Picture real estate as the ultimate sports arena. Agents are like seasoned athletes, always training, strategizing, and refining their techniques. The market is their playing field—unpredictable and full of challenges. Just like athletes, real estate professionals must stay in top form, learning new plays and adapting to the game’s ever-changing dynamics. It’s all about practice, skill, and perseverance, ensuring you’re ready to score big for your clients—and yourself. The more clients you help achieve their goals, the faster you’ll achieve your own.

Improving your real estate practice

How can you improve your real estate practice? What steps can you take to reach the next level faster? What should you be practicing in your real estate business? Here are some action steps you can deploy today to move the needle faster.

Join a coaching program

Coaching programs can provide you with a deep dive into nearly any avenue you wish to grow your business.

Know Your Market Inside and Out

Study the market relentlessly on a daily basis. Know it better than anyone else! It only takes 30 minutes each day to build your knowledge and become a specialist. Knowledge equals confidence, ignorance equals fear. The more you know, the more confidence you’ll have speaking about real estate. Remember: secret agents have skinny kids.

• Choose a big enough area without trying to learn your entire town. Focus on areas that are desirable, turn over at a reasonable rate, have low average days on the market, and a good average sale price.

• Call your MLS to set up a custom ‘daily hotsheet’ for those areas and review the report daily. This will be sent to your email automatically once you set it up.

• Further customize your reports by using Altos Research and List Reports. Read their short reports daily. Supplement with your monthly Board of Realtors reports. Use all this information for your newsletter, social media posts, prospecting calls, and daily conversations.

• Always know the following: Is inventory increasing or decreasing in your market? What’s hot and what’s not? Where are all the price reductions happening? What’s the average sale price in the areas you work in? List to sell price ratio? Competing offers or price reductions?

• Know what’s driving sales in your market. Are companies hiring or firing? Are the schools improving or declining? Who are the developers and what are they developing?

• Is there new construction in your market? Where? What price ranges? Do the builders have special financing?

Know mortgages

You don’t have to know what your favorite loan originator does, but you do need to know enough to advise your clients about different types of loans and which lenders may be the best match for them.

Know the following:

• What is today’s mortgage interest rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage?

• What are the adjustable rate mortgage rates?

• What is a 3-2-1 buydown or a 2-1 buydown?

• How can someone pay points to buy down and lock in a lower 30-year rate?

• What is a portfolio loan and who should utilize one?

• What are builders in your market offering regarding mortgage loans?

• Have at least four different mortgage lenders for different types of clients. One for first-time buyers, one for standard move-up and move-down buyers, one for higher-end executive types, and one with portfolio loans for the self-employed.

• Have coffee with each lender at least once per month and ask who they’ve just prequalified who needs an agent. Ask them what their best products are and why.

Practice pricing property

This is a key skill to practice regularly, not just when you have a new listing opportunity.

• Preview homes in each area and each price range where you’re practicing real estate. Take notes on what you get for the money (or what you don’t get) in each area.

• Practice pricing property with the help of your coach or broker. Take a subject property and see how your CMA compares to your broker’s or coach’s.

• Take an appraisal class when your qualifying education is due.

• Tour new construction models and get a feel for pricing on each product for each builder.

Be relentlessly proactive in generating new leads daily

Talk with both people who already know you (your database of past clients and centers of influence), as well as people you don’t already know.

• Hold yourself accountable to a minimum of five contacts daily with people from your database. Get your scripts from Premier Coaching.

• Hold yourself accountable to speaking to at least two people every day from the most likely to transact categories such as expireds, for sale by owners, for rent by owners, and probate.

• Ask for buyer referrals (and pay a referral fee) from busier agents who aren’t pursuing their sign calls or open house leads.

• Hold open houses yourself until you have at least three pre-approved buyers at all times. Lather, rinse, repeat!

• Follow up immediately with all leads you generate or who are referred to you.

Actively expand your personal and business centers of influence

10% of your database will transact or refer someone to you each year, assuming you’re following the previous points and speaking with at least five people daily from your list.

• 10% of 100 people = 10 transactions. 10% of 200 is 20 deals and so on. Your list doesn’t need to be gigantic but it should be curated and communicated with regularly.

• Refer to our podcasts dedicated to growing your centers of influence as well as the coaching material in Premier Coaching.

Educate yourself daily and polish your skills

Listen to podcasts like HousingWire Daily, New Home Insights Podcast, Sales Gravy, and other content-rich, skill-building podcasts.

• Limit or eliminate your exposure to negative media sources. Be media-free except for your own curated collection of newsletters, podcasts, and books. Napoleon Hill talks about having a Mastermind. He states that this can be people alive or dead, through books, conversations, and clubs.

Schedule and stick to a productive and profit-driven daily schedule

Peter Drucker famously said, “Tell me what you value and I might believe you, but show me your calendar and your bank statement, and I’ll show you what you really value!”

• How you allocate your time and resources reflects your true priorities and productivity.

• If you haven’t scheduled proactive lead generation, you’re unlikely to do it. If you don’t have a reminder to follow up on all leads daily, you’ll forget to pursue them. If you don’t have an open house scheduled, you won’t be doing one this weekend!

• Don’t hit ‘save for later’ or ‘snooze’ your notifications. Do the task, be consistent and see the results!

Practice the previous seven skills weekly

This is why it’s called your real estate ‘practice.’ Practice isn’t a one-time dabble; it’s how you build your business through honing your skills and being proactive.

Our job is to educate you, motivate you, and get you into action. Your job is to be in action!

Tim and Julie Harris host the nation’s #1 podcast for real estate professionals in the US. New episodes premier every weekday. Tim and Julie have been real estate coaches for more than two  decades, coaching the top agents in the country through all types of markets.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: [email protected]