As our business continues to grow each year, we always have several agents (both brand new and experienced) approach us on joining our company. In the past six years, Lakehomes.com Realty has grown from little more than a husband and wife team, to a company with waterfront specialists in many areas of Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. But due to our popularity on the Internet, we have a steady stream of buyer and seller requests in market areas where we could definitely use a little more help...and any agent who joined us in those places would have wide open markets to work in. Not a bad deal for a motivated individual!
Sandy and I have been lake specialists for our entire real estate career, and it has always been easy for us to stand out from the rest of the agents because of our differentiation. As the Internet began to take hold in the mid 90s, we were able to create incredible search results on many of the search engines to make it even easier for potential customers to find us. Back then only 2% of the real estate buyers were using the web to search for homes...today it is over 85%!
Niche companies like us - in any field - are suited perfectly for Internet shoppers. It is so easy to type a term like "Minneapolis waterfront property" or "Duluth lakefront real estate" into a search engine to find what you are looking for, rather than a more generic string of words. It is true in anything you are searching for these days.
If someone is looking for information on "Mille Lacs Lake crappie fishing," they can type that into a search engine rather than looking through a pile of fishing publications hoping to find a pertinent article. And who would think of purchasing a $50 medical journal anymore to search for a disease they might have, instead of just entering those symptoms into the Google search bar?
Most of the agents that have come to work for us understand the strength of this differentiation. As the real estate market has slowed overall, many of our agents are as busy as ever because of their ability to truly say something different. But beyond just telling the sellers they will do a better job in exposing their property, they can actually prove it with strong search results from many of our waterfront websites. And with nearly 90% of all buyers using the Internet to shop for real estate, there isn't much doubt in where those listings will get seen the most.
Whether you are an experienced agent who loves selling waterfront properties, or someone who just wants to sell a few places around your own lake, we have some pretty interesting opportunities right now. And if you enjoy talking to potential clients, we can give you something quite different to talk about with our unique form of marketing! It will certainly give you a foot in the door.
When Sandy and I created our niche business nearly 20 years ago, hardly anyone in real estate specialized in anything. Other than differentiating between commercial real estate and residential real estate, most agents listed and sold pretty much any type of property they could - and the best way to get the phone to ring was to run numerous ads each week in the newspaper. Unfortunately, that doesn't work too well anymore, and a lot of agents have had to leave the business because they weren't able to change along with the times.
Today, there are a lot more agents who market themselves as specialists in all facets of real estate - from hobby farms to condos - and yes, of course, there are plenty of lakeshore specialists. But we have tried to take it a step further as an entire company of waterfront specialists, leaving no doubt that that is what we do best. Therefore, any agent who comes to work for us can save a considerable amount of time and money by avoiding the high costs of creating his or her own image in this high-end niche market. Many of our brand new agents have certainly proven this by becoming multi-million dollar producers in their first year with this built-in differentiation.
There is one negative in becoming a specialist in anything; it is hard to say you are also a specialist in something else. Although, it can be quite comical to look through a real estate guide and notice that some agents specialize in nearly everything: residential real estate, commercial real estate, townhomes, resorts, gas stations, apartment buildings...even timeshares. It's kind of like a doctor specializing in heart surgery, brain surgery and delivering babies. To be fair, a lot of our agents do end up selling other types of real estate - especially large acreage and recreational properties - because many of the buyers that are interested in waterfront property are also looking at those types of things.
If you have a passion for waterfront properties, there isn't a more enjoyable area of real estate to work in. And as many of our agents will attest...the boss isn't a bad guy either! However, if you don't believe them, you can call me at the office at 866-327-9889 to judge for yourself.
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