SHARE THE LESSONS YOU'VE LEARNT FROM 2007 AND MAKE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR 2008: 

•1.                 List to Subsist.  Reduce to Produce.  Hone your listing skills, or learn to live with less.  70+% of the agents in my market have not had a single sale this entire year.  They were the order takers of yesteryear, who made money because they showed up.   

Working with Buyers is very time consuming.  With tons of expireds, all you have to do is practice, practice, practice listing.  The more you do that, the better you'll be at it. 

Ask the Seller for a price reduction at least once a month until the property sells.  Price the property 2-5% below anything else sold in that neighborhood, or that condo project.  Stay alert and inform your seller of any other price drops in the neighborhood.  You want to consistently be the lowest priced active comp, so you can get first dibs on the showings.

•2.                 Make it Impossible for the Seller to say No.   Impress the Seller with your knowledge, your skills, your advertising, your reporting, your fresh ideas, etc.  Offer more value than any other agent.  Do more than anybody else.  Once you get the listing walk the walk. 

Whatever you do, make sure you charge the right amount of commission.   Since it takes me a lot more money and effort to sell a listing, I have raised our commissions.  We offer more money to the co-operating brokerage too, so they can have more incentive to sell my listings.

•3.                 Net sheet every listing presentation.  Net sheet every price reduction.  If you discovered the magic of the net sheet, read my blog on it: "Just Show Me The Money!"http://activerain.com/blogsview/250507/Just-Show-Me-The

•4.                 Report back to your Seller, REGULARLY.    Gone are the days of the expedient sale.  With properties lingering on the market month after month, you better have continuous communication with your Seller, or your Seller will think you're just sitting on your duff doing nothing. 

At least once a month, all my sellers receive an in-depth report with all the showings and comments from the agents who showed the property, current competition in the particular project and current competition in the immediate area.  What listings have sold in the neighborhood (if any).  What comparable listings have sold in the immediate area and for how much.   A copy of all your advertising.  A copy of the MLS listing.  Send the reports by e-mail whenever possible, snail mail if not.  Follow up with a phone call to the Seller, going over everything, answering any questions, then asking for a price reduction.

Make your Seller an integral part of your team.   Use the word "US", not you and I.  Once you become "partners", you are in the same team.  Brainstorm together, share ideas, work together to get the job done. 

•5.                 Cross Market.  Whether it's joining the MLS Board in the adjacent city, networking with agencies internationally, or simply suggesting one more of your listings to agents when they call to make showing arrangements, put that word on your desk and milk it for all it's worth. 

We're in 4 (yes, 4!!!), MLS boards.  It's not cheap, but it's well worth it.  It helps us sell more of our listings, and it certainly impresses our Sellers, so we get more listings.

•6.                 Go International.   Open your eyes to doing International business.  The weakening of the dollar and the strength of the other currencies provide a unique opportunity for International buyers.  Open your eyes to that unique opportunity.  I've already bought several dot de's (for Germany) and I'm trying to figure out how to get my hands on some dot eu's.  Canada is next.  You don't have to be bilingual to represent foreign buyers.  Most Europeans speak English, and you can have anything translated for free right on line.  See:  "Free Online Translator" http://www2.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html

Also, look into training on how to do business internationally.   Invest in CIPS education.   http://www.realtor.org/cipshome.nsf/pages/education

•7.                 Advertise like your life depended on it.  Learn as much as possible about Advertising and dedicate a lot more attention and money to it.  A weak market necessitates a lot more advertising to get the same job done.  Yes, I've made less money and I've spent more, but I'm still at the top in my market - I consider it an INVESTMENT in my business.   Read:  "I'm Overspending My Advertising Budget Again This Year; I Can't Afford Not To!"   http://activerain.com/blogsview/320469/I-m-Overspending-My

•8.                 Figure out how to do more with less.  Cut off all the "Fat".  Get Lean.  ... And I don't mean, go on a diet...  Run a tight ship.  Get rid of superfluous expenditures that do not deliver.  From cutting unproductive staff, to cleaning up all expenses that do not deliver, these lean times call for "trimming the fat" in business...

•9.                 Learn to love systems.  Figure out a system for everything, from creating a list of all the things you have to do once you have a listing, to automatically paying your bills on line, to formulating advertising you re-create over and over.  Have a system in place for everything.  Once a system is in place, follow it 100% of the time.  Systems allow you and your team to do more in less time.

•10.           Educate or stagnate.  In a very competitive market such as ours, education takes on a new meaning: it is no longer a choice, but a requirement.    If you are not up to date on lease with an option to buy, land contract of sale transactions, owner financing, you better take a crash course in those, so you can educate your Sellers on them and provide them as viable alternatives to straight out sales.  Read:   "Do You BS, or CRS?"    http://activerain.com/blogsview/319562/Do-You-BS-or

•11.           If you can't sell it, rent it.  If you are not doing property management, this is a good time to start.  If you don't want to do that, at least ally yourself with a very good property manager.   Explore the option of renting when the Sellers simply can not afford to sell (when they don't have the money to bring to closing...). 

•12.           Help your fellow builders.  Many of them are going under.  With unsold specs collecting dust, you need to aggressively pursue solutions and approach dying builders with them.  From offering to rent the homes out, to educating the builders on lease with option to buy, land contract of sale, mortgage buy-downs and staging,  you need to aggressively get in there and help your fellow builders.  Formulate solutions and approach every builder you consider worth the effort of saving.  

My Prediction for 2008:

Savvy buyers have been buying more and more as the year progressed.  The more negative the real estate scenario, the better the deals.  2008 will be a very strong year for Buyers.  2008 will be the year of the Deal.  By 2009 the market will swing up again, and it will be too late to garner great buys once the media picks up on it and the "feeding frenzy" starts once again. 

What do you think?  Please give me the lessons you've learnt in 2007 that you will implement in 2008. 

What's your prediction?

Your Myrtle Beach Real Estate Connection, Mirela Monte

http://www.myrtlebeachhomes.us/