Real Estate Agents.

red_cedar

Has anyone tried sending information to various realestate agents, brokers.
Im in the process of getting together a small mailer and plan on sending them to the real estate people in various communities. its going to include letter, busisness card, 1 glossy manufacturer products sheet, 1 picture of completed job.
I figured maybe with the picture it wont be so prone to be tossed.
They deal with a lot of people.

What do you guys think? has anyone done something similar? General input would be helpfull


Thanks,......Red

MinConst

Red,
I have tried this on a very small scale with no results. I would be interested in your results so let us know how it works out for you.

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Paul
Minichillo's Construction
Website
I will never leave you hanging!

Bob Kovacs

In general, RE agents will run you ragged having you look at homes for potential clients for free, give tons of free advice to their clients, and then use some low-ball unlicensed relative when they actually need any repairs/work done. If they do give you any work, many of them expect a "referral fee" for "getting you the job". Funny how you don't get a "referral fee" when they get a listing from you, right?

Of course, this doesn't apply to "all" agents- just the majority of the ones I've every had the pleasure of dealing with.

Bob

Teetorbilt

I agree with Bob. Many around here are also flipping, they want everything perfect for the least amount of $$$$. I avoid them like the plague.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

red_cedar

The products I am promoting and sometimes selling is a higher end roofing product. More times than not, several times more in cost than your regular roof. I dont have a problem with a referal fee if a job is signed up. say $3-5 hundred
I am looking for more of a word of mouth type of advertising. I do know what you guys are talking about though with how they can be. In my experience, Out of 10 realestate people I have dealt with, 5-6 has panned out into dollars.

keep the opinions coming!

Grumpy

Do some searching on this forum. Use the advanced search function and search for my posts about real estate agents. They are a painter's best friend and a roofer's nightmare. Just search.

red_cedar

I found it Grumpy, basicly wasting roofers time for their and clients benefit.

Floorwizard

Real Estate agents are tough to crack.
You could probably use your time drumming up business elsewhere.
But if you have the time, you can profit well from them.
I sent out E-Mails to all the Realtors up here that had email. I offered airline miles for the referrals. You can offer other things.
I only heard back from a few, but got a few good jobs from some, and wasted a bit of time with a couple others.
The key was that I FOLLOWED UP on the emails. I made personal calls to make sure they got it, and dig deeper into their wants and needs to see if they were interested.

Then after a couple years of attending some functions and personally getting to see these Realtors time and time again, I was able to get better leads from them.
You have to mix in some personal mingle time and shake some hands and meet some faces.
Emails or handouts alone will not work, but if you get the ice broken in time, it can be a gold mine.

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"in 20 years you will regret more what you did not do than what you did"

Mike Finley

Same here. A customer of mine asked me to call his son who is a real estate agent because he is always looking for a good contractor. Of course the 'always looking' part should be enough to tell you that there is probably a reason why a realtor in business for over 10 years is still "always looking" for a good contractor - CHEAP clients of realtors who want something fixed as cheap as possible so they can sell the house. That's just the nature of a realtors client, who wants to put $10,000 into a house just to sell it if you can hopefully do it the same for $5000?

ProWallGuy

Ditto.

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Wallpaper Hanger St. Louis
Digital Murals Installation

shopdust

Real estate firms/property management firms are generally bad news. They are beyond cheap.
Unless one is feeding me good investment deals, I don't even return their calls.

AAPaint

I had one realtor/investor that I did some work for. Started off great. Met the man, gave him a price, he said great get started. Painted what he wanted, he asked for more work. Gave him another price, he was still OK. From there it went straight down hill. He tried to low-ball me at every opportunity he got. He'd ask for a price, I'd give it, he'd say "THAT much for THIS??" and balk all day about it. In the end, he wanted me to look at his PERSONAL home to give him a price on it. I went out and looked at it. Then he says "well, let's get started, just tell me how many hours it takes you and I'll pay you accordingly".....WHAT??? Needless to say I didn't paint his house. Like he was going to decide how much I would work for all on his own, hah! I stopped working by the hour a long time ago, now it's all priced by the job....

Anyway, after that experience I haven't had the urge to bother with another realtor or investor. My prices aren't cheap, and realtors are. So, it just means that they are not part of my target audience. I do the highest quality work, at a high quality price. You can't have champagne on a beer budget.

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-AAPaint

AA Quality Painting & Pressure Washing LLC
Jacksonville Painters
Jacksonville, FL.

mdshunk

Real estate agents have traditionally been a steady source of work for me doing service upgrades only. In the past, I have done lots and lots of estimates for REA'a on total home rewires and wiring upgrades, but get very little of that work from REA's. I'll continue to do service upgrades for them, but I'm wasting my time looking at any rewire work for them. I guess as long as the home has a new service, the REA can say, "Look, it has new electric", or something along those lines. A new meter can and service panel might give just enough OOH and AHH factor. What the prospective homeowner isn't seeing is the 100 year old K&T sizzling throughout the rest of the dwelling.

red_cedar

I appreciate all the responses. I am going forward with the mailings.
The cost ( not including labor ) with postage comes out to about 70 cents apiece. Im thinking 3-4 hundred of them. At the very least, maybe it will get people talking.

housedocs

Man ain't that the truth and it's just unbelievable how many people buy a home thinking it's had wiring updated only to find they just upgraded the service. Should be against the law!

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Bjd

I had a REA that wanted us to paint the entire water main and all exposed pipes copper, then insulate them as to fool any buyer into thinking that they were replaced. When I refused they found some one else to do the dirty work, funny thing is we ended up years later replacing everything when the home was sold.
These guys want everything cosmedic, nothing whole, just make it look good for the sale.
To me its kinda of hard to put my name on something, that done half ass thats just is not our style.

BJD

ProWallGuy

Wørd.

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Wallpaper Hanger St. Louis
Digital Murals Installation