Kris Berg wrote a very compelling post on Inman yesterday Don’t Forget the Customer The article was spot-on about how brokerages function – and often how the function to the detriment of the consumer.
Now, I think most consumers would understand that in order to keep their doors open, a brokerage needs to be profitable. The bottom line for any business is that they must turn a profit or close their doors. Ideally, profitability should be tied to customer service. The agents of a brokerage should provide outstanding customer service including intelligent negotiating skills, a fine marketing plan, and service that smoothes the transaction process. Unfortunately, that model is not the prevailing one among brokerages.
The way brokerages function often is a mystery to the consumer and it often comes as a shock to new agents who think that the brokerage is there to “support” them. After all they are paying very hefty splits to the brokerage -supposedly for leads and support and training from the brokerage. And therein lies the rub for the consumer. Most brokerages disconnected from customer service and the newly licensed agent course became the big cash cow. They recruited and recruited throwing anyone with a license and a pulse up against a wall and hoping that something will stick. Even a non-productive agent had a couple of good deals in them from family and friends.
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It is very interesting that just as consumers are demanding ever more hyper-local content and knowledge from agents that we are also seeing another distinct trend in the opposite direction: the tendency to list and sell to larger and larger geographic areas.
The contrast between old-school hyper-local agents and the newer nomad agnet was driven home to me while I was working with two listing agents who still work exclusively in small niche markets. I was at a closing with one of them and she implied that since I had the entire city of White Plains to cover, why didn’t I simply refer out the client who finally bought in Scarsdale?
Can a real estate agent be too local?
I knew that the attitude about staying hyper-local is alive and well though it appears to be a staple of old-school real estate. Still, I was more than a tad surprised. Scarsdale is not the moon. It is the town directly adjacent to the west side of White Plains and about a whopping six miles from my front door to the center of the village. If we followed this line of thinking to its most extreme would mean that a buyer potentially moving from New York City to Westchester NY would have to have as many as five or six agents to explore all the possibilities open to them that were within about 30 minute commute. For the consumer this seems most unwieldy if not highly impractical. Could you imagine the mountain of agents all crawling over each other for the buyer’s attention? What a mess. Not to mention a monster of coordination.
From the agent’s perspective, there could also be a danger to being too local. What if something happens to that small segment of the market you represent? If your geography/price range are razor thin – you are setting yourself up for trouble. This was clearly seen this year when agents who specialized in small high-end markets got creamed because jumbo loan issues bit them in the backside. Another listing agent I encountered was used to selling about 10 major properties a year – but this year had only managed a single sale.
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We had our first snow yesterday. As usual we were told to expect the storm of the century, so I did what everyone else in Westchester was doing…got groceries, hoarded salt, made sure I had a good shovel and hunkered down. Seriously, the way we treat snow storms around here one would think that no one had ever heard of snow plows and other modern marvels that actually make it possible for you to be back in the real world within 24 hours. Nevertheless, the storm and subsequent dig-out gave me some quiet time with my canine family. I have two Siberain Huskies and a husky mix who for obvious reasons LOVE the snow. The colder the better and the heavier the snow fall, the happier they are. So after spending quality time with my shovel and salt, I spent some time outside with Buddy, Jade & Tundra. They had a great time tearing up the yard. To get good pictures however they had to stand still…I got a few shots of them running, but most of that passed by my camera in a blur!
For the stills here is a link to Siberians in the Snow on Flickr.
Enjoy the video and Happy Holidays.
