How to Be a Market Maker

We want your database to be full of names you can interact with, deploy, talk to, refer, and get referrals from – that’s how you become a market maker. By doing this, any potential listing you get is one that you can handle yourself on both sides of the coin, buying and selling. 

Being a market maker means you have names on both sides of your database: buyers and sellers. Your job as a real estate agent is to find ways to bring the people on either side of your database together and make a sale. 

Space Coast Condo Report

If you haven’t heard of Dean Jackson’s podcast, Listing Agent Lifestyle, you should start listening. One thing we’re in the process of working on with Dean is called the Space Coast Condo Report – and that’s one tool we’re using to help connect people on both sides of our agents’ databases when they work by referral. 

The concept behind it is to build a database of potential buyers and sellers of condominiums on Florida’s Space Coast. The Space Coast is in Brevard County: It’s on the East side of Florida, and it runs from Cape Canaveral to the North, almost down to Vero Beach in the South. Brevard County is huge, and the oceanfront is miles and miles long. 

You can get a copy of the report for yourself at www.spacecoastcondoguide.com. 

The guide includes information on every property, such as:

• Square footage
• Year built
• Pets
• Amenities
• Cost
• Rental restrictions

And this guide applies to every oceanfront condo development in the county. When people visit the report’s website, they’ll be able to download the guide as a PDF, but they’ll also be able to get in contact with potentially interested clients because you’ll get their contact information when they sign up for the download. 

My favorite part of the Space Coast Condo Report is the information about rental restrictions. Let me give some background about why. 

My wife and I bought a home in Melbourne, Florida, about 10 minutes from the beach. We originally wanted to get a house in Florida because we wanted to do business there. Since we still primarily live in Ohio, we’re only at the Florida property a few months out of every year. The rest of the time, we rent that property out on Airbnb. 

We’ve always made the mortgage payment, and we get eight or nine months of income from the property as a rental. If you’re thinking about doing something similar – or know someone who is – it’s crucial to take a look at rental restrictions to determine whether this will even be possible for the property you want to buy. 

As soon as we moved in, our HOA president tried to change the guidelines to include restrictions on whether someone could use their property as a short-term rental and for how long they could do it. We had to contact our attorney, and ultimately, we won. We were grandfathered in so we could continue using our property as an Airbnb – but we were one of the last ones who could do this. 

But, how cool is it that you can buy a property that you enjoy yourself sometimes and rent out as an Airbnb for some extra income the rest of the time in this modern world of ours? You might think that’s awesome, but if there’s one thing to note about the Space Coast, it’s that every single development in every single town has different rules. As far as I know, not even Zillow has been able to pull together all of that info in one place. 

• The Space Coast Condo Report does include this information, which is especially valuable for potential buyers who have the goal of using a property as a short-term rental or investment property. 

In today’s market, a lot of people who previously might not have felt comfortable taking the plunge could be on the lookout for a condo because of the ability to use it as a short-term rental that can subsidize the purchase cost. 

At ROOST, we also do property management – so we can rent that condo out, too. 

I think the Space Coast Condo Report is a great asset and a great example of how to build a database and the value of a database to people who are looking into the Florida Space Coast real estate market. This applies to any other area where you’re trying to make a market for yourself. 

It’s important to remember that these people weren’t tricked into buying anything and there’s nothing illegitimate about doing business this way. We are simply connecting people who want to buy properties with properties for sale, or connecting people who have a property to sell with people who might want to buy that property. We’re offering a valuable service. 

People sign up to get the report, which updates every six months, but every week they also get an email. The email contains information about what properties have been bought and sold that week on the Space Coast. It’s not salesy – it’s just information. 

Sometimes we get a call from someone immediately after they have signed up for the brochure, and other times, we don’t hear from someone for months after they’ve signed up. 

Dean will tell you about situations where some people haven’t called for years – but it’s still worth something if they do call and, even better, you can sell them a property or sell a property for them. And, even better, the cost to market this report and maintain it is minimal compared to the payoff. 

Why Choose the Space Coast?

Going back to the concept of being a market maker, let’s discuss why I chose to work out of the Space Coast for part of my business. 

First of all, I own property in Florida, so I know the area. I also have an agent there, and I have business there. Choosing a location on the oceanfront might seem like an obvious choice, too. Everyone wants to be on the beach. But, why did we choose condos?

Condos represent a unique market of buyers and sellers, and we can find out everything we need to know about them without having to go broader in our research. We’re not trying to do riverfront homes, we’re not looking into selling homes on the canal, we’re not even looking at single-family homes. 

• When discovering how to make a niche for yourself, it’s important to think about your target market and sell to those people. 

Right now, our target market is people who want to purchase a condo on the beach. We have the information, we’ve done our research, we can manage the information, and we can keep our database up to date. We can become experts on oceanfront condos on the Space Coast of Florida with the larger goal of being able to dominate that market over time. 

How Does This Relate to Listings? 

People want to know information about listings, and we can provide them with all the information they need. Clients always want to know that they’re hiring someone who can handle their property, either on the buying side, selling side, or both. 

When you tell them about your well-established database full of other buyers or sellers who are specifically looking for properties on the Space Coast of Florida, you’ve just become the neighborhood expert. Show them your guide, and you’ll get that listing – and every other listing in the development.  

Track & Measure the Impact of Marketing on Neighborhoods

Another part of my mantra is “track,” and that applies to all the strategies real estate agents use to track and monitor their business, including real estate marketing. If you can track and measure the impact of your marketing on neighborhoods – and the business you’re handling personally – you’ll be able to get a better sense of your overall growth and success. 

This is part of what a professional practice looks like, and we always want to strive to be consummate professionals in everything we do. If you focus on three things, you won’t be able to help but grow – and not only as a business but as a person. 

• Connecting with clients
• Improving your practice
• Tracking your progress

Final Thoughts

You can’t wait for the market to take a turn in your favor. To find real success in real estate, you need to learn how to take advantage of the market by turning yourself into a market maker. Nobody’s going to do it for you – and your hard work will pay off. 

When you master how to make lasting impressions on your clients and provide them with a steady stream of quality information about your listing, you’ll have a better business. It’s as simple as that. Think about the market you’re working in: Like how we’ve been steadily expanding along Florida’s Space Coast, you’ve got to figure out how to gather up all the listings – or as many as possible – in your specific area. 

How can you make yourself the go-to person for your future clients? How about your current ones? How do you set yourself apart? Do you know everything there is to know about your neighborhood? 

These are some questions you should be asking yourself before you get started on your path to conquer your neighborhood – and all its listing potential. Likewise, you should keep in mind that listings are like gold. They’re hard to come by in today’s real estate market, so when you get one, you have to know how to maximize its potential. 

When you think back about the listings you’ve recently sold, have you missed any opportunities? Write those down and learn from them. You can always apply what you’ve learned to your next listing. That’s how to win in this business.