Questions to Consider When Interviewing with a new Real Estate Company

BOSTON - July 19, 2013 - PRLog -- It is easy to get a job in real estate, but it's much more difficult to make money!  As a salesperson working strictly on commission, you need to know that you are associated with a winning team that have the most apartment and sales listings, the best product to rent or sell, superior management support and training, the best technologies and the largest stream of customers in order for you to build your business.  

What questions should you ask when you are interviewing at a real estate office? After all, when you are working for yourself, you want to start at the best possible office that helps you immediately make the most money. The BostonRealEstateJob team has developed a list of the most commonly asked questions during an interview when considering a professional real estate company.

How many deals does the real estate office process per year?

By processing a large amount of deals, more landlords are satisfied.  When more landlords are satisfied, more listings can be further acquired creating further success.  Relationships with landlords are slowly built through a proven track record of success through multiple years of hard work.  By effectively completing a large amount of deals annually with landlords, they will return the next year for repeat business.  In fact, when they are extremely satisfied with your service, they will refer you to other landlords to do business with as well.  Always ask a company you are interviewing with who is the market leader and how long they have been in business.

How many landlords and listings do you have?

In nearly all cases it is important that you choose a market leader that has the most apartment and sales listings.  There is an old saying in real estate that says “You can’t rent or sell what you don’t have.”  Landlords and listings are everything in the game of real estate.  Landlords provide you with rental listings year after year and often times turn into property management contracts and sales listings.  Working for a strong company with the most amount of landlords is crucial to your success.  Similarly, you want to ask a company how many total listings and landlords that they have both active and non-active in their database.  The combination of landlords and listings builds success in both new and experienced real estate agents.  Generally speaking you want to avoid start ups with few listings as it will only hinder your performance.  You also may want to ask how they update their data.

How many websites does the company own?

Websites are directly linked to lead generation.  If your agency is relying on third party websites that can’t be controlled internally, the business module is most likely flawed.  Successful proprietary websites are crucial to success in real estate.  When you Google “Beacon Hill apartments”, what website comes up? How about “Boston Real Estate?”  Keyword related search terms are crucial to a company’s success, because it makes a website much more likely to show up when clients look up common search terms.  By having area specific websites in each region of a city, a company is able to provide extensive coverage and generate the most amount of leads, ultimately making you the most money.

What does your online media presence look like? How many pictures, videos, virtual tours or panoramic galleries does the company have?

Online media is crucial to generating leads in real estate.  With cutting edge technology such as pictures, videos, virtual tours and panoramic pictures, you will stand out as a leader in the industry.  With better pictures than everyone else, you will get more calls than anyone else.  If everyone has pictures of a property, and you have videos and virtual tours, you will stand out as the leader of the industry.  Virtual tours get the most web traffic out of any form of media.  If you are able to successively have a massive amount of virtual tours, your ads will look professional and stand out, resulting in more money for you.  Try to see out companies that spend time and resources gathering the most amount of media possible.  Don’t be afraid to ask a company how many galleries they have, how many videos they have, and how many virtual tours they currently keep in their own proprietary systems.  If a company tells you that they mainly rely on landlords galleries or generally available galleries that are open to all real estate companies be very wary.  

Another crucial aspect of this is how the media is used in advertising.  Is the company just posting on generic websites or are they utilizing the full capacity of social media?  Are they posting on social media sites like Facebook, Linked In and Twitter?  Always make sure that in addition to having leading media, it is effectively being used via a strong online marketing presence.  Never be afraid to ask a company how many web hits they receive each month and how many unique visitors come to their websites each month.  Ask for the names of their websites and ask them how they rank on Google, Bing etc.


What does the company’s training program look like?

Real estate has an initial massive learning curve.  There is a large amount of information that is presented up front and sometimes it is hard to keep track of what’s what.  You want to make sure that any company you are interviewing with provides you with a list of their training program and all that in entails.   How many different subjects does it cover?  How many different teachers will provide you to the widest exposure of knowledge to help you close the most transactions?  Be aware that some companies do not have a formal training program and may have a much higher failure rate of their agent(s).  What is truly successful is hands on specific training on each aspect of real estate.  How actively do managers work with you? How many training classes are offered? You want to make sure that you are working with an organization that provides extensive training so you can maximize your potential in the quickest manner possible.

Boston Real Estate Job compiled these questions through an extensive study of speaking with numerous real estate agents throughout MA.