General FAQ
What is NARREIA?
NARREIA is the National Association of Residential Real Estate
Investment Advisors. It is a group of Realtors who have experience in
locating, buying, and selling property with the intent of making a profit
for the Client. We have an understanding of the nuances of financing investment
properties and have found reliable loan officers. For more details, visit
the About Us section of the site.
How do you pronounce NARREIA?
The acronym NARREIA is pronounced NAR-ee-uh. The emphasis is
on the first syllable, but the importance is in the second two: "Real
Estate Investment" and "Advisors."
Are there any costs, fees, or membership dues?
No, the use of NARREIA’s website is completely free for Clients, and aside from referral fees, it's free for Agents and Advisors to use as well. The only “costs” involved are the traditional costs associated with buying and selling real estate.
Will you sell any of my personal information (what are your privacy policy and terms of use)?
No, we absolutely will not sell your information to anyone. When you register, we only require your name, email address, and how you found NARREIA so that we can send referral fees to the appropriate source. Click here to review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
If it doesn’t cost to use the services, how does NARREIA make money?
The site obviously costs quite a bit to develop and maintain, and the way these costs are offset is by referral fees. For a Client to actually use the site, they must register. When they register, they enter the name of an agent who referred them (the agent MUST be registered with NARREIA before the Client registers). If Clients are not referred by an agent but find us through our marketing methods, their "agent" is NARREIA itself. Either way, if they use one of our Advisors to buy or sell a house, that Advisor sends the referring agent a referral fee. Out of this referral fee is a 5% GCI referral to NARREIA.
The beauty of this concept is that no one pays anything unless they actually buy property that they want, and there is no additional fee to the Client. The Advisors accept this as the cost of doing business, as they get to work with a high quality Clientele they would otherwise not be able to tap into. The Referring Agents love this because the referral fees are much higher than standard, and they can refer their valued Clients into a system of qualified agents who are competent working with Clients looking for investment property. The Clients truly appreciate the collection of qualified real estate agents for free.
How do I become a member of NARREIA?
Since there aren’t any dues, Clients don’t really become “members” of NARREIA, they just register with the site. Once they do, they have access to the many tools provided on the site as well as to the list of Advisors we advocate across the United States. Click here to register.
What other sections of the site are being developed?
We are working on an extensive set of tools that will be totally free to use. The anticipated online dates are in parentheses.
- We are working with Realtor.com and Credit Suisse
First Boston to utilize data generated by them to allow us all to manipulate
the data to either discover or reinforce our investment decisions. (March
2007)
- Online cash flow worksheets that will allow users
to enter the minimum data necessary to determine pre-tax monthly cash
flow, ROI at the end of the project, and capital required. (Completed)
- Personal Real Estate Investment Portfolio that will
allow Clients to upload their properties and all of their financial
details to calculate ROI and cash flow. (March 2007)
- Real Estate Investment Glossary (May 2007)
- Customized Domain Names for each Agent and Advisor.
This will allow any agent to create any domain name (like www.InvestInUS.com
or something) they feel Clients will remember, and when they type that
URL into their browser, it automatically fills in their name as the
referring agent. This will make Client registration more efficient.
(Completed)
- Fantasy Real Estate Investment and a Real Estate
Investment Simulator (September 2007)
- A National Hotsheet, where Agents (as opposed to Advisors) can post properties
that are incredibly smoking deals that they don’t have investors
for. There will be a $250 bond to post one of these properties, and
if the property sells to one of the NARREIA Clients, the bond will be
refunded. If it does not sell, the bond is retained by NARREIA. The
idea of the bond is to ensure that only the very best deals are posted
so the Agent knows they’ll sell it to a NARREIA Client.
(May 2007)
Clients
How do I use this site?
Once you register, you can cruise the entire site to learn about the various investment vehicles. If you want, the site will walk you step-by-step to develop an investment strategy. Feel free to contact any of the Advisors to help you build your strategy. After you determine what you would like to do, contact an Advisor in the region you would like to purchase or sell in, and they’ll take the ball and run with it.
What is the main benefit of using a NARREIA Advisor to buy and sell real estate investment property?
Before NARREIA, if you were interested in getting into real estate investment, you had to reinvent the wheel each and every time. Even if you understood real estate investment, it was a very laborious task locating a reliable real estate agent in the market you wanted to invest in.
By tapping into the NARRIA network, you have access to the Advisors, agents who were selected because they understand real estate investing. This is perhaps the most significant benefit of registering with NARREIA.
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Agents
How can I best take advantage of NARREIA?
Anyone with a current, valid real estate license can register
Clients to NARREIA. When you do, any time a Client associated with you
buys an investment property using one of the NARREIA Advisors, you’ll receive
a 30% referral fee for any contract your Client executes in the first two years he/she is registered. If you as an Agent purchase a property for yourself, you receive a 30% referral for as long as you remain an active, licensed agent.
By the way, we try not to hide anything here at NARREIA,
including the referral fee concept. It is no secret that we are all in
this to make money. This bizarre phenomenon about not talking about commission
and referral fees doesn’t make any sense. Yes, we make money from
buying and selling houses. It’s part of the cost of buying and selling
real estate. Does it matter if the referring agent receives anything,
especially since it doesn’t come out of the Client’s pocket?
For the record, 30% is pretty much unheard of, as the industry standard
is pretty much 20% to 25%, and it’s usually only on the first transaction.
How do I receive my referral fee?
Just like any other transaction where you received a referral fee. NARREIA Advisors are aware that many of their Clients come from the site, and that any Client from the site will be associated with an agent and a referral fee. When they put a property under contract, they send an Agent-to-Agent referral fee that will be signed by both brokers. When the commission check comes in to the Advisor’s broker, the broker splits the check and sends the referral money to the agent’s broker.
What are the costs associated with being an Agent affiliated with NARREIA?
There really is no cost to an Agent. The only “cost” is that 5% GCI of the referral fee will be
sent to NARREIA. In other words, when you have a 30% referral fee from one of your Client's purchases, 30%
will go to your broker and 5% more will go to NARREIA via NARREIA’s
broker (the Advisor will keep 65% of the gross commission, or GCI).
This 5% is what pays for the cost of developing the web site, the use of the Realtor.com and Credit Suisse First Boston data, and the high cost of the NARREIA officers flying, meeting, and screening Advisors throughout the United States.
As a NARREIA affiliated Agent, will I receive referrals to work with Clients?
No. Agents affiliated with NARREIA only refer Clients into NARREIA. The only people who work with NARREIA Clients are NARREIA Advisors, agents who have been screened to have a thorough understanding of real estate investment. What you do receive are referral fees from the transactions completed by NARREIA Advisors.
Theoretically, many agents could never do a transaction again and just refer Clients to NARREIA. With the referral fees that you receive being as high as they are, and considering you have zero expense with each transaction, if you just talked to and referred two Clients to complete one transaction each, you’d receive about as much commission as you would if you did all the work and spent all the marketing dollars on one transaction.
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Advisors
How do I become an Advisor?
Such a simple question, yet it’s an incredibly challenging task for the NARREIA officers. Becoming a NARREIA Advisor is by invitation only. You may submit your request to become an Advisor. If you receive confirmation of receipt of your request, please do not resubmit.
Once we receive your request, we will contact you for a phone interview. The phone interview is designed to ensure you understand the basic concepts of residential real estate investment, including the financing. We are not looking for yes-men who agree with our personal investment style. You may think one investment style or technique is the best way to approach investing, while we may think another way ... it honestly does not matter. There are many great real estate gurus out there, and they all have various investing styles and practices. We believe the variety of styles is beneficial to the Clients and promote our Advisors to think differently. The point of the phone interview is to ensure you have a good understanding of real estate investment.
If the phone interview goes well, we schedule a face to face meeting. Depending on schedules, it can be either in your home region or at the NARREIA home office in Las Vegas. Ideally, it will be in your home region so we can see your operation, see what the Clients will see, and get to tour a sample of the investment vehicles you would be promoting.
If that goes well, you’ll need to read and thoroughly understand our philosophy. There is a section of this site cordoned off to Advisors, and once you are on board with the way we do business, we make you an Advisor.
Is there a cost to be an Advisor?
No. You must be on board with dishing out up to a 35% referral fee for contracts executed through a NARREIA referral. In exchange
you'll tap into the thousands of Clients that register with NARREIA.
Consider this. A typical investor will buy 3 investment
properties in a short period of time. Often, these properties will be
in the same real estate market. If you received that Client and help them purchase
3 properties, you'll retain 65% of each transaction, or 195% overall, from a Client you would never have the opportunity to work
with.
Realize that the typical Realtor is putting an even
20% of their gross income back into their business in the form of marketing,
more if they are growing their business. Marketing here is only costs
you the time it takes to write your articles and talk with Clients.
As an Advisor, do I receive referral fees as well?
Yes, Advisors are also Agents, and any Client they refer into the NARREIA
network will be subject to referral fees if they purchase from other NARREIA
Advisors. This is a very big benefit and we would expect Advisors
to refer their clients to other regions to help balance their clients'
portfolios.
Can there be more than one Advisor in a market?
Yes. A common misconception is that NARREIA Advisors have an exclusive
territory. As I have utilized several lead generation sites in
the past, I understand why some agents might be concerned about exclusivity,
but what they don't understand is that this isn't a lead generation
system, it's more of a referral network. One of the many ways you can
apply NARREIA to your business is that if you find a viable investment
property, you can email it out to the Client database. If there are two
or three Advisors in your market, it is very unlikely that you are going
to find the exact same investment opportunities as the other Advisors.
Furthermore, Advisors tend to have varying areas of focus. Some are MLS
Resale oriented, like myself. I utilize the MLS to find a large number
of viable investments. Others, however, might be Foreclosure specialists.
You either do foreclosures, or you don't... there really isn't a gray
line, no "dabbling" in foreclosures. Another Advisor might have
exceptional inroads to one or more builders and tend to focus on pre-construction
and flips. We try to mix the Advisors in a market to provide more of a
total coverage for the Clients. Besides, the synergy that has developed
between our Advisors, especially the Advisors in the same market, has
been outstanding. NARREIA is nothing like you've ever seen before, and
being a team player is a big part of our philosophy. Believe me, if your
market is good for investing, there will be plenty of Clients to go around.
What is the tenure of a NARREIA Advisor?
Being a NARREIA Advisor is a privilege and there is no tenure. NARREIA Advisors are held to a very high standard, and if an Advisor deviates from the NARREIA philosophy they can be removed from the network.
The NARREIA officers are very flexible and understanding
when it comes to this. No Advisor could satisfy all of the Clients.
As in all aspects of life, there will be a 10% factor of the Clients who
cause problems. Unless there is an egregious negligent act or questionable
ethical violation of our code of ethics, we take the feedback with a grain
of salt. If an Advisor consistently receives negative feedback, they will
be consulted, and their association with NARREIA will be reviewed.
From an Advisor's perspective, how does NARREIA
differ from Agent Connect, Service Magic, and Home Gain?
These entities are lead based systems. They troll for any traffic and
all they do is pass the contact info on to the agent. At NARREIA, we have
free education, have staff on hand to help guide the Clients, and provide
a lot of support for the Client. Some Clients might jump right in and
contact the Advisors, but everyone including them benefit by going through
the entire process so they are trained and conditioned to work with the
Advisors. As most of the Clients will be referred in by other Agents and
Advisors, NARREIA is a referral-based system, not lead-based. Leads are
just contact info, where referrals are much stronger.
At Agent Connect, you pay for a ZIP code, and you receive the contact
information of any person who comes across one of their internet sites
and is interested in property in your ZIP code. You pay several hundred
dollars a month, sometimes even more than $1,000, to get this information.
Again, this is just contact information. It is not another Agent giving
you a third party endorsement, and they do not have free training or advice.
Service Magic utilizes another lead-generation business model. Instead
of exclusive areas, you sign up for an entire market, or several cities.
They get contact information from websurfers the same way as Agent Connect.
They then notify the agents who sign up a notice that there is someone
interested in buying or selling in their area. IF you choose to accept
the lead, you pay $30 or so for the contact information. But the big catch
that most agents resent is they will sell this information to up to three
agents. So they'll get $90 for the information, and the agents have to
compete to close the deal. This is a lead, so there is a good chance they
could go with one of the other agents or with someone else entirely.
Home Gain is very interesting. There, you pay $30/month, and they send
you what they call referrals. I'm not certain how they get their information,
but it seems to me that they are doing the same thing as Agent Connect
and Service Magic. The reason they call it a referral based system is
because if you accept and close the deal, you pay a 30% referral fee.
I have a strong business networking background, and to me there is a very
big difference between a lead and a referral. Some of NARREIA's Clients
will be straight from the internet and will cut to the chase and bypass
the education and advice, but for the most part, our Clients are focused
and are coming as a true referral from other Agents and Advisors. At Home
Gain, the referral fee is to HOME GAIN. At NARREIA, the majority of the
referral fees should be paid to another Agent or Advisor, like yourself.
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