Daily life and miscellaneous notes of a real estate agent

In order to explore what the second-hand housing market is like, and to use the second-hand housing economy to peek into the current real estate boom, I joined a large intermediary agency in Taiyuan.

When filling out the job form, I very unprofessionally asked HR if the job position column should be filled with "real estate sales", and he replied that it should be filled with "real estate agent." Oh, now people are more disgusted with the term sales, so they use the new word agent instead. Later, when I went to look at other places, I also found that their business cards all read "real estate agent" or "senior real estate agent." The difference between the two is whether you have stayed with the agency for enough one year. I couldn't help but think of the profession of celebrity agents. I wonder if housing prices continue to rise, will real estate agents become a high-risk profession that everyone loves and hates?

Before joining the company, I had an extra thought and called a more "senior" agent to inquire. My brother told me that I should first ask the company whether the training fees, clothing fees, and port fees should be paid by myself, or whether they should be deducted from the salary afterwards. Ask how much the internship salary is and how commission is calculated. I also did it truthfully, which played a role in preventing problems in the bud. Later I learned that the port fee is also a big expense for intermediaries. If you want to open a port on the 58.com website, it will cost about 500 yuan per month in Taiyuan. The port means to ask the platform website to give you a port. From this port, you can obtain unlimited customer phone numbers. These customers may have directly or indirectly inquired about real estate matters before, so there may be your potential customers among them. Catch them and you get a commission. No, there is no need to worry about intermediary harassment, because intermediaries are in a hurry. If you don’t plan to buy a house, they won’t call you for several days to urge you. After hanging up the phone, they will rush to the next one. Where did these phone numbers come from? 1. For customers who have inquired through various intermediaries before, ask their colleagues for their phone numbers. 2. Customers who have registered at your door. 3. Customers who post purchase and rental information on the website. 4. Customers who have done decoration, furniture and home appliances, or purchased new houses. 5. Out-of-town customers of appropriate age for the job search website. Therefore, 500 yuan is actually the information exchange fee. What the platform that provides information does is essentially the same as the express company recording user information. In fact, the level of detail is not as good as that of express delivery companies, because the address of express delivery is fixed, and intermediaries cannot penetrate into the lives and work of buyers and sellers, so large transactions always make people cautious.

A typical real estate agent’s work day looks like this: Cleaning and starting work around 8 a.m. Chat for a while and make a few phone calls to ask whether the client wants to buy or rent a house. Think about the more popular properties that were not posted to Moments yesterday, and edit them with the right words to post them. From 9 to 10 o'clock, I wait on Fangduoduo's real estate software to see if any suitable new properties appear. If there are any, I ride on an electric bicycle to look at the properties in groups. Generally, I won't be able to see very far. They are all around 3-5 kilometers, and if you are lazy, it will be reduced to 2 kilometers. Park the car downstairs, go upstairs, put on shoe covers, knock on the door, express your intention, view the house, and take photos. You may encounter many colleagues in this process, because the landlord holds the key and lets all the agents see it at once, saving you the trouble of going back and forth. My colleagues all wore uniforms, as colorful as a rainbow. If the price of this house is indeed very suitable, there will be more people traveling with it, reaching 15-20 people. Just when the owner is knocking on the door and waiting for the answer, a large group of people surround the security door, as if 110 is cracking down on pornography. In the morning, I looked at one or two apartments, then came back to continue making phone calls or chatting for a while, and it was noon. After lunch, take a lunch break, go to work at 2 p.m., and repeat the above process again. Depending on the weather conditions, buyers may request to view the house. At this time, take the buyer to view the house. Of course, you must ask in advance where the keys are. Before the evening rush hour, the agent coordinates with the office staff and starts printing various promotional posters. Usually about 100 posters are printed, and then they go out and post them everywhere. I get off work at 7pm, but it will actually be later because some bosses will assign tasks or make comments. But according to my observation, some Lianjia Real Estate and Zhonghuan Real Estate are open after 8 o'clock. I don't know if the employees voluntarily work overtime, advertise, or for some other purpose.

The agency is open all year round and occasionally has rotating holidays. The salary for a college degree is 1,800 yuan, and the salary for a bachelor's degree is 2,000 yuan. The commission is different for each company, but it is actually part of the 2.5% agency fee earned. A senior real estate agent can earn up to 8,000 to 9,000 a month. In the off-season, most agents can earn between 4,000 and 6,000 a month.

Some agents have a keen sense of smell and feel that there are no good houses recently, so they focus on renting a house. The agency fee for a house is one month's rent. In this way, even if the company takes part of it and you accumulate a little, it is still an objective income.

There are two types of intermediaries, one is local chain and the other is cross-regional chain. The former is like Yijia Real Estate, and the latter is like I love my home. Cross-regional chain intermediaries are generally very large in scale, and the ecology of Lianjia, for example, is very large. I love my home and also cooperate with 58.com to capture both online and offline. Check out the real estate listings on major real estate publishing platforms. Many of them are agents from I Love My Home, which shows the penetration.

The intermediary itself does not produce products. If he finds one more house and holds it tight, he will have one more exclusive house, which will increase the chance of closing the deal. In fact, this is also true. Taiyuan I Love My Home does not allow other agents to take the landlord's keys from him and lead buyers to view the house, but other small and medium-sized agents allow this.

This year, the average monthly transaction volume of second-hand houses in Taiyuan is about 2,000 units. When searching for real estate agencies on Baidu, about 4,000 results came out, which means that two agency stores only sell one house per month. The average transaction area in Taiyuan is generally 70 square meters. This means that the agency commission in Taiyuan City is only 35 million per month. Evenly distributed to each store, it is only 17,500. This is only enough for rent, employee wages and other consumption. Expenditures were made. If we follow the Pareto optimal 28-year-old situation and 20% of intermediary stores account for 80% of the commission, that means 800 stores have a commission of 28 million, with an average of only 35,000 per store and a gross profit of about 20,000. The profit of 20,000 yuan will all be distributed based on commission. If it is a typical small store, two intermediaries + one person on duty + one boss, 3 people will share 20,000 yuan, and the boss will account for more than 50%. One person is up to 5,000 yuan. yuan, plus the basic salary, which is about seven thousand yuan. But in fact, the distribution of 28 is an extreme situation. Generally, it cannot reach the number 5000, otherwise there would not be 4000 stores. Taking the average distribution and the arithmetic mean of the 28 situation, that is, the commission is 2500 yuan. It should be an average income level for agents in Taiyuan. It should be said that for a migrant worker without strong skills, the income is relatively objective and can afford an older second-hand house. In fact, older agents all have their own houses in Taiyuan. After all, they have access to the property on a first-come, first-served basis, and they don’t need to pay agency fees when they buy it themselves.

There are several things that intermediaries are particular about.

The wording is more particular. You can tell the shortcomings of a house by looking at an agent's advertisement. For example, if the house is not transparent from north to south, he will definitely not write about this feature, but will replace it with words such as "convenient to view the house" or "convenient transportation". Therefore, as long as you are familiar with the keyword characteristics of a house and compare what is missing in the advertisement, it must be a shortcoming. If you really don’t know what features a house should have, go to 58.com or Fangtianxia and read a few pages of listings, focusing on their titles. After accumulating 20-30 houses, you will almost have all the features. In fact, their advertisements are not only for home buyers, but also for home sellers through inflated prices. As soon as the home sellers are encouraged, they register, so that they have more exclusive housing.

The words are more particular. Every new agency will receive a printed set of speaking skills. The speaking skills materials for small companies are copied from the Internet, and the speaking skills materials for large companies are partly extracted from the Internet and partly integrated with their own experience and characteristics. Once you have the skills, you can use them on both the buyer and the seller according to the actual situation. To the seller, the agent will forcefully tell him that the house is not easy to sell and make him cheaper. When it comes to buying a house, the agent will forcefully tell you that the competition for houses is fierce, so buy it quickly and don’t bargain. In this way, you can earn the price difference. Of course, this is done privately, and because it is a seller's market, if you encounter an anxious buyer who does not understand the market, the intermediary will take the initiative to disclose it to the seller, and then teach the seller how to cooperate in raising the price. . Next, the agent will communicate with the buyer and use both hard and soft tactics to get the buyer to pay the deposit. The so-called softness means to act with emotion and reason; the so-called hardness means to feed the buyer with poisonous chicken soup and cynicism, making him feel that he will be particularly low-income if he doesn't buy a house.

Recruiting people is more particular. Brokers are very mobile and often leave after only a few months. Although it is not like the master Sanhe who works for a month and then leaves, the logic behind it is somewhat similar, that is, industries without hard-core technology tend to have high liquidity, or at least a strong willingness to move.

Agents who have the ability and ambition will consider opening their own stores, while those who are not ambitious will choose a less cramped store to continue hanging out. A few familiar friends will go there together, and viewing houses is just like playing, and there is nothing wrong with it. More importantly, the intermediary's profit model is that the boss relies solely on the commissions of employees, so when the housing supply is tight, one more person can spread a wider net, and there will be more opportunities to harvest. The income from the next order must be higher than the basic salary, so the more employees the better. If you add part-time jobs that don’t require a basic salary (some small agencies have them), the income will be more objective. On this basis, the intermediary has no reason not to recruit people, and will recruit people first. The LED screens at the entrances of all intermediary stores without exception are scrolling with recruitment advertisements. This is the reason. Some intermediary HRs suffer from the difficulty of recruiting people from the market. They will be very enthusiastic when someone comes to visit them. What's more, they will call the intermediary directly and ask them to come to work with them. In fact, this is easy to find. Go to any platform website, and the phone numbers of the several listings at the top must be intermediaries.

The guarantee is more particular. If you don't buy the house in full, you will need to charge a guarantee fee when you go to the bank to apply for a loan. There are many names for this guarantee fee, but in fact if you have a relationship with a bank, you can get part of it yourself. In other words, if you have a relationship with a bank, your ambition to be your own boss will be stronger, and in fact it will be smoother.

Intermediary interpersonal relationships are calm on the surface but turbulent secretly. If you are a rookie, many people are more tolerant, mixed with a little ridicule, just like veterans in the army treat new recruits. If you are a senior player, it will be more subtle to compete with the masters. They tend to be friendly on the surface, but when real interests are at stake, they will exploit every opportunity, and there are many rule-breakers among them. For example, if a buyer comes to the door and there is a broker negotiating with him first, and this broker happens to have sudden business and is about to be interrupted for a minute or two, other brokers will take the opportunity to communicate with the buyer, and eventually the broker will People come to you, because if your name is written on the follow-up, guidance, and intermediary contracts, you can get the commission; if you don't fight for it, you won't have this opportunity. In fact, the company will require every follow-up to be recorded on the internal integrated information platform. This will also be referred to when the commission is distributed. If the original broker handles the unexpected business, a situation will arise where two tigers are fighting each other, which will eventually end in some way: either a fierce fight, or the commission will be divided 50-50 according to the model of the old man leading the newcomer, and the newcomer will bear some of the responsibility. Peripheral tasks, such as driving, follow-up procedures, taking photos and publishing, etc. If you choose the former, the situation is often that someone is about to leave; if you choose the latter, it proves that the senior agent has certain manipulation capabilities, while the latter is not particularly willing to make money. Intermediary interpersonal relationships reflect the interpersonal relationships in the service industry. The service industry itself does not produce products, they are just transporters of products. They don't even produce core services, but can only provide some peripheral services, at least the intermediaries in Taiyuan are like this. Some foreign intermediaries can be subdivided into three types: buyer's intermediary, intermediary intermediary, and seller's intermediary. Each of them is only responsible for communicating with one group. Such services are more people-oriented and closer to customers. Only in this way can it be possible to provide core services and earn money. Premium opportunity. As long as the eyebrows and beards are scratched, the price will be mediocre and there will be no new profit points. As long as the cake does not grow bigger, it will turn into a tragic Red Sea sooner or later. If the pie becomes bigger and transactions become more frequent, intermediaries will be self-motivated to differentiate themselves, as has been the case with Chongqing real estate intermediaries in recent years. The more famous Zhimeng team recommended by Ou Chengcheng only acts as a buyer's intermediary and charges an additional service fee of 3% of the transaction amount. They skillfully use various Internet tools to publish news, set up various home buying communities, and rack their brains to screen and dig out bamboo shoots (houses with less than 80% of the market price) in the already "vast" city of Chongqing. This is a win-win situation. The buyer’s agent gets a hefty service fee, and the buyer gets high-quality bamboo shoots, killing two birds with one stone. However, this model relies heavily on finance and policies, because most of the buyers are out-of-towners, and if they do not pay enough social security, they will not be eligible to buy a house. There is also a layer of services in between. As for what they are, we can only imagine them.

If there is a book "Self-cultivation of Real Estate Agents", then the first thing is to choose, choose a city or city group with a good financial environment and a broad real estate market. The next step is to improve professional skills, improve cognitive abilities in finance and policy, and acquire resources in gray areas, so as to accumulate some resources.

Then, it is necessary to hone professional skills in a certain direction to meet the customized needs of potential users, such as quickly finding a house in a community with the most piano players and combining it with previous resources and cognitive abilities. The last step is to contact the big names, spend money to ask for endorsements, form a group and start taking orders, and at the same time continue to distribute advertisements.

This routine is also suitable for other service industries that do not provide core services for specific people.