Get the most out of your network

Firstly, on behalf of myself and my colleagues may we wish you and your families a very Happy New Year and we hope that 2018 gives you everything you hope for.

For all estate agents, the new year brings lots of hope and anticipation for the year ahead – business plans have been written, numbers assessed, marketing plans considered, market share stats analysed, however let’s be honest in simple terms, your year, turnover, profit and growth will be determined by new listings and getting your fair share of the opportunities out there and actually selling and letting what you take on, so how good are your people and how robust is your plan especially if a curve ball gets thrown.

Let me put you in the shoes of those agents who will be opening their doors in January, who have their fair share of the new homes opportunities in their areas to sell this year.   Not only will they be selling the new build units, they will also be getting all the spin off business including part exchanges, visitors to site with houses to sell, buy to let landlords who need to rent their new purchases out and the list goes on.

Can you begin to imagine how it would feel to have a stream of instructions that you had a greater visibility of and guaranteed for this year and the years to come?   Just imagine the plans you could make for growth of your business, let alone all those investor sales on apartments which could be growing your managed rental portfolio and adding considerable value to your business.

There’s no doubt that a Land & New Homes operation is now the big growth area for a modern estate agency and one that very firmly differentiates compared to all the spin and hype surrounding the competition from the internet only agents.

So, if you want to get a piece of the action, then get yourself a plan together quickly – here are a few pointers;

• Track the planning applications from the last 3 years – there are lots of sites still not built – maybe those landowners could be tempted to sell the sites with consents.
• Demonstrate you are the local expert – believe it or not, the reason most agents miss out on new homes instructions is simply that they don’t know how to differentiate between second hand values and new builds – do your homework and deliver pricing in a consistent way and develop a new homes culture across your whole business.
• Identify the key house builders for your area – don’t waste your time trying to build relationships with house builders who aren’t agent friendly and likewise look to develop long meaningful relationships and feed the land opportunities to those house builders who will happily work with agents. If you have Land, it’s probably the only time in a transaction with a house builder that you have a “Tradeable”.   Some of our members have worked with a leading business coach this year who focuses heavily on the art of negotiation when you have tradeables and have benefited hugely from this.

Many of our members this time last year, didn’t have a Land & New Homes plan, however over the last 3 months we’ve helped them formulate a robust business plan to ensure that the next 12 months have a clear target and strategy to ensure that their bottom line benefits from the profit to be had from developing a successful new revenue centre from Land & New Homes.

If you’re serious about growing your business and tapping into the new homes opportunities, then let’s have a chat.   You can get in touch by calling us on 01672 556310 or visit our website www.lnhnetwork.co.uk.

The Land & New Homes Network works with non-competing market leading estate agents who all work collaboratively.