Accurate Methods of Recording Results in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

As a broker in commercial real estate today you really do need to look into your activities within your property speciality, listings, and new business activity. You should understand where you are positioned when it comes to today’s property market for the location.

An awareness of your position will allow you to make adjustments and improve your results where situations allow. Top agents are always adjusting their activities in a deliberate an ongoing way. They look for the indicators that show the levels of inquiry to focus into, strategies to achieve conversion, and client service requirements.  New business generally comes through creative ongoing contact.

Your town or city will have indicators to watch when it comes to commercial property sales, leasing, and development. Local business sentiment and investor activity will flow and change in an out of the marketplace subject to the opportunities and investment growth. As a broker or agent specializing in the location, you can work with those opportunities deliberately and directly. You should become a specialist for the location and market yourself accordingly.

Look Locally

So what is happening in your location today with properties and listings? Consider the following factors and track these concepts in your business activities:

• the number of listings on the market today
• the types of listings that are creating the best levels of interest
• the time that it takes to sell or lease a property today
• the levels of business sentiment for the location
• the supply and demand for property locally
• the dominant brokers and agents for the location
• the number of signboards and advertisements applying to local listings

So there are plenty of things that you can do here to find the best clients and the better listings for your location. When you focus on quality in this way, you will find that the levels of enquiry coming to you from your marketing efforts are always of greater frequency and of a more genuine nature.

The message here is that you can and should track your numbers using a simple analysis process undertaken each week; the weekend is the best time to do that when the pressures of the business day and transaction activity are low.

That deliberate analysis for the location and your position within it, will allow you to adjust your prospecting activities, negotiations, and client services. The commercial property market is always active; it is up to the agents and the brokers to adjust to property market conditions. In any period of 12 months, it is quite likely that you will need to adjust your business focus and client focus at least three or four times. If you are researching your area in a regular and ongoing way, you will understand exactly how you can tap into the local area changes to achieve some of the positive outcomes that you seek.

Business Analysis

Here are some other ideas to help you in your business analysis:

• Listings are always important and should be the basis of your business activity. Listings can be exclusively controlled, and that should be a priority in your client presentation and listing pitch. Exclusivity allows you to build your real estate business and client services with greater levels of success and conversion. If you work an exclusive listing correctly, the results that you achieve with the listing will be more successful for the client and faster from time perspective. Open listings stay on the market for a very long period of time. That is why exclusivity is just so important in what we do. Understand the numbers of listings in the market today, and the ratio of exclusive listings within that. Look to improve your exclusive listing ratios in comparison to other agents locally.
• Assuming that you can convert listings exclusively, monitor the time on market in each case. Client service and client conditioning will allow you to shorten the time on market and achieve a better result in either price or rental. The listing process is the beginning of a complex series of strategies across marketing, inspections, and negotiations. Devote most of your professional services into the exclusive listings that you control. Communicate with the client in regular and valuable ways.
• Track the sales results and the leasing results by suburb and by building type. The numbers identified will help you when it comes to property presentations and listing conversions. It is one thing to quote asking rentals from other advertised properties; it is another to actually quote final achieve rentals and prices. Some clients have a warped sense of values and results when it comes to local property activity, and their property in relation to that. You will need actual results from the location and within the targeted property type to help condition them to the prevailing market conditions. Be prepared to prove exactly what is happening in the local area when it comes to the property types and the recent transaction activities.

So there are plenty of things that you can do here to understand your numbers and the results achieved from the local property market.