Pundits are predicting 2020 to be a great year for real estate. That likely means more homes will be bought and sold in your market. That also means more of your previously idle competitors will join the real estate fray, thus making it harder you to fully benefit with extra sales and income.
Real estate professionals tend to think more about areas they work in than the actual merchandise they are selling or buying. Walk into any 7-Eleven outlet and the owner knows precisely which potato chips are selling better than others, and which Slurpees are more popular. In other words, she really knows what is moving in the store, what is selling and what is staying on the shelves.
Perhaps it is time for you to start thinking of yourself as a purveyor of homes. It makes good business sense to concentrate on what type of merchandise is moving fastest. What type of people is your market serving? Are you only after one market niche? Does your market knowledge encompass the entire area you cover?
Many real estate professionals are too set in their ways and do not have a deeper comprehensive understanding of their local market segments. To their detriment, they fail to capitalize on the great opportunities right in their own backyard.
Here is how you can rise above the crowd with ease, by prudently allocating your time, which will result in higher income. Start analyzing home prices in your sphere of influence (the territory you work in) into three segments: starter homes, move-up homes and luxury homes. They make up three different categories of your purveyance inventories. Each category has a different audience, with different demands and different problems. Having complete knowledge of all three will give you expertise and power that leaves your hordes of competitors in the dust.
Below is a sampling of 3,185,747 of all types of homes sold in the U.S., broken down into the three categories:
What the previous graph means is you get maximum return for your invested time. It is practically impossible to divide your time like this daily—but, over a month’s time, here is how you should have been spending your time:
You may of course decide to focus 100 percent in one category, or just two, in which case just add your choice(s) together and approportionate accordingly.
This practice separates you from the also-rans and ensures that the real professionals always know which categories of homes are currently selling, no matter what market conditions are.
Leon Y. d’Ancona is CEO of REality®. For more information, please visit www.REstats.com.
