Starting his career in real estate when he was just 19, pfr.com.au principal/director Joe Mucci knows first-hand what the real estate industry is like for a young person

I recently contacted Joe to discuss the secrets to his fast ascent in real estate as a young person.

Q: Joe, what character traits do you believe are required to succeed in this industry?

To succeed, you need:

Passion. Customers can see straight through those agents that are looking at the dollar figure. You have to care about the people, not the money.

Persistence. Never give up, every “NO” you hear makes you one “NO” closer to a “YES”.

Focus. Focus on the 1% (the little tasks); those things that make you different from the other agents. Relationship is probably the most important. People knowing who you are and what you stand for and you the agent knowing who your customers are.

Fortitude. This industry is not for the faint hearted and you will get left behind if you’re not determined. But it is very rewarding if you care about what you are doing and you can have fun!

Q: What challenges does a young person face in the real estate industry today?

Local knowledge, confidence in what they are talking about, and being able to use an example or give case studies of what they have done in the past are some of the big challenges.

But there are definitely advantages to being a young person, too. My drive and energy towards people and their property will always exceed other more “older” agents. I also think the younger real estate agents have the upper hand when it comes to technology and being brought up around computers and social media.

Q: We want to hear about your driving ambitions. Did you have any career goals when you first began in real estate, and what goals do you have now?

My career goal was to have a career. I wanted to be a young successful person that could have freedom and choice! My goal now is to grow my business, increase my team and possibly purchase a rent roll.

Q: What is the one most important piece of advice that you would give a young person entering the real estate industry?

I guess people selling their most valued asset will always look at entrusting the most capable agent, so talking about what your agency has done and refer to your experience/agency experience as the same thing. “We have sold two homes in this street this month”, and “We are listing the home next door” are better ways to include yourself in examples, giving you more credibility. Listen to what your senior agents are telling you. You have no experience, they do, and you can change their strategies once you have some tools in your tool box!

You can learn more about Joe on his pfr.com.au profile page, or by following him on Facebook or Twitter.

In this particular case, the seller of a Perth home resided in Edinburgh, Scotland, where they had moved to be with family. As per regulation, this seller was required to have an Australian consular officer – such as an ambassador, consul, or secretary at an embassy – witness them sign the Transfer of Land documents. However, Edinburgh has no Australian embassy – making the closest embassy the Australian High Commission in London, England!

At the beginning of settlement, we brought this issue to the attention of all parties and set a settlement deadline of two months from the beginning of settlement. It was important to allow plenty of time for the seller to travel to England and sign the transfer of land documents.

However, part-way through the settlement, the buyer’s real estate agent requested the deadline be bought forward to only three weeks into the future. The result was that the seller had to drastically adjust their plans and drive across the UK to the Australian High Commission in London, weeks sooner than intended, to complete the settlement on time and avoid penalty interests. As this embassy does not take appointments (and is only open three days a week), there was a risk that the seller might not have be able to sign the documents on the day they intended.

To make matters even more complex, the seller was required to have an original rates notice when signing the documents. As the seller had not brought any such documentation with them when they left Australia, they had to wait while the rates notice arrived by post.

Further complicating the matter, another important (but potentially difficult) requirement of the land titles office is that the conveyancer satisfies themselves that the person is who they say they are. In this case, we were unable to use online searches to achieve this as our seller wasn’t working – but as their sales rep was in close contact during the listing and sales process and was able to provide uniquely identifying features of their property. Without this assistance, settlement would have been delayed.

In summary, the new shortened deadline, coupled with the new identity legislation, left very little room for error, and it was only through the joint re-organisation efforts of all parties that the seller made the settlement deadline.

When an overseas seller is going through a property transaction, it is highly important to be aware of the unique settlement requirements of that seller. Keep in mind that the seller will need to make the trip to their closest embassy, and let them know well in advance what documentation they will need to be able to complete the transaction.

Image by Images_Of_Money

Is it time to invest yet?

The jury is still out over whether or not prices will rise steadily. If they do history will show 2012 was a great time to invest. However, unforeseen global events could have a big impact on our still-recovering property market. A major default by a large European country, for example, would put upward pressure on interest rates here. For our property market to remain steady, we’ll need stability out of Europe.

Current Australian house prices are “comfortably explained by fundamental economic factors”.

Some are also concerned that the Australian property market is overvalued by somewhere between 10 and 50 percent, which suggests a significant price correction is on the horizon. However, financial economist Christopher Joye makes a convincing argument that such assertions are misleading. By measuring changes in disposable household income and mortgage rates, Christopher finds that current Australian house prices are “comfortably explained by fundamental economic factors”.

All in all, there seems to be a consensus that the market is bottoming out. REIWA’s David Airey has said the outlook for this year is “steady” – so we may have to wait for 2013 for a bumper year in property.

Monday: Top 10 tips to sell your property. Presentation is everything, so Juliet Love shares valuable tips to help prospective buyers visualise themselves in a home for sale.

The top 10 tips for selling your property, by @JulietLove: ow.ly/8Kuu1 #realestate

— Resi Settlements (@Ressetts) January 30, 2012

Tuesday: When US real estate company ARG pulled their listings from syndication websites this week, debate over whether listings syndication is worthwhile or not ensued. The Real Syndication Battle: SEO. Are Brokers Giving Away “Online Real Estate”? adds to the debate by highlighting the way syndication can damage your search engine rank.

When you put your listing on another website, you give away SEO! ow.ly/8M9Ox #syndication #realestate

— Resi Settlements (@Ressetts) January 31, 2012

Wednesday: The History of a Home – and How Homeowners Can Take Control of Their Home (& Listings). Drew Meyers suggests that it’s a property’s history that makes it appealing – and that an online home “timeline” could help sell homes.

How a home’s “timeline” can sell properties, by @drewmeyers: ow.ly/8Ntxx #realestate #timeline

— Resi Settlements (@Ressetts) February 1, 2012

Thursday: How to Make That Personal Connection Through Real Estate Blogging. A short but inspirational post from Real Estate Tomato encouraging real estate bloggers to tell “tales from the heart” to connect with readers on a personal level.

How to make that personal connection in real estate blogging: ow.ly/8OYqc #blogging

— Resi Settlements (@Ressetts) February 2, 2012

Friday: Online scam leaves renters out of pocket. The tight rental market at the moment is perfect for scammers, who are posing as landlords and asking new renters for online deposits.

Renters, look out for scammers posing as landlords online! ow.ly/8Qs6F Always meet the landlord face-to-face. #Perth #realestate

— Resi Settlements (@Ressetts) February 3, 2012

We also lost our front window overnight (apparently that happens for no reason, sometimes), and had to get it replaced! (See the shattered window)

Lol, @peterfletcher is outside ResSetts explaining to some passers-by about the new “feature window” we’ve just had installed.

— Resi Settlements (@Ressetts) February 3, 2012

So that’s our week in tweets. Have a great weekend!

Peter snapped a few pics on his phone during the night:

^ Lee Baston sharing her blogging experiences with Symone Cope, Dina Otley, and Lisa Vidovich. (Lee has a great blog  focusing on Vic Park, at leeandderekbaston.com.)

^ Lori Grech and Pam Herron connecting on Twitter.

^ Myself and Natalie Hoye discussing WordPress themes. Natalie now has a great new theme installed on her Life, Real Estate & Everything blog.

^ Peter providing a light screen for the perfect Instagram photo.

We also had our own Twitter hashtag, #WordPress101:

@peterfletcher @SymoneC @Lisa_Vidovich @NoshGourmet @SymoneC @NatalieHoye blogging it up #WordPress101 twitter.com/bastonproperty…

— Lee Baston (@bastonproperty) February 2, 2012

From real estate legend to social media legend with @peterfletcher and friends #WordPress101

— Natalie Hoye (@NatalieHoye) February 2, 2012

All in all, a great night! If you’re interested in learning about WordPress, or any other digital marketing topic (including Twitter, email campaigns etc), come along to our next workshop on the Tuesday 16th of February – give us a call on 9459 0044 to RSVP.

Google AdWords allows you to place advertisements next to its search results by bidding money on certain words and phrases (called ‘keywords’). When a search is made that includes one or more of your keywords, your advertisement is likely to appear. You are charged for each click that your advertisement gets, up to a pre-specified amount (your ‘daily spend’).

Google AdWords is one of the best ways to advertise online. Why? Because when you advertise next to Google searches, you are advertising to an audience that may already be looking for the service your offer.

Other advertising platforms offer only the opportunity to broadcast your message to a wide range of people, and just hope that someone who wants your service will see it. Even Facebook ads, which allow you to choose the gender, age, and interests of the people who see your ads, can’t know if and when those people are in need of the service you offer – but Google can. Google is the place where people go for answers (I know I do, regularly!), and your Google ad may be the thing to provide that answer.

How to get started:

Before we create and start paying for our ad to appear, I’ve pinpointed three important things we need to decide on:

1. The audience
2. The keywords
3. The landing page

1. The audience

Who do you want to get business from? For many, the answer is “everyone!”. However, it’s difficult to run an effective targeted advertising campaign unless you narrow your audience. As a settlement agency, we have narrowed our audience into three different groups, with different needs: buyers, sellers, and first home buyers.

Don’t try to target absolutely every group. For example, we are not targeting real estate agents at all with this campaign (even though Residential Settlements rely on agent referalls for a large chunk of our business) because agents are unlikely to be using Google to find settlement agents to refer to. Think about which sectors of your potential clients are likely to be using Google to find your service, and target those groups.

2. The keywords

Your campaign is only as good as your keywords, so these are important. If we place our advertisements next to searches for ‘cars for sale’, we’ve missed the boat. Instead, we need to think like a customer, and pinpoint words and phrases that potential customers will use while searching for the service we provide.

Some keywords that come to mind are ‘settlement agent Perth’, and ‘Perth conveyancer’, but there are a couple of ways to pinpoint keywords without just guessing:

1. Google analytics – sign up for Google analytics (it’s easy), put their tracking code on your website, and start watching your ‘traffic sources’. This will tell you what people are searching for the most when they find your website. For us, it’s phrases like ‘settlement agents perth’ and ‘residential settlements maddington’, as well as more loosely linked searches like ‘jargon titles’ – which leads people to our Jargon Buster page.

2. Keyword tool – Once you’ve got some keywords that you know people associate with your site, you can find similar ones using Google’s keywords tool. These similar words could be untapped sources of potential that you might want to target with your campaign.

3. The landing page

Every ad on Google needs to link back to a webpage. Instead of just linking to your homepage, it makes sense to link to a certain page on your website that suits both your target audience and the content of the ad they just clicked on.

For example, when we run an ad aimed at buyers that says something like “Buying a home? Contact us for a settlement quote today”, we will be directing people who click on that ad to a specially-made page on our website that summarises our services in a way appealing to buyers, and then provides an email form allowing the potential client to “Contact us for a settlement quote today”.

It’s important that the page they land on is relevant, because searchers want instant gratification. If someone clicks on an ad promising a certain thing, and isn’t offered that thing straight away, chances are they will leave your site and find another.

These three things – audience, keywords, and landing pages – are likely to make or break an AdWords campaign. We’re still working on them and will launch our campaign soon – I’ll keep you updated.

Note: We also need to decide on the actual content of the advertisement (which takes the format of a title and two lines of text), but I haven’t started that, yet. However, the content you should write is directly related to your audience and keywords, so once you have those downpat, the content should almost write itself – hopefully

I caught up with Rebecca yesterday to chat about her success in the real estate industry. Read on for her thoughts on specialisation, starting out in real estate, and women in the industry.

Q: Rebecca, how did you begin your career in real estate, and why did you choose to come into this industry?

When I finished high school, I was studying, but I also got a job working for an investor and property developer, which involved privately selling and leasing residential and commercial properties – which I suppose is where my love of real estate stemmed from. Even before that though, as a kid, I would always grab the newspaper on the weekend to go through all the properties for sale. I have always wanted to get into property, but didn’t know quite how I wanted to get into it.

When I purchased my first house through Ron Viney at Prowest – around the time that I’d just got into real estate – I turned around to Ron and asked, “Do you think I’d make an okay real estate agent?”, and his answer: “Why not? You should come in and have a chat to us?”. So I came in, and interviewed with Paul for about three hours! We had all kinds of fun and games – he tried to sell me a pen – and I came to work for Prowest. I’ve been here ever since.

What I love about Prowest is the team environment, and the fact that everybody working here is in it to assist and work with each other – we’ve got a lot of support here as an office. There’s also that ability where I feel I can grow with Prowest – which is what’s kept me here for such a long period of time.

In general, real estate gives you the ability to pursue your own interests as well, because it’s something that can be time-flexible.

Q: You have quite a few awards under your belt. What level of commitment does it take to win awards from organisations such as REIWA and the Professionals?

I think the biggest thing is to maintain consistency. I also think it’s really, really important that the reason behind what you do is to help people. When you help people and they know that your heart’s in the job, and that you’re working for them and their best interests, getting all the listings is purely a by-product of that.

Q: You specialise in renovation, refurbishment, and development. Do you find having a speciality puts you in higher demand?

Renovation, refurbishment, and development is definitely my true love. Having that speciality absolutely puts me in higher demand. A lot of people have no idea how to get their house actually ready for the market place, so they are completely reliant on us to assist them with going through the whole process.

That involves showing them everything right down to paint colours, types of carpets, window treatments, and the details of all the tradespeople to assist them in getting their house completely ready for the market. And then, of course, going through with my specialist marketing plan from there.

As they say, presentation is what sells a property, so if you don’t have that presentation right from the time that it goes to the marketplace, it can really hurt your sale price.

Q: Apart from selling houses, what other interests do you have?

I hardly have time for anything else! Apart from renovating property, my other part-time love is the farm I’ve got down in Busselton. I’ve got cattle on that, and it’s nice to have something on the side where you’re not thinking about real estate all the time.

I’m a dairy farmer’s daughter, and I suppose that discipline as I was growing up is where having no problem with working long hours – every day of the week, if I have to – comes from.

Q: Traditionally, real estate has been thought of as a male-dominated industry. What are your thoughts on women in real estate?

As a woman in the industry, I’ve seen a lot of changes over time. When I first started working at Prowest, there was one other woman in the office. She left very shortly after I joined, and then for a long time it was only myself and the boys here in the office. But in the time that I’ve been working doing real estate I’ve seen a lot of women out there doing well.

Both men and women have different strengths and different qualities, but as women in the industry we have a very caring, nurturing nature. I find that really assists our vendors – you know, they say they liken selling a house to a nervous breakdown, so clients appreciate someone caring who can assist them through the entire process.

Q: Lastly, if someone came up to you and told you they were thinking of beginning a career in real estate, what would be the most important piece of advice you would give them?

I’ve got a few bits of advice I would give:

Firstly, real estate is something that you just can’t do part-time – you have to do it full-time.

Secondly, for people who are nervous about going into job interviews: every time we do an appraisal for a listing, it’s like a job interview. You’re proving to that person that you’re the very best person for the job, so if you’re scared of putting yourself out there and you’re scared of hearing the word ‘no’ – this industry may not be the best idea. But if you’ve got a strong character and strong backbone, then you’re likely to succeed.

And last of all, but definitely not the least: To succeed in real estate, I think you need a really strong desire to assist other people. At the end of the day, really all it is is that the person has a problem: they need to get their home sold in the shortest time for the best price – and you need to be able to deliver on that by assisting with the presentation, the sales process, and how best to market their home to get them the best dollar for it. If you’re that sort of person who is a real service-providing person, then I think it’s an industry that you can not just enter into but grow in – there’s so much potential there.

You can find Rebecca’s agent profile on the Prowest website.

This is the first of an ongoing series of Ask an Expert posts, in which I interview successful people in the real estate industry. Check back next week for an interview with Principal / Director of PFR, Joe Mucci.

The debate has been triggered by some American real estate companies pulling their listings from syndication sites – most recently, ARG – prompting some Australians to ask if they should do the same.

But what’s so bad about having your listings on other websites?

Why listings syndication is detrimental

Unique content is valuable for bolstering search engine optimisation (SEO). When you put your listings in more than one place on the web, your content loses uniqueness. Coupled with the fact that some syndications websites put “no-follow” tags on links back to the agents’ websites (thereby telling search engines to ignore those links), listings syndication is not great for SEO. And SEO is essential if you want clients to find your website and contact your business – see Sam DeBord’s explanation of the issue.

Syndications on some websites is also costly, as Glenn Batton points out.

Why listings syndication is valuable

The biggest advantage of placing your property listings on a syndication website is the exposure. Agents’ primary concern is creating sales, and one way to do that is by creating leads with online listings. The hard truth is that large websites such as realestate.com.au are more likely to appear in search results when potential clients search for “homes for sale” than smaller websites belonging to individual agents are – so they remain a valuable way to increase the exposure of your listings.

So while some real estate agencies are taking a stand, it’s unlikely that listing syndication sites will be going away any time soon. In the meantime, videos such as ARG’s explanation of their actions and Fred Glick’s rebuttal argument give us the opportunity to watch the debate unfold.

Not everyone has a custom-built content-management system at their fingertips, however. For those who don’t, creating and updating your website or blog can be cumbersome – or expensive, if you pay someone else to do it.

A content-management system like WordPress is a great platform to use if you’re having trouble creating, designing, or updating your current website. With WordPress, you can create pages and good-looking web designs without having to know any code – and because it was originally designed for blogging, making regular updates to a WordPress site is a breeze.

So what does a WordPress site look like? Often they have a blog-like format, but they can look like any other website. See our website, for example:

Any aspect of our website can be changed by logging in to an admin area. Adding a new post in the ‘blog’ section is as easy as writing the post in a text-box and hitting ‘Publish’, and changing the content on pages (or adding new pages) is just as simple.

As such, WordPress is a relatively easy way to make any sort of website, and is ideal if you plan on updating your website regularly. With WordPress, you can easily customise the:

Design of your website – When creating a WordPress site, you choose from a variety of themes, which determine the colour scheme and layout of your website. These can often be customised to suit your business’ branding.

Structure – Pages are created by clicking Pages > Add new in the WordPress admin area and entering a title and the content of your page (which can include text, images, video, and music) and hitting ‘Publish’. Navigation menus that will apply to every page on the site are created through Appearance > Menus, and sidebar content can be customised with a variety of ‘widgets’.

Updates – The creation of a new post on your website is as easy as creating a page – type in the title and content of the post, and send it off! Both the content of posts and pages can be edited at any time.

If you want to get a website or blog set up quickly with minimal fuss, and you want to be able to update and post new content easily, without knowing any code, then I highly recommend using WordPress. There are two ways to make a WordPress website:

WordPress.com – simply visit wordpress.com and set up an account. In doing so, you’ll create a free blog that you can start using right away. (Advertisements are sometimes placed on WordPress.com blogs to cover the costs of the hosting.)

WordPress.org – the WordPress software itself is free to download from wordpress.org and can be uploaded to your own web host (check that the host supports PHP first), where it can be customised to any extent – not only with a theme, but with your own styling if you have someone with coding skills handy. (There will never be ads on a WordPress site hosted in this way, unless you choose to put them there.)

Good luck! If you need more help, check out the WordPress.com support page (if you’re using WordPress.com), or Webmonkey’s guide to getting started with WordPress (if you’re using software from WordPress.org).

Note: This article was originally published in an email newsletter to real estate agents. If you work in real estate and would like to receive our brief weekly newsletter, subscribe using this form.

^ We have a bit of a red theme going on in this space. Still waiting for some new art to hang over the comfortable couches.

^ Each of us chose the new colour for our offices. The result is a rainbow of colours throughout Residential Settlements!

^ Reception is looking beautiful, and we also have a new whirly-fandangle coffee machine in the kitchen – the envy of Kelmscott First National, who later went out and bought their own

We just love our new work space. If you’re in the area feel free to drop in for a coffee and say hi.