Using Market Statistics to Gauge Brokerage Productivity

If you are thinking about how to boost agent and office productivity and utilizing key tools to track and monitor your success relative to the activity in your local area, consider market statistic products.

The real estate industry in particular has seen a lot of local market weaknesses that have brought angst to the consumer market.  Providing market statistics to your agents, can certainly work to establish them as local experts and trusted real estate advisors.

Most brokers think of market statistic offerings in terms of providing a tool to their agents.  Certainly this is a key component to most market statistic services, but it is not the only way brokerages can effectively leverage this data to drive their business.

This week I spoke with Michelle Carter, VP of Sales & Operations at Trendgraphix and we discussed the value of real estate brokers using market statistics to drive their business.  Michelle is clearly passionate about the value market statistics offer the broker.

Initially we discussed the value of market statistics for the real estate agent. I asked Michelle to outline the top three benefits she saw in utilizing market statistics for growing a real estate business.  She gave the following tips:

1.)    Opportunity Areas: An agent can use market statistics to look at their local market and see which areas/farms are most active right now. Where are the REO’s? Where are buyers buying? Sometimes you may need to change your farm to keep in business. Simply adjusting your farm by focusing on more active neighborhoods can make or break your sales year.

2.)    Secure new listings - Market statistics are valuable to use in a listing presentation.  You walk into this presentation knowing and being able to showcase local trends and neighborhood patterns, and it buys you credibility.  You show professionalism, which leads to trust.  Agent can help potential customers understand how their home stands on the current market.  Knowing where the current homes are on the market, how they are priced and more are big selling points.  It puts you at an advantage for winning the listing.

3.)    Position yourself as a local expert - Publicizing this useful data on your website, through social media channels and more can generate leads. Place county level statistics online and ask the buyers to call you for more information.  By doing this, you’re engaging the customer, and giving them another reason to contact you.  You are becoming the trusted advisor. You can talk beyond the statistics, explain them and predict more effectively.  WAV Group published a paper called Edutizing that explains that consumers are very hungry to understand the performance of their local market.  This paper explains more in-depth about how you can use market statistics to gain credibility and new customers.

Beyond the value to agents, Michelle was keen to point out how market statistics can meet broker’s unique needs.

“Brokers are looking beyond basic market trends; they are looking for more high level data.  They care about whether the market is going up, or down and how they can use this information to compare for their own use,” says Michelle.

Brokers purchase products to help their position their agents for success.  Beyond this, the broker cares about making their agents and office more productive.  They are interested in general trends and providing agents the tools they need.

When looking at recent broker trends, many brokers have been starting to add this info to their websites because they recognize the consumer’s need to get a better handle on the performance of their local market or neighborhood.  Most brokers are using this to draw interest and show that they are in touch with real estate trends.

Brokers want to be able to see granular level information, such as their market share of listings.  They can see how individual agents are performing.  How are competing agents doing? This could help with agent recruiting, but allowing brokers to identify local top producers, even if they are outside their brokerage.

If the market is in recession, brokerages have to work a lot harder to maintain their market share.   If the market is showing signs of heating up and the brokerage’s business is not experiencing signs of growth as well.  That is a red flag to brokers.  Market statistics can help gauge whether or not a brokerage is out-performing the market or under-performing the market.  It can serve as the catalyst for determining whether or not you are doing something to gain more of a market share? This is what makes market statistics more powerful.

“Fifty percent of what we do is aggregate data to show how a brokerage’s competition is doing compared to them. What are the local market trends?  How are brokers performing in lieu of these trends? How are their agents performing?  How are other competing agents performing?”  explains Michelle.

If you would like to learn more about how you can use market analytics in your business click here.

If you would like to learn more about how to get the most out of market analytics to generate new customers click here.

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