Will Becoming A Real Estate Investor Increase My Business As A Real Estate AGENT?

Read Transcript for “Will Becoming A Real Estate Investor Increase My Business As A Real Estate Agent?”

“Since I’m pursuing a real estate license, how will this help me as one of your students? Could I use my future license with any potential California investors in conjunction with your program who may require real estate assistance?” – Mike Dowell

Joe: Yes, that’s the beauty of the Automarketer for agents. You already have a lot of options using all of the structures that I teach but if you can also list a property for a seller, now you have that other option that you can give them.
 
Joe: One of the big target markets that real estate agents go after when they’re trying to get a listing and if you’re an agent you know that you list or you die – you list properties and that’s how you keep a consistent business – listing properties, not selling properties – listing them. If you list a property, they’ll sell and you’ll make a great living and create a lot of inventory and make a lot of money, so you want to focus on listings.
 
Joe: But you have to find a way to get to those people. One of the best target markets to go after is people that are for sale by owners. Eventually, 85 to 95% of for sale by owners either take their property off the market or they list it with a real estate agent. So if you’re the first agent that they talk to and build a relationship with, you’re going to be better off.
 
Joe: A lot of real estate agents go after for sale by owners and say, ‘Hey, I’ll give you a free market analysis of your home’. Which is fine, but most for sale by owners aren’t that excited about talking to real estate agents – they don’t want to pay a real estate agent – that’s why they’re doing for sale by owner if they’re capable of listing.
 
Joe: Some of them aren’t capable of listing and that’s why they’re doing a for sale by owner and they just can’t hire an agent. The ones that can hire an agent that have a little bit of equity and can afford it are trying to hold onto their equity and they don’t want to talk to an agent, so if you approach them as an agent they don’t want to talk to you, but if you approach them as a buyer, it changes the game – its everything.
 
Joe: It’s different – now they want to talk to you – if you say, ‘I’d like to buy your property rent to buy. Would you consider that?’ – now there’s a possibility that they would do that with you, and then when you’re having that discussion with them, what you’re going to do is lay out their options. You’re going to show them the different ways they can do this.
 
Joe: If you have the Automarketer and you go into any of the lead sheets, there’s a link to the left side on the lead sheet that says ‘seller options’ and it breaks down all the seller options that are available. There’s 8 or 10 seller options that every deal has, and you can look at the options that that particular person has for that particular property and explain it to them, and then if you’re an agent, you can also say, ‘Well, you could also list it with me. Here’s what it would cost to do that.’
 
Joe: And by then, you’ve already started to develop a relationship with these people. You may be the first agent they’ve talked to or you may be the most competent agent. Plus, you’ve given them an option that, ‘if you don’t sell it as a listing or you don’t get your _x_ amount of dollars and let’s say we list it for a month or two months and it’s not sold and you want to get rid of it right away, we’ll do the lease option and we’ll get rid of it in 30 days and you’ll be fine and you can move into the next property. And I’ll even help you find that next property.’
 
Joe: You can offer so many more things to them if you have a license. It also gets rid of any question that you’re practicing real estate without a license if you have a license, so there’s some real advantages to having a real estate license.
 
Joe: I’ve had mine for 20 some years. I just finished my continuing education to continue to keep my broker’s license. I now have a principle broker’s license, which again, I’ve had for many years.
 
Joe: But with that said, I should also say that if you don’t have a license and you haven’t started that process, you don’t have to start it. That can be very distracting, it can be very expensive and it can be very time consuming. You should just go out there and make some money and get some deals going. Once you get some deals going, doing it the way I teach which is legal, then maybe later on you can get a license after that and get that process going.
 
Joe: All over the country, the requirements for getting a license are going up. It’s getting more and more difficult. It’s becoming more and more of an old boys club where you have to be a member to work in their city. And I understand that they want people to be more educated. They want people to do this more reliably, more honestly and more ethically. But I’ve been in this business a very long time and I can tell you that 99% of the agents that I’ve worked with over the years have been good, ethical, honorable people that are just trying to do the right thing.
 
Joe: They want to make a living but they’re also trying to serve their clients. I’ve run into a few that are some real doozies but most of the agents out there are doing a good job, and if you do that as an investor, then you probably won’t have the problems that some of the people that rub people the wrong way will have.
 
Joe: So my suggestion is don’t get a license unless you’re already on that path and you already want to do that. If you have a license, hold onto it and keep it because it can be really valuable to you. Eventually as you do this, six months or a year or two years from now, as you’re making money and as you’re building a business, it probably does make sense for you to get a license.
 
Joe: We’re working in multiple states, so if you try to get a license in every state that you work in, it’s going to be difficult to do that. It’s going to be hard to keep up with all of the continuing education because most of the states are not reciprocal with other states and that’s going to be more difficult for you to maintain licenses in all of those different states. Instead, in a worst case scenario, hire somebody in that state who can do that stuff for you if you need an agent in that particular state or feel that you do. Alright, I hope that makes sense.