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Reigning rookies of the year share advice for new agents

Rookie agents have a lot to learn during their first years in the business. Jessica Jakubowski, an associate broker at Baird & Warner, and Josh Lipton, a Realtor with Jameson Sotheby’s International, know how to handle it better than

From rookie to real estate success story: how new agents get ahead

Upon completing the requisite 50 to 80 hours of real estate training and passing the licensing exam, many rookie agents expect they’ll be ready to sell real estate. It’s a reasonable expectation. And technically, they are officially qualified. But

Looking back: rookie mistakes

For an experienced perspective on common rookie mistakes, we turned to Mike McCatty, a broker with Century 21. McCatty has closed more than 1,300 transactions totaling a half billion in sales since 1999, and was named “Office Broker of

Agents’ love-hate relationship with Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com

Since their emergence in the early 1990s and the early 2000s, syndication sites have disrupted the real estate world and divided Realtors. Viewed at once by agents as competition and as yet another source for leads, the “Big Three”

These are Chicagoland’s most social brokerages

We pulled the numbers of likes, followers and shares directly from each brokerage’s social media pages during the week of May 9. Brokerages are listed in descending

Which brokerage websites are on top in 2016?

We ran the numbers on national real estate brands and local brokerages to see which websites led in website visitors and visitor engagement. We pulled data from Alexa.com during the week of May 9. Average time on site is

Agent Website SEO 101

Agents know that being found online is crucial for their business. David Conroy, an R&D engineer for CRT Labs at the National Association of Realtors’ headquarters, has some best practices for SEO implementation on agent websites. “Real Estate is

Chicagoland brokerages in the app marketplace

In our Agent Insider survey earlier this year, we asked agents which real estate apps they use. Though the MLS was the clear favorite (62 percent of respondents said they used it), 46 percent told us that they use

Long live your real estate brand

It’s no secret that the real estate industry is a cyclical one. After watching the real estate boom and the subsequent bubble burst in 2007, agents are once again seeing housing prices and demand rise. It’s a pattern that

Today’s rookies are tomorrow’s retirees – how the 1980 market compares to today

Here’s what the market looked like in 1980, when many of today’s older agents were first navigating their real estate careers, versus the market today’s real estate rookies enter into in

Bring in the varsity team – a Chicago Agent survey on brand legacies

For some perspective on real estate branding over the course of an agent’s career, we turned to a group of agents whose experience and tenure in the field make them the perfect candidates to complete a short survey on

Realtors by the Numbers

Real estate agents have a longstanding reputation as enterprisers in the business world. According to the 2015 National Association of Realtors (NAR) Member Profile report, the average age of those industry leaders is 57 years, an age that is

Luxury Homes: Selling a Vision of the Future

Chicago’s luxury market is one of the biggest in the nation, as is only fitting for a city of some 2.7 million people with a large number of high net worth individuals. Chicago has about 282,000 individuals with more

Two Incredible Additions to Chicago’s Skyline

Renelle Address: 403 N Wabash Avenue Price Range: $1,660,000 to $3 million Number of units: 45 Number of floors: 17 stories Date listed for sale: Pre-sales begin in mid-May. Completion: Deliveries for Renelle are expected to begin in spring

Agents Get a New Angle on Luxury Marketing with Drone Photography

If you ask Brian Balduf, the chairman and co-founder of VHT studios, about the main benefits of his company’s new drone photography/video system, he does not mince words.  “So much focus of the last 20 years in bringing technology

A Wealth of Positive Signs for the Luxury Market

The outlook is good for the luxury real estate market, according to The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing’s Housing Report for the first week of April 2016. Although it’s currently a “buyer’s market,” according to The Institute’s “Market Action

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