Member Spotlight: Kris Anderson

CLHMS Guild Member Kris Anderson’s career is a testament to hard work, the hunger to learn, and the willingness to accept a challenge.

Her accolades range from being named one of the Top 20 Women in Real Estate to becoming a member of Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate.

On Zillow, Kris has made 41 sales in the last twelve months, proving she knows how to create referral-worthy experiences for her clients and knows a thing or two about becoming a successful real estate agent.

Her ability to create detailed luxury home marketing strategies for her listings and to meet the needs of even the most demanding luxury clients has helped her build Your Premier Team, a successful real estate company spanning across Sedona, Scottsdale, and Phoenix, Arizona, which now produces in the top 1% of their market.

Our interview with her this month resulted in some powerful insights for agents who are wanting to break into the luxury market, and also for struggling luxury agents who are interested in becoming a successful real estate agent.

Breaking into the luxury real estate market

“I started out working really hard with first-time home buyers, and working really hard all the time. I figured that breaking into luxury real estate would be just as difficult as working with first time home buyers, and I just decided to jump in and go for it,” Kris explains.

To start, she was able to get a mentor within her first real estate company who had the most luxury real estate listings. To sweeten the deal for her mentor and to get a true glimpse into working with luxury listings, Kris offered to hold open houses for her mentor every single day.

She adds that if potential mentors are resistant to letting new luxury agents handle their open houses, setting up a referral agreement or even paying them to shadow them may help soften the request.

“The biggest challenge, as anybody knows breaking into luxury, is that when you go on a listing appointment, the number one question the luxury seller is going to ask you is, ‘how many luxury homes have you sold in my neighborhood and how many people do you know who can afford to buy this house?” who can afford it?’”

In response to those kinds of questions, Kris was able to look at her company’s sales and listings specific to the areas in which people were asking. This, combined with communicating a very detailed marketing plan to those prospective clients, is how she ended up with her very first luxury listing.

Going the extra mile for clients to stay top of mind

Kris also makes sure that every existing and prospective client gets the five-star treatment, a driving force behind her becoming a successful real estate agent.

She has what she calls the “Fifteen Second Rule”, which means that if she or her team are contacted by any client or prospect, the goal is to respond within fifteen seconds.

“It’s all about responsiveness, especially with luxury listings.” Those clients tend to be demanding, and our Rolodex is very thick. So resource management is the key to getting them what they want,” she says.

She also credits The Institute’s live trainings with helping her build up that Rolodex of resources. With real estate market trends shifting towards buyers wanting the newest amenities and a variety of experiences, Kris says that luxury real estate agents greatly benefit from building their network of specialists beyond the usual painters, plumbers, and home inspectors.

“The Institute, I think, provides the best class anybody can take to get the luxury home marketing designation, and especially doing the physical classroom time to meet other agents. A lot of those agents in the network can share ideas, or perhaps some great providers,” she adds.

She also mentions that The Institute’s Online Wealth Look-up tool (OWL) helps her get an idea of a client before she goes on a listing appointment to better serve the client. “They really give you everything you need to be better, you just have to do the work.”

Adapting to real estate market trends in a new era of luxury

As real estate market trends are shifting towards more space-efficient living, even top-producing agents like Kris are noticing a slowdown in upper-tier listings.

In her market, properties such as those that are over 4,500 square feet, are above the $2M price point, or those that have more than one acre, are seeing less movement on the market. In her Sedona market, luxury ranch owners are having a difficult time passing their large estates down to their children and are seeing longer listing times when they decide to sell.

To adapt, Kris’s marketing strategy includes breaking down these larger estates into more manageable concepts for today’s luxury buyer. “We’re trying to break up those big estates and focus on some of the things they could do with them. For example, we have a 14-acre parcel. We know we could subdivide that, or we could turn that into animal rescue opportunity. We’re just trying to take something that’s an albatross and break it down into something more servable,” she explains.

Another example she gives is a combined home and horse facility listing. Rather than marketing it as a horse ranch, she brought in classic cars to be photographed in the barn facilities to position the estate as the perfect property for a car collector.

Another trend Kris has adapted to? Online brokerages.

Kris is part of eXp Realty, an online global brokerage where agents no longer have to pay desk fees, royalty fees, or franchise fees, get a retirement plan as a shareholder, and get to keep more of their commission. “I have never been with a stronger, more collaborative company,” she says, proving that part of becoming a successful real estate agent is all about thinking out of the box and welcoming the changes that inevitably come with an extraordinary market.

Want to become part of The Institute’s network of elite agents and stand out among the crowd? Click here to learn more about our trainings and CLHMS designation.

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