Want to start a real estate team but have little-to-no experience as an agent? Believe it or not, it’s possible to get a successful team running your first year in the business. The success of Pat Hiban’s recent podcast guest David Serpa is proof of that.

  • To start a team successfully and give it legs for long-term growth, you’ll need to create a business that rising agents actually want to join.

Want to start a real estate team but have little-to-no experience as an agent?

Believe it or not, it’s possible to get a successful team running your first year in the business. The success of Pat Hiban’s recent podcast guest David Serpa is proof of that.

David Serpa

With only 10 months in real estate, Serpa started his real estate team. Now, just three years later, his team of nearly 30 agents has completed over 100 transactions per year. Better still, all of the agents who have been with Serpa for 18 months or more earn over $100,000 annually.

Read on to learn what Serpa recommends to new real estate agents who want to start a successful real estate team. To hear everything Serpa discussed during his interview, including how he boosts his conversion rate for open houses, listen to the podcast below.

What it takes to start a real estate team

Starting a real estate team early in your career will take plenty of hard work, but hard work isn’t all it takes to make a new team successful.

To start a team successfully and give it legs for long-term growth, you’ll need to create a business that rising agents actually want to join.

Here’s how Serpa recommends doing that:

Rise above the grind

Income-servicing activities, like coordinating showings, are important, but you shouldn’t be the one doing them if building your business is one of your priorities.

Serpa recommends delegating these tasks to someone else so you’re able to dedicate more of your time and energy to generating clients and attracting great agents.

As his business grew larger, Serpa did less of the tasks he personally performed starting out. It simply wasn’t possible to grow his team effectively while responsible for every aspect of its operation. To grow, he had to rise above the grind.

Generate excitement

When word got out that Serpa’s agents earn over $100,000 annually, other agents were very eager to join his team. Regardless, Serpa never had trouble recruiting great talent, even when he was just starting out.

Early on, Serpa worked toward creating a rockstar persona; he became a well-known local figure by constantly putting himself out there.

When he wasn’t hosting open houses, he was pushing out video content, posting blogs and doing whatever it took to get his business more attention from potential clients as well as potential hires.

Provide opportunities

Business owners often hold back when it comes to training new team members, usually from fear that they may leave and become the competition. Serpa doesn’t do this, and he doesn’t worry about agents leaving either.

Serpa provides his agents with the best training and opportunities he can, which leads to better production numbers, better relationships with employees and better retention rates.

Learn more about real estate team building

Serpa had a lot to say about what it’s like to start a real estate team during his podcast interview. He also shared several valuable nuggets on increasing production, ensuring agent accountability and more.

If you have any interest in building a real estate team, or if you just want some honest advice from a successful real estate entrepreneur, listen to the complete podcast with David Serpa.

Pat Hiban is the author of the NYT bestselling book “6 steps to 7 figures: A Real Estate Professional’s Guide to Building Wealth and Creating Your Destiny,” the founder of online real estate sales training site Rebus University, and the host of Pat Hiban Interviews Real Estate Rockstars, an agent-to-agent real estate podcast with Hiban Digital in Baltimore, Maryland. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

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