Tools are deployed in our daily activities to make the human job easier either hardware or software. No more physical hard-work is required by human creatures to complete the task rather we need an intellectual mind to pick the right tool for the right job in any field.
Technology is revolutionizing every field to make the process easier and faster and real estate is not counted out.
Real estate is an exception which allows an unknown third person to sell the property and get the commission cut. A lot of opportunities for individuals to earn huge from a single transaction.
It’s not only in primary sale, real estate agents participation is more in a secondary and rental transaction where the supply and demand are in harmony.
A lot of individuals are doing this business as a freelancer and making a good fortune but there are few agents who do this business with office setup and telesales team, completely professional.
This article “Essential real estate agent tools” is applicable to individual or a team.
Being in real estate industry for more than three years I found many successful real estate agents using marketing tools to make the process easier and efficient and they are very successful.
Enough Said…….
Let’s dive into the topic 4 Essential Real Estate Agent Tools
1.Demand Finder
It’s not only in real estate in any business if you pool your investment without primary research it will end up in the capital lock.
Real estate agent business is more of marketing business than manufacturing segment. Here an agent won’t build a property but acts as a channel partner and help the builder in selling the property. He works on commission basis.
Since he is working on commission basis he won’t get any capital support from the respective builder to start the marketing campaign.
He needs to invest from his own pocket, the risk involved is high. So before signing up with any builder a real estate agent should study the demand and supply of the market.
Property articles or locality reviews in dailies will help to a certain extent but won’t give you a live or very recent demand in the locality.
Magicbricks Demand Heatmap
In India builders, real estate agents or investors can study the locality demand on Magicbricks.
Magicbricks Demand Heat MapFor example:
If I want to know the property( sale/ rental) demand in Andheri, just go to Magicbricks select Buy/Rent and make a search for Andheri.
You will end up seeing the properties listed out in magicbricks, this search result shows you the supply in the locality Andheri, but how do you find the demand in the locality.
Simple, In the desktop version on the right side you will find the map view, just click the map view, your screen will change accordingly then under Heat Map select Demand.
A demand heat map will be displayed based on the demand in the Andheri and nearby locality.
This data will really help you to find the right locality to invest in. Based on the demand number you can allocate the marketing spend.
This is an important real estate agent tool to forecast the market demand.
2.Project Finder
It’s the second most important tool for real estate agent.
Once the demand in a locality is identified he needs to approach the projects in the particular locality to tie up with builders.
Again with the help of online portals you can easily identify the best projects.
Login to magicbricks or 99acres you will find many numbers of projects with contact details simply contact them.
Things to be considered before you choose the project
1.Visit the project in person and understand the neighborhood there are a lot of unsold stocks available in the market because of the neighborhood and amenities.
If you invest in those properties you cannot get a return.
2.Make sure the builder is quoting the locality price.
If the price per sqft is much higher than the locality average price then it will be near impossible to sell a single unit.
I know a promoter personally who spent lakhs in marketing a project with higher per sqft rate and ended up in the loss and still the project is unsold.
3.Make sure both you and builder are not promoting the same project in the same medium.
For example: if you both are advertising the project in online portals you both may end up in getting the same lead and the confusion prevails.
3.Real estate agent tools for advertising
A potential property buyer will never take a bike and roam street by street to find where the construction is happening to find a right property.
Technology enabled real estate buyers to choose the property of their choice from the comfort of home.
There are a lot of ways to advertise your property but only a few ways are found lucrative with high ROI.
For example:
A traditional way of keeping hoardings in streets will only help the renowned developers to generate leads, not for unpopular developers. A buyer won’t roam in the street to find the banners.
Giving advertisement in a newspaper is one of the potential outbound ways to generate quality leads but the cost of advertisement is comparatively higher than the online marketing.
In papers, if you spend few thousands for one day you will end up in ten to twenty calls but if you spend only thousand per day in online you will get hundreds of leads.
When it comes to online targeted advertisement its wise for agents to choose the leading online portals like Magicbricks rather than approaching independent digital marketing agencies.
4.Lead Nurturing tools for real estate agents
Lead nurturing is as equally important as lead generation.
The job of your sales team actually begins when they start nurturing the leads.
Leads can be generated from online portals or through any outbound methods but if you don’t put a right individual or team to follow the cases then all your marketing expenditures go waste.
There are many lead management tools for agents to manage their leads like Magicbrick’s SmartDiary, a mobile CRM which capture the leads from magicbricks and help you to follow it up in an effective way.
You can use ZOHO CRM to capture and nurture the leads up to 10 users it is completely free for small-scale businesses.
You can use ZOHO CRM to store the customer details, integrate with Twitter, Facebook or with other online portals to capture the lead directly to CRM and from there you can assign the lead to the individual.
From a single dashboard, you can follow the activities happening in any of your sales team accounts.
Do you want to suggest any tools? Comment down below.