What is NOT broken in real-life real estate?

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Continuing from a comment from Ardell:

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.

That may be true right now, I don’t know for sure. I know there are non-NAR members who have access to ARMLS, but I don’t know that any of them are also real estate licensees. My expectation, about which more below, is that the AAR would cave at once if a non-NAR-member licensee applied for full access to ARMLS — if they raised any objection at all.

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.

But of course they do have this right. The conversation might not go very far with most agents, but we advertise the idea at the top of our home page.

I do have a something against buyers being “procured” for the benefit of the seller.

I do, too, but buyers have to be willing to bring complaints when they are abused. Nothing cures bad behavior like seven-figure judgments for agency violations.

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.

The NAR is sclerotic. This is not news. The important point is that there is no obstacle to individual practitioners and brokers doing better.

Here’s an example: We had an Article 16 complaint earlier this year. In the neighborhoods we farm, we broadcast our announcements — open house invitations, sold cards, etc. This work is done by independent contractors of a subcontractor, and both because training is difficult to effect and because I did not want to experience errors of discretion, I interpreted Article 16.2 in the broadest possible terms: They were to skip only houses with “No Soliciting” or “No Trespassing” signs. They had no knowledge of the MLS, and they should not make any presumption about the presence or absence of real estate marketing paraphernalia. My reasoning was that any discretion is “targeting”, so that if they skipped houses with posts — which might not be listed for sale — they risked hitting houses that were in fact listed but had no post. “Broadcasting” means no judgment, and that’s the way they worked.

So the crybaby do-nothings we compete against complained, of course, two to me directly, at first, but then those two and at least one more to the AAR. A mediator called me, and she was treading on alternative-business-model eggshells through the whole call. I explained my reasoning, and she bought into it right away. She didn’t require me to do anything, but because one of the distributors had — in the innocence of complete ignorance — attached a card to a lock box, I prepared a handout for training purposes.

I can speak for no one but myself, and only of my experience with the AAR, but that one experience was very positive. The complaints were childish and stupid, but the process of addressing them was painless, and it was clear to me that the AAR, at least, is very sensitive to the “innovative business practices” provision of Article 16.

In short, if other practitioners don’t do what we think is appropriate, it doesn’t mean we can’t. If we’re right about the benefits these innovations deliver to the consumer, then we have a distinct marketing advantage. I say we should exploit it — and may the divil take the hindmost…

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