How to Be a Community Oriented Realtor

Realtors have the opportunity to be dynamic community leaders. Because you interact with your community every day, you have an understanding of your area’s strengths and weaknesses, the needs of your fellow community members, and it’s very likely you have connections all throughout the region.
 

Positioning yourself to invest in your community through service, leadership, or organizing will further your professional goals; however, it will also help you strike a deeply satisfying work/life balance that incorporates authentic altruism. Making time to promote the wellbeing of your community is almost certainly going to have positive effects throughout other aspects of your life.
 

This article is intended to give you some ideas about ways you can begin to emerge as a leader in your community. This list is by no means comprehensive, but hopefully you find yourself inspired to find an avenue by which you can best become a more community-oriented realtor.

1. Use the skills you already have.

If you have experience with children or teenagers, there are sure to be youth outreach programs in your area serving underprivileged kids. Helping these children gain skills and stability makes it much more likely that they will become healthy, productive members of society, so investing in them is investing directly in the fabric of your community.
 

If you are great with communication between team members, encourage neighborhoods to nominate leaders who can organize into cooperative groups. These grounds can facilitate communication and cooperation throughout town.
 

Perhaps you have prior administrative work, or have served on boards. These strong skills can be used for non-profit work or partial-profit work in almost any area you wish!
 

2. Create and operate a website that gives prospective home buyers a tour of key neighborhoods in your community. 

This has become increasingly popular with realtors across the country. In order to make the website as personal and interactive as possible, interview community members about what they enjoy about their location. Visit the local farmer’s markets and chat with produce experts, cheesemakers, butchers, and bakers. Interview a few school principals, inviting them to share what makes their school a wonderful place for children.

These warm, inviting gestures will help newcomers feel welcome and familiar with the faces and feel of the various parts of your town. They will associate your work with this feeling, and likely always remember your website as positively influencing their decision about moving to your area.

3. Organize charitable fundraisers.

If you can’t commit to a long-term project, fundraisers are a great way to put yourself out there. You can choose to benefit a children’s hospital, organizations that create housing for the homeless, or a local health clinic. The possibilities are enormous, and each one would give you a great platform for meeting influential people, people in need, and people who thrive in community service. Each of these aspects will contribute to you becoming more community-oriented.

4. Organize an effort to reclaim an abandoned building under the umbrella of a non-profit.
We won’t pretend this isn’t a hugely ambitious project, but it just might be right for you in your location. Many areas have old, beautiful homes and buildings that have been abandoned and left to decline. Any community would doubtless rather have a non-profit or partial-profit entity operating a charitable organization from one of these locations than see former beauty turn to rot. These reclamation efforts, like charitable fundraising itself, are excellent opportunities to work with a wide cross-section of people in your town.

5. Sponsor local foster children and organize toy drives around the holidays.

Foster children are a fixture in every community across the country, but they are frequently overlooked, marginalized, and made to feel “less than.” They often go without basic necessities like well-fitting shoes, warm jackets, and school supplies. Consider sponsoring local foster children so that they have the opportunity to feel a bit more like they belong.

At the holidays, new toy drives are especially helpful. Without donations from the community, many foster children will simply not receive ANY gifts during this time. This is heartbreaking for children, many of whom see other children opening and enjoying wonderful toys and games. Offering your office as a hub for donations is a wonderful way to generate happiness and joy for these underprivileged kids.

6. Volunteer.

If you feel like you aren’t in a position to organize something yourself, there are numerous ways for you to volunteer for already thriving organizations. Whether you volunteer at a food bank or spend one Saturday a month at a senior center, there’s sure to be an enjoyable way for you to take steps toward investing your time into your community.