Read it and weep. Bet wrong and weep harder.
Category: Real Estate (page 39 of 266)
Are you the ‘go to’ guy/gal? Do you list a lotta property and do it well? Are you a leader? Though I’m sure many will say charisma is required, I beg to disagree. It never hurts, but in the end, the Lord created the ultimate equalizer to charisma:
Results.
Today, let’s have a serious discussion about what combination of approaches would slaughter what’s currently goin’ on in the national brokerage community. First, here’s my perception of the major ‘schools’ I see in operation.
Variations on the Agent-Centric brokerage model
Between us we can come up with a myriad variations. Let’s limit them to very high commission splits, and the desk fee approach.
As I’ve written before, not long ago, that the agent-centric (A-C) model is failing everywhere it’s been tried. It’s ability to fail at pretty much every level is becoming legendary, regardless of the Titantic-like practicianers now lookin’ to technology to save them. Listen guys, if buying ownership positions in title companies, lenders, and starting your own escrows isn’t prima facie evidence of the desperate reach for lifejackets, I don’t know what is.
Let’s directly compare the currently popular A-C model with what I’d open in today’s — or any — housing market.
But first, a word from the Disclosures Department.
My biz model, though it pains me to admit, would indeed work exceptionally well if completely buyer oriented, listing few if any homes. However, when compared to my model — Broker-Centric — the firm primarily based upon listing homes will annihilate the buyer based company. This isn’t theory, or even bias on my part. As anyone should readily be able to discern, it’s a matter of sixth grade arithmetic.
Also, I’m loosely basing my ‘virtual’ A-C company on a brokerage I know of in a northwestern state. The size, and commission split are the perfect example of the results one can expect when using this model.
End disclosures.
Let’s first construct a virtual company built upon the A-C model.
Let’s give ’em a lotta agents, but not make it a big box setup. We’ll hire 35 full time agents. None of ’em Read more
Long post ahead. I think it is worth your time. 😉
The first presentation that I ever did on SEO was titled “SEO is a team sport”. I am a team sport kind of guy. I know that it may sound wierd coming from a rugged individualist, but it is or at least can be totally true. I have an example that (hopefully) proves my point.
I have mentioned my friend Gary Lundholm before. His brokerage has 150 plus agents and is a sizeable force in the Virginia Beach / Hampton Roads market. The way that he and his partners foundeed their brokerage was on providing the most and best tools and training to their agents. And then teaching a trusting that their agents would respect themselves and each other enough to work together as a cohesive and yet competitive team in the same market with each other. It is a team sport.
Coopetition. It is when Cooperation and Competition meet.
Most would argue that Competition surely eliminates cooperation. I would argue that a brokerage CAN take a leadership role in building a climate where their agents feel that the broker IS helping them build their business and not just the “chinese food and cotton candy” approach that most brokers take where 20 minutes later the agent is still hungry. That is laziness on their part as brokers. There I said it. Meant it too.
So my example? I was teaching an online SEO class to a group of his agents. (remember I said nothing held back? 😉 ) Note: Gary also equips them for online marketing battle with the same armor that he uses. Interesting, huh? We were helping two members of this little class to rank their sites a bit better in Google for neighborhoods and niches that they were targeting. Greg Chaplain (who focusses on several luxury niche neighborhoods) and Larry Porter (who specializes in military relocations). Great guys and each technically could be competing for the same kettle of fish, but everyone deciding to learn by doing, and also by helping the other guy in the process.
Would this Read more
This was in the San Diego Union Tribune, and references an occurrence at a local real estate meeting here last week.
Wednesday: Jim Abbott, owner of a San Diego real estate brokerage, backed out from appearing on a real estate event’s panel after he was told to refrain from speaking negatively about real estate search sites including Zillow.
Zillow reserved a table at Thursday’s 2012 Real Estate Success Event, held at downtown’s San Diego Convention Center. Abbott is against third-party housing websites because he says they are inaccurate, misleading and take business from listing agents. Leaders from such sites say their platforms are popular with consumers because they’re easy to use and offer lots of information.
Here’s Jim Abbott’s video explaining why Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com are…well, worthy of having something bad said about them.
Where is he wrong? If Zillow, Trulia or Realtor.com really believe he’s off the rail, then why an effort to keep him down. Seems like a nice enough fellow. Not caustic. Simply telling a story. Oh, and I know this isn’t “just in” news. It’s simply news that I believe we as Realtors, actual fiduciaries to our clients, have a duty to take a stand on.
I, for one, think Mr. Jim Abbott is on point, articulate and taking us to an important question all of us should ponder and stand on as well.
Where am I wrong?
I hate Bill Maher…mostly. Hate most of the stances he takes, and over the years the manner in which he has taken them. “Never make a point when you can take a shot…Maher.” But in this short video he has me laughing, at myself and even with him. Good on ya….as Greg would say.
Am I getting soft, going kookoo, or simply exposing that mostly I like to laugh rather than look at gestalt or grouse? Ah well, Maher will do himself in with me in a week or month, but for today I’m leaving work with a smile on my face. Be happy my fellow hounds….
This is what’s really happening: FannieMae and FreddieMac are holding foreclosed houses off the market, in anticipation of “selling” them to campaign donors.
Meanwhile, the town is being picked clean, with prices being bid up by buyers convinced that houses are going out of style — a story we’ve heard before, yes?
As an example, my BargainBot search, which is shared with hundreds of investors all over the world, is at less than 5% of it’s peak. A search I use to select premium rental homes produces one listing this morning, where it stood at 45 homes in April of 2011.
If Fannie and Freddie “sell” the homes they own to politically-connected “investors,” the rental market in Phoenix will be slaughtered.
And if they release the homes they have been hoarding into the MLS, Phoenix will hit a third bottom before the market can finally recover.
You can call the news media idiots or you can call them liars. But any news from any official source about Phoenix real estate is dangerously misleading.
Just in case you missed this. And I got it on a Google alert.
Dead tree media is ummm…dying more everyday.
Note to newspapers…those presses are livery stables and we all drive cars. 😉 And have for a LONG time.
What’s the real difference between a broker and a salesperson? Whatever his or her license status, the broker is one who knows the deal ain’t done until you’ve got the money. Starting in April, DocuSign is going to make a broker’s life a lot easier:
DocuSign’s upcoming April release ushers in a new era for the global standard for eSignature with the introduction of Payment Processing. Once available, you will be able to close the deal and collect the cash with DocuSign in one step to further accelerate transaction times, increase speed to revenue, reduce costs and enhance your customers’ experience.
It’s PayPal, and the charges are plausibly reversible, so it’s not perfect money. But this is document-as-storefront, a whole new way for paper-pusher to sell.
Note to the vendorslut mafia: I gain nothing by chastising you for your unbounded mediocrity, which is why I’ve stopped paying attention entirely to your artifacts of ineptitude. But take careful note: DocuSign knows how to deliver the goods. They are in a constant added-value mode, with the result that no less-motivated competitor can even come close to them. It’s not just the features, it’s how they are implemented — software-as-a-service in both directions, with a REST API coming in the new release.
To say one word more is one too many.
This came in over the transom. I’m not answering the whole question. To say the truth, I feel as if I’m being shopped with every conceivable infraction in the HUD handbook. So, you, too, please do also exercise restraint on the subject of commissions. For all of me, the FSBO question is more interesting, anyway.
From my interlocutor:
We are selling our home in a very upscale part of Atlanta. We want to do it “by owner” using one of several services advertised on line. Who pays the buyer’s agent and what percentage? We’ve been told its negotiable but too little and no one will show it. The home will sell in the $400,000 range if that makes a difference.
I start here: I want to know more about “one of several services advertised on line.”
I don’t know the real estate market in Atlanta, but this strikes me as being a very poor time to sell without the MLS. If the “services advertised” are limited service MLS listings — which is as far as anyone should go, in my opinion, down the “by owner” road — then those listing agents can address the commission questions.
The seller will definitely be paying the buyer’s agent, of course: If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product — an idea that never seems to occur to home buyers.
But I think it would be a huge marketing disadvantage to forego the MLS. In the age of the internet, an MLS listing is more valuable than ever before. (I think this has come up lately in the Dipshit Broker News, but I stopped following that crap years ago.)
But even more than that, I think the right full-service listing agent can more than repay his marginal cost. The house is unlikely to attract a lot of attention if it is not listed in the MLS system, but, even then, if it is not marketed to its fullest advantage, it will sell more slowly and for less money than it could have.
My take is that most listing agents aren’t worth a damn, but the right agent will bring home Read more
From good friend of the dawgs, Jim Klein, comes this grim reminder of the times we live in: SurvivalRealty.com.
Todd Zywicki finds the robo-signing settlement unsettling.
But despair you nothing: There is a real-life Sheldon Cooper going to high school in Nevada.
Limited lunchtime? Give it all to the third article. It’s the best read, and the most inspiring. The world runs by itself, but your spirit does not. Feed it wisely.
Spam from ARMLS:
On February 13, 2012, at a Special Called Meeting of the ARMLS Board of Directors, Bob Bemis tendered his resignation notice as ARMLS CEO, to accept the newly created position of Vice President of Partner Relations for Zillow, Inc. in Seattle.
Good on him. I’m thinking the retirement plan might be better, although I wonder how Bemis will fare in a non-DMV environment. I might start to worry about an echo-chamber, too, if it were me at the helm, but I don’t have much to do with social media — or with that kind of networking — to begin with.
What I love about our business is that there’re no points awarded for effort. With rare exceptions, it’s a heartless, merit based culture. Trying really really hard is for first time T-Ballers. Real estate owners don’t sign contracts promising to pay us for our efforts. They agree to pay when we produce 100% of the results outlined in that contract. 99% = go fish, no paycheck. The rest qualifies as ‘the dog ate my homework’ crappola. Coincidentally, this is why the vast majority of new agents make like steam and disappear in their first year or two. They found out the hard way, that in the real world, the world refusing to pay for anything less than the bargained for results, attempting never equals achievement.
Apparently, to buyers and sellers of real estate, results matter — they matter big time.
I write this post to those agents who’ve been workin’ like dogs, without much reward. Been there, lived that. I sympathize and empathize. You’ve already demonstrated what’s most lacking in our industry, a consistently OldSchool work ethic. Allow me to gently redirect your energy.
Join the Brother/Sisterhood of Gladiators — enter the arena of those who value achievement, read: results, over the culture of ‘Participation Trophies’.
There are two kinds of licensees. Those who enter the arena daily, and those who work their asses off to avoid the arena at all costs. The former generally make an excellent to elite living. The latter either struggle from year to year, or find what we often refer to as a W-2 job. The key factor in the new career is that they get paid whether they produce optimum results or not. There’s no arena involved.
In real estate, we’re more or less bounty hunters. No skinned cat, no paycheck. No exceptions.
We’re almost at the halfway point of 2012’s first quarter. If you’re able to look at your activities since January 1st in written form, do so. What percentage of your time were you either prospecting, belly to belly with a prospective client, or, like one of my mentors used to say, ‘out among ’em, talking’? Read more
Spam today from RealtyExecutives, which really used to matter in Phoenix:
I love the monthly fee with the huge, larcenous split. RealtyExecs actually invented the 100% commission plan. It was that idea that Dave Liniger spirited away to Denver, where he founded ReMax. He discovered right away that a 100% brokerage is a giant cash sink — for the broker — but, luckily, his minions in Canada figured out how to combine the 100% claim with a hidden 5% split. Liniger flies in a private jet today because his 100% commission brokerages are all actually split shops.
Still, $95 a month plus a 15% split is a little steep. HomeSmart will do you a monthly deal for twenty-five bucks plus E&O. But before its ignominious bankruptcy, RealtyExecutives was charging on the order of $750 a month — nine grand a year! — whether you closed anything or not. In the interim, a whole lot of Big Names have moved from RealtyExecs to HomeSmart.
I love the rest of the ad, though: 78% of RealtyExecutives’ agents made less than six figures in 2011. And if the average agent closed 12 deals, that suggests that a whole bunch of those agents sold five houses or fewer last year.
And to think: You could be an “executive” too!
I was talking to a friend of mine who is a broker with a small “boutique” brokerage about the business recently and he told me that since it was pointless to list property in this market, he has focused his efforts on rental properties. He is “hanging in there”, waiting for the market to turn around. I was surprised by his position. He defended it vigorously. I get this all the time from friends who ask me how am I doing, fully expecting me to tell a sad tale.
Let me tell you a secret. People get used to everything. Even a recession, you ask? Yes, people even get used to a recession. The secret is that there are still people who are securely employed, who have decided that with the interest at all-time lows and the prices down, now is a perfect time to buy. They barely even know that there is a recession. There are grandparents who want to get closer to their grandchildren ready to pay cash for a house. There are rich kids who just got married who are ready to spend Granddad’s money. There are people getting divorced, people inheriting homes they don’t want to live in, people letting their underwater homes go to foreclosure and then cashing out of their 401K and buying homes for cash at ½ the price of the one they let go. There are people buying homes in areas where the prevailing idea is that the market is dead. There are investors getting out of the stock market and into real estate. There are landlords increasing their holdings.
The other side of the secret is there are way less agents in the market competing for the buyers or the sellers. The worst thing an agent can do is to buy the sad story. The fastest route to the poorhouse is to think it’s pointless to try. Yeah, there may be a lot of reasons to be depressed, but nothing will turn a buyer or a seller off more than an agent who seems depressed.
Well how do you find these buyers and sellers? Well Read more