How a quick new-home specialist certification course could boost your entire professional arsenal
Looking for the next big thing to add to your professional real estate agent tool belt? Build a new home niche by becoming a Certified New Home Co-Broker, a leading designation for real estate agents and brokers seeking to assist buyers with new construction.
While there are other tools and certifications out there, one of the best is this online new home specialist designation.
This three-hour online training will help you master new homes — and enable you to partner effectively with a builder’s on-site Sales Team and Online Sales Counselor to show and sell new homes.
The course and certification represent the life’s work of David Fletcher, a top broker and the founder of New Home Co-Broker Academy. Fletcher has been bringing agents and builders together to meet the needs of homebuyers for decades.
“Realtors and builders needed an affordable training system that both parties could understand and agree made sense,” Fletcher said.
“We named the course, How to Build a New Homes Niche, using wording real estate agents would understand,” Fletcher added. “We established the New Home Co-Broker Academy, a name homebuilders would understand.”
While Fletcher has devoted a lifetime to bringing real estate professionals and builders together, he acknowledges that timing is especially important now for both groups to work together to help homebuyers find the right home.
“Saleable resale inventory is projected to be in short supply for the foreseeable future,” Fletcher said. “Buyers today also feel comfortable with brand-new, never-lived-in new homes — many of which offer the latest technologies.”
The three-hour online New Homes Niche course includes the NHCB designation. Agents in Florida can receive three hours of continuing education (CE) credit, as well.
Key learnings from the training include:
- How to Use New Homes to Establish a Price Baseline for Each Buyer
- How to Find New Home Inventory
- How to Show New Homes with Confidence
- How to Team Up with a Builder’s Onsite Sales Consultant
- How to Find New Home Shoppers
It may sound like a lot of information to digest, but in the long run it’s certainly something worth looking into. Here’s why:
Benefits of New Home Co-Broker (NHCB) Certification
As a real estate professional, you know there are major differences when it comes to selling new homes versus selling resale. A new home specialist certification course lays those differences out for you.
“Realtors are learning that new homes represent three possible saleable solutions: pre-sales, partially built and move-in ready homes,” Fletcher said. ”This gives the agent an appealing option for many types of buyers.”
Recent graduates shared their thoughts on NHCB training and certification.
“I have sold resales for eight years. This course opened my eyes,” said Gladys Moyal, a New Home Certified Co-Broker with Sellstate Partners Realty in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“Within two days of completing this course, I sold a new D.R. Horton home,” Moyal added.
Training and designations also make you more marketable as a professional. As prospective clients are sifting through pages of real estate professionals, the more designations you have, the more appealing you will appear as an individual — and the more confident you and your buyers will be in a home search.
“The agents who took this course are having such good results, we decided to require all recruits with one year or less experience to take this course,” said Alan Randel, Broker/CEO AmeriTeam Realty in Orlando, Fla.
Builders also see the value of NHCB training — and look forward to working with graduates.
According to Marie Lorimer, a Realtor® for Allen Tate Companies in Charlotte, N.C., and the former vice president of marketing at AV Homes, another major benefit is getting an inside look at the home construction process from beginning to end, which can be an intimidating thought for someone who only has resale experience.
“It defines the roles, it explains what you’re doing, the process to talk to the buyers and help them understand why certain things have to happen and what comes up during the building process,” says Derek Stabel, a sales associate with Niblock Homes in Charlotte, N.C.
Register for this three-hour online New Home Co-Broker training and designation here.
Representing a Builder Directly?
If you partner with a builder to market and sell their spec homes, Quick Move-In inventory and to-be-built floor plans, the Certified New Home Sales Professional (CSP) designation from The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is also a wise investment.
One of four designations from NAHB’s Institute of Residential Marketing, CSP training provides valuable grounding in key aspects of new home sales. Not surprisingly, it’s a designation many top builder Onsite Sales Counselors seek.
CSP training covers the entire homebuyer journey – helping you identify and engage prospects, manage the sales process smoothly, answer FAQ’s and objections, close the sale, and assist the homebuyer in the design and construction phase.
Learn more about CSP and other NAHB designations here.
National Association of Realtors® Training
As a real estate professional, you’re no doubt familiar with the value of new home-related training from the National Association of Realtors® (NAR).
The New Home Construction and Buyer Representation – Professionals, Product, and Process course from NAR is another great tool to help you serve new homebuyers.
The course – which earns credit toward the ABR designation – helps real estate professionals guide buyers through key steps to purchase, customize, and construct a new home. The training also includes a focus on partnering with a homebuilder’s team and building strong relationships that serve your buyer.
These courses — often just a few hours or days of training — utilize audio and video clips of live seminar training and onsite construction activities to help you increase your knowledge, confidence, and professionalism, whether you’re representing builders, developers, or new homebuyers.
“You learn about the roles and responsibilities you have working for the builder versus working for the buyer,” said Stabel, “about the agency, agency disclosure, the process of buying a house, expectation, the different steps that are part of the building process, then also helping the homeowner understand that process and set the proper expectations.”
Once in the classroom, whether that be literal or on your home computer in your pajamas, there will be plenty of enlightening material for you to add to your real estate arsenal, getting you to selling new homes in no time.
A Certified Life
Now, how could this certification change your daily business?
Mary Carpousis, an agent with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, sold two new homes within five weeks of earning her certification with the New Homes Co-Broker Academy.
“Earning the certification gave me the credentials, but the course itself gave me the takeaways I needed to know how to work with onsite agents and how to qualify resale prospects for new homes,” Carpousis said. “It’s not only easy, but it’s fun to watch my buyers get excited when they understand that they can, in fact, afford a new home.”
“It’s really critical as time goes on that the buyer loves their home because it’s such an emotional purchase,” said Lorimer. “When anything is drawn out like that, it can be a little more difficult and I think that’s where a lot of our new home specialists have a knack for communication and people skills.”
“I’m like a marriage counselor, financial advisor — I mean you do everything. Even their kids get to know you,” said Stabel.
But to him, this is what makes that certification all worthwhile.
“You meet people and you’re selling them their home and you become part of that process,” he says. “Every day is different, every day is a challenge, but it’s rewarding. If you have people skills and you like to manage that process, it’s a great job.”
