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Just because you did not see it does not mean it wasn't happening. I'm not a Realtor, but I work with them and I see this point coming up time and again. You must realize, however, that your analogy between a Realtor that you don't see hustling and a department store clerk that you do see hustling is this. The department store clerk does not pay any overhead. He does not come out of pocket to sell you anything. Not only that, but that approach just does not work in RE. Do you or would you like to be pressured and confronted when looking at homes? If anything this sort of approach will make it more difficult to sell the home. Of course I'm sure that if you decided to shadow a Realtor all day you would see just how much work actually does go into marketing and selling a home.
A true salesman can sell you on an idea without you even realizing it.
Obviously you don't want to scare people away.
Persuade without making it obvious that you are being persuasive.
Suggest without making it obvious that you are being suggestive.
It takes a different approach to selling a different kind of product.
Selling a suit would take a different approach than selling a BMW M3 for example.
I think there is a lot of sentiment out there that, "My house is mine. Why should I have to pay 6% to anyone if I sell it?"
That's a pretty silly way to look at it and I think people, for the most part, know there is a price to pay for the service.
What I don't see happening is our realtor really hustling to sell our home. When I was in college I worked in retail sales (not for a commision mind you) and I had to hustle my arse off to sell....or I didn't have a job. My job was to make the customer buy it through whatever means were at my disposal. Folks I was just working for $6/hr. I just don't see my RE agent hustling like that....and the pay for selling a handful of homes is a heck of a lot more than working a year at $6/hr.
So if you want to know why average people have trouble letting go of your cut that's it in a nutshell. You didn't bleed for it. You were just there to passively sell it to someone who happened upon it on a website or drove by and saw the sign in front of their home. You didn't run up and down the street to get people to come look at it. You didn't persuade anyone. You were just there.
So the next time you go to a store and you see some kid trying to hussle you into buying a suit or pair of pants or and then hits you up for socks, cologne, and a wallet at the checkout counter all for a couple of clicks above minimum wage think about how much effort you put into selling your client's home. Did you work as hard as that kid did?
I realize I'm not posting to an audience that want's to hear this kind of thing so if you'd like to ignore it or write it off as bunk feel free.
You don't see me when I am walking the neighborhood after taking a listing to inform the neighbors about it.
You don't see me when I am in the office working th phones because I know agents that had just shown a similar listing as my new listing.
You don't see me when I am at the title company / lawyers office / county clerks office / walking a 20 acre parcel, etc.
I work 10 times harder than that kid and have 10 times the knowledge.
Well, some Realtors are more pro-active than others. I'll be the first to admit there are many agents in the business that shouldn't be. Even on very active Realtors the client doesn't see the work happening. We pro-actively market, then have to react to showings. It is impossible to sell a home like you would sell a pair of pants. People don't buy homes that way. To some degree it is passive. The reason is marketing creates showings if the price is reasonable. The home must then sell itself to the person because a person can't simply be "sold" on an investment like a home as they could on a pair of pants. The homes condition "sells" the home once the agent gets the person there.
So an agents job is to create showings and provide info on how to help the home sell itself, then guide the home from contract to closing. I typically work a 60 hour week but my clients don't see that and I try to always treat them like they are my only client.
I don't doubt there are agents such as yourself that work long hours.
Let me ask you this. My realtor has clients who buy and clients who sell. Seems to be a match made in heaven. Just introduce one to the other. Is there any reason my realtor just can say to her buying clients, "Hey, I know this great 4 bedroom house over here you could get for a reasonable price..."??? Is this taboo?
"The home must then sell itself to the person because a person can't simply be "sold" on an investment like a home as they could on a pair of pants."
I'd heasitate to call a home much more of an investment than a pair of pants in this market. I've got pairs of pants that have retained their value better than my house has.
Is there any reason my realtor just can say to her buying clients, "Hey, I know this great 4 bedroom house over here you could get for a reasonable price..."??? Is this taboo?
No, and, in fact, the agents in my office do so if the house fits the criteria - or even most of them - that the buyers have. It is, after all, the agent's job to find a house for the buyers whose interests they are representing to buy - it's how they get paid, and they don't get paid until their buyers find, and purchase, that house, and they're likely to show the buyers every one they can find that fits in order to accomplish that goal.
However, if they're looking for a house in a particular school district or with a floor plan that doesn't match yours or they have specifically said they do NOT want to live in the neighborhood your house happens to be in or any of a number of other criteria that your house doesn't meet, they can't very well hogtie the buyers, pull them through the house on a sled, then take their hand and sign the offer for them.
And what Mike Peterson said. So much of what a real estate agent does is invisible to the buyers and sellers. Especially if they're doing a good job, it is, because, after all, they're being hired to do the work FOR you, not involve you in every detail.
I don't doubt there are agents such as yourself that work long hours.
Let me ask you this. My realtor has clients who buy and clients who sell. Seems to be a match made in heaven. Just introduce one to the other. Is there any reason my realtor just can say to her buying clients, "Hey, I know this great 4 bedroom house over here you could get for a reasonable price..."??? Is this taboo?
"The home must then sell itself to the person because a person can't simply be "sold" on an investment like a home as they could on a pair of pants."
I'd heasitate to call a home much more of an investment than a pair of pants in this market. I've got pairs of pants that have retained their value better than my house has.
If only it were that easy...Thousands of homes for sale in my market and almost as many buyers.
Internet, utilities, conference rooms (I'd never want to meet clients at my home), faxes, copiers, utilities, phone lines, office space (home is home, office is office), administrative assistants, paper, ink/toner, location/visibility, strength in numbers of other agents, branding, policies, training, advice, experience, computers, marketing assistance, and more. It's a business. There aren't that many successful home businesses.
I run a real estate company out of my home quite successfully. I've been in the industry for over 25 years and have been a broker for about 15 years. I don't meet people at my home - we meet at the property, at the clients home or some other location, I don't use assistants and do quite well. I've sold over $390 million in my career, or about $16 million per year.
The reason many people have a problem with agents is that they bring so little to the table. Yes, you can get an attorney to review the contract for a couple of hundred dollars. Yes, with the internet you can find homes you like. Where I see a broker's contribution being worth his/her fee is when they save their client dollars in excess of their fees. For example, I sold a new home recently where we were getting great traffic but no offers. I track feedback very closely and recognized a consistent theme to the comments made over about a two week period. The comments dealt with an issue that could be remedied at a reasonable cost. I got the architect to come over to make suggestions of how to best implement the changes and the builder spent about one month and $20,000 to complete the changes. We sold the house within two weeks for full price after the issues had been corrected. Now many agents would have simply told the builder they were getting negative feedback and that he should drop the price. On a $1.7 million house a $20k drop would be meaningless. He would have had to drop it a minimum of $100k to get anyone's attention and then he'd have still had the same problems. So I viewed the roughly $80k savings as plenty of justification for my $51k fee.
Also, I sell over 50% of my listings as direct sales. That's 70% higher than the market average. And when I do so, I don't charge the seller the full 6%, I only charge them the 3% I would have received in the event of a co-brokered sale.
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