How To Build A Michigan Foreclosure Black Book – Part 1 – Michigan Real Estate Agents for Selling Your Homes
Pick any business – mortgages, real estate, appraising, title insurance, dentist, restaurant owners – and that one number that never changes is that 5% of them make all the big bucks. 1% truly gets rich.
So in any given Michigan city of all the real estate agents vying for you attention and listings – there is a tiny number of real estate agents – 5% who are making all the money.
Since they make money, month after month – they can afford to advertise.
Actually they advertise a lot.
My local township newspaper has a full page color ad on the back page, every single week. Same real estate agent week after week. I called the newspaper just for the lark. The full page costs $1600 per week. That is $6,400 per month, $76,800 per year.
This guy has to be doing well in his business to be writing a check like that every month. Which also means since he is the “only” one running a full page color ad – the chances are that his listings / houses sell faster than his competition who are not running a full page color ads.
Who do you want to handle your listing?
A real estate agent who runs full page color ads every week or a real estate agent who will put a sign in front of the house and call it a day?
The top dogs make more money, which gives them the room to advertise more, which helps them sell more, which gives them more money to advertise ….
You get the picture???
If you are going to pay 6% anyway to sell your house why not hire the absolute best gun for hire out there?
One of the top real estate agents in the city of Detroit spends $10,000 per month on radio advertising. Another one has two different radio shows on two different radio stations in the city.
Yet nobody bothers to do this little piece of common sense research before listing his or her house with a real estate agent. Any body with a business card with a picture and the title of Real Estate Agent could be given a listing. Yet they are not created equal.
It is 6% either way – top dog or wet behind the ears? You can pick.
Even worse are the real estate investors who get a real estate license then try selling their own homes without having $1 for marketing because they have already blown all their money on rehab.
Reminds of the old joke – the guy who wants to defend himself in the court of law has a fool for a client.
Do these 4 point checklist before you sign on the dotted line on a listing agreement to sell one of your properties:
1. If you have access to MLS do a search on the houses sold in that particular city and see whose name pulls up all the time.
2. Go to the public library and pull up the local newspapers and see who are running big color full page ads.
3. Go to the local Kroger or Meijer and see whose mug shot is on all the shopping carts.
4. Go to Google, MSN, Yahoo and type in your city followed by the words “real estate agent” and then “Realtor” and check out two things:
*** Who is pulling up on the top 3 search results? If they are smart enough to invest in putting up a kick butt website probably they are investing in other forms of advertising too.
### Who is running these ads – these are little text ads that are on the top of the page and right hand side – blue links that say on top “Sponsored Links”. These ads are very expensive to run. Anybody who is spending money on running these ads must be doing something.
Build a list of Top Realtors in your target Michigan city. A great Black Book the kind that makes you money does not happens by accident. But once it is done; the transformation in everything you do is almost instantaneous.