While data can be used to sell properties, agencies can also use it to guide growth strategy by monitoring market developments and competitors.
Along with understanding housing market trends, which has long been essential to real estate success, agencies must also analyse key metrics before making major business decisions to maximise growth potential.
In a recent episode of the REB Podcast, PRD chief economist Diaswati Mardiasmo explained that principals could leverage their data to optimise workflows and manage the scaling of their agency.
“As a principal, it's not just market data that is important; business data is key as well,” Mardiasmo said.
Mardiasmo said that “business data” included information about competitors and their market performance.
She said the data includes sales figures and days on market, as well as internal insights into how teams are using processes and systems.
By understanding which areas are actually seeing value, Mardiasmo said that leveraging business data was pivotal to developing a growth strategy.
“That can really help to figure out where your resources should be going.”
Mardiasmo said that by keeping an eye on their competitors, agencies could determine whether an area was worth dedicating more time to or whether to pivot their focus to a less-serviced area.
“When there’s too much competition and not enough stock, and there’s another area that could service your business better, then it makes sense to pull your resources in that way.”
“Having that benchmark data that is set, that all of your agents know, that is what can drive your team.”
With an established baseline of data, Mardiasmo said principals could see who was underperforming in the business and offer support when needed.
While data on current business performance can be a valuable tool, Mardiasmo said principals also needed to look at development data and understand the infrastructure projects pipeline.
While data has become an integral part of the industry, she said agencies need to avoid being overwhelmed by the sea of numbers by implementing a management system that suits their needs, keeping it consistently updated.
“Being data diligent is such a difficult skill to conquer.”
“It's hard to remember everything, so that data discipline, that is key when it comes to dealing with data, because data can be noisy.”
Additionally, Mardiasmo said that being diligent with data and finding ways to deliver it more simply would become more important as people use alternative methods for their own research.
“Data is going to be delivered across different of mediums.”
“The simpler you can make the data dictates how the data is going to be delivered,” Mardiasmo concluded.
Listen to the whole episode here
