Whenever I go on a listing appointment, I generally find that the seller already has a “number in their head” about what their home should sell for. This number can come from various sources. It is – unfortunately – almost always higher than the current market can command.
In truth, I can’t blame sellers for this…their minds have been levered to continued price increases to such an extent that the current market has left most sellers blind sided.
The first thing I often hear is that “I need to get X out in order to buy my next home which I can now get for Y because its gone down in price. The trouble if the property you want to buy has gone down so much in price, chances are the property that you want to sell has gone down by a similar percentage. Wishful thinking is often the culprit here. Markets are fluid – that was fine when prices were going up – but it also holds true when prices decline.
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In surfing the net, I discovered an on-line version of an article by Ben Brody and Laura Gurfein that appeared in last months Westchester Magazine about the county’s “top” Realtors. The subtitle declared “In good times or bad, whether buying or selling, these are the agents you want on your side.”
Now, I have nothing against the Realtors who were chosen as the finest agents in Westchester NY real estate. None at all. it was fascinating to see how the authors chose to define “success.” They used a simple unbiased metric – the bottom line. They defined success in terms of .sales volume in dollars. The theory being – the bigger the sales volume the better the “track record.” This kind of boggles my tiny mind. In a twisted way it reflects the public antipathy to Realtors in general because it emphasizes that “success” is defined in dollar signs.
This got me thinking – how exactly should one define success in real estate? How should these bottom line numbers like sales production and number of listings held factor into a home owners decision about who to sign a listing contract with?
Well, realistically, an agent has to achieve two goals. Certainly, over time, the agent must be able to turn a profit or they will go out of business. This is much harder to do than most people outside our industry think. I have to make a living this way and turning a profit is absolutely essential or my bills don’t get paid. But for all the delusions of real estate agents being “rich” without any effort, the failure rate is enormously high – north of 80% in most of the country (over 90% locally.) So posting sales volume is a major component of success.
But, what does this do for the client? The home seller or home buyer? The article indicated that whether selling or buying – these agents were the best. But by looking at sales volume only, the article missed the mark altogether.
1. Is this agent primarily a listing agent or a buyer’s agent? If they have an even number of sales in both categories – fine. But I looked at the sales history of a couple of these superstars. They were primarily listing agents and did relatively few sales as a buyer’s agent.
2. On the listing side, what is their success rate? After all, an agent can make a bundle listing in volume. The percent of listings that actually sell is another matter.To that end I took a look a closer look at a “top agents” sales record for 2009. I picked an agent on the list at random and found the following.
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Whenever I go on a listing appointment, I generally find that the seller already has a “number in their head” about what their home should sell for. This number can come from various sources. It is – unfortunately – almost always higher than the current market can command.
