BanCorp Realty: Orange County's Real Estate Blog : July 2014

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Maintaining Momentum in Real Estate

Focus Intensity over Time and multiply it by God will give a company unstoppable Momentum. Momentum is not something random, like a lightning strike, it is the exact opposite. It is something that is created within a company, and then is managed by both the leaders and employees of the organization. If the momentum is lost, normally it means the company has dropped its focus, intensity or simply its lack of faith. When a company loses its focus, this usually falls on the shoulders of management, and it normally happens because of either fear or greed. Fear will cause a company to lose focus because it is looking at the potential for failure instead of concentrating on success. Greed will cause an organization to lose focus because they begin to take their eye off of the good of their client, and out of the moment, and into a sense of celebrating victories that have not yet been earned.

BanCorp Realty: Integrity in Southern California Real Estate

A company cannot become intense until they find something that they deeply care about. Many companies make the mistake of being intense for the wrong things. A company must be intentional in their intensity. Their intensity must be purposely directed at things that really matter and purposely not directed at things that don’t. If a company takes all their team-members to their favorite pro football team’s game and everybody is jumping up and down yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs from ten minutes before kick-off until the final whistle, shouldn’t that same group be just as intense about their company? Something that is bigger than all of them that everyone can prosper in? Intensity and passion are two traits of a company that is able to succeed and carry momentum over extended periods of time.

Most companies can focus if they concentrate, and most companies can be intense for a while. Focused intensity at some level can be achieved by most companies if and when they care enough about a certain outcome. However, few companies can add the next element of the formula for very long – Time. Great companies are able to maintain focused intensity for long periods of time. For an organization to achieve huge accomplishments, they have to stay focused and intense over an extended period of time. The most key component of the Momentum Theory is God. As humans we are all finite. Our skills, abilities and talents have a limit. Wouldn’t our limited efforts as a company be multiplied by an infinite God? If faith was added to the equation, wouldn’t it seem natural that our comparatively puny efforts as humans could literally explode with even an ounce of faith? As a good lesson for business and for life, if we are trying to gain momentum… we take our best focused intensity over time and multiply it by God for unstoppable momentum.

Thanks Dave Ramsey...

Greg Steinaker: Purpose-Driven Leader of BanCorp REG

Greg Steinaker - BanCorp REG

Cities and Communities BanCorp Properties Serves In:

Aliso Viejo Real Estate & Aliso Viejo Homes For Sale | Costa Mesa Real Estate & Costa Mesa Homes For Sale | Coto De Caza Real Estate & Coto De Caza Homes For Sale | Dana Point Real Estate & Dana Point Homes For Sale | Irvine Real Estate & Irvine Homes For Sale | Ladera Ranch, Real Estate & Ladera Ranch Homes For Sale | Laguna Beach Real Estate & Laguna Beach Homes For Sale | Laguna Hills Real Estate & Laguna Hills Homes For Sale | Laguna Niguel Real Estate & Laguna Niguel Homes For Sale | Lake Forest, CA Real Estate & Lake Forest, CA Homes For Sale | Mission Viejo Real Estate & Mission Viejo Homes For Sale | Newport Beach Real Estate & Newport Beach Homes For Sale | Corona Del Mar Real Estate & Corona Del Mar Homes For Sale | Newport Coast Real Estate & Newport Coast Homes For Sale | Rancho Santa Margarita Real Estate & Rancho Santa Margarita Homes For Sale | Dove Canyon Real Estate & Dove Canyon Homes For Sale | | San Clemente Real Estate & San Clemente Homes For Sale | San Juan Capistrano Real Estate & San Juan Capistrano Homes For Sale

Friday, July 25, 2014

Management Decision Making: Orange County Real Estate

For a real estate company to move from ordinary to excellent, they must possess a management team that is able to make both the easy decisions and they hard ones. If they want their company to stand out from the rest of the industry – passivity cannot be an option when it comes to decision making from the management team. If the company is going to flourish, the organization can’t realize these dreams by having a management team that is weak or timid; it requires that their leadership have a tremendous backbone. The management and leadership of one company is what separates it from the rest of the industry, and indecisive leadership can kill the dreams for a company and drive away the most talented professionals in real estate.

BannCorp Properties: Great Orange County Real Estate Decision Making

If an excellent real estate company is stuck in the old-school method because their management team can’t or won’t make the critical decision when it is called for, the organization is reduced to an average company. An Average real estate company won’t survive very long in a very competitive and crowded Orange County real estate marketplace. If management can’t make the critical decisions, basically it means that they can’t make up their minds, and people that can’t make up their minds tend to be unstable and unpredictable – this can cause ruin to a real estate company.

BanCorp Properties: Orange County Real Estate Broker - Good Decision Making

The bottom line is this: the success (or failure) of a real estate company is ultimately tied to the ability of management in making the call (the decision). There are costs and risks in decision making, and mistakes are made – the key is for leadership to minimize the mistakes. If the management team is able to make the right call on a consistent basis, the organization will flourish and their Realtors will profit personally and professionally.

Greg Steinaker is not afraid to make the big decision when it is called for..

Greg Steinaker - Managing General Partner

BanCorp Real Estate Group

Cities and Communities BanCorp Serves In

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Orange County Real Estate Innovation

A Better Orange County Real Estate Broker:

BanCorp REG™ will not bend to or adapt to the rather dull and ordinary expectations of the existing Orange County marketing model, nor will we be swayed by the opinion of our competition. Winners get criticized – it comes with the territory. If we are going to continue leading from the front we can expect to continue receiving shallow responses from average companies who are doing nothing to influence change in the Southern California housing market. While other companies are talking about what BanCorp is doing – BanCorp Properties is a business in action - affecting real positive change in the Orange County cities and communities we serve in. We are an organization that is making a difference in the marketplace, and a lot of people are talking about our company. Our clients are giving us accolades and applause while our competition is left grumbling and wondering.

BanCorp Properties: Southern California Real Estate Brokers

BanCorp believes that we can’t secure our clientele excellent results – the results they are seeking – by playing it safe, afraid to take risks, and sitting on the sidelines and acting like a cheerleader instead of an advocate. We are willing to take calculated market risk and accept the corresponding corporate responsibility as a trade-off for positioning our client’s for a potential larger net gain and/or easier and faster transaction directly benefiting our client, creating short-term equity building to long-term wealth. We not only encourage, but underwrite aggressive thinking from each and every one of our real estate professionals. This is just one example of why BanCorp leads from the front in a very competitive Orange County real estate market.

BanCorp Properties: Southern California Real Estate Company

It is amazing how fast other real estate companies will give up and throw in the towel at the first sign of danger or dilemma. When we come across a challenge or ‘bump in the road’ we will go right through it instead of trying to navigate around it, pretend it didn’t exist or hope it disappears. Two-decades of experience has taught us that it is much better to deal with circumstances and uncertainty head-on rather than put them off for a later date, they both have the potential to jeopardize or ruin a transaction. BanCorp knows that we are only as strong as our weakest link, and we have our weakest link covered. Because of this, we only employ and retain the most excellent talent in the industry. We have also committed, and will continue to invest the necessary resources to insure we maintain the most sophisticated, comprehensive leading-edge real estate databases in the industry.

By believing in the Principles of Innovation, BanCorp REG™ will not be swayed by the decreasing expectations of the existing Orange County real estate marketing model, and we are not afraid to try different approaches to putting a transaction together and step outside the box when it is in our client’s best interest. At BanCorp we are always doing things that we don’t know how to do so that we can learn how to do them.

Greg Steinaker: Southern California CEO and Real Estate Executive

Greg Steinaker: BanCorp Properties

Cities and Communities BanCorp Serves In:

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The best real estate professionals manage their time effectively and efficiently.

If a person spends fifteen-minutes planning their day on paper every morning, they will add twenty-percent to their productive (proven). When a real estate professional has their day carefully planned, well scripted in advance, it gives them a plumb line (a safety-net), a guide and a measurement mechanism to evaluate interruptions and also a place to come back to after the interruptions occur which we know happen all too frequently though out the day. A Realtor will secure the best results by managing their daily activities not by managing their results. If the person is not spending time on something that will directly lead them to meeting their goals, it is likely a waste of their time and resources.

BanCorp Properties: Join a Winning Southern California Real Estate Broker

When a professional is managing their time correctly, the natural by-product is more activity, and more activity will always lead to better results. For example, if a Realtor makes more sales calls, the natural results is more interested clients leading to higher sales. Another way a real estate professional can effectively manage their time is by staying away from the proverbial “time-sucker.” We all know who they are. Time-wasters will suck the lifeblood out of a person’s day. Consider for a moment the financial implications of this time-sucker: they are taking away the Realtors time, the one thing that the Realtor can never get back – and everyone knows what time equals! That is why I say there are financial implications to the proverbial “time-sucker.”

Here are just a few time management basics for the Southern California Real Estate Professional.

Keep inter-office emails short and sweet, don’t hit “reply to all”, it seems efficient, but it is a waste of time.

Social Media. Stay away from all social media throughout the day. You will have plenty of time to catch up with friends later in the evening. Unless you are marketing one of your listings through social media channels, you have no excuse to be there during the day, unless you are taking a lunch break.

Keep your physical desk organized. This represents the organization condition of your mind. If your desk is a disaster…

Get away from paper as best you can. If you must – keep a day-planner on your desk and any notes can be taken there. Best case scenario is to keep everything in a lap-top or similar. When a person’s desk is clean, so are their minds.

Clean it up, delegate it (if possible), or throw it out…

Greg Steinaker: Managing General Partner
BanCorp Properties - California

Southern California Cities and Communities we serve in:

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

A real estate company can’t reach the summit unless everyone is doing their part.

For a real estate company to be truly successful in a very competitive marketplace, the management team has to be able to cast the “bigger picture” to their team-members and then make sure that they see how and what part they play in reaching the goal that the vision has set out to accomplish. The leadership of the company is pulling its team-members to reach their goals, not pushing them, a radical difference in thinking. When a company is pulling its Realtors instead of pushing them, it simply means they are always one-step ahead instead of one-step behind, leading the way and always creating new marketing ideas and introducing new clients to the organization.

BanCorp Properties: Easier and Faster Orange County Realtors

The best real estate companies understand that they can’t just walk up to their Realtors and announce arbitrary revenue goals which dishes out sales quotas for each team-member. Instead the management team talks about how important it is that the company serves a greater number of clients and not only what the company will do for that client, but what that increased income will do for the company – and better yet, what the Realtors personal income will look like. After the company has done this then they propose a revenue goal and ask each individual Realtor to carefully craft which part of that goal he or she is going to contribute.

“When the management of a real estate company sets goals by themselves they are not goals they are quotas. And no one likes quotas.”

When a real estate company is successful through all of its Realtors contributing on a regular basis, not just the top-ten or twenty percent, this is usually referred to successfully Managing By Objectives, or simply getting the team-members to set their own goals as part of the overall objective of the company – this is also referred to as Shared Goals. One of the reasons that shared goals are so important to both the Realtor and the organizations success is that Shared Goals create communication. Communication here simply means that everyone in the company is working towards making the company the best in the industry. Could you even imaging for a second a quarterback in football fumbling the ball and a big lineman not jumping on the ball, instead saying something stupid like “that isn’t my job.”? It is every Realtors job to make the company successful.

BanCorp Properties: Easier and Faster Orange County Real Estate

The bottom line is this: one of the main reasons that companies fail in America is because of selfishness. If all of the Realtors in a company are only looking out for themselves, they are by definition no longer part of team. If this happens the germ of failure has entered the organization and it has begun to spread and is likely doomed for failure. The most excellent real estate brokers understand that it takes a concerted effort by each and every real estate professional that will not only get them to the top, but will also get each of their Realtors their fullest potential, professionally and personally.

Cities and Communities BanCorp Properties Serves In:

Monday, July 21, 2014

Guiding Values makes decision making easy

As a real estate company a well-defined code of ethics makes decision making easy – it also makes it simple to answer our client’s questions with one-hundred percent accuracy and reliability. The simple principle this organization is founded upon is to ask, when making a decision or asking a question, if our response causes us to lie or hide the truth (which is a type of lying), if the answer is yes, we know what the decision is – and it is a really easy one to make. When a company is in an intense or stressful situation, even those people with the highest integrity might be tempted to hide the truth, this is why everyone at BanCorp, leaders and management included, are accountable to each other through our written Guiding Valueswhich are published on our website.

BanCorp Realty: Orange County Real Estate Purpose Driven Company

One of the senior Guiding Values that drives BanCorp REG is the Golden Rule: the Real Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As a company we are always asking ourselves, if the tables were turned, if we were walking in the other companies or the other Realtors shoes, how would we want to be treated? As a firm we strive to operate by the Golden rule. Be thoughtful of others. With that being said, we also aren’t wimps in business, we are playing the game to win and we also believe to a certain degree in the Reverse Golden Rule. As it relates to our competition and our vendors, if we are going to do unto others as we would have them do unto us… we feel it should be a two-way street. BanCorp Realty will never repay evil with evil. However, if our best, most reliable vendor steals one of our team-members we’ll cut them off in a second.

BanCorp Properties: Guiding Values makes the decision making process easy

When a client knows they are dealing with a real estate company that follows a well-defined code of ethics and publishes its Guiding Values on their website, it makes it much easier to work with that company because they know what the company stands for upfront – before the transaction has an opportunity to begin unfolding.

Greg Steinaker: As a Purpose-Driven Leader a well-defined code of ethics makes the decision making process simple

Cities and Communities BanCorp REG serves in:

Friday, July 18, 2014

The best Orange County Realtors manage their clients with Passion.

A real estate professional cannot get their client’s the results they are seeking unless they are leading them with passion. Passion causes things to move in the marketplace and even has the ability to cause transactions to come together (or fall apart), will them to happen as it were… Passion even has the ability to cover over many mistakes in the field by the Realtor – if the errors were made with good intentions. Passion creates a force multiplier and is the polar opposite of passivity. Passivity equals apathy, or an uncaring attitude and lack of interest. Passion simply means “caring, caring deeply” and being in control, self-control and acting humble and meek. Real world definition of meek: “Power under Control.”

BanCorp Realty: Purpose Driven Orange County Real Estate Company

When a real estate professional is passionate about their career, truly cares about the well-being of each and every one of their clients, the natural by-products are; quality and excellence in service, impressed clients, and ultimately increased likelihood of higher sales. When a Realtor is passionate it changes everything: their outlook on the day, their career, and who they are serving – them self or their client. When a Realtor makes the decision to serve others instead of self, this is what a purpose-driven career looks like.

BanCorp Realty: Orange County Homes For Sale

An amazing thing happens when passion is introduced into a real estate agents daily routine. As I mentioned earlier, passion will cover over a multitude of errors. Why does this happen? If a client believes a Realtor deeply cares (they really do care) about giving them excellent service and providing them with all of the relevant information they need, they are going to be more forgiving when a mistake is made (and in real estate there are always mistakes being made). When a client knows their Realtor is passionate and their intentions are good and then a mistake is made – they will know it was an honest one, it will be corrected, “so let’s move on to the next step of the transaction” – this is human nature. It is my experience that when Realtors are passionate, their client’s will be quick to give them second or even third chances when errors or mistakes are made. However, there is little or no tolerance for mistakes when there is no passion or caring.

If you aren’t passionate about real estate and passionate about what you do on a day-to-day basis, maybe you should evaluate why you are doing it in the first place? If passion leads to quality and excellence in service, impressed clients and higher likelihood of increased sales, why would you not want to show a much greater concern about your client’s well-being and demonstrate it through the way you lead your clients – with passion?

Greg Steinaker: Purpose-Driven Leader of BanCorp Realty

Greg Steinaker – President BanCorp Properties

Cities and Communities BanCorp Serves In:

Thursday, July 17, 2014

As a Realtor are you still doing what you love – or are you just doing what you do?

A real estate professional will never be successful if they don’t like or maybe even dread what they do. They will never reach their full potential if it is a small challenge just to pull them into the office each morning. When a Realtor loses focus and is drifting, the majority of the time it simply boils down to a passion question: are you passionate about real estate or are you just doing this to make money? Passion for what you do is at the very center of your professional success and personal fulfillment. Passion will give you energy when others around you grow tired and decide to make a career change. Why do the best Realtors make it look so easy? They understand that passion allows them to play during the day while the other Realtors are seemingly working so hard.

The best Realtors understand that they can’t effectively lead and manage their client’s without passion. Passion will cause transactions to come together and passion can actually cover mistakes made by the Realtor. How does that happen? If a client knows that their Realtor deeply cares, they are genuinely concerned about the client’s well-being and success in the transaction, and the Realtor is delivering excellent service, the natural by-product is the client is going to be more forgiving if a mistake is made and the Realtor’s intentions were good – this is simply human nature. No Realtor is perfect out in the field, but if they are passionate and their client’s know it, their passion will cover up a multitude of errors.

BanCorp Real Estate Group: Innovative Orange County Realtors

It is not difficult to be a passionate Realtor: especially if you love what you do. Passion in its simplest form means “caring, caring deeply” about your client’s, and being in control When a Realtor is passionate, the natural by-products are; quality, excellence and impressed client’s. If you aren’t passionate then you should ask yourself, who are you serving, your client or yourself?

Greg Steinaker - Former Executive of Ford Motor Company

Greg Steinaker - BanCorp Real Estate Group

Cities Communities BanCorp Serves In:

Mission Statement

BanCorp Real Estate Group provides and administers superior real estate services and product expertise. At each level we strive to be the client’s first choice. We continue to succeed treating our clients and the communities we serve as we would wish to be treated – the real golden rule.

We will continue to lead from the front the mutual trust, honest, integrity and authenticity in the delivery of our service. Our achievements are realized through our commitment to O.N.E. unified purpose driven resolve – Truth in Real Estate.