How to Start All Over Again in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

The longer you stay in the commercial real estate industry as an agent or broker, you will find yourself ‘starting over again’ in a number of different ways and at different times.  It could be that you are moving offices, changing territory location, perhaps there have been internal brokerage changes, or you have taken a break for a while from the market.  For any reason and at any time in any property market, you can rebuild your business and market share.  Your focus and systems will help you get there.

When you systemise your processes in contacting people in your market, the facts of ‘starting over’ really are not a problem.  In simple terms you need a plan to make things happen, and daily action to take that plan forward.

Here are some tips to help you:

1. Define your Property Market – Get out some maps of the town or city to define where your sales and leasing territory will be.  If it is a large area, then split it up into sub zones where you have priority streets and suburbs.  Use previous sales records as a guide to see how many transactions may be possible in the zone in the future.
2. Property Owners – Get to know the property owners and landlords for all properties in priority areas.  Those areas will be where businesses and tenants like to occupy and or purchase.  The people that you speak to in these groups should be put into your pipeline of contact and particularly your database.  Put those people into a 90 day contact cycle to build your relevance to them through cold calling and contact meetings.
3. Land – Any vacant land regionally should be checked out to see if any pockets of that land could be coming up for redevelopment or a major project.  A good sized project can help you fast track your growth of market share.  Property developers may be good at construction and project planning, but they still need marketing to back up the project sales and or leasing.  As a local agent or broker you can help with that.
4. Recent Sales and Leases – Check out all the recent transactions in the area so you know what prices and rents are doing.  As part of that process check out the supply and demand for property groups and types.  Understand the types of properties that people today are looking to purchase or rent.  Can you tap into those markets and how will you do that?  It is really important that you build your brand and relevance around a property type in a location.
5. Check out all Local Listings – Current listings will give you a perspective of the property market today.  Within your zone get to understand what listings are for sale and lease; look at the time on market in each case.  Why are things selling or remaining unsold?  The same questions should apply to leasing.  When you have the answers you have the strategies to make your property market share grow.
6. Signboards – Get plenty of signboards up in your area as soon as possible.  As a priority make those listings exclusive where you can control the stock and the enquiry.

These 6 simple strategies will help you get back into your property market after a change in location, or a break from the industry.  Systemise your actions and you will find the commercial real estate business.  It is a very personal process to be actioned as soon as possible.