With a lower volume of transactions and the general property market continuing to cool down compared to the heights of last year, now is the perfect time to take a closer look at your business expenses and find ways to cut your costs.

For real estate agents, there are a number of business expenses that are vital, not only to continue doing your job well, but to also save time which is equally important. The key to cost cutting is to first identify what your main costs are, and then try to improve or consolidate where you can or cut them out altogether.

Here are some key areas to focus on when cutting costs.

Evaluate your tech stack

There’s no doubt that technology has dramatically changed the game for most real estate agents over the past few decades. In todays market, technology tools can help make you more efficient as an agent, save you time and broaden your reach further than ever before.

In the PropTech era in which we find ourselves, new technology is evolving faster than ever before and new products are being released on a frequent basis. For agency's it’s important to continually assess the tools that you’re using to make sure you’re getting the most out of them and really maximising your technology stack.

The first step is to check that you’re not doubling up on technology. Many tools can do multiple functions and it’s important to make sure that you’re not paying for the same service twice.

Secondly, all of your systems should be well-integrated. You can easily pay for more tools than you might not otherwise need, simply because your current stack doesn’t integrate well. In many cases, you can find one great piece of software such as VaultRE, or Eagle Software, that can handle all of your needs at a more cost-effective price than paying for a number of different services that don't together in a cohesive way.

By selecting a comprehensive CRM as your starting point, you’ll have the benefit of saving time as you avoid integration issues and data loss across platforms. For a full guide on auditing your tech stack, check out our comprehensive article here.

Finally, you need to identify the best value for money. Oftentimes, platforms have different levels that will offer different features depending on your requirements. You might not need all the tools a platform has to offer, so you shouldn’t have to pay for them.

Utilise automation

Automation is one of the seven essential features of any real estate CRM.

If you can save time, you will save money. That applies to a range of different areas of your business, so you should always be on the lookout for more effective ways of doing things and ways you can automate tasks.

If there is the option of replacing a tedious task that is done by a human, with technology, then that is a great starting point to save significant costs and the hassles that go with hiring and managing employees. However, the real estate industry includes a number of roles that thrive with the human touch, so it then becomes important to create ways to help your employees to become more efficient in their day to day tasks.

Taking the time to plan ahead

If you’re trying to cut down on costs, nothing beats great planning. The better you plan your overall business from the top down, the more effective and cost-efficient you can be.

That starts with your overall business plan and goals, down to the way you plan your day. You should be regularly doing planning sessions where you set both high-level long-term goals and short-term goals and work out how you’re going to achieve them. Learn you can effectively plan ahead and create realistic goals for yourself and your agency by reading our recent planning article.

Detailed planning and strategising makes you more goal focussed and efficient as a business and in the process will save you and your business both time and money.