Real Estate Pains

For all you real estate agents / realtors out there,

What are some of your hardest jobs to do in your daily 9-5?
What takes the most time/money for you to complete something?

For instance, as a complete non-professional to real estate industry, this is the 9-5 jobs that I can think of (but I may be wrong):

- Finding the leads (cold calling? door-to-door marketing? Any other marketing ways?)
- Turning leads into sellers (CRM with SMS/email/calendar marketing? follow up?)
- Listing sellers to RE portals or websites (portal management? follow up?)
- Marketing to find buyers (Newspaper? RE portals? Social network? any other marketing ways?)
- Auction management (auction sign-ups, attendants? SMS marketing? follow up?)
- Paperwork management (contracts? legal docs? bank docs? finance docs?)
- CRM with buyers (with SMS/email/calendar marketing for returning purchase?)


FYI, I'm not a real estate agent nor have been one before... I may be totally wrong with what I have listed above, or may have made it easier to do than done.

So it'd great if you could be kind enough to list out some of your biggest pains in your day-to-day lives when you are trying to close sales.

Thanks in advance!
 
The last time I finished at 5pm was in 2003, which also happened to be the first day I started.

The day to day "admin" side of things chews up a heap of time. Most cold leads you find/generate/pull from RpData won't be home during the day unless you can find mobile numbers anyway.
 
Agreed. No 9 - 5!! Not even 9 to 5.30 - just 24/7 :). As others have said, most money is made out of hours because Real Estate provide a service to the consumer if the consumer says 'I want an appraisal done at 6.30pm on Friday' you reschedule your dinner plans and you go when it suits them.

I think the hardest thing (I'm in Property Management though) is the people! People don't always understand what is happening and the quickest way to upset people is when dealing with money. Real estate is expensive to rent or buy (based on people's circumstances they are generally at the top of their budget either way) and people are quick to anger and don't always see things from a logical perspective when dealing with property.
 
Another one to say no to 9-5!

Yesterday in fact, I didn't get home until 8.20pm - part my fault I will admit - I went to see a new client and we ended up chatting away for 3 hours :eek: (If you're reading this, I'm not complaining - it was great to get to know you a little more :) )

I also work from home, so from time to time I will send emails and do general admin after hours, filing etc.

Again, I'm in property management. I would agree that it depends on the task as to what takes the longest - probably VCAT, but in general education of clients takes time. I don't expect my clients to know all the laws, but they need to understand why I've done certain things.
 
For the agents doing the late nights - what time do you normally start work?

I don't really start or stop myself. It's not unusual for me to be responding to emails at 10pm or having a call from my landlords about something urgent (or if they're overseas or interstate) at 8pm or so. In the mornings when getting ready I'll check over emails and any phone messages after I stopped answering my phone for the night (there is a limit, I need to spend time with my family too! :) ) but I am back in the office by about 8.30am most mornings, sometimes earlier and sometimes later if I have other appointments. My earliest appointment is usually at 8am though, I try to avoid any earlier! :).

The ongoing emails and phone calls and maintaining those things are vital in being able to do my job well during the business hours when most of my work comes in :).
 
For the agents doing the late nights - what time do you normally start work?

I would say most if not all PM's are salary based and would have set hours as apart of that package.

Agents; Sales, leasing agents and business development managers on mostly or only commission I would say have flexibility in this area.

A lot of "agents", myself included only need a mobile phone and a laptop/Ipad and can work anywhere. I find making follow up calls or bringing owners up to speed on feed back works better when I am at home as the person on the other end of the phone doesn't need to hear morning office gossip going on in the back ground.
 
I would say most if not all PM's are salary based and would have set hours as apart of that package.
.

That is true, but to be a better than average PM to work within those hours only is impossible (not calling myself better than average but I do work to try to be!).
 
I don't have a start/finish time either.

I work from home and have everything set up so I can access details anywhere, but it also means I find myself sending emails late at night/early in the morning.
 
Other than the working hours, do we have any other pains in your daily work flow?

For example buyer/seller lead generation? marketing? buyer/seller CRM? etc..

As a novice in the RE industry, I wouldn't know the real difficulties that is taking up most of your time & money and leaving you stress on you!
 
Jeff, what you find is that the day to day items from finding new vendors & buyers is accepted and not considered a hinder. Biggest issues that cause dramas is dealing with extention to cool offs, building inspections during cool off, bank valuations that are behind the current market. If you time management is good the rest falls into line.:)
 
I think access for final inspections pest inspections etc. can be a pain when it comes to a tenanted property that has been sold. Along with getting tenants out if the property is sold with vacant possession in time. :)
 
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