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| The Real Estate Encyclopedia |
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| How do I Set Up my Home Office? |
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| Category - Real Estate General - Becoming an Agent
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Your first concern needs to be organization. Create an office space, which is yours and can be locked, especially if you have a family.
Real estate involves a lot of paperwork and you need to be able to carefully file your documents and retain them in an organized fashion, so you can easily refer to them while you are working on a transaction or in the future, if there are any challenges. You might file by year, name, active or inactive, etc. You also want to download your clients or customers’ contact information in a database for ongoing communications.
You will need a computer, outlook or other calendar system, phone, cell phone and file cabinets. You will also want to keep active files handy and develop a tracking system to input all critical dates, when working on a closing. You might develop a form, which includes the binding agreement date, inspection dates, loan timeline, contingency details and timelines as well as the closing date. You also want to include the name and contact information of the client, loan officer and closing attorney. By clipping this form to your file and emailing it to your client, you will be able to keep track of all critical dates, which impact the validity of the purchase contract and help you stay ahead of any problems.
You will also want to have a separate phone line and a fax line. Today, the best alternative to a fax line are the Internet-based services, such as EFax, which are relatively inexpensive and will allow you to receive faxes via your email.
Although it may seem trivial, recent surveys show that the way you dress at home affects your efficiency. Consider dressing for work rather than spending your day in your pajamas. As a real estate agent, you also want to spend as many hours as possible every day interacting with strangers and prospecting.
Once you have got your home office set up, it can be a satisfying base of operations. You are ready to work like any business. |
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Start Your Own Business, Rieva Lesonsky and the staff of Entrepreneur Magazine. |
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