Are you missing a golden opportunity to add a few real estate services to your business and skyrocket your income?

Most agents don’t give enough consideration to the idea of diversifying their income.

Adding one (or all!) of these services to your business will:

• alleviate some of the pressure of working solely on commission
• give you an advantage over your competition
• effectively recession-proof your business

So let’s jump right in! Here are the 5 real estate services that will skyrocket your real estate business.

1. Property Tax Appeals

Property Tax Appeals is a completely untapped agent revenue stream! And it’s far easier than you might expect.

The concept is actually quite simple. Property taxes are typically based on your County’s estimation of the value of the property. But Assessors are often wrong because they apply broad value increase formulas by submarket instead of valuing every property every year.

If the homeowner or their representative (that could be you!) can show the County that the market value of the property is less than the County’s estimated value, the homeowner will be granted a tax reduction.

All you have to do is a simple property valuation (most states don’t even require an appraisal), and present your valuation findings to the county taxing authority. Quite often the valuation can even be presented via email or phone call!

You could charge a flat fee for your property tax appeal services. But you should consider charging a percentage of the tax savings instead. Homeowners are much more likely to work with you if they can pay you out of their tax savings instead of paying you up front.

The brilliance of adding this income stream to your business is that property tax appeals cycle inversely with real estate sales. When sales are up, there is less opportunity for tax appeals, but when sales are down because of a market downturn, tax appeal opportunity goes through the roof!

To learn more, check out How to Make Money with Property Tax Appeals.

Photo by Paloma Ynda-Ramsey

2. New Home Photo Shoots

Millennials have photo shoots to mark every big life event: engagement, marriage, pregnancy, birth…What about a new home?

New home photo shoots are becoming a thing. Millennials are willing to pay good money to commemorate this monumental milestone with professional photos. You may already have some decent photography skills from shooting photos for your listings. Or maybe you could partner with a professional photographer and earn referral fees.

The shoots could go in a million different directions. You could just get a few shots of the buyers posing on the porch, accepting the keys, and walking in the front door. Or you could do a “moving day” shoot to capture the drama of actually moving into the home. Or a day-in-the-life shoot of the buyers doing domestic things like cooking and gardening.

For more shoot ideas and to learn more about adding this service, check out How to Make Money with New Home Photo Shoots.

3. Tool and Equipment Rental

If you’ve worked with first-time homeowners, you know they usually buy a starter home requiring some fixes. Of course after the down payment and closing costs, they don’t have the money to buy expensive tools and equipment, so they head to Home Depot and rent whatever they need.

Why not offer to rent your tools and equipment to them? In my experience, the rentals at Home Depot are often in poor condition, too expensive, and sometimes not even available for weeks at a time. You can provide a much better customer experience!

So why not take the tools and equipment, currently just gathering dust and spiders in your garage or shed, and put them to work making money for you?

Just for the love of God, make sure you get your customers’ credit cards on file for a healthy deposit in case they somehow destroy your equipment.

Learn more: How to Make Money Renting Out Tools and Equipment

4. Property Management

With many millennials opting to rent instead of buy, there is a growing number of SFRs being used as rental properties. And more and more absentee owners in need of property management services.

You may already have experience with property management, but for those who aren’t familiar with it, it basically involves:

• Marketing properties for rent
• Touring properties with prospective tenants
• Screening tenants
• Drafting leases
• Collecting rents
• Scheduling maintenance and repairs
• Negotiating renewals
• Addressing any tenant issues
• Handling any eviction proceedings (if it ever comes to that)
• Managing move-outs and return of deposits
• Making properties ready for new tenants

You probably already know how to do almost every item on this list!

In an ideal world, you find great tenants and spend a little time on the paperwork upfront. Then sit back and watch the rent money roll in online every month for multiple years with just a couple minor maintenance issues scattered in there.

Believe it or not, that’s been my personal experience so far. If you can attract responsible tenants, the job practically does itself!

Fees are nearly always a percentage of the rent. It varies by market of course, but 5% is fairly standard for year-round management. Then there’s usually an additional fee for finding new tenants; 50% of the first month’s rent is typical in many markets.

You may even want to offer simple Find-A-Tenant services for property owners who can manage the property, but don’t have the time, skill, or knowledge to screen tenants and draft the lease paperwork. While you won’t get the ongoing income, this can be a fairly quick and easy paycheck.

It just takes a little organization to stay on top of your portfolio, so make sure you invest in some inexpensive, but effective, property management software.

5. Home Staging

You know how important staging is to home sales. And even if you’re not a skilled decorator or designer, you know how to stage a home to sell.

You also know that many sellers struggle with appropriate staging. This is a perfect opportunity to earn a fee for your time spent staging the house, while simultaneously increasing your commission when the house sells for more than it would otherwise. The seller also benefits from the higher sales price and less time on the market.

As a general rule, staging information should be included in your role as real estate agent. But when you start laboring (or hiring laborers) to move furniture, take things to storage, paint, hang wall art, or rent furniture and accessories for a vacant space, you’re perfectly entitled to a staging fee.

Get a Small Win

Great victories are made possible by small wins. Before you move on with the rest of your day, take a second to get a small win.

Your small win challenge is to choose one of these real estate services to add to your business and create a timeline to implement it. You can actually launch your new hustle in just 2 weeks! Learn how and get started today!