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Memorial Day weekend is here. There will be cookouts, pool openings and lots of sales on things like mattresses. However, advertising for the Memorial Day holiday is tone-deaf and reflects poorly on brands. 

Is there a way your real estate business can take advantage of this holiday and the unofficial start to summer? 

Yes, but carefully consider how you approach the holiday. 

Memorial Day is a poignant reminder of the brave souls who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. As a military spouse, I had the privilege of supporting my husband during his service in the U.S. Army. Through this experience, I came to understand the significance of this day for the families of our fallen heroes. It’s a day of reflection, remembrance and gratitude, marked by ceremonies and personal tributes nationwide.

Acknowledging respectfully 

How can this solemn holiday be respectfully acknowledged in a business context within the real estate industry?

Don’t think about it like a promo, but rather as a chance to show up for your local community. 

Real estate is more than just transactions and properties; it’s about building communities and creating a sense of belonging. That’s why the industry has an opportunity to honor the day in a way that strengthens community bonds and demonstrates corporate social responsibility.

For starters, don’t wish anyone a “Happy Memorial Day.” Instead, express gratitude. 

Does this mean no cookouts or pool parties? Of course not. Memorial Day weekend is the first long holiday weekend with warm weather of the year for almost all of the United States. It’s OK to take advantage of that.

In fact, I think enjoying life to the fullest is one of the best ways to honor the sacrifices of our fallen heroes. I often think of the adage to live a life worthy of their sacrifice, and knowing many soldiers, I think most of them would want those they sacrificed for to enjoy the warm weather, cookouts and pool parties.

Good PR is personal

Show up for this weekend in whatever way feels authentic to you. If your local town has a parade, participate in it and connect with your community while remembering local fallen heroes. 

All audiences respond best to what is real and true, so don’t get caught up in promos or gimmicks. Be honest about your feelings and what you express and if you’re unsure what to say, find someone who said it better and share their words (with credit, of course) often; less is more anyway. 

If you have a veteran in your life to honor on Memorial Day and you feel moved to, share their memory with others. 

Important note: This is not a holiday to thank all veterans, and most living veterans feel very uncomfortable when they are thanked for their service on Memorial Day. Veterans Day, on Nov. 11, is the holiday to thank all veterans for their service. 

Here are a few ways to respectfully observe Memorial Day:

1. Fly the American flag at half-staff: If you have a regulation American flag and flag pole, displaying the flag at half-staff from sunrise until noon is a traditional way to honor the fallen. Make sure to check the guidelines for proper flag etiquette.
2. Organize or participate in a charitable event: Consider organizing or participating in an event to raise funds for a charity that supports Gold Star families or donate to one. This can be a great way to give back to those who have served our country.
3. Post a tribute on social media: Share a tribute on your social media accounts, acknowledging the sacrifices made by our military. This can be a simple message of gratitude or a more elaborate post with photos and videos.
4. Attend a Memorial Day parade or ceremony: Look for local events in your area and attend a Memorial Day parade or ceremony. This is a great way to support our military and connect with your community.

Remember, Memorial Day is a time to reflect on the sacrifices made by our fallen heroes. By observing this day with respect and gratitude, we can honor their memory and show appreciation for their service while still enjoying the unofficial kick-off to summer. 

Just be sure to save the Happy Summer wishes for later in the week. 

Jessi Healey is a freelance writer and social media manager specializing in real estate. Find her on Instagram or LinkedIn.

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Portal giant Zillow this week revealed that it is expanding an “enhanced market” program, which notably includes an exclusive “post-pay” version of Premier Agent, to two new cities.

The expansion will see Zillow’s enhanced market program come to Charlotte and Durham, both in North Carolina. The program was first announced a year ago, at which time Zillow said it was piloting the concept in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Denver, Colorado. In the time since, the enhanced market program has also expanded into Phoenix, Arizona, and Atlanta, Georgia — making Charlotte and Durham the fifth and sixth metros to get the program.

For agents, probably the most relevant part of the enhanced market program is the way it handles Premier Agent, Zillow’s popular lead-generation service. Traditionally, agents who participated in Premier Agent pay up-front for leads in the hope of later closing deals.

In the post-pay version, however, agents don’t pay anything until they close a deal. When a deal does close, the agents then pay a “success fee.” The fee varies depending on a property’s sale price and location but is typically between 30 percent and 35 percent of the participating agent’s commission.

Perhaps the most eye-catching part of the post-pay model, however, is that it’s only available via invite to top-performing agents. That means in markets switching from the better-known pre-pay model to the post-pay model, many Premier Agent users will be cut from the program.

Both this week and a year ago Zillow declined to say exactly how many agents might get cut in the switch to the post-pay model. However, when the program launched last year in Raleigh and Denver, the company said “several hundred” agents would ultimately be cut while “hundreds” would continue with Premier Agent.

Presumably, something similar will happen in Charlotte and Durham.

News of the shift to the post-pay model in Charlotte and Durham prompted chatter on social media, with some commenters framing the move as an end to Premier Agent.

However, Zillow told Inman Premier Agent is not ending. What’s happening is merely a shift in some markets from one payment model to another. The company also said that both the pre- and post-pay models continue to be important and long-term parts of company strategy.

The post-pay model — which has existed in some form since 2019 under the name “Flex” — is also available in other markets via invitation. What makes enhanced markets noteworthy is that they operate exclusively with the post-pay version of Premier Agent.

Zillow also told Inman that the post-pay model is merely one part of a broader strategy for enhanced markets. Aside from changes to Premier Agent, the enhanced markets also get access to a variety of other features, such as real-time touring, which debuted last year in Atlanta.

The enhanced markets are also where Zillow is testing its ability to integrate various other services, such as Zillow Home Loans.

All of these efforts are part of Zillow’s much-touted efforts to ultimately build a real estate “super app” — a project the company announced shortly after bowing out of iBuying. So far, no such app is widely available to consumers. But the expansion of Zillow’s enhanced markets indicates the company is actively working on and expanding features that will likely one day be part of the app.

Related to the super app, Zillow also announced last week that it has promoted Jeremy Hofmann — an executive who has played a key role in the super app program — to the position of chief financial officer.

While the super app’s impact remains to be seen, agents in the immediate term will likely be most interested in changes to their lead generation toolkit. And on that front, Zillow CEO Rich Barton wrote earlier this month in defense of a consolidated network of agents who are best able to convert leads.

“We increasingly believe,” Barton wrote, “a tighter set of partners allows us to deliver a better customer experience and allows us to test new products and services rapidly along the way in service of integration.”

Email Jim Dalrymple II

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Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s co-founder and former CEO, said that when the now-giant portal first started, Realtor.com had far more traffic.

The rival company seemed, “like an impenetrable competitor,” he said Thursday.

But Rascoff said that over the years that changed — Zillow now has far more traffic than any other portal including Realtor.com, and its lead is growing — thanks to one realization.

“The reason Zillow was able to pass Realtor.com was by prioritizing the consumer,” Rascoff said.

Rascoff made the comments during a webinar with Ryan Frazier, CEO of rental investment firm Arrived. Midway through the conversation, Frazier asked Rascoff — who after leaving the helm of Zillow has become a prominent investor, among other things — about where he likes to put his money. Rascoff replied that he looks for industries where there is “a lot of money sloshing around,” but in which many users are dissatisfied. And he said real estate fits the bill — a fact that contributed to the creation of Zillow.

“Everyone is unhappy but there’s a lot of money in the category,” Rascoff said.

He later went on to describe Zillow’s origins. The company launched in 2005, a period in which the internet lacked tools for consumers, according to Rascoff. At the time, real estate’s online presence was focused on commercial uses. Broker websites were for other brokers, for example, and consumers couldn’t find information, such as days on market or price history.

“There was nothing out there that was empowering the consumer,” Rascoff said.

Realtor.com already existed during this period, and Rascoff said the site had “10 to 20 million” users. That seemed like a lot. But Rascoff said Realtor.com was geared toward real estate professionals, and Zillow ultimately surpassed the site by adopting a consumer focus.

“That one simple insight allowed Zillow to beat Realtor.com,” he added.

As Inman reported earlier this week, Zillow averaged 212 million unique monthly visitors between January and March. By comparison Realtor.com — now the second-largest real estate portal — averaged about 72 million monthly users in the first quarter of this year.

Rascoff ultimately compared the situation to the competition between TikTok and Instagram, saying that the former eclipsed the latter due to the realization that “it’s more interesting to see content that the [algorithm] thinks you want to see than your friends’ content.”

It was, in other words, a relatively simple insight that allowed the newer company to vanquish the old.

Another successful move Zillow made, Rascoff recalled Thursday, was pivoting to mobile. Rascoff said the very same day that Apple founder Steve Jobs debuted the app store Zillow dropped the “.com” from its name in order to be more mobile friendly. And Rascoff announced internally that he would walk out of company meetings in which presenters showed desktop versions of Zillow’s sites before mobile versions.

“I only had to do it one or two times before the company got the hint that we were going to be a mobile-first company,” Rascoff recalled, crediting Zillow’s success in part to the company’s mobile pivot.

Among other things, Rascoff also talked about Zillow’s impact. He noted that in the early days, many consumer-focused real estate tools didn’t exist on the internet, because “the industry didn’t want consumers to know how long a home had been sitting there.”

Zillow changed that, but Rascoff said he sometimes faces criticism from business students who argue that Zillow had the chance to fundamentally disrupt the industry but ultimately stopped short and “copped out.”

Rascoff said such criticisms aren’t without merit, but he argued that the amount of information Zillow has put in consumers’ hands amounts to a major change in how real estate functions.

“There’s a lot to be said for consumer empowerment and information,” Rascoff said.

And he also argued that Zillow has changed the calculus for agents.

“What Zillow has done is created tens of thousands of super agents who have much more market share than they used to,” Rascoff said. “And they do that by buying leads from Zillow.”

Email Jim Dalrymple II

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Renowned LA broker Anthony Marguleas, founder of Amalfi Estates, shares how to effectively define luxury within your specific market and leverage your expertise, knowledge and unique value proposition to make a powerful entrance into the luxury space.

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Establishing a client “community” is a key component for successful agents. But how can you unleash the power of connection and transform your “sphere of influence” into a community that you build around yourself? Joseph Rand, BPP, along with Nicole Lopez of Mark Dimas Properties and Tanin Teston of The Teston Team, eXp Realty, discuss how to position yourself as a pillar in your community for current, past and future clients.

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The real estate industry has a reputation for being highly competitive. Agents might feel like it’s every individual for themselves when closing properties or pursuing new leads. A ruthless, dog-eat-dog company culture might be motivating for some, but it’s by no means the only way for an agency to succeed.

One of the core tenets of our company is a collaborative culture. When agents work together, they’re stronger than they are alone. By sharing information instead of gatekeeping it, your staff will generate a larger bank of knowledge. A sense of team spirit boosts agent morale and makes clients feel like they have more resources at their disposal.

Synergetic workplaces have ample benefits, but cultivating a collaborative company culture doesn’t happen overnight. Here are some strategies to encourage teamwork among your staff and agents: 

Be selective when hiring

In order to build a collaborative work environment, you’ll need to pay extra attention to the hiring process. Make sure all team members are a cultural fit who you can envision growing with the company over time. 

It’s not enough for a new hire to be experienced and motivated; you’ll need agents with great interpersonal skills who work well with others. The goal isn’t to grow faster than other agencies; it’s to build a team that wants to grow alongside you. 

Establish core company values

Agents thrive when they know what is expected of them. Starting with the interview and onboarding process, convey to new hires that your company values and rewards teamwork. Creating a set of core principles — and putting them in writing — provides a company mantra that employees can refer to when setting goals and making decisions.

We have an actual list of 10 “Rules” we live by. One of my favorites is Rule No. 4: All for One and One for All — which references our collaborative culture and connected global network. Rule No. 4 means when you work with one of us, you work with all of us.

Once you’ve solidified your company creed, find ways to reinforce it on a regular basis. Try holding team meetings where you encourage open conversation or share content from industry leaders that further your message. 

Lead by example

We’ve all heard that actions speak louder than words. Your team will look to you for signs that your talk of teamwork is more than just talk. You can set an example by giving equal attention to all of your agents and sharing your knowledge and resources.

A team can’t thrive without strong leadership. It’s up to you to establish a workflow and keep your agents motivated and inspired. In a collaborative work environment, a leader must pay attention to the interests of their agents, not just the interests of the company. Empower your staff to reach out to you when they have questions or need guidance. 

Create shared goals and celebrate wins as a team

What better way to encourage teamwork than to work together toward a common aim? Your agents will no doubt have their own goals as well, but creating team objectives will foster collaboration. When you meet a goal, celebrate with a dinner or a happy hour to build camaraderie. 

We encourage managers and colleagues to nominate fellow team members for quarterly company awards that honor passion, leadership, innovation and collaboration. We announce the winners to the whole company at the end of each quarter and present them with a physical award as well. This is a great moment to celebrate individuals who are going above and beyond and exemplifying our company culture. 

Recognizing your agents’ successes is an integral part of keeping them motivated. Even in collaborative environments, it’s important to publicly acknowledge when an employee has an individual win or is standing out for their great attitude and work ethic. 

Keep in mind, however, that pitting agents against each other (e.g., “X has performed better than anyone else this month”) can erode the team dynamic. Instead, simply monitor agents’ progress over time (e.g., “X had their best month since they started working here”). Framing positive feedback in this way will motivate agents to keep improving without lowering the overall group’s morale.

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Inconsistent cell service. Limited visibility from the road. Vacant. No lighting. A bear running around the neighborhood.

These are just some potential safety hazards an agent may encounter at a for-sale property, but currently there’s no standard way to alert other agents about them. A committee of the National Association of Realtors is looking to change that.

“It is the sad truth that Realtors are victims of crimes on a daily basis in the United States,” said Tiffany Meyer, chair of NAR’s Realtor Safety Advisory Committee, at the trade group’s midyear conference, the Realtors Legislative Meetings, last week. She spoke at the Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee meeting on Monday.

“It is a stark reminder of the unique hazards that we face in this industry every day.”

At the meeting, she laid out a recommendation from the 2021 Realtor Safety MLS Workgroup for MLSs to adopt eight data fields: vacant; no heat; minimal or no exterior lighting; minimal or no interior lighting; remote/limited visibility from the road; electricity not on; inconsistent cell service; and other.

“The voluntary information included in the fields is intended to help agents assess the level of danger at a property,” Meyer said, adding that agents should take proper precautions before showing a property, such as using a buddy system or making sure they let people know where they are.

The workgroup is also recommending that implementation of the fields come with a fair housing statement specifying that remarks should not reference the demographics of a neighborhood, seller, potential agents or potential buyers, and a legal disclaimer crafted by NAR’s legal team that states that neither the listing agent, listing broker or MLS makes any warranty or representation about the safety of the property.

So far, five MLSs have piloted the fields:

• Cooperative Arkansas Realtors MLS, which has 5,200 members;
• Des Moines Area Association of Realtors MLS (2,500 members);
• Greater Greenville Association of Realtors MLS (3,100 members);
• Harrison District Board of Realtors (200 members); and
• Southwest Multiple Listing Services (4,300 members).

Southwest MLS began its pilot on Oct. 3, 2022. Since then, 6,828 residential listings had been entered into the MLS as of last week and 544 of those listings — about 8 percent — had used the safety fields, “which when you consider how many of them are actually dangerous is probably a pretty good number,” Richard Gibbens, director of Southwest MLS, told the committee.

He added that none of the fields are public-facing and that his MLS had reached out to the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) for feedback on the fields. RESO creates data standards for the industry such as the RESO Data Dictionary and the RESO Web API. They offer a uniform way to exchange data between systems — such as from an MLS to a broker’s website — smoothly and accurately.

“We want to get ahead of it before it starts costing everybody money,” Gibbens said.

After hearing from RESO, SWMLS took out the “Vacant” safety field because that field already exists elsewhere in the Data Dictionary and changed the “Other” field into “See Remarks,” he said.

Meyer added, “We are currently participating in a RESO Research and Development Workgroup where the Data Dictionary compliance and feedback from the pilot participants have been discussed. Our goal is for the fields to be added to the Data Dictionary with any necessary updates.”

She said the Realtor Safety Advisory Committee would continue to run its pilot program, add more participants, and collect more feedback.

“We plan to implement the feedback the second quarter of 2023, including from the RESO,” she said. After that, tentatively in the third quarter, the committee would encourage all MLSs to implement the fields.

“It is a strong belief and considered opinion of the Realtor Safety Advisory Committee that the recommended modifications to the MLS fields will increase safety, potentially saving lives and help ensure that every Realtor comes home safely each night,” Meyer said.

“We look forward to working with you as an industry partner and putting Realtor safety first.”

Email Andrea V. Brambila.

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In May, we’ll go deep on money and finance for a special theme month, by talking to leaders about where the mortgage market is heading and how technology and business strategies are evolving to suit the needs of buyers now. A prestigious new set of awards, called Best of Finance, debuts this month too, celebrating the leaders in this space. And subscribe to Mortgage Brief for weekly updates all year long.

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay another whopping settlement to put allegations of past misdeeds behind it, this time earmarking $1 billion to settle a lawsuit by shareholders who said they were misled about the bank’s progress in fixing problems flagged by regulators almost a decade ago.

In December, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3.7 billion to settle allegations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it harmed millions of consumers over a period of several years through mismanagement of mortgages, auto loans and deposit accounts.

In 2021, Wells Fargo agreed to pay a $250 million fine to another federal regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which found fault with the bank’s practices for helping homeowners having trouble paying their mortgages.

But the $1 billion settlement granted preliminary approval Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods has its roots another, earlier scandal — the 2016 “fake accounts” debacle in which Wells Fargo employees were accused of enrolling existing bank customers in new accounts without their knowledge in order to meet sales targets.

In the wake of that scandal, in 2018 Wells Fargo entered into consent orders with several regulators to address governance and oversight issues, including the Federal Reserve Board, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Executives at the bank gave the public assurances that they were making progress in fixing the problems that led to the consent orders. But a 2020 report by the House Financial Services Committee revealed Wells Fargo’s “prolonged failure” to satisfy the terms of consent orders and “establish the safeguards necessary to protect consumers from harm,” attorneys for shareholders said in a 2020 complaint.

Shares in Wells Fargo plummeted following the release of the report, falling 34 percent in one week on fears of further action by regulators, the lawsuit claimed.

Wells Fargo denied the allegations brought by shareholders against the bank and executives who have since departed. But in the end, it agreed to settle the lawsuit after Judge Woods declined to dismiss the case and ordered the parties to enter into mediation.

“Defendants, who deny that they have committed any act or omission giving rise to liability under the federal securities laws, are entering into the settlement solely to eliminate the uncertainty, burden, and expense of further litigation,” said a notice to affected Wells Fargo investors.

The Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI), a Wells Fargo investor which claimed about $6 million in losses, “stood up for its stakeholders and held Wells Fargo accountable for its misconduct” by participating in the lawsuit, said Rhode Island General Treasurer James Diossa.

“Wells Fargo betrayed the trust of Rhode Island pensioners and is now rightly facing consequences because of that,” Diossa said in a statement.

If the settlement is granted final approval, investors who owned shares in Wells Fargo from Feb. 2, 2018 through March 12, 2020 are expected to recover an average of 53 cents per share if they don’t opt out. Attorneys who represented investors say they’ll apply for an award of up to 19 percent of the settlement fund, or $190 million.

A settlement hearing is scheduled for Sept. 8 at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.

Once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, Wells Fargo has seen much of that business evaporate last year as rising interest rates crushed demand for mortgage refinancing.

Wells Fargo mortgage originations, by channel

Source: Inman analysis of Wells Fargo regulatory filings

While other lenders have also been hit hard by rising rates, Wells Fargo has also reduced its footprint in the mortgage lending business by closing retail branches and shutting down its correspondent lending channel, which at times accounted for more than half of the bank’s mortgage production.

Wells Fargo said in January that the decision to exit correspondent lending was part of a strategy to better serve the bank’s customers and minority communities. But Bloomberg reported in August that executives were weighing such a move over concerns about the financial and reputational risk of buying mortgages from third parties after “years of struggles to avoid costly regulatory probes and hits to the bank’s reputation.”

Get Inman’s Mortgage Brief Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly roundup of all the biggest news in the world of mortgages and closings delivered every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe.

Email Matt Carter

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New York City-based Vornado Realty Trust is at risk of defaulting $2.6 billion of debt, according to reports.

The real estate investment trust has an extensive portfolio of multimillion and multibillion-dollar developments in the nation’s largest cities, including San Francisco and Chicago and NYC. Vornado’s footprint is strongest in the Big Apple, where it has more than 20 million square feet of office space and 2.4 million square feet of retail space on Fifth and Madison Avenues, Times Square, Herald Square, Union Square and SoHo.

However, the REIT giant’s contract to assist in the $6.7 billion state-led redevelopment of Penn Station has turned out to be a nightmare in the making as quickly rising interest rates and several other market headwinds whittled its debt coverage by 70 basis points, according to a Real Deal article published last week..

“Coverage has declined significantly over the past year,” TRD‘s article read. “The REIT’s weighted average rate went from 2.45 percent to 4.23 percent after the Federal Reserve began hiking rates last spring.”

“That leaves a buffer of just 79 basis points before the company hits the limit on those coverage ratios,” it continued. “Goldman’s analysts calculate that those buffers could narrow to a mere 10 and 20 basis points, respectively, if things continue the way they’re headed.”

Vornado President and Chief Financial Officer Michael Franco announced in February the company was pausing its plans for Penn Station until the market “settled down.”

“I think the good news is, we don’t have to do it today, because it would be very, very difficult and very expensive to line up construction financing,” Franco told Engineering News-Record New York in February.

According to ENR-NY, Vornado is still scheduled to complete its first three Penn District projects by the end of 2023, including the headline-making 1 Penn property. As of Dec. 31, 2022, Vornado had spent $1.9 billion on the three projects and estimated it would cost nearly half a billion dollars more to complete them.

In addition to slowdowns with its Penn Station project, TRD explained the company is contending with the loss of two office tenants that are worth $68 million in annual revenue, and expiring interest rate swaps and rate caps that could add $73 million in interest rate expenses.

From April to May, Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steve Roth made several public statements about the REIT’s future and said the company would “be going on the offense” with a $200 million share repurchase program and the postponement of common share dividends.

The CEO stoked panic with his April 7 statement, saying Vornado was “approaching the eye of the economic storm, and I expect it will get even worse.” Roth walked the statement back a week later, as the company’s stock rating began to slide.

“I inadvertently created a whirlwind when I made what I thought was an obvious comment on our third quarter 2022 conference call that, ‘the headwinds in the current environment are not at all conducive to ground-up development,’ which was interpreted as our abandoning the grand plan,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders, according to TRD. “Nothing could be further from the truth. A pause necessitated by economic conditions is not abandoning.”

As of May 16, Vornado’s (VNO) stock rating is a hold, with one analyst rating it a ‘buy’ and the remaining ten evenly split between ‘hold’ and ‘sell.’ Goldman Sachs analyst Caitlin Burrows gave the REIT a sell rating with a target price of $12 per share.

Vornado opened Tuesday at $12.89 per share, which is down from Monday’s closing price of $12.96 per share. Its market cap currently stands at $2.86 billion.

A Vornado spokesperson told TRD said the company disagreed with Goldman Sachs’ analysis.

Email Marian McPherson

When you’re first starting out, you sometimes find yourself with questions that you’re a little embarrassed to ask. Other times, you don’t really know who to ask since you haven’t found your footing. We want to make sure you always have somewhere to turn and someone to talk to when the going gets tough. This is New Agent Lifesaver, here to help you navigate your first years as an agent.

Today’s question: How am I ever going to get a listing, if no one will give me a listing [due to lack of experience]. —Anonymous (by request)

When I first earned my real estate license, I was a nervous wreck about the ins and outs of contingencies, contracts and client transactions. When I expressed my concerns (namely, that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing) to my mentor, she said, “We can figure all of that out once you’ve got a client.”

That realization — that lead gen was job one, especially for new agents — eventually led me to the marketing realm. I knew that though there are plenty of great agents in the industry, many of them don’t have the tools to find the clients they need. And with listings as a primary source of business-building, learning to land listings is even more important.

To get this new agent their first listing, I reached out to the Inman contributor community for great advice on finding that very first listing and getting your name in the front yard.

Troy Palmquist: Leverage your brokerage connections

I think that it’s important for new agents to align with the right brokerage and then be able to leverage the experience of their peers, team and mentors.

Be patient and persistent. Building a successful real estate career takes time and effort, and you may face rejection along the way. Stay positive, keep learning and growing, and continue to put in the work to build your business.

With time and dedication, you can overcome your lack of experience and achieve success in real estate.

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Joshua Jarvis: Focus on your mindset

The idea that “no one will give me a listing [due to lack of experience” is incorrect. Real estate clients choose their agents based on proximity and not experience or expertise.  It’s about the relationship you have with someone and whether or not you’re available.

Yes, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but this question is from someone who has a mindset issue, not an experience one.

Another way to look at it is … define experience.   Is it years with a license or a number of transactions.  If I close 100 homes am I “better” than someone who hasn’t closed but one?

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Rachael Hite: Seek out other types of experience

Take your broker, have a killer market report and CMA, and connect with a professional photographer/videographer for a great marketing package and examples. Send a pre-listing plan /package in advance so they know you are prepared.  

Also, get some experience — work rentals, sit in open houses, ask for desk duty.

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Brandon Doyle: Find a mentor or teammate

I recommend teaming up with someone in their office for the first couple of listings; it’s a great way to overcome that objection.

Their most likely source for the first listing is a friend or family member who already knows, likes and trusts them.