The Ultimate Wealth Guide for Real Estate Agents

By Mark Reister

Where would you like to be in 10 years, 2 years, and even a year from now? What would you like to be doing in the future? What would you like to achieve? These questions are rarely asked.

Property investor and real estate agent Mark Reister began working in real estate in 1993. He has sat through countless training seminars and meetings. He knows all about KPIs, budgets, performance reviews, and so on, and he knows what to do to be a successful real estate agent.

Most real estate agents are dedicated, hard-working, honest people who have the best interests of their clients at heart. They also have an incredible wealth of knowledge about properties in their area.

In this book, Mark explains why the real estate industry needs to start taking a longer-term view of what it can and wants to achieve. Instead of discussing the well-known, traditional methods of becoming a successful estate agent, he shows you how agents can maximise their income and create lasting wealth for themselves and their families by using knowledge they already possess, without working any harder.

Mark also explains why real estate agencies should encourage and help their staff to take advantage of all the opportunities they have available.

Even if you don’t work in the real estate industry, but simply have an interest in property investing, there is loads of useful information for you here. One of Mark’s fundamental principles is “emulate those people who are where you want to be,” and “The Ultimate Wealth Guide for Real Estate Agents” is packed with wisdom straight from the source, gained through decades of highly successful real estate and investment practice.

All profits from this book will be donated to The Fred Hollows Foundation, which does vital work in attempting to eradicate preventable blindness and eye diseases.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Reister
• Release date: Sep 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463597972

Mark Reister

I first became interested in real estate when I sold my second home in Perth, WA. It was a positive experience and I made a bit of money from the sale. After returning to my native home state of Victoria, I pursued a career as an estate agent and in 1993 I began with a large and highly respected company, Woodards Real Estate. It was an incredibly steep learning curve, as I'd never sold anything before, but with the help of some great work colleagues and mentors I made a living. I met the love of my life and now wife Trudie while vacationing overseas. We live in Shepparton, which is a small regional city approximately two hours’ drive north of Melbourne, with our two children Chloe and Liam. As a result of the move north, I left Woodards Real Estate after working there for almost seven years. I had a brief break from selling real estate, but my love of real estate has never waned. It was during this break from selling that I became more and more interested in finding out how to buy unlimited investment properties. I say “unlimited” because during my career as an estate agent I had occasionally met buyers who came back to me year after year wanting to buy another investment property. I started off reading numerous books on the subject and attending investment seminars, but whether it was due to a lack of drive on my part or because the information provided was not specific enough, I never turned that information into an investment portfolio. However, having met people who own large investment portfolios, I knew it was possible. "How to Buy Unlimited Investment Properties" is my first book, and describes exactly how I reached my goals, including all the failures I had along the way. My second book, "Buy Unlimited Properties and Retire in 10 Years", shows you more about how to build and generate income from your portfolio as you work towards financial independence and retirement. My latest book, “The Ultimate Wealth Guide for Real Estate Agents” puts forward a new vision for the real estate industry based on the idea of agents becoming successful property investors in their own right, and using the expertise they gain in doing so to help other investors and attract new clients. By following the methods I set out in my books, and with the support of my wife, I was able to build a property portfolio for my family that allowed me to retire at the age of 46. Since finishing work, my interest in real estate has never waned. I still love looking through real estate newspapers and the windows of real estate agencies, particularly when I am on holidays and my wife is scouring the dress shops near an agent’s office. I have never stopped loving real estate and following the industry. I now devote a part of my time to writing about and promoting my ideas about property investing and real estate for the benefit of investors and the industry. All the profits from the sale of “The Ultimate Wealth Guide for Real Estate Agents” go to the Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF). The FHF is a fantastic, independent not-for-profit organisation that does wonderful work here in my native Australia and more than 25 countries around the world, restoring sight to more than 2.5 million people. They are currently working towards eliminating avoidable blindness and improving the health of Indigenous Australians. A more detailed description of the work they do is available inside the book. If you do buy “The Ultimate Wealth Guide”, on behalf of the FHF, I thank you for your contribution.

Book preview

Preface

Like all major fields of employment, the real estate industry is made up of people from all sorts of different backgrounds. Real estate agents have different nationalities, beliefs, cultures, genders, and educations. But every one of these people has something in common: they all want to make as much money as possible.

The real estate agencies that employ these people want to make as much money as possible, too, and they are only too happy to pay out large amounts in commissions and bonuses when performance warrants it. The more money the individual real estate agent makes, the more money the entire real estate business makes.

The two components that make up a real estate agency—the people who work in the business and the agency itself—need each other to ensure their mutual survival and continued success. They are intrinsically intertwined.

How money is made in real estate

A salesperson in an estate agency is effectively self-employed and running their own business under the umbrella of the real estate company. The employee’s success leads to the employer’s success, but in a convenient coincidence, the more successful the employer is, the more successful the employee is likely to be. This utopian money-making arrangement is perhaps one of the best examples of the capitalist system we live in. And it’s why so many people are excited about working in real estate.

The real estate industry seems to be growing all the time, with new real estate offices spawning in local shopping strips and malls everywhere. When people think about real estate, most of them think of the sales consultant (the estate agent or realtor). And indeed, most people employed in a real estate office are sales consultants. But there are four main categories of real estate employees: sales consultants, property (rental) managers, managers or principals, and office administrators (clerks).

Regardless of where a real estate agency is located and who is working in it, one driver is ever-present: that need to make sales and money. As a result, real estate agencies place a lot of emphasis on the question, How do we make more sales and more money, and on training their staff to do it effectively. Particularly if you are a sales consultant, property manager, or manager/principal, you will be aware of how much time and effort goes into meetings, goal-setting, budgets, performance reviews, setting and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs), prospecting, client management, training, listings, and so on. And all these things aim at one goal: to make more money in the form of commissions.

These core activities are fundamental to the success of each individual and consequently the real estate agency as a whole. So it’s no surprise that these activities are closely monitored, measured, and analysed, and reported on day after day, week after week, and month after month.

Real estate agencies have a rather narrow view of what they do. In essence, they list and sell real estate, and they look after people’s rental properties. A real estate business rarely looks beyond its budget and what it has to do for the present month. At the beginning of the year, the business will set a budget for the next 12 months, taking into account seasonal changes, school and public holidays, and so on. But once that 12-month budget is set, the agency’s staff rarely revisit it. Instead, they steadfastly focus on the current month’s budget and the tasks they need to perform to reach that figure. In an effort to reach the monthly budget, the agency micromanages every aspect of the agent’s day, from the number of phone calls they make to the number of face-to-face contacts they have with clients and prospective buyers. In fact, some real estate offices will not let a sales consultant finish a day’s work until they have achieved at least one desired outcome for the day, such as booking a home appraisal, listing or selling a home, or reducing the price of a home listed for sale.

At the end of every month, performances are reviewed. Top agents are rewarded. Those who aren’t doing so well are monitored. But however good or bad your last month was, at the start of a new month, you start all over again, refocusing your efforts for the month ahead and not resting on your laurels. You make the calls, meet homeowners, appraise their properties, meet potential buyers or renters, prepare advertising, and prospect for new listings. You attend your weekly meetings and let your colleagues and managers know how you are performing, and hopefully at the end of the month, if everything goes to plan, you personally, and your agency, will have made budget.

As I have mentioned, every one of those activities is essential to ensuring the success of each estate agent, and of the real estate office as a whole. In this book, though, I will not discuss any of those time-honoured activities further. The real estate industry offers extensive training courses on everything I’ve mentioned so far, and most real estate offices have their own compulsory in-house training sessions.

If you would like to attend training courses on any of these time-tested activities, there are enough courses available to keep you in the classroom every day for the rest of your life.

This book is different.

In the pages that follow, I discuss how you, as a real estate agent or as someone interested in property investment, can make a secondary income, separate from your wage, that will give you and your family financial security and freedom for the rest of your life.

My history as an estate agent and investor

I worked in the real estate industry as a sales consultant between 1993 and 2010, and between 2010 and 2017 I was the part-owner of my own real estate agency. I have sat through countless meetings and training sessions. But it wasn’t until around 2005 (12 years after starting my career in real estate) that I started thinking beyond my monthly budget and sales targets and began thinking about the larger benefits of working in the industry and investing in real estate.

Once I did, it led me to where I am now: in 2016, after following the methods I talk about in this and my other two books (How to Buy Unlimited Investment Properties and Buy Unlimited Properties and Retire in 10 Years), I retired at the age of 46.

While I am very grateful for everything in my life and I have no regrets, I wish I had started my investment journey earlier. In all my years working in the real estate industry, no one ever asked me, Where would you like to be a year from now, or beyond that?, What would you like to be doing in the future?, or What would you like to achieve? I am not criticising the industry I love for not asking these questions; I am thankful for my career and the opportunities I’ve received. However, as I mentioned, the real estate industry has a narrow view of what it does and needs to do. Managers and staff micromanage every aspect of their days but do not ask the bigger questions, like where they will be in 10 years—or even in two.

I believe it is now time for the industry and estate agents to take a longer-term view of what they can achieve together for the mutual benefit of employees and agencies alike.

This book may challenge some of the conventional thinking in real estate. It may provoke a culture change. The strategies it describes require a view of what agents and agencies want to and can achieve that is broader and longer-term than we often see in the industry.

How this book works, and who it is for

The interests of agents and agencies are not mutually exclusive. What benefits one benefits the other. So regardless of where you fit within your real estate agency, you can read this book from cover to cover and find useful information throughout. But because each reader will have their own perspective and interests at the front of their mind, I have broken this book up into two parts:

"The Estate Agent" deals with the individual. It is primarily for people who work in a real estate office and earn a salary.

The second part, "The Real Estate Agency" looks at the benefits for the business and its owner(s). Business owners derive their income from the collective efforts of the people who work in the business.

If you are reading this book and you don’t work in, or have any financial interest in, the real estate industry, you will still find a lot of useful information here that you can use as a property investor. You only need one good idea from a book or training course to potentially change your life. Hopefully, you will find at least one diamond here that will help you create wealth for yourself into the future. If this describes you, I believe the first part of this book, The Estate Agent, will be most relevant to you. Among other things, it describes investment programs that real estate agents are best placed to set up for their clients, which you can benefit from equally by participating in them as an investor.

As you are reading, keep in mind one of the fundamental principles I live by, as described in my first book, How to Buy Unlimited Investment Properties, which is to only take advice from people who have achieved what you want to achieve. Find an estate agent who is doing the things I describe in this book, make sure they have achieved what you want to achieve, and work with that person.

Regardless of which category you fit into—estate agent, principal, or simply interested in real estate—I hope this book broadens your thinking. I would like the industry to start thinking beyond this month’s budget and commission. I would like you to start thinking about next year and the years after that. As I have indicated, this may require a fundamental shift from the conventional mindset, but I wish someone had asked me these questions when I worked in real estate. If they had, I believe I would have started on my path to wealth and independence much sooner.

Part I

The estate agent

In my experience, the overwhelming majority of estate agents work long hours, are honest, ethical people who are eager to please, and have the best interest of their clients at heart. This is true for both selling agents and property (rental) managers. Unfortunately, the actions of a few rogue agents can spoil the reputation of the whole industry, and this small minority can, and often does, taint the public’s perception of