Find the path to Becoming A Neighborhood Expert.
Are you as an agent want to become a neighborhood expert? That’s Shana Acquisto. She’s a luxury real estate broker, and I don’t even know what I’m talking about. So what we’re going to do is discuss some real estate and talk about how you, as an agent can specifically get better in one area, one specific neighborhood. So we’re going to go ahead and have Omkar pull up the correct link for us here, and we’ll chat that in and we’ll share it on the screen. And then off we’ll go.
Super excited to be sharing this with you guys here, right? So we have nine shortcuts to learning your market, thanks to Inman and a couple of different things here. I shared one of these yesterday, specifically with all the stuff that Zillow is providing you with as a resource and how you can go ahead and grab free data from Zillow. It was an amazing topic, so you have all of that, but this is about becoming a neighborhood expert.
Ok, so Shana, do you want to talk about some of these things? Sure. Like that you think would kind of be on here and we’ll start going through it, right? So I’ll control the mouse and drag.
You guys may not even realize it, but I think people may view you as the neighborhood expert and you may not even think you are. How many of your neighbors when you walk outside just to get the mail like, hey, did you see so-and-so’s moving? Hey, did you hear this? Hey. And they look to you as their real estate like resource? Nice. So you could easily become that expert just really simply by not doing too much.
There you go by getting your mail. That’s how you become the getting your network. That’s step one a guy.
If your neighbor says, Hey, did you see so-and-so listed their home? You should be like, Yeah, you should have already known that, right? No one on this list is preview listings. So in your neighborhood, you need to know what’s going on. And if something is new to the market, go attend it, go look at it, go preview it.
And you should probably have a say search setup for your neighborhood specifically so that every time one comes up, dang, you get it. And you know, as soon as it’s coming soon, right?
Yeah, for sure. Ok, yeah. So definitely preview the listings. And that’s a great way, whether you’re a veteran agent or a new agent, to go in and understand price points and trends and all of that good stuff. So wow.
As a freshly licensed newbie, one thing that our brokers suggested is I preview 10 listings a day. Whoa, why not go see 10 listings a day?
They’re there for a while. There weren’t 10 listings to view, so well.
So what they’re trying to do is teach it. They’re trying to get you out right. And by being out, you’ll meet more people. And by meeting more people, you’ll have opportunities to do things. Yeah. So sometimes it’s weird. You have to think about what the request is actually asking, right?
So they’re saying like, get moving and they’re setting a specific number and like, get out of your house, get out of the office, whatever that is, and go see things by seeing things, you’ll gain knowledge and by gaining this knowledge, then you become valuable.
So, yeah, I think that’s really good, and I would take it a step further and get to know who the listing agent is, right? Because if you’re not the listing agent, it’s in your neighborhood. You should know who that is, why they chose them.
That’s helpful. There you go. And it doesn’t necessarily just have to be in your specific neighborhood that you live in. It could be any neighborhood that you’re like farming or like whatever you are kind of trying to do where you’re trying to become the expert. Yeah. Now this is a big one that I like to talk about a lot. Right. It’s walk and drive the neighborhoods. So it’s like actually participate in it.
See what you would do. So if you’re going to a listing or you’re going to any type of appointment for a client to go show them something. One of my suggestions is always to take time and be prepared, but be fully prepared and totally invest so that you’re ready with your time. You know you’re going to be going out there. You might as well do it right. So any time that you’re showing a property, I suggest knowing the neighborhood schools going to the middle elementary and high school, but directly from the property.
So you know how to get there. So you see if there’s any obstacles, right? Like some shortcuts? Yeah, whatever that happens to be right, like you wouldn’t want, you would want to know something like to get to the middle school. You have to cross train tracks or a busy road or any one of those things, right? Like something weird that you might pick up. So if you physically drive it, you’ll pick that up.
You know, we used to bike ride on road bikes and we would go through the trails on different neighborhoods, actually in Plano. And it’s really funny. I’d been in these particu. Give our neighborhoods over and over again. When I when I was on a bike, I was able to see it in a whole different way and it was really interesting. So, you know, when you walk around and you know what’s going on in that neighborhood, what the amenities are and even the surrounding, where what’s the the shopping like around there and what restaurants are around there? So.
So some of the suggestions there would be to participate in that neighborhood. So if it’s not yours, but it’s one that you want to be really good with is go enjoy the park that’s there used to hike and bike trail, take your kids and have a picnic dinner. Right. But just participate in that neighborhood where you want to sell and you’ll start to learn things you’ll see, like all the people are nice. There’s a lot of young people. There’s a lot of older people, there’s a lot of couples, there’s a lot of this, there’s a lot of active people.
This is going on here. Now you have something to share because when you’re talking to your client and you say something very powerful, like, Hey, you know, once a week I go to a different neighborhood. I’ve been in this neighborhood, I’ve been on the park. I’ve went on the hike and bike trail as you get a little bit further down here. There’s this weird area where the wind comes over and it gets a little chilly and you’re like, Whoa, yeah, that’s like a real fact that you know about this neighborhood. And then you can share that.
So funny story is we had a client. They moved here from California years ago and schools were very important to them. So we told them, Hey, the bus stops right here, very close to this home that you’re looking at, and they just kind of want to know what type, what the demographics were like a little bit more about the kids. Yeah. So we had him, we said, You know what? Here’s where the bus stops.
Just go hang out there and you know, you might meet other parents and so forth. So it was really funny that he went and he had this little car and he sat there and he watched it in the morning and then the afternoon. And then on the neighborhood Facebook page, people were like, Has anyone seen this creepy man in this little car? You know, sitting outside looking at all the kids, no kid gets in his car so he doesn’t have kids like it was really kind of funny.
So creeper clients brought to you by showing up.
So that brings this isn’t on the list, but if you can join a neighborhood, you know, Facebook page or your next door app and then kind of understand what the community is saying about the neighborhood, that gives you really good insight.
And that’s amazing, right? So that feedback there are spectacular. So I was
Like, Oh, I would be like, Wow, thanks for looking out. There’s a lot of concerned people, and it’s a very neighborhood centric that people are well connected. They know what’s going on. They identify a one unique car right after being there just for a morning and afternoon, and they’re asking questions. Those are people who genuinely care. Yeah, and who like their neighborhood.
Maybe there’s a lot of like nosy neighbors in their well, and I’m like, No, you got to go back and show these people who you really are. So they don’t think you’re like creeping on kids.
Yeah. Oh, good. Go back a third time. That’s a good idea.
You should go back on foot.
Oh my word. All right. So what I want to do there is, I want to say, that’s a great topic. We’re going to hit pause on this. Maybe we’ll come back next time and hit on it and do becoming a neighborhood expert part dose. Oh yeah. So but what I first want to do is go ahead and conclude this topic for now and we’ll jump back in next time.
Becoming A Neighborhood Expert (Part 1) 
Becoming A Neighborhood Expert
