Whether you like it or not, every buyer’s agent will face some fundamental challenges in the service delivery process. At the same time, the entire real estate industry has challenges regarding environmental impact, market volatility, mortgage rates, and evolving technology trends.
But the buyers agent must be familiar with these challenges within the property market and know how to drive a property purchase. For example, what makes a suitable real estate property, home, or investment property?
Real estate agents, including the selling and buyer’s agents, are the leading players in successfully buying or selling real estate. The entire buying process suddenly becomes easy if you have an expert buyer agent.
Similarly, the real estate sector holds a lot of promises for excellent buyer’s agents who can close deals for the right property. Getting the right price is also pivotal to the prospective buyer’s decision.
You can ask your buyer’s agent about his challenges in the line of duty. His experience must have brought him across many opportunities trapped in challenges. And when he overcomes it, it adds to his lessons and experience in handling home sales.
In this article, we will examine five of such challenges that buyer’s agents face and possible solutions to overcoming them. But, of course, challenges are also in levels; there are the common ones, and there are the critical ones that could determine the outcome of the home purchase process.
Whether the buyer’s agent works independently or as part of a buyer’s agency, these challenges could be peculiar to the real estate industry or applicable to others. Meanwhile, the solutions we offer are efficient to apply to real estate buyer’s agents even without experience.
Below are the five challenges a buyer’s agent can face in completing a home sale.
Low Inventory
There are seasons of the year and other conditions that may cause a low inventory in the real estate market. It is a simple problem, but it can generate a low income for the buyer’s agent. In addition, if there are not many properties on the market, it isn’t easy to sell homes.
This challenge is not peculiar to only new agents but even experienced ones. Everyone struggles to get sellers during a low inventory time. However, the experience of the older buyer’s agents can help them navigate this period because they can prepare well ahead of time.
Solution
The solution to a period of low inventory is to expand your sphere of influence until you find where the properties are available. You know the saying, ‘if the fishes aren’t biting, then go to where the fishes are.’ In addition, you may need to bank on referrals from your market leads.
When sellers are hard to come by, you may depend on your trust circle to link you up to anyone at this period. So you can prioritize to capitalize on your sphere of influence. But, by implication, it also means you must build that circle of power ahead.
Remember, the workability of this solution depends on the experience of the buyer’s agent in the local real estate market.
Rise of online competition on listing portals
Listing portals are increasingly becoming more popular by the day, with a growing number of online users. Also, many apps can assist potential home buyers in locating the home of their dreams. However, these apps cannot replace the job of a buyer’s agent.
Instead, they make the job easier in that part of the buyer’s agent’s duties can be done on the app. However, the backlash of using home searching apps is the level of competition that comes with it. Even buyer’s agencies feel the competition in the use of specific applications for homes.
Solution
Create a neighborhood platform for your community or locality. Since the online platform is limitless in the expanse of opportunities for all, the best way to solve the competition is to limit it. As an experienced buyer’s agent in your locality, carve out a niche within that place for yourself.
Instead of competing with more powerful touch solutions brands, create something that can work for your locality and add peculiar information there. This route may be expensive but can turn out for the better in a short while. People targeting your area will prefer a localized online platform.
Adaptation struggle with technology trends
This problem is just like the case of online platforms for home searches. Other updates include data security, online marketing automation, SMART home technology, and SEO best practices. Also, there are many more things that buyer agents have to learn these days.
The inability to understand how these things influence the real estate market can leave some agents behind. So, a buyer’s agent not only has to be tech-savvy, he needs to keep up with the regular updates and newest trends. Following these updates can be an advantage.
Solution
If you find yourself too slow in catching up with the tech trends, get an IT expert to put you through. For instance, you will need tech counsel when setting up an email account, choosing a domain name, or choosing a web-based CMS. On the other hand, you may get someone to do the work.
Either you hire tech hands temporarily, and they put you through later, or you add an IT pro to your team. The latter’s advantage is that he can always troubleshoot any issue you encounter, unlike when you need to hire someone each time you run into problems.
Using tech tools will solve many problems during the purchasing process, especially negotiating. Also, the real estate agent needs updated lists from both off-market listings and silent listings and recommend the best property to the homeowner,
Costly lead generation
Both buyer’s agents and seller’s agents struggle with getting the right leads. But, remarkably, neither of them has to wait for things to happen. Instead, they make active efforts to get information.
One of the ways of this active effort is to pay for lead generation software or campaigns. For example, if you choose the auction-based CPC lead generation, it can quickly inflate your marketing budget overnight.
In the past, generating a good number of leads with a small budget was easy, but not today. Although it depends on your level of expertise, you still spend more on marketing. In other words, just like the home buyers spends on property search, the buyer’s agent may also pay for marketing.
Meanwhile, the buyer’s agent is also involved in the whole negotiation process, purchasing process, auction bidding, building inspections, and independent advice. Finally, he evaluates the property prices and recommends the right property having the right price to the home buyer.
Solution
Platforms, including Google AdWords, are accessible for real estate buyer agencies to compete actively for the target keywords. Social media can also be good in this regard as generating organic traffic without having to spend so much. However, in the end, you will need to employ digital strategies.
For emphasis, go the organic route if you don’t have too much to spend on your budget. If you are patient and consistent enough, the organic course can create a good number of leads and increase your visibility in the area. It also helps your website to grow.
To give a complete service to a homebuyer, the buyer’s agent must understand the entire process of finding a suitable property, whether as a family home or investment property. On the part of the buyer, using a buyer’s agent can save time and make a fundamental difference.
Cultivating a database
Building a database is one leg, a buyer’s agent cultivating it can be another kettle of fish. Meanwhile, the buyers agent’s database is vital to the sustainability of your business when serving buyers.
The database you generate can contain in-depth knowledge of a locality and factors that contribute to its capital growth. At the same time, before the real estate agent can master the whole process of buying a specific property per time, he needs a database to source resources.
Otherwise, the entire process of finding a dream home for the buyer can be tedious. A buyers agent’s database can help keep leads and referrals for future use in an investment property sale.
On the other hand, the selling agents can also keep databases containing the purchase prices of the properties. What a selling agent has to offer determines what buyers agents can recommend to buyers.
Some real estate agents overlook record-keeping, which could have contained the property purchase price and the challenges of the property market. Meanwhile, a good buyer’s agent recognizes that t succeed in the property market, you need credible data.
Every buyer’s agent must be active and master the art of sustaining the entire process. Meanwhile, an expert buyer’s agent can also automate this process, including the fees charged. Otherwise, you will discover that you easily miss out on clients due to a lack of records.
Solution
Only 25% of the buyer’s agents can cultivate existing contacts or past clients for referrals. The solution to that problem is keeping a sustainable database. Moreover, statistics show that 25% of buyer agents generate 50% of their annual returns from referrals. That is worthwhile.
Databases help keep records and create referrals and can also be handy during low inventory periods. Therefore, you need not overlook the importance of automating generating and maintaining leads in a central database. Finally, stay in touch with your tips.
See also: First Meeting with a Buyer’s Agent – What to Expect