Inside your real estate business, conducting appraisals sounds simple, however understanding all the key elements to an appraisal and their long term value will rapidly grow your revenue.

Before I dive deeper into the key elements of an appraisal, I want to share a story to open up your thinking around making appraisals part of your DNA.

You may have heard of the incredible story of the New Zealand All Blacks. They have a 77% winning record across 100 years along with winning the last 2 World Cups, simply amazing when you think of how small their country is. They have a saying inside their organisation that ‘Better people make better All Blacks’.

I would like you to think of appraisals in this way, ‘Better appraisal process makes a better real estate business’ So many get it wrong and just consider an appraisal as a listing presentation and if we don’t list it this month, just move on to chase the next one.

Let’s look at the 5 elements to the appraisal process that you need to be across.

1. Determining Asset Value

What’s your database worth?

Many agents and real estate businesses aren’t able to answer this question. They might have hundreds of clients in their database without knowing the true value on an annual basis.

We use the 5% method here to determine value

Factual data indicates that 4%-6% of properties on average in your suburb will sell on a yearly basis. Taking the middle ground, we use the 5% metric to determine the value of a database.

Let’s say that you have 1000 contacts in your database. You can expect around 50 of them will sell in the next 12 months. Multiply this by your average commission and you arrive at the value of your database.

If your average commission is $10,000, it means that your database has a value of $500,000 if nurtured correctly.

2. Get Face to Face

A big mistake that real estate agents make is not having enough face-to-face time with their database. They believe that it’s enough to keep in touch with them over the phone or email and send the odd hard copy in the post.

This doesn’t work well in today’s modern real estate world, it’s as simple as that. You’re no longer the gatekeeper of information.

There’s so much information online for free that the consumer can get their hands on today, that the need for an agent has been pushed back further and further or even next level where they sell themselves or use third party companies.

Reactive real estate businesses suffer as a result. You need to be their agent before they know they need an agent.
Be proactive and build trust with your clients through face to face interaction.

3. Developing Awareness

Keeping accurate records inside your CRM also plays a large role of conversations had along the relationship journey. If you were to give your database notes to a new PA today, what would the experience be like for them?

You need to take notes about your clients in such a way that when you’re ready to delegate to an assistant, they can take it over and run with the notes around previous conversations.

4. Automating Your Processes

How much manual labour does it take to nurture relationships with your clients? If you’re like most agents, the answer is ‘a lot’. Not knowing any better, they fail to create a system that removes the manual back end work.
By automating your processes, you can eliminate a lot of tasks that you shouldn’t have to bother with in the first place.

You should have templates that you can just schedule and send out when the time comes. This ensures consistency without requiring a lot of effort.

5. Tasks vs.Skills

The final mistake that many agents make is focusing too much energy on developing their skills and scripting. They think that this is what will get them more listings and allow them to scale their business. However, this is not always the case.

What you need to focus on instead is your task management around your appraisal process. Your task choices are highly important. Even if they seem minor, they have a big impact on your business as a whole.

A New Approach to Appraisals

As you can see, appraisals play a much bigger role in your business than you think. Your business is about building relationships prior to your next vendor being ready to sell.
If you make use of these principles above and start applying them one by one, you’ll see your relationships flourish. Once you have them all in place, you’ll see why appraisals are so valuable to the growth of your business.

Jess Densley
Process & Structure Coach
For Real Estate Professionals

PLUS. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you grow your real estate business in 2019:

1. Grab a copy of our new ebook – ‘The Relationship Transformer™’
   The real estate client relationship tool. Build a business of consistency and leverage with the 5 principles to building a world-class real estate database strategy FREE PDF guide.
   The Relationship Transformer™. Download it here: 
2. Join the ‘Agent Hub’group and connect with real estate people who are scaling too
   It’s our new Facebook community where 1800 other smart real estate people hang out and share ideas. — Click Here 
3. Join our Implementation Program and be a Case Study
   I’m putting together a new coaching case study group this month… stay tuned for details. If you’d like to work with me on your listing and sales process… just send me a message with the words “Case Study”.
4. Join me this FRIDAY @10am AEST for our online master class on growing market share inside your business.
   Learn the key steps to growing market share inside your business with our stock structure training. We have limited places join here