In comments to a post at Rain City Guide, new agent Seattle Eric wrestles with Lady Ardell over what is and is not broken in real estate representation.
Ardell offers an amazingly detailed list, at which I can only marvel. I’ve had run-ins with less-than-perfect agents, but my common experience is the opposite — very thoughtful, experienced, conscientious people. I’ve heard a lot of stories about bad agents, but I almost always assume that stories improve with age, with retelling and with the transfer of retelling rights from the original raconteur to who knows how many raconteurs-by-proxy. We are not liars, as a species, just very good storytellers.
(Even so, bad agent stories are a good education. Love is hard but hate is easy. Most of your clients will love you if you do nothing they hate, and bad agent stories are how they tell you what they hate.)
My beef with other Realtors has to do with their being lazy and complacent, rather than their being corrupt or stupid. Much of what I write about here consists of marketing ideas we are pioneering. You could argue that we are arming our own competition, but I know we are not. As good as the ideas we deploy are, no one in my market is copying them. That’s all you have to do by the time we’re done — monkey-see, monkey-do — but the agents are too lazy, too cheap or too clueless to jump on an intellectual bandwagon they exerted not one thought to create in the first place. Dinosaur is always on the lunch menu.
In the same respect, I am appalled by how how inept, technically, many Realtors are. Jim Cronin at The Real Estate Tomato had a wonderful riff on how stupid e-Pro is — and people at ActiveRain argued with him about it. We live at the far right edge of this Bell Curve, but my assumption, always, is that agents I’ll end up working with will be very far to the left side.
In general, I think agents do way too much of what Ardell argues they no longer do enough of: They mimic behaviors that have not thought through and do not understand. I see the same crap over and over again, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why no one is measuring results to discover that these lame stunts do not work. I don’t need for other agents to do badly for us to succeed — that’s purely a bonus on our end — but they seem determined to do badly anyway. Unlike a real business, the cost of entry in real estate is so low that fools abound. This condition will not persist.
To the extent that anything is broken in the real estate industry, it’s broken at the broker level and above. I could wish for better, smarter agents, but I think the bottom-feeders are going to take care of that: In ten years, the population of working Realtors will be much better, much smarter — and much smaller.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Seattle Eric says:
Greg:
Wow! Gulp. I don’t know if I want to be known as the ‘guy who sparred with Ardell’.
A question – why do you refer to agents as Realtors? All Realtors are agents, but not all agents are Realtors. Is this a rule if you’re a Realtor (I’m not)? It seems extremely elitist, given that there are lots of agents who probably do a better job than Realtors (exhibit A – Ardell).
August 19, 2006 — 9:34 pm
Greg Swann says:
> A question – why do you refer to agents as Realtors? All Realtors are agents, but not all agents are Realtors. Is this a rule if you’re a Realtor (I’m not)? It seems extremely elitist, given that there are lots of agents who probably do a better job than Realtors (exhibit A – Ardell).
I live in a different world than yours. There are licensees here in Arizona who are not Realtors, but I know of no one who represents buyers or sellers who is not a Realtor. I use Realtor not as a generic term for licensee but to describe a ubiquitous condition among the people I compete against. In that respect, I tend to use agent and Realtor interchangeably. This is not literally true, but the type of agency that non-Realtor licensees might undertake is usually not residential buyer or seller representation. And, of course, many non-Realtor licensees are agents rarely or never.
August 19, 2006 — 10:23 pm
Seattle Eric says:
Wow! Interesting. Thanks for the reply.
August 19, 2006 — 10:24 pm
Ardell DellaLoggia says:
Eric,
That is because here in the Seattle area we are somewhat unique in that the mls is not owned and operated by the Board of Realtors. In most of the Country, you would have a lot of trouble getting mls priveleges without also being a Realtor A lot of the David Barry suits are about that tied relationship.
Our mls is owned by the Brokers and not by the Board of Realtors.
P.S. I have only been a non-Realtor for a very short time. Most of my career I have been a Realtor and some of my best friends are Realtors 🙂 Generally speaking it is harder to negotiate Buyer Agent Fees with buyers and be a Realtor at the same time. I’m hoping that will change. It is also harder to blog if you work for a big company and are a Realtor. So I’m taking advantage of being a dog on a long leash for as long as I can.
August 20, 2006 — 12:54 am
Greg Swann says:
> Generally speaking it is harder to negotiate Buyer Agent Fees with buyers and be a Realtor at the same time.
Why would that be so?
> It is also harder to blog if you work for a big company and are a Realtor.
Or that? These would seem to be complaints about the broker/salesperson licensing laws. If every licensee could fly his or her own flag, neither of the problems would exist, right?
August 20, 2006 — 5:56 am
Ardell DellaLoggia says:
Well Greg, you tell me.
How many good blogs are run by agents from the major brokers who are connected to the Realtor organization?
How many blog posts on negotiating fees with a buyer client are written by agents connected to major brokers who are connect to the Realtor organization.
Give me a list of ten of each and I’ll gladly eat my words. Maybe I just haven’t seen them. I see ones at the top of the Search Engines, but not ones with meaty content or who talk about a buyer’s right to negotiate their side of the fee structure.
Ten of each…from anywhere in the country, run by someone who is a “Realtor”.
August 20, 2006 — 10:28 am
Greg Swann says:
> Ten of each…from anywhere in the country, run by someone who is a “Realtor”.
Your standard is triply specious. First and most importantly, there are no NAR or state or local association rules against either weblogging or negotiating fees with buyers. If these activities are in short supply, this is not proof of a conspiracy. Neither you nor any other pracititioner in the nation, other than BloodhoundRealty.com, make custom yard signs for your listings. This is not a conspiracy either.
Second, big-name agents tend to be the most clueless technologically, because…
Third, they depend on their sphere of influence for business.
Radical marketing techniques are deployed by the hungry, not the stated. The absence of radcial marketing techniques among the fat and sassy proves absolutely nothing.
August 20, 2006 — 10:42 am
Ardell DellaLoggia says:
It is difficult to pin down where NAR is influenced by the wishes of the large brokerage houses in the Country. Who gets to sit on which committees and all that.
It is easier for us to see through the veil here in the Seattle area, since being a member of the mls, is in no way tied to the Realtor organization.
You live in a world where everyone pretty much HAS to be a Realtor to sell residential real estate, as I did for most of my career. I have nothing against Realtors at all. I do have something against buyers not having the right to a basic conversation about compensation the same as sellers. I do have a something against buyers being “procured” for the benefit of the seller. I do have something against an organization who has not taken a stand on this issue to the benefit of the buyer consumer, and who still feels the seller pays the fee after all these years.
I see all of these things as tied together and not in linear “rule based” formation.
That’s all for me on this topic. Off to my Open House.
August 20, 2006 — 11:18 am
Greg Swann says:
Have fun at your open house. I think I’ll take this out to its own post, because I think it’s interesting.
August 20, 2006 — 11:34 am
Todd Tarson says:
Ardell
I hang my license in a RE/MAX office. I am the president of my local Association. I have a blog. I also negotiate my fees with buyers and sellers.
Now maybe I’m not at the largest RE/MAX office, or the president of a large local, or don’t have a good blog… but the point is even though I’m a cheerleader for NAR and like I believe I am my own business. That means each client is different and free to negotiate with me the terms they want me to work for.
It’s time to be leaders. I find your reads to be highly enlightening (in fact I’ll probably be reading your Mrs. X post at the next new member orientation meeting). Together we can lead the newer generation of real estate practitioners while offering the public revamped and improved service.
The Association (whether national, state, or local) is only as good as the Members that make up those bodies.
BTW, the brokers that own your MLS, do you ever wonder what they might be doing with the profits??
August 20, 2006 — 11:40 am
Jonathan Dalton says:
Every agent fly their own flag? Good lord, we may as well hand car keys out to 9-year-olds at the same time.
Greg, you’re destroying your own argument by saying most agents are lazy and complacent. You can make a very good living in real estate knowing very little about what you are doing as long as you don’t get sued. Does that serve the public, though? Not really.
Some brokers add value to the process. And if I choose to associate with one and pay them a portion of what I earn, then what is it to you? Where are you or your clients being harmed by my having a broker?
I’ve run into more problems with agents right out of school who run to the first 100% shop they find — they don’t know what they’re doing, their brokers don’t care and I end up doing their work for them.
Do I believe brokers ought to provide better training? Absolutely. Do I believe agents ought to go somewhere where they’ll receive the sales training you don’t get in school rather than running around willy-nilly? Yep.
Lastly, as I meander through this post, the superior marketing you claim helps you more than any one client. Bloodhounds don’t sell homes better. You’re creating a brand, just as I did with my beagle when I started.
Of course, I think Tobey knows more about real estate than a handful of the agents I’ve dealt with down the line.
August 21, 2006 — 11:17 am
Greg Swann says:
> Greg, you’re destroying your own argument by saying most agents are lazy and complacent.
To the contrary. I’m showing how to get rid of the bums practically overnight.
> And if I choose to associate with one and pay them a portion of what I earn, then what is it to you?
There would be nothing to prevent you from associating with whomeever you choose. Right now, you must have a broker in order to work. I think this is wrong.
August 21, 2006 — 7:33 pm