What Clients Value in Your Personal and Business Qualities

Countless stories of real estate agents have been shared and all of them seem to be worse than the previous one. Between the thieves and the liars, it seems that real estate agents’ reputation has become quite tainted.

In reality, the real estate industry is an extremely competitive industry where exceeding the basic needs of a client has become the norm.

Most agencies’ money and personal effort goes into marketing their expertise to the public with the hope of building a strong and loyal client base. Once a great job was performed for them, repeat business and referrals will follow (Hopefully). As a general statement of valued skills:

What Buyers Want from a Real Estate Professional

Buyers can’t be put in the same basket as they all have different preferences, requirements, experience etc… For instance, first time buyers are walking on unknown territory and will need a lot more hand-holding. Investors will want lots of data to measure profitability but in general, most will want transactional help, lots of interpretation of documents and help with the final decision making.

Another very important aspect to consider is the market area: If you’re representing buyers in other specialized areas or property types, they will tend to rely more on your expertise and local market knowledge. When looking for a vacation or resort home, buyers generally need even more support. When looking to buy in a mountain rural area with complicated septic system and other regulations, clients understand quite fast that the expertise of their agent becomes priceless.

What Sellers Want from a Real Estate Professional

An easy way of defining the needs and requirements of Sellers is that they just want to sell their home quickly and at the highest amount possible.
Just like everything else, there’s a lot more than what meets the eye. Some agencies offer services such as interior design, remodeling, or extensive marketing visuals to make the most of a properties’ values. Those extra benefits are the kind of details offered by reliable agencies. Basic expectations

There are numerous skills you want to find in your property agents, including people skills and technology skills, but those are the top items. Note the importance of responsiveness and communication skills. If their entire first weeks of interaction with you was over the Web and email, then those items would imply a need for some technology knowledge.

Whether your marketing features these skill sets or not, it is important to your future repeat and referral business to concentrate on doing your very best in these areas.

Some of the Basic Business Skills you want to look for are:

Responsiveness: Time management and organizational skills are a great way to know if your agent is serious or not. The better they manage their time, the more likely they will accomplish better- after all, this industry is all about the right timing

Knowledge of real estate market: Having knowledge of the area helps the agents understand the different neighborhood and guide you through the basic but important key features surrounding you.

Communication and Negotiation skills: Because a real estate agent works as an intermediary between a buyer and a seller, both his communication and negotiation skills must work hand in hand to make the deal happen.

The attributes of successful real estate agents

From personal experience, real-estate agents do come in all shape and sizes but here are some attributes I place as top priority:

Passion and Compassion —
A successful real estate never gets bored of the job and always finds pleasure in working with clients passionately. Not only is he passionate about the field he chose, he works passionately and make his clients priority.

Honesty and Integrity —
being honest is one of the main characteristics to succeed in the real estate industry. A dishonest agent might make a few sales, but he wont go far — in a field tainted by bad apples, your integrity and authenticity will make you stand out from the crowd.

After wasted months with the wrong agents, followed by countless hours of personal research, I have never been more relieved to (finally) say I am an extremely satisfied home-owner in Thailand and wouldn’t have done it this quickly for this quality without the International expertise and local experience of my amazing agents! (yes- there were 2)

Good luck to all you property hunters — and I hope you find the home you’ve been dreaming of ;)