Why Real Estate Agents in Boston Should Ditch Outdated Brokerages

The beginning of fall marks a pivotal shift for outstanding Boston real estate agents who defy the conventional belief of a slow market. Instead, top producers working in the right platform, often turn the autumn months into their most lucrative period for commissions. As the leaves change and the air grows crisp, savvy real estate professionals embrace the opportunity to expand their playing field and generate even more revenue for themselves. Why do some agents crush it in the fall while others fail? Let’s examine how this happens and what the solutions.

The general trend of many real estate agents in Greater Boston during the fall is to take a long vacation and break free from the standard work routines. Some of this fear-based mindset is through listening to other average agents around them. Most agents work at traditional real estate offices which are unable or unwilling to help deliver ample listings or leads. Therefore a real estate agent’s view of the real estate world itself is skewed towards negativity based on the limited beliefs or vision around them.

Numerous real estate agents often ill-fatedly decide it is best to find something else to do in the fall. You often see a lot of real estate agents take seasonal work or acquire a part-time or full-time job. This is an erroneous view because it is myopic and does not explore the possibilities that exist at other non-traditional real estate brokerages. It might be time to broaden your horizons and see what unique and irresistible opportunities exist at other forward-looking real estate companies.

What if there is no slow season? What if it is just a slow group-based mentality based on the truths of your existing office?

Perhaps a real estate agent working at a traditional real estate brokerage rationalizes that picking up a new hobby while it is slow at their office can suffice for now until a new season arrives. That taking a few months off and waiting for a busier period works with their overall life plan. But what if you didn’t achieve the numbers you wanted to hit by September 1st? What if the multi-family, residential sales, and high-end rentals didn’t show up for you?

What if you have bills to pay and goals to adhere to that must be achieved? The fall is often the best time to make a move to companies that invest in their agents. Perhaps now is the time to see what unique capabilities some companies adorn through their impeccable track record and localized resources developed over a significant number of years. Would less phony sizzle and more real estate steak on your plate be the solution you have been missing the whole time?

What if you are just one real estate office move away from unlocking your true potential?

For leading companies deploying and investing the most in highly localized platforms; now is the best time of year to tackle markets in Greater Boston. If you choose wisely, you may experience far less competition with far more listings and leads at your fingertips. Top real estate offices in Greater Boston have five main characteristics that make them great in the fall. All of these offices possess: vision, teamwork, unique technologies, training and vast sums of experience to help lead their agents to lucrative outcomes during the fall. There can be no doubt that countless real estate agents in Boston go through gut check time in the fall and often find themselves wondering whether their current office, with dated technologies, scant resources, limited support and questionable business practices, can still help them achieve their goals.

If you hear your broker, office manager or fellow agents saying this is the “the slow season”, you owe it to yourself to start some due diligence on various companies. Not all real estate companies are created equal or operate with the same mindset.

So, what’s the biggest obstacle for experienced real estate agents in Boston that can’t meet their goals?

In some ways, the real estate industry has lagged behind other business sectors when it comes to widespread implementation and advancement of new technologies. This lack of new technologies is especially acute at the micro level of Boston. Much of the software out there is based on national brands and one size does not fit all. Hardly. This foot- dragging by national brands partially stems from a reluctance to adjust methods that are seemingly “working fine” when everyone can clearly see localized patterns continuously change. It’s also the lack of confidence and technical know-how of local traditional brokerages not wanting to spend money to help their agents. Most real estate companies don’t want to be a leaf in the fall wind and deal with the uncertainties of experimenting and change.

Finally, most brokerages will simply never spend enough resources on custom local software applications specific to their micro real estate market to help their agents get an abundance of leads and listings. Having a national brand supposedly “back you” but not deliver unique and innovative local systems that increase your effectiveness is a recipe for mediocrity at best. It’s no small wonder that when innovation lacks- fear shows up in the fall for many agents.

Modern times demand modern solutions.

The digitalization of business practices since the early 2000s has increased the need for transparency and accuracy in data and created a far less patient consumer base. Today, if consumers are on the right real estate websites, they can gain access to a wide variety of real- time tools to help them make a decision faster. When you are aligned with a modern real estate ecosystem, your showings will be seamless and your closing ratios will soar. The consumer must know you – like you – trust you! If your agency can’t help deliver those three things quickly; you are probably losing a lot of money you never even imagined.

Though few and far between, there are a few brokerages throughout the country that are providing their agents with modern, tech and team oriented solutions. These stand out offices and their agents, are pushing ahead and continue to succeed despite changing and challenging economic climates. They are operating and organizing in a way that puts the agent first. They prioritize the agents success as a fundamental matter of company pride. Their core philosophy and mission statement is far more powerful than a rise is interest rates. Top Greater Boston real estate companies were already prepared for higher interest rates and they began that journey year ago. It’s not a knee jerk reaction – they were ready to embrace change so that their agents prospered.

More Leads, More Deals, More Money!

Anyone that has taken a real estate class has heard of the overplayed “the sphere of influence”. Your sphere of influence includes all of your contacts as a real estate professional. In short, this is usually your friends, family, previous clients, and any referrals you can get from them. If a real estate agency keeps telling you to rely on your “sphere of influence” you need to ask yourself some serious questions.

Is this really my brokerages main plan for my success?

What happens after you run out of friends and family to call in two weeks? Did your broker or manager then quickly shift you to call expired listings? Do you want to be one of one thousand agents chasing the same expired listings? Do you want to be yelled at all day by calling the same disgruntled seller that hangs up on you? Why does your agency keep shifting you to try things that doesn’t cost them any money? Can your brokerage deliver you enough booked appointments so you become a highly skilled closing machine- or do they insist this time of year is just slower? What if your broker said it’s your fault you didn’t work hard enough during the spring and summer? Maybe it’s time to ask yourself what your brokerage is actually doing for you.

It could be time to ask the hard questions. Are they spending marketing dollars to help you achieve your goals? Are they delivering and developing unique content that helps you become the expert of your chosen area in real estate?

Leads.

As any real estate agent will tell you, one of the keys to massive success in real estate is a vast supply of new leads. Under traditional brokerage models, you are often left to fend for your own. This wastes a lot of time- it is extremely time consuming to acquire clients. If you are losing 20-40 hours of your week to marketing endeavors in an antiquated system, what other opportunities both professional and social are you missing? Time is money. Boston real estate agents will, and should, flock to those highly localized platforms that give them the most operational effectiveness possible.

If you are not showing Boston apartments, you are not closing deals.

You’re competing with thousands of other real estate agents in Boston, and over 400 brokerages in Boston proper alone. As an individual, how do you ensure your online presence is strong enough to reach new potential clients? When you do a search on google, are you seeing your brokerage coming up anywhere? If your broker’s website is nowhere to be found on google, how is your company developing influence and impact with property owners? Do landlords give out their best listings to companies with a limited marketing presence? I think it is time to do a google search and figure out how many eyeballs are coming to your brokerages website.

Leads matter. Deals matter. Every single detail matters. What if you were working at an office where the offices lines actually ring with investors, landlords, and clients looking to perform transactions?

You must start considering that it is far easier to get more listings when you are dominant on real estate search results. Maybe ask yourself a question; if you were a landlord, investor or property owner – who would you give your listing to? Perhaps it’s time to look at the google domain authority of the brokerage you work for… Let’s keep it real, landlords are always going to do searches themselves and see who is driving the most traffic. They want to know their listings will get the most coverage. Property owners want the best results in the shortest period of time with the most qualified candidates. That begins and ends with the largest amount of quality leads.

Did your office spend enough money, time, energy as well as influence and impact to keep leads flowing to you?

If your broker has told you that after September 1 you should take a break- ask yourself why. If you are not closing deals, you are not making money- neither is your brokerage. So if they aren’t providing you with leads or listings- are they already tapped out? Year after year, we see multiple agents closing over $30,000 in commissions in September alone. In September 2022, our top agent closed $57,525! This could be what you are missing out on if you don’t examine all the benefits of a non-traditional highly advance brokerage that can keep you closing and building wealth all year round.

You need better tools.

Does your brokerage have automated local listing and posting tools that can generate an ad within 1 minute? Has your brokerage invested millions of dollars to ensure that your posts end up on the most locations on the internet with the fewest amount of clicks? If you’re at a traditional brokerage, chances are they haven’t built specific Boston/MA based syndication technologies. That means you are most likely suffering through the skull drudgery of posting ads manually. What if you were clicking and marketing less and able to free up more time for showings and shaking hands with property owners? Would you make more money? Would you have a better quality of life?

At many offices, making a property ad can take 6-15 minutes to write and post. That time is not including the effort you already took making calls and taking new photos. This limits you to 4-9 ads per hour, which is not enough. Real estate is, in many ways, a numbers game after all. Let’s not forget that most agents at traditional brokerages also have to pay per advertisement to post on various national real estate portals. Having to pay for your own marketing on national real estate portals simply doesn’t make sense. You are basically cutting into your own profit. Greater Boston real estate agents often end up spending a lot of their own money without seeing the results they need. With the right technologies behind you, however, generating new leads can be the least time- consuming aspect of your job- and it doesn’t need to cost you anything.

Shown above: some of the public leads available through Padsfinder.

Introducing Padsfinder.

The Boston real- estate market is white hot, ultra- competitive, and often unforgiving. Clients tend to reach out to multiple agents about the same property. They can send 10 inquiries in the span of 5 minutes. The customer is king, as they say, and kings aren’t patient. This is where Padsfinder steps in. Padsfinder is a proprietary app created by Boston Pads- Boston’s largest real- time real estate portal. All agents working at brokerages powered by Boston Pads have access to this app. They are notified instantly when someone inquires about an available property. From there, agents can immediately contact the interested client, set up an appointment, and build rapport. Customers are thrilled to be able to talk to an agent so quickly! Here is a direct quote from a happy client’s Google review:

“I was in a pinch to find a rental in the City of Boston, and I reached out to an agent at Jacob Realty. His response was immediate, and he made time to show me places the next morning. I inquired about 7 properties prior to this through different agencies/apps/websites and not one person responded.”

Agents Have Multiplied Their Take Home Income

Agents utilizing the Boston Pads platform and syndication technologies are always delivered the greatest amount of real time leads on Agents utilizing the Boston Pads platform and syndication technologies are always delivered the greatest amount of real time leads on a non-stop continuous basis. You can click, claim a lead, show and close the same day. With Padsfinder, the process of “claiming” those leads has been simplified. This technology prevents multiple agents from reaching out to the same client, delivering a vastly superior customer experience. The consumer is treated to optimized showing routes where they can see the most properties in the shortest period of time, accelerating their decision. This type of showing efficiency is a good route to closing and a win-win for all parties. Clients gain exceptional confidence knowing they are saving time and making the best decision possible.

Padsfinder automatically reduces the time necessary to put together an effective showing.

Agents prefer client lead organization and optimization so they are not wasting their time. In fact, within the app agents can even see other properties that client is interested in- saving them the headache of having to do tedious research. By providing a superior level of efficiency, agents can take on more clients, close more deals, and have higher levels of customer satisfaction.

One of our veteran agents with only three years of experience was grossing consistent numbers of $10K-$15K a month in 2021. In 2022 and 2023, after the introduction of Padsfinder into his routine, he has been grossing around $30K monthly, and closing over $50,000 in his busier months.

We have witnessed multiple new agents walk away from their traditional brokerages regardless of whether it was a national brand or a small mom and pop office and have incredible results with our technology stack. Those offices they came from put a strong emphasis on using your “sphere of influence” calling “expired listings” and over posting of tired, common listings, and on taking time off for several months during the fall. Most agents do not understand the complete Boston Pads ecosystem married to our Padsfinder app. The results are explosive because it stacks time in their favor to close more deals.

With your new found ability to enjoy the leads and listings that were previously severely lacking, we have had agents close over $20K while still undergoing initial onboarding and training within 30 days. Do you think you would be able to close more transactions if you had more time to show and close? Perhaps the answer is becoming obvious.

Property Owners Are Impressed

Property owners with portfolios of all sizes truly enjoy our full technology stack. We have delivered amazing real time tools for landlords to log in through their own private property owner portal and get a wealth of information as well as quantifiable actions they can take to optimize in their holdings. When you build longstanding trust with property owners; they let other people know about it. You get the benefits of more inventory in a low turnover environment. Landlords enjoy working with leaders in a local industry especially when they know they have a long standing impeccable track record of getting their properties rented as well as unique selling and buying options. Property owners want peace of mind especially during the fall. The bostonpads.com full real estate ecosystem allows them to focus on other priorities without worrying about a property going vacant and losing that income.

Property Owner Portal

While we are discussing property owners, we would be remiss to not address their mindset and needs. Property owners want to know, like and trust a brokerage. Landlords want consistency and long standing relationships with leading offices. Does your brokerage have a proprietary property owner portal (POP) where they can glean real time rental prices at their fingertips?

Does your brokerage provide incredibly powerful technologies to your investors free of charge? What irresistible offer are they delivering to buyers and sellers to attract them to your office? What if your favorite landlord or investor wants to access data on their own to update all their properties for showings but doesn’t have those tools? Is your broker a long standing property owner that designs software that helps landlords? What specific software have they provided to make landlord’s lives more effective and productive? If your brokerage is not helping bring in investors, buyers or sellers to you, there is a very real chance they are going somewhere else. This could be a hint to see what top real estate ecosystems are doing around Boston.

It’s Time to Make a Choice

In the age of high interest rates and low sales and rental inventory– Agents now must choose whether their brokerage is currently working in their favor or against them. Embracing new technologies and ideas has a boldness in itself that can potentially 10x your take home income- and help you reach your financial and professional goals much faster. A great agency should be able to provide you with the ability for over 20 booked rental and/or sales appointments per week on a year round average. They should not be clamoring for you to spend 20- 40 valuable hours a week on marketing alone. If you feel your brokerage is not delivering everything you deserve it’s most likely time to take the leap and try something better.

You owe it to yourself to explore all your options. Please feel free to submit your resume here and talk to one of our managers about joining an office powered by Boston Pads. Let’s make this Fall your best season ever!