Real estate is a career that has unlimited potential but your reputation and how you represent yourself online is your greatest asset as your starting out. A common misconception is that a new agent only needs licensing education in order to be successful. The truth is, there are strict limitations on what can and cannot be taught in a licensing course. Here are 5 easy ways to increase your online presence in real estate, especially for the newer agent.

It’s Your Reputation

Your reputation isn’t just built by word-of-mouth anymore — potential clients are often checking you out online before they even get in touch with you. They’ll look at your social media profiles, new listing, reviews and other places. Where your name appears on the Internet to get a full sense of your social profile.

Clients are particular about their real estate agents, which makes sense—they’re about to make a costly and potentially life-changing investment. What’s...

Ethics and fair housing are two of the most important issues will face in your real estate career. The Ethical Agent Always Wins! Although ethics, as a philosophical discipline, is a vast topic, in the simplest sense, ethical behavior can be thought of as nothing more than doing the right thing, behaving with integrity, treating people fairly, evaluating a situation and choosing the moral path, even if that path is not the easiest one to follow.

How would you characterize an ethical person?

• You might answer “an ethical person would treat other people fairly and honestly. Regardless, of their background or ethnicity.”
• You might think “an ethical person would be compassionate toward others. Consider the needs of other people when making a decision”.
• You would probably agree “an ethical person would have integrity. In upholding principles and convictions in his or her actions regardless of personal consequences.”

In fact, all of these...

Making changes to your home can be a lot of fun. It’s enjoyable transforming an old room into one that’s modern and exciting. Besides being entertaining, home improvements can really help when it’s time to move. Not only can they entice buyers into making an offer, they can earn you more money. It’s the improvements that help sell your house for more money.

However, not every remodeling project helps you financially. Read on for some tips on picking the right project, including how to avoid some common home improvement scams.

Remodeling For Resale

If you are hoping to raise your home’s sale price, then there are some home improvements to avoid. As CNBC explains, most projects directed to your particular tastes will not translate into added value. That’s because not everyone shares your passions. For example, you might love having a home gym or a home recording studio, but that’s not always popular with potential buyers. To...

Being a real estate agent can be a rewarding job. It isn’t easy to start, and it certainly isn’t easy
to become the best. However, knowing the most common mistakes real estate agents
make might help you get off to a solid start in your real estate career. Knowing these mistakes
from the beginning and learning how to avoid them will take you higher in your career and much
faster. So keep reading to find out how you can start on the right foot.

Expecting immediate success

Success doesn’t come that fast and that easily. Real estate is a growing profession that requires time, patience, and dedication. And if you are just starting your career in real estate, it’s
impossible to have all the knowledge that comes with experience. However, if you have
perseverance and are hard-working, you might become successful from your first year. Therefore, take your new job seriously and commit to it.

Try to keep a strict schedule and don’t make too many compromises....

The key objectives when staging a home for sale are to make the property look spacious and to emphasize the feel of flow from room to room. That’s what most homebuyers are looking for these days -- plenty of room to stretch out and make the space their own.

A good rule of thumb is to clear out at least 30 percent of your home’s contents before showing it to prospective buyers. That means getting rid of oversized furniture and making sure loose papers and personal items are thrown out or organized and carefully stored away. The more “stuff” buyers have to maneuver around, the more skeptical they’ll be when it comes to seeing your property as clean, well-organized and a likely candidate for purchase.

Storage space

When reviewing a home, buyers often look for plenty of storage space in the basement, garage, crawl space and closets. If they see storage square footage taken up with personal items, they’re more likely to regard your home as inadequate...

As an agent, you know how crucial an appealing exterior is to leave a lasting impression on a potential buyer. The same idea can be applied to your business. Ignoring your business’s curb appeal, or how you present yourself and your services, can drastically affect the impression you leave on your clients. One of the most significant contributors to an attractive curb appeal for your business is the vehicle you drive. Read on to understand how the vehicle you drive can influence your success as a real estate agent.

Why is the vehicle you drive so important?

Taking all factors into account, the vehicle you drive is one of the most important. Why? As a real estate agent, your vehicle is essentially an extension of your office. Not only is it one of the first places you begin to build rapport with clients in, it’s also one of the areas where you have the most critical conversations in. In a review-centric culture, it’s important that agents deliver an exceptional...

Successful real estate professionals possess a crucial mix of qualities that seemingly have little to do with each other. What drives a salesperson (self-motivation, goal setting) and a marketing professional (creativity, a love of language and imagery) are often disparate; these talents often divide people into disparate professions, but a visionary real estate agent must possess all these skills and a passion for ethical business. If you are looking to boost sales and add an enigmatic member of your team, is there a way to assess a candidate’s probability of success by simply looking at a resume and asking the right questions at an interview?

Presentation matters

You can tell a lot about a candidate by looking at the information provided in their CV. These days, a good CV should list one’s skills, experience, and achievements. Be vigilant of vague assertions of achievements and look for specifics. For instance, if a candidate states that they improved the sales figures...

For self-starters and hard workers, few businesses offer more of an opportunity for growth and success than real estate. If you’re already managing your own real estate business, that means you’ve already laid down a solid framework for success. Here are some management tips to increase your business’s presence, boost client activity, and generally stand out as superior in a crowded profession.

Devote real work time to a marketing strategy

Being associated with realtors, having your name on a database, and running a fairly popular social media account is not real marketing. You can’t think of marketing as something you do on the side of your “real work.” It is your real work.  As the proprietor of your own real estate business, at least half the battle is standing out among the crowd. You can be the best real estate agent in the world, but if nobody knows who you are, it’s all for naught. If you ever have to tighten the budget, Realtor...

Social networking certainly is an example of technology. But what exactly is social networking and why is it important to understand in all business today?

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests, values, vision, and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interest and ideas of others. A social network allows individuals and organizations to exchange ideas and expand relationships and business opportunities.

When the internet was first widely available to consumers, it was primarily used to retrieve static information from content providers, allowing only passive viewing. Users could not easily publish their own content or interact with others. Over time, the Internet evolved to be more dynamic, active, and collaborative, becoming what was referred to in 1999 as Web 2.0

Even before that, however, the first social network site was germinating. In 1995, Classmates.com launched to give people a way to re-establish ties...