By Maggie FitzRoy, Contributing Writer
When Realtors Oksana Pondo and Marnie Miller list a home, they often hire a drone video-grapher to create a narrated see-it-through-the-air property tour and a 3-D still photographer to create a virtual interior walk-through.
They then post the videos and photos on the internet, making them available to potential buyers worldwide.
The video and photo services don’t come cheap. But they do pay off for Pondo and Miller, who are both relatively new to the real estate business.
A $468,000 home that the Watson Realty Nocatee office team recently listed sold in 29 days to a cash buyer in China. A neighbor on that street was so impressed he listed his home with them.
“We don’t mind spending the money on the best marketing to accomplish the seller’s needs,” Pondo said. “We also stay on top of all the new technology.”
Pondo got into real estate in the summer of 2015 and Miller in March 2016. By the end of 2016, they had a combined $3 million in closed and pending sales.
For newbies, that is “blowing it out of the park,” their broker, Phil Lamb, said.
“In the real estate world, they tell us it takes a long time to build your business,” said Lamb, a 20-year veteran. “And if you come in with that mindset, it takes a long time. But if you come in with the idea that ‘I can make this happen in the first six months,’ you can do it in the first six months.”
Pondo and Miller earned prestigious office space in their company’s Nocatee office six months after it opened. Both live in Nocatee, which is an advantage for selling there.
But they also look for properties to list in surrounding areas, including Ponte Vedra Beach.
One of their 2016 listings was for a $1.25 million home on San Juan Drive, which had previously been for sale by owner. They make it a point to contact every For Sale By Owner home they can find and homeowners whose listings with other Realtors have just expired.
They find buyers and sellers through social media, direct mailings and newspaper and magazine ads.
Pondo, who is from Ukraine, speaks Ukrainian, Russian and Bulgarian, so she markets herself to immigrants and foreign buyers, who connect with her.
Pondo and Miller “have every day planned,” Lamb said. “I get here early and they get here before me. They treat it as a full- time job.”
Jessica Pettry, a rookie with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Florida Network Realty in Ponte Vedra Beach, also treats her business as a full-time job.
She became a Realtor in June 2015 after leaving a career in fundraising and corporate marketing that required frequent travel.
She and her husband planned to start a family, so she wanted something with a flexible schedule that didn’t require frequent flying.
She found it in real estate, and almost immediately secured buyers and sellers by contacting nearly everyone she knew about her new career.
Pettry’s “sphere of influence” was wide because she grew up in Clay County, has lived in the Jacksonville region her entire life and now lives in Ponte Vedra Beach.
By the end of 2016, she’d exceeded her business goals for the year, despite being pregnant for much of the time.
She had $2.5 million in closed sales, with 10 business transactions, half of which were listings.
Pettry “farms,” or works a neighborhood, where she once lived: Oxford Chase, near Gate Parkway, doing a lot of direct mailings there.
“But I don’t farm extensively because my business is not geographically limited,” she said. “It’s important to know the city, know every pocket of it. Know what areas are moving.”
She studies the Multiple Listing Service daily, including the “hot sheet” that lists new inventory, price changes.
Pettry, 30, also posts real estate-related news extensively on her personal and professional Facebook pages, which she says is a “huge” inexpensive marketing tool for reaching others in her generation.
And she uses her Instagram account to post pictures of homes she visits on open houses and real estate agent caravan tours, highlighting home decor trends and ideas.
Above all, “in this business you need to be creative and flexible,” she said.
During Hurricane Matthew in October, she listed a home in Lake Asbury in Clay County.
The homeowners rode out the storm, which was a good thing, because they almost immediately got an offer.
Pettry drove there and negotiated the price during the storm, “because in this business you don’t want to miss an opportunity.”
The day the sale closed, she got a phone call from a neighbor interested in selling, too.
“Listings are a force multiplier,” she said. “A way to potentially get new business.”
Cara Ferreira, who started with Keller Williams in March, has been so successful her first year that she had 14 closings by the end of December, about 40 percent of which were listings.
She also promotes her business on social media, as well as through her sphere of influence, direct mailings, involvement in a moms group in her neighborhood and by driving around with a large sign on her car, with her photo and contact information prominently displayed.
She hires an interior designer for every listing to help homeowners show their house to its best advantage. Ferreira also uses professional photographers and videographers.
She had $4.5 million in sales by the end of December, which CC Underwood — a Realtor with Keller Williams who has her own team — said is “exceptional.”
What Ferreira is doing is difficult, Underwood said, because she is working with buyers and sellers on her own.
An agent with that much business must sooner rather than later form a team or join one because even working full time there are not enough hours in the day, she said.
Whether you use print advertising, social media, video or 3-D virtual photography, “you have to market the seller’s home in the best light to the most buyers,” Underwood said.
Most customers are real estate savvy before contacting a Realtor because they study the market online first.
“So now your job is not to be the market expert,” she said. “It’s to be the marketing expert.”