Networking for Real Estate Agents: Network Like a Pro

For a real estate agent, a network is the set of people who send business your way and whom you can send clients to with confidence: other agents, in your market and beyond, and the lenders, inspectors, title companies and stagers a sale passes through. Networking for real estate agents is the steady work of meeting those people, staying in touch with them and knowing what may and may not change hands between you.

Who Belongs in a Network of Real Estate Professionals

Other agents come first. The ones in your own market sit across the table from you in many of your deals, and a working relationship with them helps when a client needs a buyer for their home or a home for their budget. Agents in other markets matter for a different reason: when a client moves away, or someone moving to your area needs an agent, you have someone to send them to and someone who might send them back.

Then come the people a transaction depends on. Your clients will ask whom to call for a mortgage, an inspection or a stager, and an agent with names they trust answers faster than one who searches online with the client. After the move, the same clients ask about contractors and movers, and knowing a few local businesses keeps you useful to them once the sale has closed.

To see where your network is thin, check it against the roles a typical sale and move involve, and start looking wherever you can't put a name to one:

• Agents in your market, including those at other brokerages
• Agents in the markets your clients move to and from
• Mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers
• Home inspectors
• Title companies and real estate attorneys
• Stagers
• Local businesses clients ask about after the move, such as contractors and movers

Where Agents Meet Other Professionals

Conferences put you in front of a larger part of the industry than your local market does. The National Association of REALTORS® events page describes them as a place to network with other professionals, attend a seminar and keep up with industry trends, from NAR NXT to the regional and specialty events on its calendar. Beyond the sessions, a small booth that shows how you work, or a mixer you host or join around the conference, widens the circle further.

Seminars do the same on a smaller scale. Attending one teaches you something and puts you in a room with people who want to learn the same thing, and if you have an insight worth sharing, you can give one yourself.

Closer to home, your local association is where you meet the agents you will deal with most. NAR members belong to one or more of about 1,200 local associations, and yours is likely to hold events for members only. The agents you meet there are the ones on the other side of your next deals. NAR's Code of Ethics already expects REALTORS® to cooperate with other brokers unless that isn't in the client's best interest, and cooperation comes easier with someone you know.

The lenders, inspectors and stagers on your list are often easiest to meet through the deals themselves. The lender on a buyer's file or the inspector a buyer hired has already seen how you work, which is a better start than a business card.

Keeping in Touch Between Deals

A network goes cold between transactions unless you keep showing up, and online is where that costs the least time. LinkedIn is built for working professionals, which makes it the natural place to stay in front of other agents and the people around the industry. Fill in your profile with your experience and an About section that says what you do and where. Post about your work, including the behind-the-scenes side, as long as it is relevant to the people you want to reach. Reply to comments on your posts and comment on other professionals' posts; a comment gives people something to answer.

Other platforms reach further beyond the industry. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are more casual and tend to put you in front of buyers and sellers more than peers, and social media aimed at your clients is a job with its own rules. Online groups where agents talk to each other are worth finding too, including groups set up for referrals between markets.

Whichever channels you use, keep at them regularly. Set aside time each week to plan and schedule posts if you can't be online every day, and check in with people directly now and then, not only when you need something. A presence takes time to build, so expect a slow start.

What Can Change Hands, and What Can't

A network runs on recommendations, and in the US some of them can't be paid for. US federal rules on mortgage settlement services ban giving or accepting a fee, kickback or anything else of value for referring business to a settlement service when the home is bought with a federally related mortgage loan. Settlement services include lenders, mortgage brokers, title companies, attorneys, appraisers, inspectors and insurers. Anything of value covers more than cash, such as discounts, free services or paid trips.

The same rules allow referral fees between real estate agents and brokers, when everyone involved is acting as a broker. A fee for sending a relocating client to an agent in another city is the kind of payment the rules allow; a cut of a lender's fee for sending them the client is not.

A preferred vendor list still works when it is built on the work you have seen each lender, inspector or stager do. Recommend them for that work, and if you do benefit from a recommendation, say so. The Code of Ethics requires REALTORS® to tell the client about any financial benefit they or their firm receive from recommending a product or service such as mortgage financing or title insurance, apart from real estate referral fees, and to disclose any direct interest in a business they suggest.