If you are considering how to start your real estate agency and you don’t know where to start, we offer you the main keys on what you need to enter this sector, what are the formal requirements and, above all, the fundamental techniques to ensure success and prosperity of your business.
Table of Contents
The person as the main source of impulse
When starting your own real estate agency, you should not only take into account the complexity of the business itself, but also the qualities that you yourself must have:
- Empathy, leadership skills and team management: will be useful for running a business that requires constant and individualized contact with people. Dealing with the client is essential when setting up a real estate company, so reflect on your ability to connect and be close to others to achieve a great job from the first minute.
- Training is essential: Knowledge about the real estate market is as changeable as it is deep and you must adapt to it and handle it. It offers an adapted, new, agile and not obsolete service.
Steps prior to starting a real estate agency: planning
Before setting up a real estate agency, think about the models that exist and adapt your needs to a specific type, choosing the one that best suits you, since it will affect the capital you invest and from which you obtain profit:
- Associated agent model. For the cases in which you want to capture and sell houses by yourself. The best idea is to partner with a real estate company that is already up and running and work with them as a self-employed agent, establishing your charge on commission.
- One-person agency model. It will allow you to have your own company, with recruitment, sale and management functions.
- Real estate industry model. It is the step beyond, which implies a complex commercial structure and higher turnover. It is the fruit of the development of the previous level. Patience!
- Franchise. Your margin of freedom and operation is less wide, but the objectives of the franchise, its marketing team and what the agency sets for you will free you from more than one headache.
Also read: What is a real estate market study?
From the theory to the practice
Now that you know that you have all the skills to be in charge of a real estate agency, we know that what worries you is putting it into practice. To do this, take a sheet of paper and a pencil and ask yourself these questions:
- What’s up?
- What do I want?
- What do I already have?
- Who do I want to offer it to?
- What do I need to offer it?
What’s up: competition
Analyze your competitors. It tracks their way of acting, their strengths and weaknesses, location, prices and image. Collect, in short, everything that you could offer more effectively.
What I want: objectives, goals and strategy
Prepare a plan that is loyal to your goals and can be achieved, both in the short, medium and long term. Collect all those actions for the promotion of your products: press, blogs, and social networks. Dare to organize opening activities to attract customers. Innovate.
What I already have: the services I offer
In general, you will have two types of clients, to whom you can offer specific services:
- Buyers and sellers: services that focus on valuations, photographic reports, after-sales services…
- Agents or internal clients: services oriented towards financing, marketing, training…
Who do I want to offer it to the public
?Analyze the market in which your activity will take place: the volume of transactions, and the type (rentals, purchases). The socioeconomic level of the area will indicate the framework in which you can work (residential, luxury, commercial).
What do I need to offer it: money and a place
Estimate in detail the economic resources that you will need, in the short term (initial investment) and in the medium term (working capital). Find out about aid and subsidies that may exist in your locality or Autonomous Community. An estimate of expenses and income for a year ahead will help you a lot to predict the durability of the business and its ability to persist.
As for the premises, make sure that it has an area of about 120 square meters, which allows for the commercial area and the transit of people.
Also read: Invest in Real Estate and Enjoy The Financial Freedom
Legal considerations: fiscal and legal requirements
Creating a real estate agency is liberalized in Spain, although the Autonomous Communities are competent to establish any specific requirements. In general, what you should do is:
- Incorporate a company in the Mercantile Registry.
- Pay the relevant taxes and procedures in relation to Social Security and the Tax Administration.
- As for the premises, ask for the corresponding opening and construction licenses, where appropriate.
- Hire insurance that guarantees the protection of assets and the safety of workers and possible damage to third parties (civil liability, employer, surety insurance).
Surely with this analysis, you are closer to knowing how to set up your own real estate agency. Now, and with the advice of a good team of professionals so that bureaucratic procedures are as agile and efficient, you have the wind in your favor to be the best entrepreneur in the sector.