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Recession-Proof Your Real Estate Career

Article by Debra Gould

If you’re among the thousands of people who got a real estate license when the market was hot, are you starting to think it might not be as easy to make money as it looked back then?

According to the 2007 Real Estate Trends Report, there is one licensed Realtor® for every 90 Americans. There couldn’t possibly be enough work for all of you, especially in today’s real estate market.

With such a saturated market of Realtors, it’s hardly surprising that they aren’t making much money either. According to Realtor.org, the median salary for a sales agent in 2004 was ,600 and for 2008 that number is down to ,000. For newer agents, salaries can be as low as ,000 a year.

Instead of heading to McDonalds® for an application, (a manager at a fast food restaurant earns ,000 to ,000 per year and doesn’t have to work 24/7) if you’re not making your fortune as an agent you might consider a career in home staging.

Home stagers can grow their businesses regardless of whether the real estate market is hot or not, because people will always want to make more on the sale of their property. And in a buyer’s market, they need our help even more, if they want to sell quickly.

Even the FSBO (for sale by owner) market is open to us as home stagers. The same sellers who don’t want to pay real estate commissions, and instead try and sell their homes privately, will invest in home staging services to decorate their home to sell faster and for more money.

As a real estate agent, you already know the real estate market and you’re probably used to giving home owners tips on getting their homes ready to sell. I hope you’re not making the fatal mistake of staging your vendors’ homes for free as an added service.

You could actually be making more money on giving staging advice than you do right now in real estate commissions!

In my second year as a home stager I was making up to ,000 a month staging my clients’ homes and that was starting from the ground up without a real estate license. It’s interesting to note too, that the majority of these home sellers hadn’t chosen their agent yet when they hired me. Had I had a license I would have had many of those listings myself rather than recommending them to other agents.

If you’re a real estate agent accustomed to driving around all day showing properties and not getting paid until you actually sell something, the income you can make as a home stager may surprise you. For example, 0 to 0 is close to industry standard for a home staging consultation, depending on where you live.

Assuming the low end, at 0, if you were to do four of those a week, that’s over ,000 at the end of the year. At the high end you could be making 4,800 a year and that’s just doing home staging consultations where you walk around the client’s home and give them staging advice so they can do the rest of the work themselves.

Now, let’s assume only a quarter of those consultations turn into full blown staging projects. You’ll earn another ,000 to ,000 per month, or between ,000 and ,000 a year on top of the consultation fees you were already making! And you don’t have to share any of that income with a broker.

If you’re making less than the average fast food restaurant manager, watching your meager income get eaten up by fees and large advertising budgets and you’re tired of being on call for your clients 24/7, isn’t it about time you started looking at other options that leverage the real estate knowledge you already have while allowing you to make double or triple what you’re earning now?

Consider the current economy and slow real estate market your wake up call. Maybe you should recession-proof your real estate career by enrolling in a home staging training program and start earning the kind of money that lured you into the real estate profession in the first place!

About the Author

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Free quiz to see if a home staging business is right for you at http://www.stagingdiva.com.

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Using a Summerville Real Estate Agent to Buy a Home

Article by Kody Fields

Using a Summerville Real Estate Agent to Buy a Home

Are you a Summerville resident who is looking to buy a home? If so, have you already started searching for that home? Better yet, do you have a real estate agent? If you are looking to buy a home in or around the Summerville area, you will definitely want to think about acquiring the services of a real estate agent, if you haven’t already done so.

When it comes to using a Summerville real estate agent, when buying a home, there are a number of local residents who wonder why they need a real estate agent. While it is true that you could go about purchasing a home without a real estate agent, the process could be long, frustrating, and stressful. That is why it is advised that you use a professional Summerville real estate agent. After a close examination, you will find that there are a number of benefits to acquiring the service of a popular and well-known real estate company or agent.

One of the many benefits to using the services of a Summerville real estate agent is that they will help you find the home of your dreams. Of course, you will also want to look for homes on your own, but your real estate agent should also help you. By letting your Summerville real estate agent know, ahead of time, what you like and do not like, they should be able to alert you if and when a new home, that fits your needs, hits the market. This, alone, should save you a fairly large amount of time.

In addition to helping you find a home, your Summerville real estate agent, should you decide to use one, will help you see the home. This is often done by private home showings. Private home showings are not usually granted unless you have a real estate agent present. That is why having your own real estate agent is important, but it may also help you in other ways. By having your real estate agent present, other than the one who is selling the home, your real estate agent may be able to give you their input or alert you to anything that may cause concern.

Perhaps, the biggest benefit of using a Summerville real estate agent is that they will take care of most of the work. In addition to helping you find the home of your dreams, a real estate agent should also assist you with the purchasing process. This process often includes a large number of legal documents and other things that you may have a difficult time processing or understanding. Not having to worry about the sale being properly processed is likely to make your home buying experience even more memorable.

As you should easily be able to see, there are a number of benefits to using the services of a professional Summerville real estate agent. If you haven’t already found an agent to work with, you are advised to start searching today.

About the Author

Kody Fields is a writer for Charleston SC Moves where you can find accurate information about Summerville Real Esate Agent and other related information.

What should an agent do before listing your house? They should make multiple visits to the house and create a market analysis. Good agents will give tips on how to improve the marketability and enhance the house for sale. Real estate agents should discuss the location, condition and give other tips and recommendations. Watch this Expert Real Estate segment for more information on what real estate agents should do to prepare a house for sale.
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Real Estate Value

Article by Steve Gillman

What is real estate value? It isn’t what you have into your house. It isn’t what you feel it is worth. It is what the market will pay. How do you figure out what the market will pay? For single family homes, the best way is by seeing what similar homes have sold for.

Figuring replacement cost isn’t very useful. It’s difficult to say what land is worth in a city center where none is left for sale, for example, and tough to gauge depreciation of the home itself. Valuation from replacement cost is used as a secondary method, and for unique homes that can’t be compared easily with others. However, the primary method of real estate appraisal used for homes is a market analysis using comparable sales.

Real Estate Value 101

First find at least three similar homes in the same area that have sold within the last year, and preferably within the last six months. You can find this information is in county records (sometimes online now), or from a real estate agent with access to the multiple listing service. Make sure you have the basic sales information: sales price, terms of sale, description of the property, etc.

Here is how you use this information to find real estate value. Write down the selling price of your first comparable. Review the description item by item, adding to the sales price of the comparable for each thing it doesn’t have that your subject home has, and subtracting for each thing it has that your subject home doesn’t have.

This sounds confusing, but it will make sense once you try it a couple times. For example, if your subject home has a second bathroom, and the a comparable doesn’t, you add the value of the bathroom to the sales price of the comparable. If a comparable home has a blacktop driveway, and the subject home doesn’t, you take the value away.What you are doing is rectifying differences, to see what the comparable home WOULD have sold for if it was just like yours. Suppose a comparable sold for 0,000, with one less bathroom than your subject home, and a bathroom is worth ,000 in your area (ask a real estate agent for help with these figures). You ADD ,000 for the bathroom it doesn’t have. You subtract, say ,000, for the paved driveway it does have, that your home doesn’t have. 0,000 plus ,000, minus ,000 gives you a comparable sales price of 1,000.

Do this with all differences between the subject home and each comparable. Once done, average the three comparable prices. If, for example, the three comparables now have adjusted sales prices of 1,000, 162,000, and 149,000, add the three figures and divide by three. The indicated value of the home is 4,000.

All appraisal is an inexact science. You might only find comparables sold over a year ago, and have to estimate appreciation in the area. If a comparable sold with seller financing, you have to decide how much this affected the price. Still, for all of it’s flaws, for single family homes this is the most accurate method for finding true real estate value.

About the Author

Steve Gillman has invested in real estate for years. To learn more, get a free real estate investing course, and see a photo of a beautiful house he and his wife bought for ,500, visit http://www.HousesUnderFiftyThousand.com