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Wayne Zhou is one of the brilliant minds behind Prospes Real Estate Corps and began his real estate career by helping his family manage properties in Queens and Brooklyn. With a degree in Accounting, Business, and Finance from Baruch College coupled with over 4 years of hands-on experience in his family-owned business, making the transition into Real Estate was seamless and natural.
When Wayne Zhou works with his clients, his goal is not only to help his clients buy or sell properties but also to create close life-long relationships with his clients. Wayne is a shark in every sense of the word and works hard to better himself every day in his personal and professional life.
What are some goals you’re currently focused on?
In my personal life my goals are to maintain my physical and mental health in addition to creating time to read the books that will help me improve my time management skills.
Professionally, my first goal is to focus on growing my team; while also helping people around me and guiding them to success. I am a true believer in giving back to my community. Another goal of mine is to expand my property management/rental business. I currently own and manage 30 units (both in residential and commercial), and in the next year or so, I am looking to expand my portfolio by 10X.
My definition of success is closely associated with being able to contribute to society in a beneficial way. If I can effectively create jobs and help others within my communities, I will have been successful. A happy family and a life worth living is another attribute of success.
Wayne Zhou
Tell us how you organize, plan, and prioritize your work.
They most efficient way I’ve found that helps me organize, plan, and prioritize my work is to always have my planner in hand. Because of my busy schedule, I review my schedule the night before so I can plan everything out and ensure a smooth day! This has allowed me to create time for family and friends in between my busy work weeks.
How have you managed to work through a stressful situation in your career?
While working hard to make sure I have my days planned out, it is unrealistic to not expect issues to spring up out of nowhere. I am someone who has dealt with many stressful situations in life and over the years, I have learned how to focus on the big picture instead of stressing over the little obstacles that come my way.
Many people get anxious or stressed out about small things but for me, I am a problem solver. When obstacles come my way, I figure out ways to overcome them.
What motivates you?
What motivates me is my life partner. I have been extremely lucky to have met the love of my life who is extremely successful. Being with her makes me feel like we could conquer anything and her journey has motivated me to become a better person every day.
Have you ever had an experience when you applied new technology or information in your job? How did it help your company?
Hubstaff is a new technology I recently applied and this not only helps the management team monitor everyone’s performance but also helps the team understand their work efficiency.
My favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur is creating jobs that help others grow and become the person they dream of becoming…
Wayne Zhou
What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
My favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur is creating jobs that help others grow and become the person they dream of becoming and providing that job security that so many strive for.
At a corporate job, an employees’ pay is always capped but as an entrepreneur/business owner, the sky is my limit. It is just a matter of making your money work for you, as opposed to working for money.
Name a time when your advice to management led to an improvement in your company.
Flexible commission structures. The market rate for real estate commission structure is usually 80/20 or higher on the brokerage side but at Prospes Real Estate, we allow our agents to choose their commission structure based on their level of maturity. The highest commission rate for the brokerage side at Prospes is 15% which is already 5% lower than the market average rate. Having been a real estate agent for over 1 decade, I understand how difficult it is to make it in this industry so both my partner, David, and I agreed to offer a lower-than-market commission cut to all Prospes agents.
Tell us about an experience in which you analyzed information and evaluated results to choose the best solution to a problem.
Agents come to me every day about different problems. My job is to help them resolve their problems with my expertise and knowledge in the industry. For example, one of my recent listings in Woodhaven was listed for 699k and because of its private driveway, which is rarely seen in this neighborhood, it indeed is a very decent listing. However, the home is built in the early 1900s and the backyard is badly laid out, so not too many competitive offers were received.
After putting it on the market for some time and having done a couple of open houses, I decided to suggest the owner do some minor renovations which cost them less than 10k. The listing then was sold at the full asking price!
Share an effective approach to working with a large amount of information/data. How has your approach affected your company?
Data on specific listings helps me understand the true market value of a property and I never look at a listing price thinking that is the true market price of a property, I do the comps to evaluate the home on my own when I see a new listing and this allows me to strategize the next steps.
How do you define success?
Success is not only reliant on occupational status. My definition of success is closely associated with being able to contribute to society in a beneficial way. If I can effectively create jobs and help others within my communities, I will have been successful. A happy family and a life worth living is another attribute of success.
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