Siberian Winter,

I am attempting to provide perspective.

Of note, I formerly lived in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Cost of living was very high.

I know it is easy to dismiss my comments because I'm in Idaho. Many concieve of my state as something like the Alaskan wilderness, filled with ill-educated folks in poorly-constructed cabins.

Yet, I'm in a community with 9,000 scientists and engineers (we have the nation's leading high tech lab for energy research), lots of locally-grown high tech companies and we were named one of the top 10 small communities in the nation by Money magazine this year. And, Idaho was just named as the #1 state for housing appreciation the past year.

Yes, we have modest cost of living. The average home is about $150,000 (3 bedrooms 2 baths 2 car garage and about 2400 square feet). Utilities are cheap. And, both food and medical care are modest.

But, wages are proportionally lower. And, real estate commissions, because of the relatively low average property price, are also rather low by national standards. Every agent I know undergoes financial pressure when starting out.

And, we face, like virtually every other market, stiff competition for the real estate business. Based on Westchester County's population and your count of active agents, it looks like about .8% of the population are in real estate. In my area, the equivalent number is .7% --- very close.

Over the past couple years, I was in a course with brokers all over the country. As part of that program, I visited all kinds and sizes of brokerages in Maine, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Florida, California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Utah. I spoke with brokers, staff and agents.

I was struck by the fact that regardless of the area, the challenges are almost identical. And, the same things seem to work regardless of where you are.

You had noted that you had had some success with open houses. What about approaching other agents about doing open houses at times they are not (ie. if the listing agent is doing a Sunday one, maybe you could do a Saturday session). Ask attendees for name, address, phone number and e-mail and promise to provide them a list of the new listings in the neighborhood.

Then, go into your mls system and set each up to have listings "auto-sent" to those folks.

Follow-up with postcards to this same audience each month. Provide data on the area (number of homes listed that month, number sold, average sales price, and sales price/list price ratio).

Check the mls religiously. If something special comes up, call each of these folks and tell them about. And, offer to show them.

Do an open house once a week and engage in this kind of follow-up with every lead. I've seen agents build an entire business off of this kind of program. The key is to consistently provide relevant help --- often times for 6 months or a year.

Many open house attendees are future buyers or sellers. This kind of program bonds them to you and can really work.

Best of luck!

First of all, getting a listing is winning the lottery. Few newbies have had listings. I have been lucky enough to have two. I've been doing open houses for other agents all along. Initially, the other newer agents preferred not to do them, so the field was all mine. That is no longer the case. We are crawling all over each other for open houses now. Also, given the poor market, the bigger agents are now desperate enough to sit at their own open houses. The result is that I've only been able to scrounge up one open house all fall. I was only able to get three open houses this summer. All of my current (warm) prospects come from these open houses. I am pretty good at conversion - so I may have as many as 3 customers from the one in the fall (we had 9 visitors). There is absolutely no way that I can get an open house weekly - if there was I'd be there. I am fortunate if I can get one a month.

What I generally do when I get an open house is this: I have sign in sheets - 1 sheet per prospect. As they talk to me I jot down essential information. What they are looking for, why they are moving, if they have something to sell first etc. By using one sheet/prospect I don't get people mixed up. I also get several copies of currently available homes in the same/similar neighborhoods in a similar price range. I attach my card and a post card of my recent closings. If the prospect doesn't appear to be as interested in the property at hand, I talk to them about the other listings in the area and about the neighborhoods in general. If I do an open house on Sunday, my first call is on Tuesday. Tuesday is a day where I keep in touch with all former contacts in general. I just add the prospects to the list. These people get regular email and regular snail mail from me. I will call them at least 2 more times. If after all of that they no longer show an interest, I let them go. Doing more than that might be construed as stalking. Many leave false names and false numbers and fake emails, so it can be frustrating. At my last open house 3 people already had an agent, 3 never returned any calls or their email addresses didn't work. The final three I am working with at one level or another. Most important - I listen for likes and dislikes - do they like newer construction or do they want something older etc. How many BR/BA - do they want to fix it up or do they want move-in ready?

Anyway, that's the method that has evolved over the past year or so. If you think I am doing anything wrong or can think of a way to increase my probability of conversion, it would be much appreciated.

A note on houses and their prices and commissions. Discounters have eaten away at commissions particularly from the buyer's side. Listing agents have kept the bulk of the money on their side of the deal. For the most part a meager 2% is all the buyer's side gets. With franchise fees, I take home a 0.92% in general. The average cost is also deceptive. The bulk of the closings for newer agents are in the form of condos and co-ops. 4 of my 6 closings were co-ops. So the average commission is much lower than you are expecting for the area. Realistically - for a higher end co-op I will make about $2500, lower end can be less than $1000. On average, I've taken away less than $2000 on deals like that. I was lucky to get one house and a condo, but that is very hard for a new agent to get.

As I said before, I do believe that if the agency is going to do literally NOTHING to provide warm leads - that the splits must change to reflect that. In my former office, the training I had was largely paid for by me, Uptime was a joke because call capture systems took in the majority of the calls and the email leads were not distributed but collected by the powers that be. Trying to get so much as manilla folder and a couple of paper clips from the office was like asking for the moon. If I wanted to contact expireds or FSBOs, stationary was handed out one sheet at a time. I finally bought my own. An office that takes 58% of my very hard-earned money and gives almost nothing in return is a bad deal for any agent. I would be a lousy business person if I ever thought that was OK. My commissions help pay for those leads. I want my fair share - I'm not willing to nor should I have to compete with my own company for leads that they squirrel away for only their top agents. The whole thing was ludicrously exploitive.

Btw, I never thought of Idaho as an energy research hot spot. I know some parts of the West have a lot of natural gas reserves, but that's about it. Has your area attracted a lot of H1B visa people? Of course, I naturally associate the energy industry with Texas. I worked as a scientist for many years - but in immunology - an entirely different can of worms. Maybe biotech could grab a foothold out there as well. It's unfortunate that the cost of living and outsourcing has forced so many in the life sciences from the field.

A question on open houses. What would another agent say if you volunteered to hold an open house on one of their homes on a weekend they are not doing one? Most sellers I know would be tickled if open houses were done every week. But few agents would do that. Could you pick up some that way?

I appreciated you note about our area. We have the Idaho National Laboratory. It is primarily run by the Department of Energy.

It started as a place to test nuclear reactors, both for the navy and for power generation.

Today, it does nuclear, exotic plastics, geothermal, solar, weather, medical and other forms of high tech research.

A few inventions that have come from the Idaho National Lab include the MRI and the armor of the M-1 tank.

There are not alot of H1B visas at the site. Many come from the East for jobs and then decide to stay -- even when their project ends.

I'm sitting about 90 minutes from Yellowstone National Park and Jackson Hole.

It's a big volcanic plain with a high desert climate. We have cold winters but not much snow. Summers are great --- 70s and 80s with almost no humidity. Most homes don't even have air conditioning.

I'm also from another field. I used be a political consultant and practiced law for a few years.

One thing to add to the mix: There is no magic tool for lead generation. No matter who you work for, you should get tips and advice on what, where, how to prospect. Try them all, use what works best for you. Mostly it's a situation where what you get out of it depends largely on what you put into it.

In my office every week agentssend out an email asking if anyone who like to do an open house. All the time!

What I generally do is every few weeks I volunteer to do open houses - by broadcast. You do have to pick and choose though. Our area is very funny. Some places attract a lot of action. Others none. There are also several agents who are trying to get inexperienced agents to sit at an open house for their overpriced listing that is also in a bad location. No one ever shows up at these. I've done several of these, but I have learned to be picky about what I take on. Otherwise you become a doormat for agents who take overpriced listings and are too lazy to deal with the consequences - like the owners clamboring for a weekly open house. In our area, an unadvertised open house with signs only works in popular areas. It goes by school district and specific neighborhood. Some areas are just "hot".

Political consulting and law might be a more "natural" switch than laboratory science. My mother ran for local office and so I found myself being involved locally in spite of my better judgement.

Now I know where you are. Nice area. Very different from DC...which is hot and humid during the summer months. Winters are pretty easy though. Actually, the way things are going, your energy braintrust is going to need more people! And soon, you might be offering beachfront property!

Someone emailed me, but I managed to delete it by mistake. Don't know how it happened, but try again...sorry.