RACHEL THE REAL ESTATE AGENT

I am Rachel, a real estate agent in the United States for almost 15 years. Let me share to you the nature and scope of my work.

Basically, real estate agents facilitate the process of acquiring, selling, and renting land, homes, and other properties. We need to keep abreast of the latest real estate laws and trends to fulfill our duties and responsibilities. One of the things I love about my job is each day is unique even though some of the things we do may be typical.

Some of the administrative duties we perform include:

• Completing and filing real estate documents, agreements, and lease records
• Forming and organizing client databases
• Researching active, pending, and sold listings to formulate comparative market analysis (CMA) reports

Clients are vital to our success. We won’t be able to process transactions and earn commissions if not for them. One way of establishing contacts and leads is the real estate sphere of influence (SOI), where agents generate leads through various people the agent knows, including family, friends, colleagues, business associates, and social contacts.

At some point in their lives, most people will sell, buy, or rent property. Hence, every individual is a potential client as they often meet and speak with many people, give out business cards, and trail contact information. But this is just one step to cultivating new leads. It is necessary to follow up with regular phone calls, emails, or text messaging for our potential clients to remember us.

Clients

Real estate agents spend most of our time with clients, may it be working on behalf of sellers or buyers. As a seller’s agent, we dedicate time making a listing presentation, taking pictures of the property in question, and staging the house. Conversely, we browse through the MLS to look for suitable listing, distributing, or sending the listings to prospective buyers, and showing the property to interested buyers. We also accompany people to inspections, meetings with loan officers, closings, and other related activities.

Meetings and Tours

We are under the helm of designated brokers, in which we work in an office with other real estate agents and brokers. We also attend regular meetings, enabling us to share new listings, update one another on price reductions, and talk over buyers’ needs. In some instances, we help agents organize their buyers and sellers.

In my case, I join MLS tours to know new listing every week or month. That way, I can limit my search for a buyer since I have seen the properties firsthand, as well as share details with my potential buyers. Some agents I know participate in such tour for them to find out a good listing price for their seller’s property.

While being an agent is rewarding and tiresome at the same time, we also need to continue to expand our knowledge about the industry, as well as obtain the necessary certifications and designations to retain our active license status. And most importantly, maintain our pool of clients - every real estate agent’s lifeline.