Recently, we have helped a lot of real estate agents to build their businesses so they could become top realtors in their local market. It surprised us to find that on average Realtors make about 55k per year and the top 10% of real estate agents make about 105k per year. So the bottom line is less than 10% of agents average over 10k per month over a calendar year. This was somewhat surprising as we know several top realtors and mistakenly assumed that many of them on average make over six figures per year. So that said it led us to do some investigating.
We found through research and surveys from reputable firms that the top 10% of agents take action in certain aspects of their business that the other 90% of less successful realtors do. It breaks down in to about 4 categories for the top realtors.
MARKETING
The top realtors spend more on marketing each year, the top 10% spend at least 5k and the top 5% spend twice that amount in marketing each year. Marketing can mean everything from nicer listing for sale signs, to brochures, online marketing like Google pay per click ads, zillow ads, trulia ads and other real estate themed marketing. The surveys did not break down the exact type of marketing, but rather just the fact that they spent the money increased their success.
TECHNOLOGY
In addition to marketing, the top realtors consistently spend money on superior technology than their less successful counter parts. On average they spend at least another 5k per year in technology and again the top 5% spend even more on tech. Tech can be everything from toll free 800 numbers with free info about a house listed to sell to superior sales funnels built out online and working in conjunction with multiple listing services in their local markets. Again the exact type of marketing will certainly be important, but more important than anything was investing in the tech whether that means better cell phone and tablet and computer technology or something as simple as a new cell phone battery. The other day I went to look at a property and the realtor was not prepared with a phone charger and with a dead cell phone was unable to open a property so I could look at it.
WEBSITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA
The next two important factors for real estate agents to be successful center around essentially what is more marketing and technology spending and it is with the agent’s own website and social media pages. The top realtors spend more on a better website and social media and they also update those sites and social media pages as well as share content multiple times each week and engage their audience of followers including having more friends on facebook and linkedin that often translate in to more clients. It really is incredible.
So for a lot of agents you look at these findings and say well duh if I had 25k to 50k I could be a successful realtor, here’s the good news, we have the ability to help you secure funding for your real estate business, so get in touch and we will help you!