Thursday 9 June 2016

Choosing a Niche in Real Estate – Becoming a real estate specialist

Choosing a Niche in Real Estate – Becoming a real estate specialist

Whenever anybody joins real estate, there are a few basic things that an individual starts with. He markets himself to the masses, reaches out to his sphere of influence, creates his own database, makes cold calls, does meetings and so on. Ideally, it is the way a realtors day should look like but there is a problem in this process. The problem is that, there are hundreds of real estate agents doing the same thing. With so many agents out there it seems like anybody can do real estate or at least it looks like they can do real estate. In such a case, where everyone is the go-to-guy for real estate, what makes you unique in that crowd?

With the changing demographics of real estate investors, now the clients are more qualified and they look for long term returns on anything they buy or sell. In such scenario’s, they look up to someone with more specialized knowledge and this is where the need arises for a specialization in the market. A smart real estate professional will first identify his skills, refine his knowledge and passion and then hunt for a speciality. Always remember that one satisfied customer, brings you a lot of referrals and this is one of the biggest perk of being a specialist! So let’s discuss how you can find your niche:

Choose your area of work: Real Estate is very vast and as an individual everyone has likes and dislikes for a specific market. Shortlist the category in which you want to work. Primary sales, secondary sales, commercial sales, renting, leasing, luxury homes, working only with first time home buyers, vacation homes, global real estate, work only on referrals etc is just a small sample of what could be your niche. We were recently reading about a story of a women realtor, who only sold luxury homes to HNI’s and doing so she had gained recognition in all the elite clubs and thus had more deals coming on her way.  She became a specialist in that community! Thus it is important to first select your niche and then start working towards it. Make a network and collect as much as possible information about your targeted audience
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 Understand your target market and audience: To succeed in your niche, you truly need to become an expert of that market. Starting from understanding their investment portfolio to the kind of lifestyle and needs your clients have, everything has to be well understood. Just for an example, if you are helping a newly married couple in finding a home, as a realtor you need to project not only their current needs but also the future requirements. If you are helping a corporate employee to find the right home for him/her, factors likes proximity to work space, good connectivity to airport, railway station etc should be kept in mind. You need to understand the requirements of your customer and provide them with an extra value from what they expect from you. This will not only make them your customers for lifetime, but they will also love to refer you to their other friends with similar requirements. Remember, in Real Estate; your NETWORK is your NETWORTH!

Know about the local demographics and the market drivers of the area: Knowing in and out of the location is another key factor that contributes to the success of building your niche. You need to master the rentals, current pricing, upcoming projects, infrastructural developments of that area etc. There is a simple formula to learn about it. Take out that areas map and do the mapping of the area.  When you know about it, you will be immediately able to find out that if you have a listing with you, is in underpriced or overpriced. This will make you an effective real estate consultant as no customer can evaluate this part of real estate by just searching the Internet. Being successful in your niche requires you to walk an extra mile to up skill yourself and once you do that, there is no looking back.    
Create a marketing campaign for yourself and let the clients 
come to you: Once everything is in place and you have started closing transactions it’s time to promote yourself as an expert. Prepare your marketing campaign and promote yourself so that people start having your name in their mind when they have that particular requirement. You should have success stories with you and a lot of promotional material with you to make people think and talk about you. Make your own value and clients will come to you.

Real estate will always be packed with competition and you must know that to excel you must keeping learning and doing more in order to succeed.  Be selective in choosing your niche and identifying your target market as they will be the key drivers for your success. Real estate offers an enormous amount of growth on a consistent basis; unlock your potential and watch your business grow!