TEXAS 5-18-20

TEXAS EDITION

MAKE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Your Calling Card

By the Numbers:

Understanding the True Value of Square Footage

5 WAYS TO

TRANSFORM RENTERS INTO OWNERS

COVER STORY

REX ANDREWS

FEATURED AGENT

ROXANNE ESCOBEDO

TEXAS EDITION

9

REX ANDREWS

19

ROXANNE ESCOBEDO

REX ANDREWS

CONTENTS 4) MAKE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING YOUR CALLING CARD

15) BY THE NUMBERS: UNDERSTANDING THE TRUE VALUE OF SQUARE FOOTAGE

6) 5 WAYS TO TRANSFORM RENTERS INTO OWNERS

22) HOW TO OVERCOME YOUR WORKPLACE FEARS

Phone 310-734-1440 | Fax 310-734-1440 mag@topagentmagazine.com | www.topagentmagazine.com No portion of this issue may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior consent of the publisher. Top Agent Magazine is published by Feature Publications GA, Inc. Although precautions are taken to ensure the accuracy of published materials, Top Agent Magazine cannot be held responsible for opinions expressed or facts supplied by its authors. To subscribe or change address, send inquiry to mag@topagentmagazine.com.

Published in the U.S.

2

Top Agent Magazine

mailto:mag@topagentmagazine.com http://www.topagentmagazine.com

Top Agent Magazine

3

Make Social Media Marketing Your Calling Card These days, it’s no secret that buyers begin their home search online. As the industry continues to take a digital turn, Realtors in the know must learn to utilize a whole new range of tools available to them—and for good reason. Social media is a dynamic hybrid of personal contact and targeted marketing. To make the most of this new medium, agents can’t settle for the occasional post and expect results.

Instead, let’s consider a few techniques that will make your social media presence 4

interactive, unmissable, and effective in generating business.

Your Profile is a Portal Ideally, you’ll have profiles across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and otherwise—but no matter what portal you’re utilizing, make sure your profile page is up-todate, well-curated, and easily navigated.

Consider your profile a landing page.

Top Agent Magazine ®

Top Agent Magazine

Your photo, location, contact information, homepage, and a brief bio should all be readily visible so that potential clients can get an immediate sense for who you are and what your voice is. If a client wants to connect with you, it should be obvious how to do so. You might also incorporate a few savvier tools that make your profile more engaging—like hashtags. These searchable tags can help you lure potential clientele and give your audience a chance to explore deeper. #DreamHome #JustListed and #HomeInspiration are popular, existing tags to choose from, but you can cultivate your own hashtag by consistently tagging posts, which gives clients an extensive thread to comb through.

Interacting with Your Audience Posting regularly is great way to appear in feeds, but engaging with your audience is just as important—and it helps you reach a new audience in the process. It’s a positive start to like your audience’s posts, pictures, and statuses, but commenting takes your engagement a step further and separates you from typical respondents. It’s also important that you diversify your engagements. In other words, don’t center every communication around your business, propositioning your services, or trying to sell. If applicable, present your value-add, but otherwise steer your engagement towards the personal. Let your clients know that you’re there, you’re human, and Top Agent Magazine

ready to work at their pace. Which leads us to our next point...

Blending the Professional with the Personal Engaging with your audience is one thing, but what about generating original content?

How do you strike the right balance between a Call to Action, industry updates, and a personal touch? Think of it this way: any post you create should provide a point of connection for your audience.

Sometimes, you might be sharing a family photo, or commenting on some unifying current event—like the Super Bowl! Other times, you may be sharing a Coming Soon listing, or providing tips to spruce up a home for spring. Regardless, you should focus on quality. Is your copywriting engaging? Does it express your unique voice and personality, while maintaining clarity? Are you giving your audience something to connect with, even if you are sharing property photos or advertising an open house? Instill some fun and some personalization to every piece of content you make, so that clients can picture the voice and person behind the post.

Things are always changing on the social media frontier, but some rules never shift.

Adding clarity, consistency, and personality to your online presence are three surefire ways to grow your business and make social media second nature.

Top Agent Magazine ®

5

5 Ways to Transform

Renters into Owners Perhaps the largest demographic of untapped business lies in the rental market. From major cities and suburbs to rural communities—renters across generations are opting to rent rather than own. The question is: why? For starters, many Americans are undereducated about the inventory and financing options available that might suit their budget and lifestyle. Secondly, many would-be homeowners have difficulty 6

visualizing the potential investment of purchasing property, and how homeownership can build wealth and security in the long-term.

As an agent, you’re always on the lookout for potential clientele. Now, to guide renters toward the real estate market, keep a few of these strategies in mind as you meet and greet this untapped demographic.

Top Agent Magazine ÂŽ

Top Agent Magazine

1

Show renters that purchasing a home isn’t impossible

Possibly the biggest hurdle for renters is believing homeownership is possible. Beyond saving for a down payment and boosting credit scores, there are dozen more factors to consider: affording utilities, homeowner’s insurance, renovations, property taxes, and more. Besides that, assembling pay stubs, finding an agent, arranging house tours, negotiating a price, and timing the transition are all major considerations to surmount.

One way to combat this thinking is to make the process transparent and demystified. Find examples of past clients who made the leap successfully, or profile the average buyer in your marketplace and see how that renter compares. Provide evidence that it’s been done before and can be done again, then build a game plan from there.

into play. Consider making a checklist, or step-by-step road-map, that guides clients through the process from start to finish. This way, you’ll manage expectations and create a path to ownership that’s specific, instead of abstract. They won’t have to wonder what goes into buying a home when they can look at an interactive site or read a document and see the steps outlined before them, with you there to guide the way.

3

Collaborate with mortgage professionals to find the right financing opportunities

2

Help would-be homebuyers create a road-map to ownership

It’s no secret that buying a home can feel overwhelming. Compared to signing a yearlong lease on an apartment, taking on the house-hunting process is a daunting affair.

That’s where your expertise as an agent comes Top Agent Magazine

Many renters aren’t aware of the variety of mortgage financing options out there that cater to first-timers, offer low down payments, or down payment assistance. Most buyers believe that the standard 20% down is a hard and fast rule, when in reality, there’s far more flexibility out there to cater to renters where they are. There are even loan options catering to freelance workers, renovation options, and other unconventional routes to ownership.

Work with a mortgage pro and find the route that suits your renter best.

Top Agent Magazine ®

7

pay monthly in a mortgage—while building a lasting asset.

5 4

Compare and contrast rental rates with monthly mortgage payments One way to convince renters to make the shift is to demonstrate the savings potential of paying into a monthly mortgage, rather than throwing away rent on a property they don’t own. To do this, draw up the average rental rates in your area, then find some potential listings that would demand a similar amount in monthly mortgage payments. Sometimes placing these numbers and images sideby-side can prove to renters that what they manage to pay monthly in rent, they can

8

Paint the big picture

For most, renting isn’t the most sustainable financial option when it comes to housing.

Rents rise, families grow, and retirement looms.

Building a financial future and homeownership go hand-in-hand. When planned appropriately, buying a home can create a path toward retirement and position homeowners in a better place for further investment in the future. A rental has little security or investment returns to offer, while owning a home makes a renter king or queen of the castle.

Prospecting renters as potential homebuyers may seem like a time-intensive way to cultivate new clients, but logic is on your side.

Keep these tips in mind as you broach the conversation with renters in your hometown.

All it takes is clear-cut value proposition and a listening ear.

Top Agent Magazine ®

Top Agent Magazine

REX ANDREWS Top Agent Magazine

9

Top Agent Rex Andrews’ hard work has translated into many awards at Keller Williams, including being the number one listing agent, buying agent, overall production, and overall volume by a single agent.

Rex Andrews had a unique journey to get to the world of real estate. Starting with a 10-year career at Adolph Coors in which he was awarded top salesman in the nation that transitioned into a College degree in Marketing. After he sold his pet hotel 10 Copyright Top Agent Magazine

business—which he co-owned with a partner—and invested the money into coal mines, he figured he’d be financially secure for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, the crash of the stock market forced him to get out into the workforce once again, and he Top Agent Magazine

began selling houses for a business partner, who had started a residential building company. Rex chose to pursue this new career further, and obtained his real estate license in 2015, at the age of 54. He serves Lubbock and surrounding areas.

Top Agent Magazine

A successful agent tends to have a strong network of repeat and referral clients, which couldn’t be truer for Rex’s business that was built on word-of-mouth. As a stay-at-home dad for 12 years, Rex developed close ties to his neighborhood, which 11 Copyright Top Agent Magazine

Rex’s focus is placed firmly on growing his brand.

Aside from striving to hit his career goals, he’s also interested in something more simple: making people happy. he now continues to cultivate through his community work. His relationship to those he works with is so strong, that he even became the Godfather to one of his client’s children.

Having a naturally competitive spirit, Rex wasn’t going to settle for being mediocre when he set out to be a real estate professional. “I figured early on that if I wanted to achieve more than the Copyright Top Agent Magazine 12

average real estate agent, I would have to do something different than them. So when I started listing houses, I decided I would go out of my way to ensure that no house would hit the market until it looked completely ready. Meaning it needed to have the carpet steam cleaned, the floors needed to be polished, the windows cleaned, and the paint touched up.” Rex’s hard work has translated into many awards at Keller Williams, some Top Agent Magazine

of which include being the number one listing and buying agent, the number one in total production, and total volume. Besides dedicating himself to his clients, Rex is also deeply dedicated and involved in his local community.

Rex is a member and past chair of the Top Agent Magazine

Ambassadors program of The Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, current chairman of the American Heart Association, former chairman of Make a Wish program in North Texas, continuous to serve as the six year elected chairman of the board for Alliance Credit Union.

Copyright Top Agent Magazine 13

Rex’s focus is placed firmly on growing his brand. Aside from striving to hit his career goals, he’s also interested in something more simple: making people happy. Buying a home is often one of the biggest purchases a person will make in a

lifetime. This process, which can be fairly stressful, is made easier by a REALTOR® whose priority goes far beyond the financial. “When someone asks me what I do for a living, I tell them that I put smiles on people’s faces.”

www.buyselllubbockhomes.com

arexa@kw.com Copyright Top Agent Magazine 14

Top Agent Magazine

By the Numbers:

Understanding the True Value of Square Footage Measuring the square footage of a property may seem like an objective and straightforward task, but you’d be surprised at how many agents and homebuyers misunderstand this pivotal figure.

True square footage provides homebuyers a concrete understanding of their prospective domain, but here’s the problem: the rules to determine a home’s square footage are not always uniform across the board. What’s more, much of Top Agent Magazine

a home’s value is determined by its size, so accuracy is certainly important. While many real estate agents have their own systems for determining or confirming a home’s true square footage, it doesn’t hurt to update your practices and become an expert on the subject. After all, you may learn a few techniques that could add value to a listing, or better prepare you in guiding house-hunters on the lookout.

Top Agent Magazine ®

15

1. Do your due diligence Most towns and cities have a local records department where floorplans and blueprints are kept on file. It’s worth noting that these records don’t typically include any subsequent additions or remodels on a property, but they still give archive hunters a legal baseline when outlining a property’s square footage. Oftentimes, a straightforward online search of a city or county’s records office can pull the information necessary, or else agents can poke around in person to uncover informative blueprints at the records office. Either way, access to original blueprints or floorplans is a great tool for determining livable square footage. As a bonus,

16

original blueprints and floorplans—especially in historic properties—can be intriguing visual aids for prospective buyers, as well.

2. Know the rules While there aren’t universal standards when it comes to measuring square footage, there are general guidelines that can help determine square footage in an authentic way. Per the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), here are the official recommendations for measuring a home’s real square footage: n

Called “below grade spaces,” basements and sunrooms beyond a home’s typical

Top Agent Magazine ®

Top Agent Magazine

living quarters do not count toward a home’s true square footage. According to ANSI, even big draws like finished basements don’t count toward a property’s Gross Living Area. Of course, even below grade spaces have their own desirable value and should be outlined as such on listings. n

n

Did you know the space inside closets and on stairways counts toward a home’s square footage? Even if these areas are relatively small, they still add to a property’s calculable square footage.

When recording square footage, ANSI actually suggests performing measurements from a property’s exterior—though this method does not account for the

Top Agent Magazine

thickness of exterior walls, which could skew square footage numbers. n

Just like below grade spaces, a garage, a pool house, or even a guest house should not be included in a property’s Gross Living Area. The rationale at work here is this: if you must go outside to access additional living areas, then they are beyond the square footage scope of the primary dwelling and should not be included in a home’s Gross Living Area.

3. Double-check by doing the dirty work Buyers and sellers have or will make a sizable investment in a property, so isn’t it fair to double-check all the relevant facts and figures

Top Agent Magazine ®

17

when it comes to true square footage? If you want to take on the endeavor yourself, here are a few helpful steps to take. n

First, you’ll need a few things to get started, including a tape measure that can measure at least 100 ft., graph paper, and a pencil.

n

Next, choose a room to start measuring wall-by-wall. Measure Wall 1, then proceed to assign each square on the gridded paper a corresponding measurement, rounding to the nearest tenth of a foot for the sake of clarity.

n

From there, draw out the wall you measured and measure the remaining walls in the

18

room. Once you’ve completed the room’s measurements, multiply the room’s length and width to determine its square footage. n

As you go measure throughout the home, using your own system to scale, you will construct a failsafe floorplan.

Mastering your craft is everything, and the real estate industry is no different. Every now and again, it’s worthwhile to update your well of information, take matters into your own hands, and continue to innovate with the industry. While square footage may not seem like the juiciest starting off point for such a venture, never forget: mastery of technical knowledge is a sure sign of expertise.

Top Agent Magazine ®

Top Agent Magazine

ROXANNE ESCOBEDO Top Agent Magazine

19

ROXANNE ESCOBEDO

Top Agent Roxanne Escobedo works as a solo agent serving Austin, Texas and the surrounding areas.

For over 30 years, Roxanne Escobedo and her family have called the Austin, Texas region home. It was only natural, then, that she would enter the real estate industry in 1997. Today she works as a solo agent serving Austin and surrounding areas. Trust, a focus on relationships, and hard work has brought her to where she is now. With a large portion of her business consisting of repeat clients and referrals, it’s clear she’s going above and beyond expectations.

“Keeping in touch with past clients and their referrals has really helped me to continue relationships,” Roxanne explains. “It’s about what they need.” Roxanne takes her time with each client, guiding them throughout the transaction 20

and getting them towards their goals. For her buyers, she aims to get them what they want at the lowest price possible. With extensive knowledge about the area, Roxanne is able to advise newcomers on the best communities to suit their needs. When it comes to her sellers, she strives to get them as much as the market will allow by utilizing her negotiation skills and Coldwell Banker’s advertising. “Working for a company that brings me huge support is invaluable,” she explains. “I’m able to offer top notch photography and social media presence. It’s 360 degrees of personalized marketing.” Roxanne’s wide variety of designations include Accredited Buyer Representative (ABR), Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist (CLHMS), CertiCopyright Top Agent Magazine

fied Residential Specialist (CRS), e-PRO Internet Professional (e-PRO), Seller Representative Specialist (SRS). Her pursuit of knowledge helps Roxanne stay on top of industry trends and changes.

After the transaction, clients leave glowing reviews about their time together. One recently said, “Roxanne truly went above and beyond for our sale! I highly recommend her as a professional REALTOR®, as she sold our land for much higher than we anticipated! Her extensive knowledge and background in real estate was greatly appreciated, as well as her honesty and integrity during the process. She guided us and was our advocate when we hit a few bumps with the title company. When our survey had been rejected hours before our closing, Roxanne contacted a survey agency and personally went out to our land and walked with the surveyor to make sure everything was perfect and correct for our closing!”

When Roxanne isn’t working, she’s spending time with her family or staying involved in the community through her twin daughters’ high school, including the Booster Club. Roxanne is also involved in the Board of REALTORS®. She loves making videos with her colleague for their real estate related YouTube channel called R&R It’s Roxie It’s Rudy.

Looking ahead, she is excited to continue growing, and can’t wait to see what the future holds. “There’s a myth out there that real estate is easy, it’s really not, but it’s a super gratifying career with great rewards. At the end of the day, my favorite part of my job is getting my clients what they want. It’s an amazing feeling.”

Top Agent Magazine

For more about Roxanne Escobedo, please call 512-825-4377, email Forroxierealtor@gmail.com more about Roxanne Escobedo, roxierealestate.com or visitplease call 512-825-4377 609 Castle Ridge, #440, Austin, TX 78764 or email roxierealtor@gmail.com www.

Copyright Top Agent Magazine 21

How To Overcome Your Workplace Fears Fear is something that can help protect us from danger, but it is also something that can be a hindrance to us in our lives, especially when it keeps us from potentially thriving and growing as a person. This is especially true in the workplace. Here’ a look at some proven ways to overcome common workplace fears.

your head, what exactly you’re feeling and why, it can help deflate the fear. Think of it as releasing some of the fear into the ether.

Yes, you’ll still be nervous about your presentation, but a lot of what was holding you back is gone. You’ll feel lighter, and hopefully have just enough butterflies to make your soar.

1

2

Really owning the emotions that are putting you in a place of fear, is the first step.

By just naming it and then talking it out in

Nothing can make you feel more isolated than going down the path of “This is something that only happens to me.” Trust me,

ASSESS THE FEELINGS BEHIND THE FEAR

22

TALK ABOUT YOUR FEARS WITH A TRUSTED CO-WORKER

Top Agent Magazine

Top Agent Magazine

it doesn’t, and you might be surprised to find out that some people have had it even worse. Talking to someone you trust and admire, hearing their own fear horror stories and how they overcame them, will help normalize what you’re feeling. Releasing yourself from the idea that it’s something about you, will be an enormous relief.

3

THINK OF THE WORST CASE SCENARIO

Although it might seem counter-productive, truly assessing what the worse outcome of the situation you’re afraid of serves two purposes. It might lead you to realize the worst case scenario isn’t that bad after all.

Of course it could also lead you to a really uncomfortable thought, you could lose your job. As bad as that is, it also gives you an opportunity to start focusing on what really matters, and how you might grow from the experience and possibly end up better off.

Countless people in their dream jobs now, were once fired and thought it was the end of the world. Hopefully, that won’t happen to you, but learning to have confidence in your abilities to always find a way, will be a great tool in overcoming fears.

4

COMPARTMENTALIZE

If you’re a super-organized type, you might try actually setting aside time in your day to focus on your fears. It might seem odd, but it will let you NOT focus on your fears during the other hours of your day. Think of it as a task, you aren’t just sitting there worrying, Top Agent Magazine

Start thinking of fears as challenges.

As scary as it might seem to face them, for the most part they are things that can be fixed.

you’re taking in your fears and figuring out ways to overcome them.

5

START THINKING OF YOUR FEARS AS OPPORTUNITY FOR GROWTH

Start thinking of fears as challenges. As scary as it might seem to face them, for the most part they are things that can be fixed.

A lot of fear is based on inexperience which leads to a lack of confidence. A common fear is workplace evaluations. Instead of looking at it as hearing everything that is wrong about you, think of it as an opportunity to see where you can improve. Going into it with a positive attitude rather than a defensive posture, will make the whole thing better for both parties.

Overcoming fears is oftentimes about a simple attitude adjustment. Like anything it takes practice, but the results of that practice will lead to a life that you’re able to thrive in both personally and professionally.

Top Agent Magazine

23

mailto:mag@topagentmagazine.com

24

Top Agent Magazine