Real Estate Info

Posts Tagged ‘business’

When you hold an FROR (First right of refusal) on a real estate property (or any other asset for that matter), it basically means the current owner of the property is obligated to offer you the property (to purchase) whenever he/she decides to sell the property. In case the owner sidesteps the person holding First right of refusal, and sell it to another buyer, the FROR holder can take them to court for reparation.

To understand how FROR works, let’s have a look at this example. Mr. A owns an apartment and rents it out to Mr. B. After living there for some months, Mr. B develops an interest in purchasing that apartment, for some reasons the transaction cannot take place straight away. However, Mr. B asks for an FROR agreement and Mr. A agrees. Now, once the agreement is signed by Mr. A, he is now restricted to offer this apartment to Mr. B before he finalizes the deal with any other party. For example, when he’s approached by a third party with an offer of say, $450,000 USD, and he is willing to accept, he must first contact Mr. B and make an offer for him to buy this apartment for the same amount ($450,000). It is only after Mr. B refuses to buy, when Mr. A will be free to sell the property to the third party. Remember, Mr. A can not ask for a better price, he must offer the property to Mr. B for the same price, which was being offered to him by the third party.

Question is why a seller in his /her right mindset would agree on presenting someone with an FROR contract. Answer is, because it doesn’t really hurt the seller in anyway. However, there are some minor plus and minuses attached to this contract. For example, seller can ask for a small amount as a fee for an FROR contract, also such contract may add a little value to the property. Coming to the negative side, real estate agents are reluctant to deal with such properties, in case the holder of FROR accepts the offer and make a purchase; the agent will be deprived of any commission whatsoever. However, the best thing about First right of refusal is that it doesn’t have some predefined clauses or terms, seller and buyers are free to negotiate and jot down their own specific conditions.

There are some modified versions of FROR as well, one of them is Right of First Offer, in which seller has to approach the holder before putting the property on sale.

Is branding important for real estate businesses (for example a real estate agency or an architect designer)? Before answering this question, first have a look at how branding can help a business in general. Pages and pages can be filled on what is a brand and how beneficial it can be. In simple words, Brand is a catchy name that carries a set of specific characteristics, quality and distinctiveness about some specific business. Branding leads to customer loyalty, brand names are easy to remember, which results in more sales (the more your targeted consumers remember the name, the more they are going to purchase from your business). Now, think of these advantages in terms of a real estate business and you’ll be absolutely clear in your mind that branding is important for a real estate business.

Powerful branding can do wonders for your real estate business. With the passage of time, it automatically becomes the leader of the market. You can expect lots of customers coming straight to your business, since the majority of first time customers can only remember (and they’ll often purchase from) an already established brand. For that reason, you must be working towards transforming your real estate business into a reputable brand.

Building a brand, especially in realty business is not an easy accomplishment though. The business must be able to deliver the expected quality and services every time someone hires their services. Otherwise, the decay is not going to take as much time as it takes in building brand-identity. You can start from pinpointing a special service or trait that the customers can count on, following it with a consistent marketing plan that highlights this special feature of your company or service. In order to do this, you must be aware of the qualities that your targeted customers will be looking for. In case of real estate agents, some of the required traits include professionalism, honesty, and unsurpassed knowledge of the market, unrivaled experience or trust.

Branding creates a positive impression of your product or services in the minds of the customers, even before they’ve started doing business with you. Then again, such luxury is an outcome of nonstop commitment and efforts being made on your part. If all kinds of businesses have been successfully benefited from branding, there’s no reason that a real estate business cannot. Therefore, irrespective of the very nature of your business (be it a real estate agency, appraiser, attorney, real estate contractor or developer), you must be concerned about the branding of your real estate business.

Telemarketing is widely used all over the world as an effective method for generating leads and making sales. Being a small scale real estate business or professional, you’ve got a couple of options like telemarketing, email marketing or web marketing to promote your services. You can choose one or more from these relatively inexpensive mediums; telemarketing happens to be the one with the best success rate. A telemarketer’s job is to call prospective customers and entice them to buy some particular product/service from you. Known as a very cost-effective method, telemarketing is often denounced by the general public who consider it to be a disturbance (and rightfully so). That doesn’t mean that telemarketing in all of its forms is unethical, all you need to do is to avoid calling at inappropriate times and make sure that the number you are going to call, is not on “Do not call” list. You can use telemarketing for various purposes in your real estate business, for example generating leads or making sales during outbound or inbound calls.

Good thing about telemarketing is that you can do it from the comfort of your house as well. Getting your hands on customer’s list and their contact numbers is often the trickiest part, because you cannot use telephone directories. Calling a random number and inquiring if they need the services of a real estate agent or attorney is not going to fetch any result. As an alternate option, you can acquire a list of customers from another business which is somehow related to your business. Otherwise you can get these numbers from property portals where interested buyers or sellers often leave their contact details along with their requirements.

Calling your customers and convincing them over phone is not easy, you should start from defining your goals. In most cases, you should be content with fixing a meeting with the clients because it’s not possible to finalize the sale of a property over phone. Even though it’s good to have a written sales pitch but don’t rely solely on the sales pitch because in most cases the customers will just slam the phone down in case you start narrating your sales pitch like a robot. It’s always good to have some information about the person you are going to talk to, if you are getting the numbers from a property portal, you must read a little about their requirements before making a call.