115 – How To Get Top Dollar In A Shifting Market with Amanda Vang

Synopsis

Amanda is a real estate agent and investor in the Bay Area and today, she’ll share her story of how she went from Walmart employee to one of the top-performing agents in Santa Clara County. She’ll give us the inside scoop on what buyers are looking for and how we can sell our properties at the highest price, even in a slowing market.

Key points

Starting Out In Real Estate

After briefly introducing herself, Amanda told a story about how she started in the real estate industry. Apparently, she stumbled upon a Facebook ad on a seminar about real estate investing. With a realization that she couldn’t keep on being an employee for the rest of her life, she went to the seminar and the rest is history. She kept on learning new things; contracts, working with buyers and sellers, communicating with people, real estate market itself, etc. She went on to get her license, spent some time fixing and selling homes, before deciding to focus on the retail side.

On Deciding Not To Join A Team

Amanda joined a brokerage firm after getting her license, but she didn’t join a team. She wish she should have joined a team as this would greatly expedite her learning curve. For her, joining a team will help you a lot to avoid costly mistakes and can speed up the process. Nevertheless, not joining a team is also great since she learned not to depend on others and be complacent about her performance. By going solo, she had to work really hard to find her own clients and in a sense accelerated her growth as well.

Differentiating Oneself From The Competition

There’s so much competition in the real estate market nowadays especially with the agents. When asked about what makes her stand out from the crowd, Amanda chose customer service as the most important ingredient to be successful. For her, this means having both in-depth technical knowledge of how to manage real estate transactions and transparent communication with the buyers and sellers. As she pointed out, clients are “emotionally dedicated” in these transactions since it involves money. Being able to respond quickly, clearly, and the reassurance that there’s nothing to worry about are just some of the practical ways to do this.

Premarketing A Home

There’s a need to premarket a house if you are selling. That is, one should already be trying to find buyers before the property is even in MLS. This is because the longer a property sits on the market, the people expect the property price to go down all the more. Premarketing a home, as Amanda shares, involves a lot of manual work like sharing the property in social media pages, doing a video of the house, talking to other agents that have potential buyers, advertising on Zillow and Redfin, sending out postcards, and many others.

The Market Today – What Do Buyers Want?

Based on experience, Amanda shared what most buyers are looking for in a property, as well as what factor/s turn them off the most enough for them not to consider it anymore. It turned out that most, if not all of the buyers want a house which is close to their workplace. Closer to work doesn’t just mean commuting will no longer be much of a problem. It also makes sense because the resale value of these properties is higher. However, some factors that drive buyers away are the floor plan and the quality of the remodeled house. If they didn’t like the floor plan, or if people see that you’re cutting corners in the remodeling of the house, they definitely won’t buy it.

Should You Join A Team Or Go Solo?

There is really no right or wrong answer which approach is better if you would ask Amanda. It all comes down to your goals, need, and preferences. What she wants us to remember though is should you ever decide to be a solo agent and not join team, you should have the initiative to go after someone for coaching. Make sure that you have someone, a coach, that holds you accountable and will show you the way to succeed. It also follows that you should be coachable for you to benefit from the coaching. You can’t expect results if you are not teachable.

References

Apps

• Zillow
• Redfin
• MLS

More from our guest

• Contact Amanda at (650) 457 9333