so this new guy shows up at work

[GonzoStyle]

Yes, that would be good. But I'm interested in how you find your prospects. Are you just thumbing through a phone book calling people if they want to buy a house, or is there some sort of lead list, like in Glengary Glen Ross.

The buyers we dont look for, they come to us. The property values here are soaring, they have increased by 10% on average every year for the last 4 years. Especially in the downtown area, people are moving in from the city now.

We have a backlog of buyers, the average is about 10 buyers for every 1 seller. We don't have to sell a house, we just have to show it. The average 5 years ago was 3-6 months to get a buyer for a house. Now it's under 30 days but it takes 3 months for the average deal to close there after.

It's getting sellers thats the hard part. The misconception is that the agent works for the buyer, we don't. We have no obligation to the buyer except for certain disclosures and honesty. All of our fiduciary responsibilities lie with the seller, which is who pays us our commision, we work for the seller. We honestly don't have to do anything for the buyer except show them the house.

The reason most people fail is cause they think like that, they dont realize the buyer is a future customer for them that can bring in not only other clients but the avg person stays in their home 6 years, who will they go to, to sell their house then?

There are many places to get listings for homes, the commision split is 50% to the broker (my boss). then 25 to the listing agent and 25 to the selling agent. So technically I can get 10 listings and have other people deal with the haggle of selling and collect my commision, people do that for a living. They spend 6 months getting tons of listings then taking 6 months to play golf and collect their commisions. Or you can list and sell and get the whole 50%. My company is the largest privately owned one in NY. We are light years ahead with all of our services to the client, so we usually dont go below a 5% commision unless the property is above 1 million.

As far as getting clients, you go by for sale by owner ads in the paper (9 out of 10 people who sell on their own eventually go to an agent anyway).

Expired listings, which are listings that didnt sell within their contracted time frame.

Off market listings, which the owner took off market but they never stay off for long. It's usually they wanna wait for something and most agents never ask.

and word of mouth, I just tell everyone I meet and go back to people I have made contacts with in the past and tell them I am in the real estate business now. People who bump into me on the street, anyone.