Tag Archives: real estate agents

What’s the Value of Agent-to-Agent Relationships?

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REALTOR Love! What’s It Worth?

Heard a story the other night from a friend who is a REALTOR(R), while talking about the hot hot seller’s market we’re in now in many places around the country. (As an aside, doesn’t this mean that early 2013 is not a great time to buy?)

Apparently, she had a house on the market for all of 48 hours before she got 12 offers, 6 of them all-cash. But that’s not the interesting part.

The interesting part is that two of the offers came from buyers represented by agents she didn’t like very much. She called them difficult to work with, and a couple other unsavory descriptions as well.

Now, it so happened that the highest offers were all-cash, from agents she had decent relationships with, so that was that. But it got me wondering….

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Marketing and Seduction: A Valentine’s Day Special

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Ah, Valentine’s Day. I’ve always hated this particular “holiday”, whether single, dating, or married. How a religious holiday celebrating a guy who was beaten with clubs and stones before being beheaded for the crime of trying to convert a Roman emperor to Christianity became a day of flowers and candy and male guilt is beyond me. Well, unless the example of St. Valentine is something that men should keep in mind as their fate should they ignore their girlfriends and wives…

In any event, although I’ve never liked Valentine’s Day (or Black Thursday as it was known to my friends back when we were all lonely singles), it does seem like an appropriate day to revisit a topic I first touched on back in 2009 and maybe expand on it.

This is a dangerous line of thinking, by the way, and wholly unproven so you, the reader, is hereby warned not to wander down this path, lest you come across horrible things like original insight or politically incorrect thoughts thereby. But here we go.

Marketing is seduction. Seduction is marketing. What works for you in seduction is probably what would work for you in marketing, and what doesn’t work for you in seduction won’t work for you in marketing.

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7 Can’t Lose Tips for Content Curation

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You might be excited to read the rest of this post. After all, 7 “can’t-lose” tips for content curation! If you’re doing paper.li or Pinterest, but not seeing a whole lot of results, you want to know what you have to do to turn those things into faucets of money.

Actually, I don’t have 7 can’t lose tips. I have but one observation:

Titles matter.

You see, on this Black Friday, since I have less than zero desire to be within 5 miles of a shopping mall, I idly clicked on some tweet telling me that “XYZ Real Estate Daily Is Out!” It was one of those “personal newspapers” from paper.li put out by a Realtor.

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Where Are The Gen-Y REALTORS?

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There’s a fascinating, if opaque, puff piece on the Gen-Y (or Millennials) over at HLN extensively quoting Nick Shore of MTV Insights, the market research and consulting arm of MTV. Money grafs:

What we found was counter to the often-charged caricature of today’s youth as “entitled” and “coddled.” Instead, we found a vibrant and strong fixer/maker/builder culture where nearly 3 in 4 Millennials believe “our generation is starting a movement to change old, outdated systems.” Put more broadly, if the American Dream isn’t working as promised, Millennials will take it upon themselves to create the next “version” of America.

The heady mix of forces driving this generation is only partly due to their sense of needing to fix something broken. The other, even more potent, side of the coin is the primacy they place on their own power of creativity. When asked “what word best defines the DNA of your generation?” the number one response was “Creative” and number two “Self-expressive.” A full 70% of Millennials in the study agreed “Creativity will save us!”

The video above, which goes with the story, has Nick Shore repeating this finding from MTV’s study:

Fifty-five percent of Millennials in our study said, “My hustle is more important than my MBA,” while 78% said “even if I have a job it’s important to have a side project that could become a different career.”

And this whole conversation is happening against a backdrop of unemployment and underemployment.

So I have to ask… where are the millions of Gen-Y REALTORS(r)? Seems to me that at least hustling in real estate would fit right into this new American Dreamer.

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Dr. Lawrence Yun, Call Your Office

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A mere six days ago, NAR’s Chief Economist (and my doppelganger) Lawrence Yun released this cheery video forecast on housing for the remainder of the year:

Lawrence is predicting a slight pickup for 2011 over 2010; he thinks the second half of this year will be better than the second half of last year. New home sales will still be hurting, he thinks, but existing home sales should improve.

He based this forecast on the idea that the employment picture was slowly improving, as seen in this video:

Lawrence says he thinks we’ll see 1.5 million new jobs in 2011, maybe a little less. But “at least we’re not losing jobs, and losing potential for housing demand”. He thinks we’re on the right track, albeit slowly.

So he’s thinking 1.5M new jobs this year, 2M next year.

Well, the latest job report is dismal, even grim.  The official government report was that only 18,000 jobs were created in June, way, way below the expectations of economists of around 150,000. Furthermore, the news is even worse than it seems.

Ah, but there is a glimmer of hope, it seems… read on for more.

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Buyer Diaries: The Pregame

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Ima get ready to buy me a house, y'all.

As some of you know, I’ve recently moved from New Jersey to Texas, because my wife got one of them “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunities to join a fledgling company at the ground level. I’ve been thinking and writing about real estate for a few years now, but haven’t really had the chance to look at the experience of being a home buyer. I do not think I’m representative — in fact, far from it. I know too much. But at the same time, I thought it would be interesting to do a series of “diaries” on my experience as an average joe, regular home buyer in this market, with the technology that is available to me as a run-of-the-mill consumer.

This post is about the pre-game.

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Have You Seen Me? The Role of the Broker in Contemporary Real Estate

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Okay, maybe 1930 is going a bit too far back...

One of the most insightful set of comments I’ve ever read on this here blog (remember, I usually learn more from writing this blog than I ever “teach”) is to my last post about technology-loving agents. As it happens frequently around these here parts, at the same time I was being enlightened by you, the commenter, I was also looking at two other things.

The first is this Mike Ferry vs. Mike Ferrara Smackdown debate (ht: Chris Smith, @TechSavvyAgent) at Coldwell Banker’s recent convention. Watch at least the first 20 minutes or so; it’s pretty engaging, entertaining, and enlightening:

The second is this incredibly well-written post by Jeff Brown, who also takes me to task periodically and teaches me things here on Notorious.

Here’s my point/question: Where is the broker in all of this conversation?

In the entire 32 minute long debate between Ferry and Ferrara, has either gent used the word “broker” even once? I missed it if they did. In all of Jeff’s wonderful post, does he mention the word “broker” at all? No.

Quite a few of the commenters on the technology and agents post expressed all sorts of reasons why technology was so important. And they make some great points. I agree with many of them. But did any of them ever mention the broker? No. And some of them are brokers or managers themselves.

This conversation about technology and the REALTOR reveals that what is at stake is the notion of the real estate agent as a professional saddled with, and deserving of, fiduciary duty. One of two things has to change: the dominant business model of contemporary real estate, or the idea that real estate is a profession.

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What’s up with REALTORS Who Love Tech?

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I forgot an angle on this post about agent ratings and consumers that’s more in line with the light and snappy flow of this blog.

As the NAR survey, flawed as it might be, shows, consumers overwhelmingly want these skills/qualities in a REALTOR:

  • Honesty and Integrity – 98%
  • Knowledge of purchase process – 96%
  • Responsiveness – 93%
  • Knowledge of real estate market – 92%
  • Communication skills – 85%
  • Negotiation skills – 84%
  • People skills – 79%
  • Knowledge of local area – 79%

The one quality that majority of consumers don’t care about? Skills with technology, at 40%.

So here’s my question.

The REALTORS who love, love, looooove technology, and spend most of their time talking about and studying/learning Facebook, Twitter, SEO, QR Codes, augmented reality, mobile technology, iPhone apps, and the rest of it… should I be assuming that y’all have the top eight skills/qualities mastered?

When I go to a REBarcamp and see literally hundreds of young REALTORS who couldn’t possibly have more than 5-6 years of experience in the business, should I assume that they’ve learned all they can about the local market, knowledge of purchase process, and negotiation skills, such that the only thing left to learn is technology skills?

If the answer is “Yes”, then followup: Is real estate really that easy? Why does a consumer need to pay tens of thousands in transaction fees if it is?

If the answer is “No”, then followup: Why would a professional spend so much time and energy learning things that their clients have said they don’t care about?

What do you think?

-rsh

So Who Will Be Exiting Real Estate?

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Following up on my post on NAR 800K, I found this article on Inman News about a survey it conducted of its readers (subscription required). Apparently, most of the respondents agree with yours truly in thinking that at least another 20% of agents need to exit the industry before we can have recovery. But here’s the interesting point — the Inman readers think that part-time agents are the most threatened:

Part-time agents were viewed as the most likely to leave the field, with 46.8 percent of those surveyed identifying them as the most threatened by the market shakeout. That compares with 33.5 percent who said full-time agents were most threatened, and 32.4 percent who identified brokers.

Let’s assume that I’m correct about NAR 800K. Well, that might be a very good thing indeed. However, whether losing 20% is a good or a bad thing depends in part on who it is that will be leaving and who will be staying behind.

I differ with the Inman readers, because I don’t believe that the 20% drop will come from part-timers. I think they will come from the ranks of full-time agents, particularly those in the critical first and second quintiles. Allow me to explain.

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What’s the Grade Level Required To Read Your Blog?

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This blog NOT written for this audience.

Once in a while, the Internet has gems in it that I find absolutely amazing, and tonight, I found one of them: online readability tests. I hadn’t ever given the topic much thought, since I write for my pleasure not yours, but it does appear that this blog is written for an older, more educated audience.

For the record, I’ve analyzed this post (which was the #1 most popular post in the last year) using this tool and got the following results:

Number of characters (without spaces) :	 7,939.00
Number of words :	 1,667.00
Number of sentences :	 104.00
Average number of characters per word :	 4.76
Average number of syllables per word :	 1.58
Average number of words per sentence:	 16.03

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily
understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index :	 11.23

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index :	 10.38
Flesh Kincaid Grade level :	 9.26
ARI (Automated Readability Index) :	 9.02
SMOG :	 11.49

Flesch Reading Ease :	 57.20

It appears that you need an 11th grade education to understand what the hell I’m talking about on the first try, according to the Gunning Fog Index. Thankfully, my Flesh Reading Ease score is pretty good at 57.20 suggesting that it’s not really that hard.

We’ll get into what some of this stuff means, but here’s why I think it’s interesting, particularly for some of my readers. If you blog, and unlike me, you’re not doing it just for fun and pleasure but to connect and communicate with some sort of an audience… you probably should care how readable your blog is. If you want a wide distribution, but write at a 11th grade level, chances are, a lot of people are just going to find what you’re saying incomprehensible.

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