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How to become an estate agent
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In the UK property is big business and a huge part of the economy, as a result there are many estate agents helping people sell their homes and helping buyers find a property. If you are considering of becoming an estate agent there are a number of factors you must consider, first is ensuring you have the appropriate insurances , licenses and business set up so that you are allowed to trade as an estate agent. The next thing is consider your market place, what is going to attract sellers to use you to advertise their home over the competition, are you going to target the local area or are you going to specialise in certain types of property. The final thing is the generation of income, you must consider how you are going to market the properties listed with you and drive sales as well as considering any other possible income streams you could generate.
Starting an estate agency business
First you must register your business, decide if it is going to be a limited company, partnership or sole trader. Many estate agents rely on passing foot traffic to their location as such you will require a good location, you will need to set up a lease and furnish the estate agent to promote homes within the property.Once the estate agents premises is set up you will require to staff to man it, experienced staff can help give you a leg up and help you get to a good start with the knowledge gained throughout their career, unfortunately experienced estate agents can be costly so may be a good idea to combine experienced estate agents with new comers who will be able to develop their skills as your estate agency grows.
Finding homes to sell is the next step, if an estate agent was a shop then houses is the stock with which to sell. Unlike a shop though you do not buy your own stock but sell that of others, getting started can be the most difficult part, it is worth trying to contact local property developers and give them special rates to try and encourage them to use you, as you get more homes listed your signs will be seen more often and hopefully drive other sellers to list their property with you. It may also be worth finding a niche to concentrate on; becoming well known in a certain niche will help you establish yourself in that market
Once you have houses to sell you must market them and get prospective buyers to come and visit them. Home buyers start their search in a number of various locations, first is the highstreet visiting the various estate agents, talking to the staff and browsing the for sale post, the second is traditional advertising such as press, many people browse newspapers to find their next home. Over the last few years the internet has become huge with millions of property searches each year, this has seen the rise of huge property websites such as rightmove and zoopla which are used by many estate agents to publicise what properties they have for sale. With the internet growing at such a fast pace, many estate agents have embraced the technology with their own websites to list properties for sale.