Top Agents Meet A Bill Barrett's Masterminds in New Orleans

50 Agents Bring their Best Ideas

Another trip well worth it to New Orleans just before the official kick off of the National Association of Realtors National Conference. I had the pleasure of being a part of Bill Barrett's SuperStars mastermind at the Ritz. There were some incredible ideas and it was hard to do, but I narrowed my top 3 ideas to the following:

1- Pat Wattam had a contest for an iPad in her office. Each team member get points for different things, mostly 20% stuff (generating new leads, getting contracts signed, making calls, making appts, open houses, blogging, running ads, and setting up systems to free them up for more lead gen). Points are accumulated over a month's time, and the iPad is given away to person with most points.

2- Cathy Russell shared the Flag Signage for Open Houses. You've seen the tall flags blowing in the wind in your marketplace. Getting Flags with your logo and that say "OPEN" and use them for everything from, outside the office, for Open Houses, Client Appreciation Parties, etc.

3- Kevin Hildebrand sharing that Storage Unit Managers are a great source for referrals. They meet people every day that are decluttering their homes.

The Korn Team shared the information on our new book, The Complete Guide to Buying a Home in Kansas City. We found a company that will help with most of the common content, yet allow you to personalize the book for our area.

Becoming a Published author has been much easier than I ever imagined. The book is full of incredible content and we have put our Kansas City touch to help buyers & your referrals take advantage of the Kansas City market and be comfortable with the process of buying a home.

If you would like more information about publishing a Buyer book or Seller book for your marketplace (only one Realtor per market area) contact me at brad@kornteam.com with subject: "I want to be a published author" and I will get you the information about publishing your own Real Estate Book.

Is NOW a good time to sell?

Many clients ask if they should wait till April (or so) to put their home on the market. Actually, my advice is quite different. No matter what market you are in, the Fall and Spring months are one of the BEST times to be on the market.

Real Estate is everything they taught us in High School Economics....it is "supply" and "demand". The reason people think they should wait is because they heard a lot of homes sell in the summer. Well, that is true. In fact, 50% of home sales in the US sell in the summer months. However, during the summer months there is more competition for those buyers.

What I suggest is to get your home on the market right away. Jan-Mar will be the months you will have the leasst amount of competition for the rest of the year. Many sellers sign 6 month contracts when they list their home. If they list in June and expire around Thanksgiving...the majority of sellers go ahead and take their home off the market. Those are the months that you have the least amount of sellers trying to take YOUR buyer.

Another way to look at it is this, in the summer there are a lot more buyers....but also a lot more homes for sale. In the beginning of the year there are fewer buyers....but they are typically more serious buyers (especially if there is snow and bad weather). Those buyers HAVE to move. So, even though you may get fewer lookers, the lookers out in the weather ar serious buyers. In fact, those serious buyers have fewer homes to chose from, so I would argue that sellers typically get a little more equity during the first months of the year.

If you would like further explanation on this, feel free to contact us at brad@kornteam.com