The Right Broker at the Right Time

Although I was involved with a real estate team for a year, and had some incredible training experiences, I still feel very *green* to the Real Estate business.

One of the very *green* worries is "How do I pick the right Real Estate Office/Broker to begin my career with?"

I'm sure many new agents, or those working to become agents, torture over what brokerage to join and how to determine if its a right choice.  Asking the right questions also seems extremely important in light of the rough market that exists in most areas of our nation.

My question for more weatherred agents out there is what sort of questions would be good for a new agent to ask the brokerage to help determine if its a good match and choice.  What sort of factors and qualities of the brokerage are important to look out for?

Piles and Piles

One of the first and most annoying things we learn about this business is that there is a LOT of paperwork involved.  If your an Assistant for a Real Estate Agent or a Team, and your job is to tryto keep the scatter-brains organized...then you REALLY have a lot of paperwork to deal with.  Add to that organizing Leads and Marketing, and you have a potential Pile-up Nightmare!

I have a few personal strategies that I work at to keep the Piles under control and the Paperwork under wrap. 

1) I set atleast thirty minutes a day, either before or right after lunch, to do nothing but sort through my desk, drawers, desk tops, and filing trays.  The purpose of these 30 minutes are to sift through any misc piles that accumulated or just to make sure that paperwork that exists in a Labeled trey or folder actually BELONGS in that folder.  Craziness happens.

2) Fridays = Review Day.  Every Friday, I take 30 min to an Hour to Review my systems of organization.  I will pick an area (Desk top, Folders, Drawers, Top-Producer, or Daily Leads, etc) and review how I'm keeping it organized, if its working, how I can change it, or how much better I can use it.  Its a great "cool down" activity for the week and also helps keep the upcoming Monday from being potentially frustrating.

3) Keep-It-Simple-Stupid.  Sometimes the simplest organization methods work best.  I have some complicated systems....but I keep those few and far between. 

An example of a simple and effective system is my Activities Folder.  Its a Binder with Five Tabs: 1) Daily Showings (for the Agents call and say they want to show a property), 2) Daily Leads (copies of the leads I pull/gather for Paul), 3) Contacts (hard copies of Contacts we acquire), 4) Updates (to listings / systems), 5) Misc . The purpose of this folder and its tabs is to be a gathering place for Papers!  Basically, I can sort most all of the emails I print out,t he contacts and leads I receive, and random other junk thrown at me into this folder.  It keeps it from building up, its easyt o determine where something goes, and from there I can sort them into a more complicated system if I wish.  All it takes is a moment to holepunch, open clamp, insert, close clamp.

4) If you can't explain the system to others...then it might not be a good system.  Paul, Dana and Chris operate on a different wavelength to me, more often than not, and basically a system of organization is good if I can explain it to them breifly and they "get" it.  If its taking me thirty minutes to explain where I put the Mail Outs and why....then I may need to rethink my system.

Those are just some tidbits I've learned the hardway working in Real Estate.  I used to manage a small restaurant and was president of a few organizations in college, and none of them seemed to create as much to organize as this crazy business.  You have to stay on top of it, or it will get on top of YOU!