally. Or, they could be so small that I
would be invisible.
I ended up with a 2003 plan to spend more than $4,000
on a combination of direct mail and print advertising
campaigns.
Having conducted multimillion-dollar public education
campaigns in the past, I had some idea about what made
sense. For direct mail, I decided to focus on luxury
renters. For print advertising, I concluded that I had
to avoid publications where the faces of real estate
agents were plentiful enough to fill a platoon. To
minimize expense, achieve frequency and potentially
stand out, for print advertising I ultimately chose the
Logan Circle Community Association's newsletter and
Studio Theatre's program.
While possibly an under funded and thereby futile
attempt to promote the Malcolm Carter brand in a crowded
arena, this campaign is in my view at worst a costly,
yet noble experiment.
Whether the campaign ultimately pays off, I am
particularly hopeful about the impact my e-newsletter
will have. It took me two months to perfect the
distribution list, refine the newsletter's content and
master the technology. But the only cost is $10 a month
for the distribution service and maybe three or four
hours per week of my time. I have a feeling that my
Realty Update will be by far my most powerful marketing
tool.
The expense of marketing is just one of many that
agents assume. Little did I know last May, when I
shelled out $350 for my licensing course, that the
original trickle from my checking account would
eventually grow into a seeming torrent. The expenses
mounted quickly, including, in round numbers:
• $1,000: courses, books and licenses for the
District, Maryland and Virginia.
• $4,000: marketing plan.
• $1,250: equipment, including a fax machine, cell
phone, BlackBerry, calculator, shredder, lockboxes and
computer accessories.
• $15,000: a 1996 car, without which I had managed
quite nicely for years, plus associated expenses.
• $500: memberships in real estate organizations,
including Metropolitan Regional Information Systems,
which is responsible for the multiple listing service.
• $600: errors and omissions insurance to minimize my
exposure in the event of lawsuits.
• $900: required and elective continuing education
courses.
• $165: my Web site
• $450: supplies, such as business cards, a name
badge, toner, paper and even chocolate chip cookies to
serve at open houses.
• $900: cell phone charges, as well as Web browser
service through March for my BlackBerry.
The list is far from complete, so it does not quite
add up to my outflow to date, which runs deep into the
$20,000s. And it does not yet include the digital camera
I really should get or hundreds of dollars in future
course work this year so I can earn the Graduate Realtor
Institute designation.
Hidden underneath the numbers are hours of
decision-making, self-instruction in new technologies
and attendance at training classes. There's also time
printing out mailing labels, making copies, haranguing
vendors to deliver their goods and services, and
performing all manner of secretarial work for myself.
"It's only right for people to know it's going to be
tough, and I tell them that," said Marj Rosner, sales
manager of four Long & Foster offices, including my own,
and some 150 agents. "But at the end of the day, you
have a lot of personal freedom and you really can
control your life if you're disciplined, organized and
motivated."
But I am beginning to see the fruits of these efforts
and expenses. Already I have sold close to $2 million
worth of property, and I see a substantial amount in the
pipeline. My commission income has finally made a
significant dent in the cost of starting up and running
this business.
It is most assuredly hard work. It is not so much
about mentally redecorating every house I enter or
putting a theoretical price on every one I pass. It is
less about ratifying a contract than developing a
lasting relationship with those who are parting with
their longtime homes or searching for their first one.
The compensation is not only money, especially now.
It is the pleasure of working for myself and building a
business with every indication that it will be
successful. It also is a new career, a new set of
skills, a stimulating new discipline that keeps me
happily moving forward. As compensation goes, that's not
half bad.
Malcolm N. Carter is an agent in the Chevy
Chase/Uptown office of Long & Foster Real Estate Inc.
Check the other articles at
www.Kate-Jody.com
Articles
and Essays by Jody Hudson of www.Kate-Jody.com
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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