How To Capture The Senior Real Estate Market: Discover a New Business Model for Real Estate and a Clear Path to Success

By Steve Tomas Fecske and Alan Barnett

Real Estate industry is overflowing with competition. There are 5 million agents nationwide and most are marketing themselves in common ubiquitous means. Every real estate agent gets phone calls from all the Internet companies and marketing companies offering a basic formula that is repeated thousands and thousands of times and there is no way t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Senior Team
• Release date: Feb 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780692074220

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

RECOGNIZING WHAT YOU HAVE

The first step to forming a Senior Team is to apply to the Senior Real Estate Specialist (SRES) Council under the National Association of Realtors. You can sign up on their website at www.nar.realtor and take their designation courses. This book can also be helpful giving you knowledge and perspective about senior affairs, issues, solutions and the elder care industry. Study for the Senior Real Estate Specialist exam, and take it as soon as you are ready. Once you have the designation, you are ready to start to create and execute what this book offers: a business plan for the senior real estate market.

Your Business Plan

It’s always best to write a business plan because it will give you an overall understanding for what you want to do and, why and what, it will take. Writing down your ideas and intentions also makes it easier for you to discover what your strengths and weaknesses are and to create a path that will compliment your goals and guide you as you develop and grow your business. It will let you recognize goals and face the difficulties and build strategies to overcome them and most importantly build the value in you and the business. Until you have a written plan, one that’s broken down to address the different facets of your business, ideas are just ideas. But don’t worry! After you read this book, you will be able to easily and confidently write a business plan for your senior real estate business.

Don’t worry about getting everything right the first time you write your plan. You should also know—and accept—that any business plan you write today will need to be updated over the coming days and weeks. Once you have a solid plan in place, as a rule, it’s a good idea to update it quarterly. As they say, live and learn! That’s especially true in the business world. Be flexible and constantly consider better ways of doing things.

Your business plan is the blueprint through which you and your team will work. A developer would never build a house without a blueprint, right? Likewise, building a business without a blueprint is equally foolish.

The Senior Real Estate Specialist Exam

The SRES exam is not overly difficult, although it might take two weeks to thirty days to complete depending on the extent of your background in elder care. How to Capture the Senior Real Estate Market will help you pass the SRES exam, but remember that it’s not enough to just pass the test: you need to take the designated SRES courses as well. (Which you do on the NAR website.) Much like when you were studying to apply for your real estate license, in terms of your actual business dealings, you’ll rarely need to refer to content of the test material on a day-to-day basis. However, certain issues tend only to be briefly or superficially discussed in the test prep materials, so you’ll need to do some extra studying on your own to gain a deeper understanding of the material. Note that I didn’t write this book to help you prepare for the SRES exam, but rather to give you pragmatic and clear direction—including proven strategies and ideas—about how to build your Senior Real Estate Specialist business within the elder care industry. Though it will help you.

Mutual Benefits Within the Field

There are essentially two parts to this book: one part gives you background on all the professionals, specialists, companies, services, and organizations you should know about and understand, while the other part of the book involves teaching you how to expand and capture new marketing avenues and leveraging the many resources available to you so that you can position your business to offer the kind of services seniors need. Many of these opportunities appear to be very costly, but actually, most are free. I will explain how you work with your team, assisted living residences, adult day care centers, and other organizations to market your real estate services, as well as their business services. Opportunities such as inviting large groups to relevant and compelling seminars and/or sponsoring shopping and entertainment events aimed at senior and senior-relevant audiences are just some of the methods discussed.

There is a way to capture treasure troves of new business, and it starts not only with your understanding of the industry, the people in it, and the knowledge of how to position your business for seniors, but also recognizing when to work with the professionals and specialists in the market to benefit them from your efforts. You will make them want to be a member of your senior team. The business model puts you in a position to be seen as a facilitator for deals to get done, while making sure an estate is in order before closing. You will also be recognized as a needed specialist in the transition seniors make when selling and moving into an assisted living and strategies for care costs. Understanding how to position yourself in the eldercare industry is where you will gain an advantage over other real estate agents. You will learn how to use your newfound understanding to build a business that will bring you positive recognition in your community and within the elder care industry.

It Won’t Be Easy

As I am sure you already know, there is no easy way to succeed in real estate. The one thing you can be sure about is that you must be ready to work hard and not relent in the face of adversity. You need to consistently and intelligently promote yourself, your expertise, and your services. But now you have a clear mission, message and, path to success.

You are entering a real estate niche that is wide-open and timely to be captured, so that you gain a large market share, with the continued prospects of building a solid network of specialists, professionals and key allies, who will make your business not only successful but offers you a lasting legacy. How to Capture the Senior Real Estate Market offers a path to this new, abundant, and exciting way of doing business. Instead of just focusing on real estate, you’ll become a senior specialist. You will go from being hungry for real estate deals to focusing on the needs of seniors and their families, such as their worries about the cost of health care and being able to do all the necessary tasks of everyday life. You will be their guiding light, while managing them through the transition that ends with the sale or purchase of their home or real estate and empowers a new beginning.

In this book, you’ll learn about the unique considerations and decisions that seniors must address before placing their home on the market. As their SRES, you know not to give advice on matters other than what pertains to real estate. Legal issues and tax laws, securities, Medicare, veterans benefits, estate sales, (unless you’re licensed or certified to do so) are areas where you use your team. You will become sensitive to these issues when they arise and you should always refer them to those licensed and certified. It’s recognizing the circumstances, where the problems arise, what solutions are, and who is the best person to call for the senior and family. Beyond your real estate expertise, you bring understanding for the big picture, and with it direction to find solutions or better ways, is what you offer. You have a team to make it easier for seniors and families to get things done with the least concern and uncertainty for the final results. How to Capture the Senior Real Estate Market lays out ways to work with other professionals and specialists and techniques and strategies to create your senior team. This will not be a team you hire or pay; they will be more like your advisory board of directors for information and solutions, as well as your marketing partners and referral sources in your business. They will offer your clients free consultations and you will refer work to them and over time, they will reciprocate.

In tandem, with your senior team, you’ll share and leverage resources always with the focus of helping seniors and their families. Your team members should all be licensed, accredited, and/or have the requisite seal of approval within their specific fields. Before inviting them to join your team, see what associations they belong to/are accredited by and check any possible references. Remember, your clients’ interests are paramount and you want to find a team of people who are also committed to this perspective. Your obligations to your clients will not be carried out properly if you don’t do everything you can to protect and assure your clients’ best interests, rights, and good will are being held supreme. Most professional licensing organizations impose severe penalties for unethical acts just as real estate organizations, as you know, any business under license is subject to professional and ethical standards and requirements. When you refer another professional to your client, you must be able to describe that professional’s credentials in a clear and concise manner. You want your client to know that you are providing them with the best people to help them make difficult decisions. You want to work with professionals and specialists willing to offer a free consultation before charging your clients.

You should be confident that the team of professionals you bring together as a team can and will work together to settle and prepare your client’s estate and goals in conjunction with their real estate transaction under the best terms and with the best results. The details become very important, when your clients are relying on the equity from the sale of their home to pay for care and housing in their autumn years—all clients need to get as much as they can from their real estate sale, but it is especially true for seniors because in many instances it is their safety net.

Your clients may also want to protect their heirs (or, inversely, protect themselves from their heirs), regardless, how your business transactions play out, can affect these and other situations in one way or another that you must inform and prepare your client, even if it’s only for full disclosure that an issue was discussed. As a Senior Real Estate Specialist, it is your duty to ensure that your client’s home is sold under terms that are financially optimal for your client.

Knowing about Assisted Living Facilities

You should know the assisted living business inside and out, because the assisted living industry and its professionals are a very important strategic partner in the business model. There are several levels you and assisted living professionals can work together that provides mutually beneficial results. There is great value in working with assisted living providers for your real estate business, but part of the model offers an opportunity for a new revenue stream that is available as a source of new revenues for your business because they pay for referrals.

As a senior real estate specialist, you should understand the dynamic for marketing and referrals, that can build strong relationships with assisted living businesses and your business.

How to Capture the Senior Real Estate Market provides background information about how assisted living providers do business, how they operate, how they’re organized, and who you will want to approach in the communities or at residences to build relationships.

Most assisted living residences and communities have interests and benefits that overlap with yours, and if you nurture these relationships with the key figures, you will build strong business alliances that can benefit you for a long time. There is a great synergy just waiting to be ignited. A strong symbiotic relationship that can be developed between you as a special type of SRES, and them, as assisted living executives. Knowing their purpose, which is to fill their residence, and presenting your shared purpose, marketing resources and expertise for solutions and services, their residents and prospects may need, is the basic formula for relationships with your team and alliances. It’s a way of growing your business beyond just profits, and you do it by offering a means to mutually beneficial goals.

You are able to build a valuable business for a minimum monetary investment, with a maximum return. It’s part of what makes this model such a unique opportunity. It is designed to help you establish your business in a niche that offers a network of strategic alliances for your business to make it grow in substance and value. This model builds your business as you also build goodwill within the eldercare industry and the community at large.

There are many other elder care businesses, organizations, and associations discussed, and how they too, have mutual needs and goals and therefore, can offer great opportunities for you in marketing your business. This broad universe of overlapping areas of interest will allow you to build your real estate business beyond what you imagined.

The senior team model empowers you to navigate your real estate practice into the elder care industry. This book gives you the maps and geography. Once you have them, then it will be up to you to step across the threshold and take the initiative to execute the strategies, tips, and advice you’ll find in the subsequent pages. My wish is to offer a new perspective for your senior real estate specialist’s business with new ideas to help you to succeed.

CHAPTER TWO

THIS NEW APPROACH TO REAL ESTATE

It has been said that In simplicity, there is genius. If that’s true, then this opportunity is genius. Essentially, this is about entering a niche where you can offer something unique. The Senior Real Estate Specialist approach is not about going after clients; rather, you will be offering to assist with finding solutions for their long term health and well-being. Your purpose is to be truly benevolent, because you are serving almost like a social worker keeping an eye on the senior community. When you are needed, you are there for your client far beyond just the sale of their property. Your first concern is for their circumstances, safety, and what they say their needs are and what you see they might be.

Usually your clients will be overwhelmed or just set against a certain plan of action. It’s your job to be compassionate, to appeal to their commonsense nature, and to gain their respect and confidence so that you can explain how and why a course of action benefits them. This should start before you discuss your ability to help them sell their home. You might include a comparative analysis for their home in your introduction package, but you won’t necessarily go over it unless they ask you to—you can tell them that there is still a lot to discuss before they need to make any decisions about selling their home.

Other things to be mindful of are their legal concerns, their need for money to pay for present and future care, and what the best solution is for them. If they are willing to sign a listing agreement, you should never reject it if they offer to sign one, or, if it feels right to ask, then ask. But usually, it will take time to build trust with your senior client. That said, you will gain their trust as you’re assisting them to assess their estate and circumstances, discuss a plan and set consultations and visits to assisted living residences, in an effort to close all loose ends and execute a plan that culminates with the sale of their property. Then there are family members, also known as, the adult children. The first thing to know before communicating with family is to learn if any one of them has Power of Attorney. This will be further discussed because family can complicate circumstances and require greater communications. It also behooves you to learn their position from your client and what they expect from you when it comes to telling family anything. As a real estate agent you have a fiduciary obligation to your client, however this can get cloudy when there is a trust or power of attorney. We’ll cover it further in the chapter about elder law attorneys.

Connecting with Assisted Living Communities

An assisted living residence in many instances will be the best option and worst option for your client. This is when you will want to rely on your strategic partners. You can set up a lunch for them at an assisted living community and let them learn firsthand about it. As you build your relationships with assisted living professionals, you will learn more about assisted living so that you can talk about assisted living with your clients. Part of your strategic relationships with their marketing professionals is about learning their side of the business so that you can facilitate their business and build lasting and loyal relationships with the assisted living communities and residences in your area.

You should always know that the decision to move to an assisted living, is always difficult. For some, it’s harder than for others, so, it is incumbent upon you to recognize the difficulty and work to help them overcome it. Offer to take them to lunch and a tour at an assisted living community. Depending on the client and sometimes with permission from their family, you might set up a meeting to introduce your client to a person who lives at a community who may have a similar background or interests. Before you take your client on a visit, you can ask the marketing director to help be a matchmaker for your client—they might just find a new friend during their visit! You can help soften the transition from a home to assisted living in various ways and being a good senior specialist, it is within your power to help.

By conveying your understanding of the situation and demonstrating ways for your client to overcome their reluctance to move to an assisted living residence, you are bringing yourself closer to your client, to the family, and the assisted living partner by helping them to move forward. There are situations unique to seniors and you’ll find yourself being able to offer solutions. The long-term results of providing business to partners and allies will provide results/reciprocity that far surpass your efforts. This kind of special effort should be a regular part of what you do for your clients. As you work to get all the information your client needs, one of your rewards will be that assisted living marketing professionals will recognize your value to them. That’s ideal—you want these professionals to see you as a facilitator who will bring in prospects. In return, you will gain a platform for marketing and connecting with seniors and their families.

When it comes to your client, if there are spouses, children, and/or other family members or benefactors, you will want to put yourself in position to also be a facilitator for them. Your knowledge of the elder care industry and position of expertise can bring family members peace of mind and your client, and the family, a sense that you can lead them down the right path, while also selling their family home.

A True Distinction

Maybe you would say that your distinction is your proven ability to sell or buy a home, but that is not a distinction when you consider that there are 5.5 million homes being sold each year throughout the United States; mostly by other agents. It’s not a distinction when a lot of agents can say the same thing about their distinction. It is difficult to even be a first-rate real estate agent, because everyone believes they are the first-rate real estate agent. So that’s not a distinction either.

The Senior Real Estate Specialist designation, however, and the way you practice real estate can be that distinction you’re looking for. Having the designation, immediately gives you a unique distinction in that you will find yourself talking to people about senior issues and you’ll find that they are interested in what you do. Many times, people will have parents, or grandparents who have been faced with needing assisted living and not having any idea where to start.

Imagine being one of three agents going after a listing. You find out that one of the agents has sold houses in the neighborhood for the last 10 years. The other agent drives a Porsche and knows everyone in town. Then you come along with your Camry. How are you feeling about the listing being yours? But then you, the third real estate agent to the party, meet the client, and they are an elderly couple. You can see from their body language that one spouse has health issues. You sit down, look at the other spouse, and ask them how they’re holding up. Not because you don’t feel compassion for the sick spouse, but because you’re a Senior Real Estate Specialist and you understand that the healthy spouse is the caregiver and is likely to be under constant stress, tension, rising resentment, guilt, and exhaustion, even PTSD.

Your next question might be to ask what is going on in their lives that has prompted them to consider selling their home. There is a reason they are making such a big decision, and the fact that you’re taking the time to learn why—will demonstrate that you’re aware of the difficulties they are facing.

Once you have listened, because you are a senior specialist, you will be able to address their concerns through the lens of their personal circumstances, and you will offer practical solutions and an understanding that will make them feel that you can help them better than another agent could because you understand about their trust, their health needs, Medicare, veterans benefits and what they want to accomplish by selling. In instances like these, your knowledge of the elder care industry will undoubtedly make you more likely to gain the listing. If you have it in you to work with seniors, this book can make you successful in this business, and more importantly, an angel in the eyes of your clients.

The truth is that selling real estate is more market-driven than agent-driven, and there’s very little one experienced real estate agent can do, compared to what another agent can do. Maybe one agent can get a client a little over the market price—and certainly a good realtor will keep a client out of trouble and free of liability—but we are all reliant on the market no matter how skilled and capable we are. This means that the ability to distinguish yourself from other real estate agents by being more relevant to the client in broader terms (i.e., going past just real estate concerns) could more likely than not, result in a client wanting you on their side. I have experienced this firsthand, and it will happen.

Knowing the types of financial benefits that are available to seniors, for example, can truly make a difference as to whether or not a client can afford assisted living and whether or not they can secure bridge financing to move forward in the interim, while waiting for money, or, while they await the sale. Those kinds of considerations can enable you to secure them services and options beyond just selling their home. In short, being a Senior Real Estate Specialist, with a superior team of professionals and specialists backing up your services, is another reason why clients and their families are likely to choose you to represent them.

If you agree that generally, being successful in real estate comes down to your presentation, personality, and the whim of the property owner, and if you agree that agents have the same basic knowledge, expertise, tools, and methods for advertising and promoting themselves, then you should recognize that the standard way of doing business offers a smaller opportunity for most, and especially, new real estate agents. Even if you’re one of the few who have been able to succeed using the conventional business model, why would you want to just cross your fingers and hope that you will continue to do what everyone else is doing and continue to succeed?

If you earn your SRES designation and if you build your additional services in your presentation to your client, then you offer a special added value that again will make it more likely they choose you. These additional services include: finding the right assisted living residence in the area based on budget, desired location, and care needed; introducing your client to relevant senior team members and introducing how the team can help them; and are willing to offer your clients, a free consultation about whatever issue crops up (taxes, Medicaid issues, questions about their trust, veteran benefits, life insurance, etc.). Furthermore, if your client is a veteran who served during a war, you can tell them how to receive a monthly cash payment for the rest of their life. This is usually not a small amount of money, either! More about this in a subsequent chapter.

Crafting Your Presentation

Your presentation might focus on your client and how their real estate sale for liquidity or purchase for an income earning property, might affect their finances, Medicare premiums, create Medicaid liabilities, and other possible issues and uncertainties that would need to be reviewed and fixed before placing their house on the market; or buying one. Everyone is different and has different circumstances and before making a presentation do an assessment so that you presentation is relevant.

The senior team approach, starts by assessing a prospective client to learn about their circumstances so that you can accurately assess the estate’s assets and structure, first, but also to determine where the complexities can arise and who in your team can