How Do Realtors Work From Home? 7 Essential Tips
Whether you’re a real estate broker, agent, or transaction coordinator, working from home is more than possible. In fact, working from home can increase productivity by up to 77%.
Better work-life balance, less commuting, working your own hours, and fewer distractions are just some of the reasons why many brokers and real estate agents work from home.
But how do you achieve effective remote work? With the right tools, it’s possible to have a successful real estate career and reap all the benefits of remote work.
In this article, we’ll provide you with some top tips for anyone in the real estate industry to work from home successfully.
1. Create a Home Office Space
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when building a remote real estate business is working from your couch.
This sounds counterintuitive since your goal is to work from home, but you need to take yourself outside the spaces you enjoy when taking a day off. This means doing your remote work in a dedicated workspace.
If you have a home office, you’re ahead of the game. If you don’t, simply having your own dedicated desk and chair or even a devoted section of the kitchen table can do wonders.
Your main goal is to have a place that’s ‘away from home’ in your mind—even if it’s in the middle of your house.
2. Use the Right Video Chat Tools
Even when team leads and brokers have minimal interaction with clients, it’s still necessary for them to have ‘face-to-face” meetings when working from home.
They’re in leadership positions that require them to interact directly with real estate agents and other professionals, and one-on-one phone calls or even conference calls sometimes won’t cut it.
Fortunately, there are a variety of video chat tools available. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has pinpointed the best chat apps for real estate professionals to use:
- FaceTime.
- Skype.
- ooVoo.
- Google Meet.
- WhatsApp.
You’ll want to have a reliable, fast internet connection to be able to use these apps without connectivity issues.
3. Invest in Real Estate Management Software
One of the most important tools you’ll need when working from home is real estate management software. All the paperwork you’d usually work with at the office or in the field is out of reach when you’re at home.
Fortunately, with appropriate software, you can go paperless for nearly all essential processes, even when completing real estate transactions.
Automated checklists, instant commission statements, detailed financial reports, and delegation of responsibilities are just a few of the essentials that you can handle via software.
While it’s technically possible to do all your real estate work at home manually, you’ll find that doing so makes your remote job more difficult.
With the right software in place, it makes time management for realtors much easier and allows for a more productive real estate operation.
4. Know When to Contact Clients
Team leads and brokers have to interact with clients occasionally, but this is something transaction coordinators do daily.
Since you’re no longer scheduling appointments to meet with clients, it’s important to recognize the best time to call them. Not everyone works from home, and even those who do won’t always be available.
Calling real estate clients in the late afternoon is the best time to contact them. Calling on Wednesdays and Thursdays leads to even higher response rates.
Potential buyers and sellers won’t be able to just walk into your business when you’re working from home. That’s why you need to ensure every contact attempt follows industry best practices.
5. Attend Virtual Real Estate Conferences
One of the biggest disadvantages of doing real estate work from home is that you can’t attend networking events.
Conferences and similar events provide industry professionals with an opportunity to:
- Meet their colleagues.
- Stay current with industry trends.
- Gather new ideas.
- Form new relationships with vendors.
Unfortunately, this typically means getting on a plane and traveling out of state.
Working from home didn’t stop professionals from attending these events, but everything became more difficult thanks to COVID-19. Many real estate agents suddenly couldn’t safely travel at all.
Fortunately, many conferences and trade shows have since moved into the virtual space.
By attending these events, you’ll ensure you stay at the top of your game while working from home.
6. Purchase a Drone
Purchasing a drone is a smart move for remote workers in the real estate industry. Using a drone for aerial photography at properties means you don’t have to leave your house to get good footage.
Research shows that realtors get 403% more inquiries when they use videos in their marketing. Additionally, 73% of sellers choose a realtor who uses video over those who don’t.
There are drones on the market with a range of eight miles, so you can get a bird’s-eye view of many local properties without leaving your home.
While using a drone for real estate work from home isn’t mandatory, it can give you an advantage over competitors.
7. Get Video Editing Software
If you’re not already using video in your real estate practice, working from home is the perfect opportunity to catch up.
Of homeowners looking to sell their property, over 73% say they’d prefer to list with a real estate agent that includes videos or virtual tours on their property listing pages.
Video also becomes important since you and many real estate agents or colleagues won’t be face-to-face with clients. People want a personal touch, and video is a good way to give it to them.
People enjoy the appeal of video interaction, but without appropriate editing, you may lose a sense of professionalism.
Enjoy Working Remotely with Paperless Pipeline
Paperless Pipeline is the ideal tool to use when working from home to stay organized and on top of the transaction process.
Our fast and affordable software simplifies and streamlines the transaction process, ensuring every milestone and critical due date is met on time.
With Paperless Pipeline, your agents, transaction coordinators, and admins can stay connected and do their best work remotely. In fact, you can run an entirely remote brokerage and still close deals successfully.
Visit our website for a free Paperless Pipeline trial and see how you can run a remote operation with ease.