There are a lot of home buyers and sellers who don’t know about real estate. As a real estate agent or investor, their inability to comprehend the market can be detrimental to your success. So how do you effectively educate these individuals on real estate, win more customers and help them? Done correctly, your educational efforts can help you tremendously.
Real estate is a lot more complex than most consumers can fathom. There are many costs associated with buying, selling, financing and owning a home that most aren’t aware of. Most, including many real estate investors and agents, are aware of all of the fine print and factors which affect loan approvals and actual appraised values. Few get how much is involved in a real estate transaction and getting to the closing table. Most would be horrified if they were aware of just how volatile and fragile it all was.
So how does this void negatively impact the real estate business on a day to day basis, why doesn’t simply trying to tell consumers work, and what’s the best way to deliver real estate education?
What home buyers and sellers don’t know and what is held back from them about the costs and complexities of transactions, borrowing and homeownership not only hurts them, but all real estate investors and agents and the industry. Some believe holding back information, or at least being delicate and keeping disclosures to a whimper is the only way to close deals. This might be true in some cases, if consumers run to someone else who masks these details. Obviously, they’ll find out eventually and often become disenchanted with the whole real estate industry and become bitter.
Unfortunately, 99% of the time, trying to educate about real estate on the spot in a sales presentation just doesn’t work. Most consumers don’t know who to trust, and are only focused on the dollar figures and path of least resistance. So when the competition promises “no closing costs” or “zero money down and closings in 3 days,” it can be a virtually impossible argument to win.
Besides just not wanting to hear the truth, too many prospective home buyers and sellers take ‘being educated’ by a stranger offensively; as an attack on their own intelligence and a poke in the chest to their pride. This is true, regardless of your intentions and superior accuracy.
So what’s the solution?
For the aggressive Realtor, investor and mortgage broker, one of the most powerful strategies for delivering education is the ‘conference call strategy.’ When you are losing the deal to a competitor who clearly isn’t being honest with the prospect or has no idea what they are doing, surprise them with a live conference call to put them on the spot and call them out. Just be sure you really have your stuff together!
However, in order to provide effective real estate education, 99% of it either needs to be done in a soft way, via a consultative approach, and preferably even before a prospect picks up a phone to call a real estate agent or other professional for help. A few ways to deliver on this include:
- Regular real estate blogging
- Tips spread by social media including YouTube
- Hosting live home buyers seminars
- Publishing articles on third party sites
- Collaborating on podcasts
- Getting better at SEO so that you are found when consumers have questions
