An excerpt from my book, “How To Make $120,000 Your First Year As A Rental Agent”

To prospect continually is the first rule of sales. One needs to have a constant flow of clients in order to be successful. Most new agents don’t carefully study the market and make the mistake of wasting their time in the wrong efforts. Instead of spreading yourself thin and running all over the city showing apartments, create a niche where you focus on one property and market it intelligently. The results can be startling!

Before you decide on a property, consider some of these aspects:

1. Great building
2. Good amenities
3. Close to transportation
4. Competitively priced
5. High turnover
6. Building does all the paperwork
7. Building offers an incentive to brokers
8. Rental office
9. Allows pets
10. Allows walls for conversion

Excellent prospecting requires three areas of expertise: mastery of high-turnover buildings, focusing on buildings that have below market priced rentals and attractive amenities, and advertising effectively.

Mastery of High-Turnover Buildings

• Deal with buildings with a lot of units. This usually means that they have enough availability of apartments that you can rent there all year long.

• When you work with a few buildings that have high availability of apartments you become an expert on those buildings, thereby giving you an edge over other agents.

• Inventory tracking is not necessary because apartment availability is assured.

• Advertisement tracking is not necessary because apartment availability assures ad continuity without changes.

Focus on Buildings that Have Below Market Priced Rentals & Attractive Amenities

These building will:

• Attract more clients.
• Be popular in the market place.
• Have greater advertisement and marketing potential.

Effective Advertising Includes:

• Building floor plan
• Building pictures
• Apartment pictures
• Building information
• Benefits
• Features
• Amount of rent
• Contact information: work and cell number, no e-mail addresses
• Fee/ no fee
• Rental agent picture
• Location of apartment
• Apartment size
• Apartment availability
• Pet friendly
• Sales presentation
• Use of color
• Use of images

Please note that you should have 5 ads online ASAP.

Three Cardinal Rules of Manhattan Rental Apartments

1. Maximize the number of incoming leads.
2. Increase the dollar amount of commission earned per deal.
3. Focus on getting exclusive and semi-exclusive listings.

If you apply the above guidelines to prospecting you will greatly increase your odds of success!