By: Carol Evenson, guest author

As a real estate agent, your success depends on attracting more clients. If you can grow your reach and appeal to more people in your market, you’ll see organic growth in your success. These tips may help you reach your goals for the new year.

Remember Growth is Relative

As a real estate agent, you’re an independent contractor with limited resources and trying to grow like a larger business may be a mistake. Instead, focus on your market and the people in your community. You should also use this status to your advantage. Being a small fish in a big pond means you can be more mobile, which will allow you to explore new opportunities more easily. It also means you have the time to forge genuine relationships with your clients. Combined, these two elements will help you grow professionally.

Remember to Budget for Everything

Another characteristic of being an independent contractor is that you’re going to have career-related expenses. You’ll end up going broke if you just pay for expenses blindly. The best advice is to create a personal household budget and a professional budget together, so you can see where all of your spendings is occurring. Things like home security may cost you a little money up front, but if it helps you sell the house and is within your budget, you can know where to spend your money. This will help you adjust your spending, so you’ll have more money for things like marketing.

Hire a Real Estate Coach

If you feel as though you’re not making the impact you hoped to make in the market, consider getting professional guidance. A real estate coach can help you with things like delivering a compelling pitch. They often offer negotiations training that helps agents excel on both sides of the transaction. While some coaches are expensive, requiring up to a $1,000 fee, it may be worth it. Many real estate agencies have estimated that sales have increased by a factor of 10 as a result of using coaches. If you can fit this into your budget, you may experience a healthy return on your investment.

Resist Turning Down Prospective Clients

When most real estate agents are starting out, they look for the brass ring. They will turn down those buyers and sellers who don’t represent a big commission. That can be a mistake because the commission isn’t always your only payoff. Those smaller fish may offer you a bigger deal in a few years if you make a positive impression now. They may also refer you to other clients, which will help you grow your reach organically. Especially if you’re new to the business, every client has the potential to offer something of value.

Remember the Importance of Communication

When people feel ignored by any business, their first response is usually to go to a competitor. For this reason, you should return calls and respond to questions at your earliest convenience. Making a client wait on something as important as a real estate transaction is never wise. The only exception is in cases when the client wants some information you don’t possess. Taking the time to research the issue is acceptable because your responses should always be honest and accurate.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

It will take you forever to grow your practice if you’re not networking and marketing your services. Using social media is the best way to get your name out there where people will discover you. This is a free resource that simply takes a little effort and an interest in socializing. You start by creating a profile and sharing compelling content. As you begin to attract followers, be sure to respond to them and engage with them. Building online relationships helps you generate leads. When people find you communicative and personable, they will ask their friends to follow you as well.

Advancing in the real estate business requires passion, ambition, and tenacity. If you can develop a marketing strategy and stick with it over a period of time, you will see you reach consistently expand. It won’t happen overnight, but you will get there if you persevere.

Carol Evenson is an entrepreneur and professional consultant specializing in C-level training and business growth. She currently works as a real estate agent and seeks to give a hand up to those that helped her during her come up in both corporate and personal real estate. Contact her at carolevenson5@gmail.com

TUCSON, ARIZONA — Benson-DBS, LLC, a California investor from Rancho Mission Viejo, CA, purchased the brand-new Dollar General located at 28890 S. Nogales Highway in Amado, AZ.  The 9,100-square-foot Dollar General, that opened last week, was purchased from DCM Development Company, LLC for $1,642,800 ($180.53 PSF).  The store sits on a 1.8-acre site.

Dave Hammack, Principal and Retail Specialist with Cushman & Wakefield | PICOR, represented the seller in this transaction.

In a separate transaction, another Dollar General at 3436 N Country Club Road in Tucson sold for $1.670 million ($185.50 PSF). Built in 2014, this is the second time the investment property has sold with an absolute NNN lease term to the Rayner Family Trust from Palo Alto, CA.

The 9,002-square-foot building sits on a .8-acre site in central Tucson in a dense population area with approximately 113,236 people within a 3-mile radius of the site.

Dollar General is one of the largest dollar store chains in the US and a publicly traded company. It started in 1939 by J.L. Turner in Kentucky offering a broad selection of merchandise, including consumables, seasonal, home products and apparel at deep discounts.

From a net lease point of view, Dollar General is appealing given its lower price points, respectable sales record, and corporate expansion strategy in a growing market segment. Dollar General’s new store model is approximately 9,100 square feet on approximately 1-acre of land to accommodate a minimum of 30 parking spaces. Dollar General net lease properties have high visibility and full ingress/egress along retail corridors with good traffic. Higher cap rates and lower price points result in a larger pool of qualified buyers.

All Dollar General net leases have a corporate guarantee and typically the newer stores are NNN with 15-year initial terms. New Dollar General’s lease terms usually include 10% bumps every five (5) years and in options making it a passive investment deal for Out-of-State investors. A significant portion of the new stores are subject to build-to-suit arrangements.

At the end of 2018, Dollar General operated 15,227 stores across 44 states. In the first three quarters of 2018, Dollar General opened 750 new stores. Dollar General plans to open 975 additional stores this year.

For more information Dave Hammack should be reached at 520.546.2712.

To learn more, see RED Comp #6803 and #6750.

On- and off-campus developments benefit from rising demand

PHOENIX, Arizona – A booming population, aging demographics and freeway expansions have significantly increased demand for medical services in metro Phoenix, according to the Phoenix office of JLL, resulting in a 33 percent decrease in office vacancies since 2010.

According to the company’s recently released Medical Office Overview, the metro Phoenix medical office market currently represents almost 17-million-square-feet of on- and off-campus space. An additional 301,000-square-feet is now under construction – all located in the Southeast Valley, which at more than 4.52 million square feet represents the Valley’s largest medical office submarket.

“The variety and sophistication of Phoenix’s medical office space is maturing right alongside our population figures, and we are seeing positive results in all of our communities because of this,” said JLL Senior Associate Katie McIntyre.

While the Southeast Valley is enjoying the lion’s share of active new construction, the Southwest Valley was the only metro submarket to achieve positive net medical office space absorption, totaling 26,723-square-feet during the first quarter. JLL expects demand in that submarket to continue to rise, particularly following this year’s completion of the area’s new Loop 202 freeway expansion.

The Central Business District, Southeast Valley and Northeast Valley are at a near tie for lowest medical office vacancy rate, all sitting in the mid-11 percent range. This helps bring the overall Phoenix medical office vacancy to just 13.3 percent, a full 33 percent lower than it was five years ago.

“These are powerful figures that are attracting everything from world-class hospitals and outpatient centers to innovative specialized treatment facilities. They are also encouraging both large-scale facilities and physicians groups to expand throughout the Valley, creating new development projects in growing communities,” said McIntyre. “That growth – along with our popularity as a retirement destination – will only expand this mix and provide welcome stability for our on- and off-campus medical projects.”

To access JLL research for Phoenix and across the U.S., visit the company’s research page at https://www.us.jll.com/en/trends-and-insights#research.

See more details here:  PHX Medical Office Overview_5-19