Essential Soft Skills you Need to Succeed in Real Estate

Hard and soft skills are equally crucial for agents to learn, but this article will focus on the things you can’t learn in the classroom. Here are 20 soft skills agents can’t live without.

1. Organization 

Running your real estate brokerage wouldn’t be possible without organizational skills, especially if you’re more mobile. The easiest way to ensure success is to make a schedule and stick with it. At the same time, you need to balance structure with flexibility to be there for your clients.

2. Persistence

Most real estate agents are pretty persistent. After all, you wouldn’t have gotten your real estate license if you didn’t put your nose to the grindstone. Even when you have your license, the grind never stops. You’ll be calling 10-100 contacts a day to fuel a consistent business pipeline.

3. Communication

Communication may just be one of the most critical soft skills of them all. Agents that can communicate effectively with their clients can become more aware of their pain points and home buying/selling needs. Agents must also use active listening skills to help resolve conflict.

4. Negotiation

Negotiation isn’t about winning or losing; it’s about understanding your client’s needs. The ability to see each real estate deal from both the buyer’s and seller’s side can help you come up with a price that will suit everyone. Great real estate agents will know how to leverage a property’s strong points.

5. Presentation

In 2018, 93% of Americans used online websites to search for a home. As that percentage continues to increase, agents have to start paying attention to their MLS descriptions, agent websites, and email marketing campaigns to ensure they’re descriptive and error-free. Utilizing a no-cost text-to-image solution can transform mundane listings into eye-catching visuals that capture potential buyers’ imaginations without dipping into your marketing budget.

6. Problem-Solving

Real estate transactions rarely go off without a hitch. In fact, you’re bound to be a part of a few failing deals, communication mistakes, and contingency issues. Agents must be master problem solvers if they want to rescue themselves from unhappy customers or negative reviews.

7. Design

While interior design is considered a “hard skill,” do you ever notice that some people just have an eye for design? Some agents are gifted at staging homes, highlighting selling points on a property, or matching the right colors or themes. These agents often sell more homes.

8. Empathy

Selling a house is an emotional experience. Your clients spend many heartfelt moments in their homes, and it can be difficult to give it up when the time comes. Buying a property can also bring up a lot of emotions. In the end, empathy is needed to navigate emotional sales situations.

9. Resourcefulness

Agents often work with pennies in their pocket when they start, so they have to understand a home’s selling points to make their dollars go further. They know how to take advantage of inexpensive online traffic sources and thrifty home renovations to sell a lot of homes.

10. Delegation

At some point, all business owners have to give up control and trust other professionals, even if the process leaves them kicking and screaming. The best agents know how to delegate their workload or automate aspects of their business, so they can spend more time with their clients.

11. Confidence

Most of us can tell the difference between cockiness, insecurity, and true confidence. That’s why “fake it till you make it” rarely works for a client-facing industry like real estate. Agents have to develop real confidence in order to attract clients, build their network, and sell homes.

12. Time Management

Real estate agents are busy. From meeting new clients to setting up open houses to marketing their properties, agents hardly have enough time for themselves, especially if they also have full-time jobs. For this reason, time management is necessary for successful agents.

13. Growth Mindset

Real estate is a competitive industry, so you need to get your head in the game to outlast other agents. That doesn’t mean you have to be cut-throat, but it does mean you need to adopt a growth mindset. If you spend a bit of time honing your skills daily, you’ll keep growing.

14. Teamwork

In an industry like real estate, you wouldn’t think teamwork is necessary, but if you work with your fellow agents, you’ll be better for it. With teamwork skills, you can cooperate with your team to sell more homes, build your network, or learn vital real estate knowledge from your brokers. And there’s crossover between teamwork and the aforementioned time management skills, particularly as you rise through the ranks in a real estate organization. You need to be able to write an effective team meeting agenda, orchestrate geographically disparate groups of agents, and motivate members of staff to give their all to their jobs.

15. Business Ethics

Shady real estate tactics may work in the movies, but they won’t keep you in business for long. You won’t need to hide info from your clients to sell homes, as a buyer can be found for any property if you know what to focus on. Plus, being an inclusive realtor is the right thing to do.

16. Resilience

You hear a lot of “no’s” in real estate, and you may not get a lot of clients right away. But every realtor has to get through this rough patch before becoming a real estate superstar. If you’re about to future-proof (or recession-proof) your business, you’ll become a top producer.

17. Motivation

All real estate agents are self-employed, even when they work under a broker. With such a flexible schedule, it can be hard to get motivated. You can overcome most productivity hurdles by remembering why you became a real estate agent or broker in the first place.

18. Self-Awareness 

Self-awareness isn’t easy, even for honest and transparent agents and brokers. However, real estate professionals can sabotage their own success if they don’t realize why a deal flopped. A bit of self-awareness can help you rebuild client relationships or become more productive.

19. Leadership

Even if you never plan to run your own brokerage, leadership is a fundamental real estate skill. Not only will it help you build a thriving real estate team of contractors, lawyers, landscapers, and more, but it will also help you take charge of any situation, no matter how challenging.

20. Critical Thinking

One thing all great real estate agents need is critical thinking skills, especially if they plan to specialize. For example, a real estate appraiser needs to estimate the market value of a property by assessing known home issues. They also can’t be biased during their walkthroughs.