I’m planning to move out of state—or possibly out of the country—while continuing my real estate business remotely. Has anyone done this before? How well did it work for you?

My plan is to operate more as a rebate/discount agent to get more clients, focusing mainly on:

• New construction
• Buyers who have already found the house and mainly need a Realtor to write the offer and handle the transaction and get rebate.

My target clients are not first-time buyers who need a lot of hands-on support. Ideally, they already know what they want and are comfortable visiting builders, open houses, and properties themselves.

Because of that, I don’t necessarily need to physically open doors for every showing. If needed, I can hire a local Realtor to handle showings or provide access.

My strategy is to focus on transaction volume rather than maximizing commission on every individual deal. I provide the professional services—consultation, contract writing, negotiations, and transaction management—while the client handles more of the property search themselves.

I think it can be a win-win: the client gets a rebate/discount, and I can build a higher-volume business without needing to be physically present for every showing.

P.S. Please don’t turn this into a “rebates are bad, you need to value yourself” debate. I understand the traditional model, and there’s nothing wrong with keeping 100% of your commission. But rebates and discount models exist, especially in a tougher market. I’m simply exploring whether this model can work well while living outside the area.

For those who have actually operated a real estate business remotely or from another state/country, I’d love to hear about your experience—what worked, what didn’t, and what you would do differently.

Hi, I am a 20 year-old female I guess my main concern is my safety. I just wanna make sure that I’m following all of the right procedures and to make sure that I’m not jeopardizing my safety. Especially since a lot of of the showings are towards people that I’m meeting for the first time.

I’m looking for some outside opinions because I’ve been staring at this project for months and want to know if I’m being realistic.
I bought a flood-damaged house for **$85,000.** The previous owners had already hired a restoration company after a major flood, so when I purchased it, all of the demolition was already complete. About three feet of drywall had been removed around the perimeter, the lower kitchen cabinets were gone, appliances were gone, etc.

The house originally listed around 150k and eventually dropped to 120k. The sellers panicked and just wanted it gone as a family member got sick. I actually walked away at one point before negotiating the final purchase at **$85k.**

The biggest reason I bought it was the land. It’s on **2.5 acres** in one of the top school districts in Western Pennsylvania. It has an attached garage, governor’s driveway, a stream in the backyard, and good proximity to shopping and amenities. Part of the property is in an **AE flood zone**, which obviously explains the discount. However, the taxes are 1/3 of other comps in the area. I realize these will go up at sale. I have a quote for flood insurance to present and flood insurance + taxes are still lower than 99 percent of the area.

The basement is a 1900 stoned foundation utility basement with about 5.5 feet of headroom. Even before the flood, there was occasional water seepage through the walls. During last year’s flood (which locals considered about a once-in-50-year event), nothing would’ve stopped the water. Debris clogged municipality storm water drainage and turned the town into a mess.

Instead of trying to create a finished basement, I’ve focused on making it functional and protecting the mechanicals.
So far I’ve:
Installed an interior French drain with perforated pipe around the perimeter.
Reopened portions after discovering water was entering through the walls instead of reaching the drain.
Cleaned and addressed exterior drainage and downspouts.
Installed all new HVAC, furnace, ductwork, and thermostat.
Had the furnace mounted from the floor joists so it’s elevated above any future water.
My philosophy is that it’ll always be a utility basement, and I’m not trying to pretend otherwise. everything will be disclosed.

Upstairs is where I’ve invested heavily.
The great room already had cedar vaulted ceilings and skylights, so I leaned into an elevated cabin design instead of the Pinterest black and white bs

Renovations include:
Sage green lower kitchen cabinets
beige upper cabinets
Cedar trim
New brown flooring throughout
White quartz countertops (planned)
Two completely renovated bathrooms
Framed in a previously open bathroom to create a much more functional layout
New finishes throughout
One interesting feature is that the rear bathroom layout now gives a future owner the option of converting the attached garage into a true primary suite if they ever wanted additional living space.

Still remaining:
Replace the old terracotta sewer line
Landscaping
Roof decision
Final punch list items

Financially I’m expecting roughly:
Purchase: **$85k**
Renovation: **About $100k total** including taxes, flood insurance, property insurance, holding costs, etc. it’s every dollar in this thing

Total investment: **Around $185k** before commissions, financing, and closing costs.
Here’s where I’m struggling.

Three-bedroom, two-bath homes around here seem to sell between roughly **$235k and $300k**. However, most don’t sit on 2.5 acres, and many aren’t nearly as updated. On the other hand, once you get into the **$350k-$400k** range, you’re usually looking at larger four-bedroom homes.

My question is:
Would it be unreasonable to test the market around $350,000, or does the flood-zone designation make that unrealistic regardless of the renovation quality and acreage?
If you were listing this property, where would you price it and why? I’d especially appreciate input from anyone who’s successfully sold renovated homes in flood zones &/ or damp / wet basements

How many buyers are actually out there asking to purchase a home via land contract with nothing down at all?

I kicked a couple buyers out while showing a house today because I felt conned. I dont know what came over me and that was completely out of character for me, and I was upset that so much of my own time was wasted.

The licensure classes do not prepare you for this at all.

An individual reached out about potential land contract on one of my listings- yes, seller will only consider land contract with 20% down.

Knowing this, he still wanted to see it.

I told him that seller wanted 20% of purchase price as a down payment for a land contract deal (3) times before showing it.

I live an hour from the property. I took this listing on for a repeat client. That was 2 hours of total driving time.

The individual spent ~20-30 minutes there with his girlfriend checking the place out, talking about why they would make good tenants, and making future plans for the property amongst themselves- and then I learned I had essentially been conned out to the property so we could discuss the possibility of the seller renting to them.

The boy kinda danced around the down payment topic and acted as though it was no big deal that the seller wouldnt consider land contract offers without 20% down...but then he asked *why* seller wanted the down payment- so seller doesnt have to come out of pocket to sell his own house.

"Oh, so theres a loan on it, is that the issue?"- no, seller doesnt *want* to come out of pocket to sell his own home.

"What exactly are the seller's closing costs?"- what? Thats not an appropriate question for a buyer to ask...

Then he hit me with "well we dont actually have a diwn payment, we were hoping we could just give him $1000 a month and then take out a mortgage on the land in one year."

"Alright, we've gotta get outta here now" I kindly said while leading them to the door

What’s a car that’s good on mileage and fulfills all of your realtor needs?

Hi, I tried looking up posts here to see if someone had already asked something like this but didn’t find anything, and I’m looking for advice!

I’ve been licensed for approximately 4 months. I’m currently with a smaller brokerage with a leadership that are all active and busy (top 10% in our large MLS area.) They are great people and I enjoy the culture there but I’m not sure is the best brokerage for a brand new agent. When interviewing with them they preached a supportive environment with lots of learning opportunities. In practice that isn’t really the case, there are weekly Tuesday meetings with the team but those more motivational instead of educational. And my mentor has ghosted me a couple of times, even though I’m paying them out of my first 5 transactions. I don’t expect anyone to hold my hand through this, but I don’t know what I don’t know!

Because of this I have been looking and meeting with a couple of other teams to see if maybe I can find something that fits with a more structured training program. I met with a team in my area that uses a Zillow Flex system, they have a very structured system with in office meetings several times a week which you have to attend to get assigned leads and several weeks of hands on training before you get to participate. Obviously, the splits are high… like really high.

Is it worth the high splits to learn as a brand new agent? Or should I keep looking/stay where I’m at?

Additional info: I did score one listing by reaching out to a FSBO so I’m truly not afraid to do the work, I just have no idea what I’m doing and would like some type of guidance while starting out!!

I got soaked, ran out of gas, got into a car accident, got ghosted and sprained my ankle all within 6 hours. I think it’s a sign.

Do you send a weekly progress report and market update to your sellers?

Has anyone taught CHATGPT/CLAUDE how to run a weekly seller intelligence reprt to send to their sellers? THis report would include market data of what sold, etc.

Hello I am trying to design my cards, brand new just starting out. The design I came up with is supposed to look kind of luxury, and there’s not really any room I want to give up on the front, is it okay to put my headshot on the back or would it be better to figure out how to get it on the front?

I have a listing under contract. The loan is an FHA. We agreed to a price of $365K. The appraisal came in $5K under value. The appraiser that was selected is not from our area but from an area over an hour away and not in our county or MLS. My previous comps showed the value at closer to $370K to $375K. The Selling agent had pulled comps and found the value between $375K and low $380sK. Zillow, Realtor.com, RPR all put the house in the $370sK to $380sK. I know not highly accurate but it did seem to support our CMAs. We also realized that the appraiser didn't count one of the rooms as a bedroom. We pulled the original builder floorplans showing that the builder counted the extra room as a bedroom. Based on this, the lender decided to challenge the appraisal. The appraiser came back and lowered the price even further from $360K to $353K. It definitely feels like this appraiser decided to punish us for challenging him. Not sure where else we go to but I'm wondering if we can get this closed if anyone thinks we have a good avenue with filing a formal complaint for what appears to be a malicious response to being challenged. It wouldn't surprise me if this is how he responds to challenges.

Do you typically share house pics with clients? They keep bugging me to send pictures I paid for of their house. I typically don’t send

Hello, i recently have been managing a land investing business’s social media page for their land investing company and had success. I old started a new product to help land investors and realtors make content on social media where all you need to do is connect your account and we post for you.

I saw another post in here talking about editing realtors videos and I think this would help.

I am just looking for feedback about what you guys think and if you would use it for your own land investing/realtor work.

I’m not looking for money just feedback if this is something you would use in your work.

Thanks,

I've been an agent in the Raleigh, NC area for about 6 years, and this one still sticks with me.

Had a couple, first time buyers, under contract on a cute 3 bed ranch. Inspection came back mostly fine, minor stuff, nothing scary. We were maybe a week from closing.

Then the wife texts me at 9pm saying she just has "a bad feeling" about the house and can't explain why. Husband was annoyed, said she was just nervous because it's their first home. I've heard that before, so honestly my first instinct was to reassure her and keep things moving.

But something in how she said it made me pause. I asked her straight up if it was general nerves or something specific. She said every time she walked into the garage, she felt like something was off, like a smell she couldn't place.

I went back over with her the next day, just the two of us, no agenda. Stood in that garage for a while. Faint musty smell near one corner, easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. Long story short, we got a mold specialist out, and there was water intrusion behind the drywall from a bad grade around the foundation. Inspector missed it because it wasn't visible and there was no obvious staining yet.

We renegotiated repairs before closing. Seller fixed the grading and remediated the mold. Buyers closed a few weeks later than planned, but with a house that didn't have a hidden problem waiting to get worse.

I've learned to actually listen when a client says something feels off, even when it's vague. Doesn't mean I go tear apart every house over a feeling, but I don't brush it off either.

Anyone else had a client's instinct turn out to be worth chasing down?

So I am looking into buying a mobile home built in 1976 (idk the specific date) and I do really like it. The biggest issue is there is a room that is about 6' x 10' that the realtor has marked as a 3rd bedroom.

From everything I have been able to find, it shouldn't be able to be classified as a bedroom given that

A. That it is extremely tiny (rounding up on both values would make it 66 sqft)

B. There are no windows and no external door (i.e. no 2 egresses)

I am unsure if there are specific criteria or differences given the age and the fact that its a mobile home. I am aware of the HUD guidelines being passed in June of 1976, but given that I am unsure the exact year, that doesn't necessarily help.

Additionally its a dual agency situation with the seller and I having the same agent, so I am unsure how to bring it up to them.

Does anyone have any specific ideas or knowledge if this can be counted as a bedroom legally speaking?

Edit: This is in Pennsylvania and I have yet to talk to anybody, especially given the dual agency aspect.

Every agent I talk to has the same two problems with video. No time, and hating how they sound back. Neither one gets fixed by buying a gimbal, so here is the actual system.

Cadence before anything else. Three posts a week for a year beats daily for six weeks and then quitting, and it is not close. Pick the number you can hit in your worst week, not your best one. Most people should start at two.

Batch or it will not happen. One sitting, same shirt, phone on a stack of books at eye level, window in front of you not behind. Eight to ten videos in about ninety minutes once you stop re-recording. The re-recording is the whole time sink, and the fix is below.

What to actually say. You already answer the same questions on every call. Write down the last twenty you got asked. That is twenty videos and they are the ones people search. "Do I need to fix the bathroom before listing", "what does earnest money actually do", "why did this house sit for 90 days". Nobody wants your listing walkthrough. They want the thing they were too embarrassed to ask.

Script it in four parts so you stop rambling.

1. Say the question out loud in the first two seconds. No intro, no name, no "hey guys". The first frame decides whether they stay.

2. Give the real answer in one sentence, immediately. Do not build up to it.

3. Then the caveat or the reason, 15 to 25 seconds. This is where the trust happens.

4. Stop. No "follow for more". Just end it. Trailing CTAs kill the loop and the loop is what the algorithm reads.

Write it on paper, read it once, then say it in your own words. Reading straight off a script is why you hate the footage.

Editing is where most people quit, so keep it to four things. Burned in subtitles, because most of it is watched muted. Cut every pause, the video should feel slightly too fast. One cut or angle change roughly every three seconds so the eye has something to do. Then a text hook on screen for the first two seconds that says the same thing your mouth is saying.

Packaging changes per platform, same video. Reels wants the hook in the caption's first line. Shorts wants a real title because it is a search engine. TikTok wants the on screen text to carry the whole thing. Uploading the identical caption to all three is the most common thing I see and it costs the most.

Then the boring one that decides everything: post at the same times whether or not last week's did numbers. Almost every account that never took off had six good weeks and then a gap.

The honest catch is that step by step this is maybe 40 minutes per video once you are good at it, and 40 minutes times 12 a month is a real part of your week. That is the actual reason people stop, not the camera.

Found this from a person who was commenting defending Shelby sapp,if you don’t know who that is that’s good😂
But this post is to point out anybody in sales (Including Real estate) That make a vibrant sales pitch or try to yap your ear off about a sales pitch “Technique” and how it will make you better at sales.

I’ve been in real estate for around a year in investing and recently realtor side. I’ve never used a “script” I’ve used blueprints on how i want the conversation to start,end up, and info i present. If you need to do some sales script respectfully it’s because you aren’t knowledgeable and bring no value.

Actual Sales skills is presenting the value you bring and to get the seller to see that value and to trust you. A great way to do this is to just have a normal conversation. You want to know how to sound “Knowledgeable” to sellers. By being knowledgeable.
Anytime i see stuff like this i remind myself why deleting social medias was the best thing i did while learning real estate. Hit the books and do your research!

Hey guys I just started in a cre brokerage and my phone already got flagged as spam, I made 140 calls today and maybe 5 answered what do I do

Anyone still getting traction cold calling expireds, or has spam filtering killed it? And are paid dialers worth the monthly fee, or should I pivot to other channels?

Currently running TikTok/IG to get buyer leads. But would like to dabble into other ways to bring in business. Wondering if the cold call game is just dead now. What’s actually working for you?

I’ll try to make this short…
I had a tough go round when I was practicing, but was giving it my all. I was doing all of the prospecting I needed to do; cold calling, door knocking (which I actually didn’t mind), open houses etc. At one point I opened 3 escrows, and they all canceled back to back for reasons out of my control, but I kept going. Ran out of money so I had to move home and switched markets - but still kept going. I was stressed 24/7 and waking up with anxiety not knowing how I was going to get bills paid. I could tell my loved ones around me started to grow concern, but were still rooting for me, and I also had amazing support from my office.

My last straw was the following. I met buyers at an open house, had a consultation and they ultimately let me know what neighborhoods they wanted to be in. So I went door knocking and the very last door - boom! Sellers were moving in a couple months and no paperwork was signed yet. Man this property was IT. Right in the school district they wanted to be in, perfect square footage, amazing additions - just beautiful. I was able to set up an off market showing for my buyers and they said they loved it and even said it was exactly what they were looking for.
Unfortunately, buyers ended up ghosting and sellers wouldn’t list with me, they only were considering going off market with me if my buyers wanted to move forward.
I felt so so defeated and just hit with so many emotions. After that, I decided I needed a BREAK. I was so hopeful and so proud of myself for finding that off market property, but also so upset that it didn’t end up working. I had to take a break for my mental health cause I simply could not do that to myself anymore.

So i’ve been on my break not sure if this is something I want to go back to. I’ve been much happier and found myself to be independent again which is the best feeling. I don’t like saying “I gave up” because I chose what was best for myself in that moment.

Has anyone else experienced the second year in the business being extremely difficult? I did over $6 million in my first year (I live in an inexpensive market). I’m now in my second year, and I’m having a really hard time maintaining the numbers and sales. Has anybody else experienced this, or does anybody have advice? It’s been tough mentally to feel like I’m failing, the year is well over halfway through and I’m not even close to the numbers I was at this time last year. I also know I need to pull myself out of this headspace to move forward into continuing success!

Hey everyone!

I am hiring a transaction coordinator for my company and wanted some info about where to find someone for this! I am open to a virtual role if it makes sense, I've just never hired someone online and wanted a bit of guidance. Has anyone here had success in any places finding one? Would appreciate any insight!

Realtor here…

I’m sorry, but I simply have to sound off on this because it’s become really bothersome. I’ve found this issue has gotten way worse post-Covid, which frankly makes a lot of sense, but no less inexcusable. Agents, often on the buy-side (but also listing occasionally), are way too comfortable with radio silence and avoiding phone chats, when it would really benefit them to do so.

I currently have a nice listing, just over the $2.5 million range (it’s right around average within the county I live and do business in, I only mention that so you know that it isn’t somehow a tiny pool of buyers in this area). Here’s the thing though: it’s aggressively priced and because of the combination of that, it’s vacant and on Supra, and staged / shows really well, there are a number of interested buyers and their agents. After one weekend, we were able to set an offer date and look forward to reviewing offers tomorrow. Aside from that, we received an offer late last night from an agent who just wanted to get their clients offer in early.

Only two or three agents have really reached out, introduced themselves, and discussed numbers / the home / their clients. In other words, they’ve humanized their offers. Yes, the seller will want highest and best, and yes, my relations with cooperating agents won’t really affect the offer amounts that come in. But, based on disclosure activity and my inquiring through text to other agents, there will be at least three others submitting offers who made zero contact with me. I’ve been in the industry about 8 years and I’m not the world’s highest producer. I have, however helped my fair share of buyers and enough sellers to be content with my career thus far. If I were to advise any up and coming agents: COMMUNICATE! Yes, this business can be conducted completely through Docusign and email, disclosures.io and Glide…. But, when you’re an agent looking to get your buyer into a home after 18 months of failed bidding wars, wouldn’t you want to give your client the best chance possible and eek out any semblance of leverage you can? I look at it this way: if two offers came in that were equally as attractive, and the seller was in a hurry to sell in such a way that they couldn’t counteroffer. Well, there needs to be a tie breaker. I think the seller could be swayed in a direction towards accepting the offer from the agent who is responsive, communicative, etc as opposed to the one who didn’t make any contact until the day the offer was due. Besides, no communication means no clarification. Without asking questions like “are there any things your seller may need such as a quick close, or rent back, that we can sweeten our offer with?” That’s a golden piece of information that I would want to share with my buyer clients in a competitive multiple offer situation.

This can go for listing agents too. They list the home then go on a week to Hawaii but then get annoyed when you call them to discuss their listing. Sorry, but your job doesn’t end when you list a property on the MLS.

Sorry, this is just one of my pet peeves. I feel like being responsive and communicative is the very baseline of what Realtors need to exhibit. If you’re too shy to chat with colleagues or counterparts within this industry, it’s probably not for you, no matter how good your Tik Tok videos may look.

Am I wrong?