When selling a home, you want to make prospective buyers fall in love with each room and the exterior when they view it virtually or in-person. As a full-time or part-time real estate agent, consider staging your client’s home to successfully catch the attention of viewers and increase the home’s selling price.

If you’re interested in joining the exciting field of real estate, the first step is to get started on your pre-licensing courses. And with the pandemic still a major concern in most states, online options are more attractive than ever. To help you make the best decision, below we’ve broken down our top seven picks for real estate classes online along with tips for succeeding on your journey as a real estate professional.

Are you currently a member of any professional real estate organizations or associations? If you're not, you should be!

Whether you're new to the industry, or a veteran with years of experience, local realtor associations can help take your business to the next level! There are plenty of associations and industry organizations for agents, including those that specialize in buyer's agents, those that specialize in sellers agents, organizations that monitor ethical guidelines, and those that promote change to elevate industry standards.

Webinar Recap

The latest C.A.R. Business Products webinar, “Expand Your Earning Potential with Rentals in 2021: Advice from California's Top Agents” was a huge success, with over 1,500 registrants! This panelist-style webinar focused on tips and tricks to utilize rentals to expand your income and build your real estate business.

If a potential client learns about your business via an online advertisement, prospecting postcard, or business card, your real estate slogans are the first pieces of information they’re going to gather about your brand. Because of this, your slogan needs to be top-notch.

Gig work has exploded and because it has there is no way that it should be considered a red flag on a standard rental application. What used to be a set of jobs shared by only a few, gig work has expanded across the country with the growth of food delivery apps such as UberEats, GrubHub, DoorDash and more.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the real estate market and a number of trends emerged during 2020, including:

Housing inventory declined up to 39%
The typical home spent a median of 65 days on the market between January and October 2020, two days less than the previous year
Housing prices through October 2020 were up nationally by an average of 3.4%, but only up by 1.4% in top 50 metro areas
Larger rental units were slowly returning to pre-COVID prices, while studios continue to experience decline
The largest generational group (25%) of buyers were older millennials

In order to help real estate agents better prepare for a successful 2021, we’ve assessed data to break down the most relevant real estate trends and housing market predictions.

In a perfect world, only qualified applicants would apply for your rental -- but we all know that's not how it works. When it comes to property management, there will be times when you must turn down a potential tenant. Any landlord or property manager should know how to turn down an application with both grace and authority.

Many property managers will go to their legal counsel and have a lawyer create a new application and lease from start to finish. While this option ensures high-accuracy -- it's also expensive. Fortunately, there are many ways to get a free rental application form that you can customize.

Finding the right tenants is a priority for any landlord or property manager. The old proverb says, "better an empty house than a bad tenant," but in truth, for most property owners an empty house is not desirable either. Full and functioning properties with responsible tenants are not just desirable but necessary.

These days, keeping your customers interested and invested in your business is more important than ever. Though this isn’t a problem for businesses that already operated mainly online before the pandemic, it presents a difficult pivot for real estate agents and other careers that rely on face-to-face interaction.

As a real estate agent, you are guiding home buyers and sellers through the process of selling or purchasing a home. Both will have plenty of questions for you. Part of being a successful real estate agent is building trust with your clients, which you have likely already built through the tenant screening process.