Realtor obligations: Return phone calls to interested buyers. The R/E Maven

 

 

It simply amazes me how many real estate agents can be so caviler and inefficient in the way they conduct themselves.

A listing realtor has a sworn duty and responsibility to work in the seller’s best interest.

How do many of these realtors justify this obligation when they do not even return inquires of interest concerning the very properties they are supposedly working in the best interest of a seller to sell. If they do not communicate the sales process either stalls or dies on the vine.

Return communication is the second step in this process. The first step is advertising, either through signage or print/Internet. Most firms have someone assigned to perform these duties and they do usually get the word out that a particular property is available for sale. It is in the second step of communication where realtors constantly fall down.

 

Case in point.  I recently responded to a full-page advertisement in the New England Real Estate Journal. This full-page advertisement was placed by one of the offices of the largest real estate chain in the country. This full-page ad contained only one agents name, picture and contact information and it had two parcels of land that I was interested in. I called this Realtor and left two unanswered messages over the course of four days. About the seventh day she finally answered the phone and I attempted to gain some information about the properties. She was not at her desk and her memory concerning the facts was shaky at best so she asked me to send her an email and said she would send the pertinent information back to me upon receipt. I did so the next day and honestly I then forgot about her and these properties. A week later I received mail from her about some totally unrelated real estate. I was put on her automatics mailer but had still not been sent the information I was promised.

 

I made the effort of four contacts seeking information about some unfortunate sellers land that I could now care less about. I feel sorry for the property owner for trusting this realtor. I made more of an effort (4 to 0) to get information concerning this property than the realtor did. For this property it is just too difficult to do business this way. Someone wasted $1,200 for a full-page advertisement and the seller is still the party that suffers from poor agent representation. 

 

 

As a group realtors suffer from a bad reputation. One of their largest sins is their not returning property inquiry phone calls. It is extremely frustrating when potential buyers put more effort into seeking information than the listing realtors does in providing the information. This lack of communication is not in the seller’s best interest.

Real estate marketing advice: Reason number 4 why sellers need to perform property inspections before marketing.

Real estate marketing advice: Reason number 4 why sellers need to perform property inspections before marketing.

 

Before a seller places a property on the market they need to have all property inspections performed before they self market or list for sale thru a Realtor.

 

The reasons that performing these inspections before you seek a buyer are so important include:

1. Establishment of price
2. Learning the exact nature of the property
3. Misrepresentations
4. Avoiding price renegotiations
5. Error and omissions insurance coverage
6. Maintain arms length negotiations

 

Reason #4 is perhaps the most important reason of them all.

 

Typical Realtor involved real estate transactions are handled in just the complete opposite way of what I am instructing the seller to now do. The way Realtors usually handle the inspection issue is to negotiate the terms of the transaction first and included the home inspection as a contingency that is performed by the buyers after the sales agreements are signed. This is a worry about the offer first and the inspections second mentality.

What is so wrong and dangerous with this format is that the seller’s realtor has now given the buyer the perfect opportunity to have a second bite at the price apple. The seller has been mislead into a comfort zone by believing that the transaction was completely negotiated when in fact it remains only partially negotiated. After the buyers have performed the inspections it now becomes a perfect time for the buyer to renegotiate the price based on this new information generated by the inspection. This leaves the door wide open for a second round of negotiations. The price a buyer is willing to pay will never go up after inspections.

Why Realtors choose to place their sellers in this no win predicament is completely unfathomable.

The best and only way inspections should be performed is well before the property is placed on the market. The few hundred dollars it will cost the seller is money well spent in order to insulate the seller from further price reductions.

 

At some point in the sales process it will become inevitable these reports are performed.

It is entirely in the SELLER’S BEST INTEREST to maintain this control and have these inspections performed at their own expense. In the long run it will always save the seller time, aggravation and money.

 

By performing home inspection before a property in placed up for sale, sellers avoid falling into the price renegotiation trap. Informing a buyer as to the exact condition of a property before they make an offer remove one of the two most frequent sales contingencies and can save a seller quite a substantial amount of money.

 

 

 

Real estate marketing advice: Check up on your Realtor and review your online listing information. The R/E Maven

 

 

Please go to www.realtor.com and lookup MLS#754553. It happens to be an oceanfront property for sale with an asking price of $10,250,000. It is known as “Seaweed” and is located in Newport Rhode Island somewhere in the Ocean Avenue area.

 

What is so special about this listing that I ask you go view it for yourselves? Namely what the heck is this Realtor attempting to sell for more than 10 million dollars? I cannot tell. There is only one Arial photo on the site and it is from hundreds of yards away. I’ll bet this property has all sorts of great and interesting character but I have to use my imagination to fully enjoy the experience of its architecture.

What are the seller or this agent thinking by making such a marketing 101 mistake?

Is this the agent’s fault? Is he perhaps too lazy or cheap to have some class A photography performed and shared. Or is it more than likely at the seller direction that buyers are to be left to guess what 10 million dollars will buy. Could it be that the seller’s ego so far out of line that they believe this one poor photo is good enough and why did not the agent demand better for all his marketing efforts. There is no answer good to these questions to justify this mistake.

My point to all of this is to demonstrate to other sellers that they should not be intimidated as to whether they are capable of marketing their own property. If this type real estate can suffer through this type of marketing with the assistance of a real estate professional then you can feel good about your own marketing efforts without an agent.

With the enormous exposure possibilities of the Internet sellers need visit the most popular sites and check and see that their Realtor has their listing located there and that all its information is correct and valuable.

Oh and one last thing, did you notice that the address to this property on the Multiple Listing Service is kind of a secret?

 

 

Real estate mrketing advice; Have you ever wonder why Realtors need watch dogs? The R/E Maven

 

 

Some of the national brand real estate offices have a computer generated phone lead system that is necessary for several reasons.

The public relations reason that these companies most proudly display to potential customers for the need of the system is how fast a response is made to an inquiry about a particular property.  The system is set up so that it places the agents in a move it or loose it situation. The Realtor has only one chance to answer the phone or loose the lead. The second reason and I believe the actual reason for this system is to make sure that there actually is a response.  I don’t blame these companies for developing this system. They spend hundreds of thousand of dollars on advertising to make the phone ring and then agents don’t return the calls. So then these companies need to spend millions more upon a watchdog system to ensure the leads are followed up on.

 

The last study of response time that I had seen is several years old. This study claimed that the national average response time by real estate agents to be 72 hours! I would like to add and that’s if they respond at all. Isn’t this ridiculous?  A three day average to respond and that is the national average. Many responses take even longer. I can stand to wait three days for my cable company to show up. Can you imagine if it took your cable company three days just to call you back, never mind show up and perform the repair.

 

Five days ago I contacted seven different real estate agents that had land listed for sale on loopnet, requesting additional information. I received a response from only two. That’s a 29% response rate and the sad part is from my experience this is not uncommon.

Last fall I performed a test for some very close friends of mine. They had helped one of their sons purchase a commercial piece if land in Savannah and it has become a huge problem in their lives and they now need to sell this land that has a new building upon in and is located at least 1000 miles away from where they live. Neither they nor I know of any commercial real estate brokers in Georgia so I looked up seven of the larger firms and gave them each a call. I pretended to be a buyer in search of the exact type of property my friends will need to list for sale. From this test I believed that I could accomplice several things. First, I could check out the competition. See what’s for sale that is similar to theirs. Second I could get a ballpark value of what their property is worth by comparing it to the competing properties and the third and most importantly I would become familiar with what agent in Savannah is a real go getter that should list this property for sale. An agent who hustles to show me listings, finds out about my needs and perhaps how solid my finances are in order to perform. The results of the test were awful. No office or agent was impressive whatsoever. I spoke live with seven different agents. Some of these included the principle brokers and owners. I left a message for an eighth agent and that was the only agent that ever got back to me.

This was an easy exercise for them to pass. I did not make it difficult. The specifications that I gave out were simple to fulfill and I only heard back from one agent.

Surely the real estate market in Savannah or any other place in the entire country cannot be good enough to ignore a ready, willing and able buyer but how would they know because not one of these agents spent enough time with me to find out.

 

 Keep in mind that this would not have been a waist of time for any of these agents because I was going to list the parcel for sale with the most impressive broker. There now exists a small industrial site that will be sold in their back yard but not through this inefficient bunch.