So I've been thinking about the Green Real Estate Revolution that will be happening in earnest in the not to distant future and I'm thinking about automobiles.  Part of this is predicated on the fact that my Chrysler 300C is now worth more then I owe on it and that it doesn't really make the statement that I would want to make as a Green real estate company.  However since the Tesla Class S hasn't come out yet (2011 - 2012) I'm debating the idea of trading in my car on something more Green.

The debate I continue to think about is this:

Does trading in my existing car (which I drive maybe 1000 miles / month) on something more efficient make environmental sense or does trading in a working car which obviously someone else will purchase and drive simply make the problem someone else's problem.  Have I solved anything by trading in my car on something more fuel efficient at this point.

I'm a lot more emotionally interested in driving a Tesla Class S then I am a Prius even thought the Class S is about $15,000 more then the Prius..

Well that's it for my evening ActiveRain brainstorm.

On November 17th, I’ll be presenting at the first ever Virtual REBarCamp, “The Real Estate Office of the Future” and there will be a number of ideas that I will be going over some of which I’ll be blogging about here and on Facebook and on ActiveRain while some content I’ll be reserving for the REBarCamp.  I’m really looking forward to this REBC especially because I think we are really are in a major shift that probably wouldn’t have taken place if the real estate markets had continued to plug along at a reasonable pace.  However as our eXp Realty Washington State Broker, Dale Kreiser has mentioned a couple of time, “This is the Perfect Storm.”

I titled this Blog Post, The Relevance and Future Demise of Bricks and Mortar and I believe that Bricks and Mortar in real estate especially is going to come under serious attack.  The primary reason as I’ll layout below is that it isn’t relevant anymore or its really becoming less relevant.  The second reason is one of money.  I do not by the way consider money the primary motivator for the demise however financial reasons will force the adoption of other methods of agent aggregation.

First why WAS Bricks and Mortar relevant?

The primarly reason was that was where the information on homes was kept.  Back since the Industrial Revolution and Automobiles and modern travel, the information on who’s home was for sale and how one could access it was controlled by brokers.  At the time, this was a very efficient model given other ways to gather information.  Everyone in town probably knew who the broker’s were and based on who they liked best they would give a broker a listing and that broker would shake the trees through his / her network of prospective purchasers and hopefully find a buyer.  I haven’t read the history of brokerages in general however if a broker or brokers had the listings that made it easier for buyers to access the listings and so they would travel from broker to broker to find a property.

Obviously the better brokers would need to have sub-brokers or agents to help them stay on top of all the listings.  Now the agents would obviously need to come to the office because that is where all the information on the listings existed.

As time went smaller brokers affiliated and shared information among themselves to compete with the bigger brokers and so the MLS came into existence.  The MLS really was printed pages circulated between brokers with an agreement to compensate each other if one of the member offices sold a property.

Eventually the MLS’s became more important then the brokers.  Now it was less about the brokers and more about being able to share information between the different firms because of the MLS, however in order for a consumer to access the MLS info they still needed to go into an office.  That is also where they kept, “The Book”.

The Book was really the MLS printout which was produced once or twice a month and was the bible of real estate.  The Book was protected like it was the Holy Grail and it really was because it insured that consumers needed to come into the office to meet with an agent to go and see property.  Seller’s had it a little better since it was their properties being listed the agents would come to them and really had no serious need to go to the office other then to complain to the broker or drink some coffee with their agent.

Now the 1990’s rolls around and things started to change.  By the late 1990’s there were public facing websites with some of the information that consumers could find in “The Book”.  Consumers started to use the web to search for properties however generally speaking information was a bit spotty.  There were no really good search sites and the Internet though recognized for its future importance was still a bit of a novelty for most.

Fast forward to the mid 2000’s.  Everything that was in The Book is now on The Web…  Consumers have quit stopping by real estate offices in the volume that they used to, they are now contacting agents on the web to ask questions.  They are finding great websites to search with better information then they could ever find in a real estate office.  Agents are now getting consumers leads to their Blackberry’s and iPhones.  The need to go into the office is losing its appeal and for many agents its more of a time waster.  Consumers are now coming up with their list of properties they want to look at and in many circumstances know a lot more about the homes they are interested, the zoning, the schools, the neighbors and the neighborhoods then the agents they are contacting.  By the way, I’m not saying the agents aren’t competent at all, what I am saying however is the web based agent has to cover a larger geography then the traditional old school agent and is really becoming more of a facilitator then the holder of the information or “The Book”.

Now if we look at the original reason why agents needed to work in a broker’s office the primary reason was because that was were the listings were and that is where consumers were conditioned to go to get access to the listings.

Today broker’s have a big challenge on their hands because they are forced to provide value to agents who really don’t get a lot of value from the brokerage bricks and mortar themselves.  Brokers are forced to cut sweet heart deals to agents for fear of losing the revenue associated with that agent but this is a major slippery slope because ultimately any deal cut for one agent makes it to all other agents who are working in that firm or prospective agents looking to join.  Now the broker is forced to do more with less and the agents know they can get more for less.  As much as a broker will attempt to differentiate based on their personal interaction with the agents, and that will work for a while, eventually agents will defect to where they can again get more for less and since the biggest commodity that the brokerage used to have and that was the listings and the customers walking through the doors on a regular basis went away because of the web, their relevance to the agent community at large is one of branding and not substance.

So where does that leave us.  The first major challenge is for agents and brokerages to recognize that the value is no longer in the listings.  Even though listings are important for branding and ultimately as a product to market and sell, they don’t mean a lot because of the MLS and the Internet.  The second major challenge is that consumers don’t say let’s go find ourselves a real estate office to find out what is for sale, so walk in traffic is at an all time low and going lower.  The market recently driven by the First Time Home Buyer tax credit will likely slow down again once the Government determines that it has done as much as it can to help stimulate the market and once again agents will be scrambling to take as much home from the transactions that generate and the traditional brokerages will be struggling with their overheads.

To put in perspective the cost of Bricks and Mortar runs between $2000 on the low side of the equation upward of $7,000 – $10,000 / year per agent.  If you don’t think broker/owners aren’t scared of what is going on in the economy, there is a reason why they are recruiting as aggressively as they are.

One more piece of puzzle relative to “Relevance”.

There has been value in the gathering of agents into an office whether daily or weekly, however the value has been one of Social Value.  This is really the nail in the coffin of Traditional Firms.  There is a major attempt by brokerages as a last ditch effort to stay relevant by talking about the value of an office, the value of being able to meet with the broker, the Sales Manager etc… and I agree these are valuable, however remember the late 1990’s when everyone recognized the future importance of the Internet.  Well we are all recognizing the importance of “Social Media” and in my opinion even more importantly, the importance of Immersive Social Web or what we are referring to internally as Web 3.0.

This really is the Shift that will ultimately change the landscape of real estate brokerages.  Whether it be the more superficial Twitter, Facebook, Flikr, Box.net, Google Wave, Orkut or any other number of quasi communication / marketing platforms, or what I consider the Virtual Office of the Future which duplicates the residual value of Bricks and Mortar in Virtual space, the landscape of work and how we do it is being forever changed.

The fact that I can blog on this site and in a matter of a few minutes to a few hours or days have 100’s if not 1000’s of prospective eyeballs read it and interact with me over this is nothing short of amazing and being able to do it from my Home Office which is quickly becoming command central for a multi-state real estate company is the future of our future as agents, brokers and owners.

The question is one of relevancy.  Is Bricks and Mortar relevant when an Immersive Web exists where you can interact from your home office in much the same way as you would in a physical Bricks and Mortar office?  Not everyone will engage in the immersive web today, but rest assured those in the late teenage years or early 20’s, those agents who will be moving into the workforce over the next 5, 10 and 15 years.  Those agents will naturally gravitate to an immersive experience.  That immersive experience will displace bricks and mortar.  Broker/Owners of traditional firms you are frogs in a pot of water that is getting warming and warmer all the time…  The problem is the frog dies before it knows its time to jump out.  Try as you might by the time you recognize that you need to change you are too weak to jump out of the pot.

Interested in more information on eXp Realty and where we think the future is headed, please feel free to email info@exprealty.com or call me, Glenn Sanford, Founder and CEO of eXp Realty @ 360-389-2426.

Over the last few days I've blogged on our eXp Realty Corporate site on the subject of Bricks and Mortar.  The first Article is "The Relevance and Future Demise of Bricks and Mortar" and the second one is "eXp Realty and Being a Green Real Estate Firm".

I blogged the second on based on some ideas presented by Terry Watson at a great presentation I saw down in Everett yesterday and he talked about putting information about being Green and talk about Carbon Footprint.

I thought a bit about it and thought maybe I would talk about the difference in Carbon Footprint between an agent who works out of their home (like in our model) vs someone who works out of a typical Bricks and mortar office.

There was also a bit of talk about a Green designation and the like, however I digress.

I wrote the article and it turns out that when you factor in commute, heat, air conditioning etc...  The additional Carbon Footprint cost of driving to and from an office 5 days a week is 5.652 tons of additional CO2 emissions per year.  This was actually light because I was factoring in a commute to the office of 5 miles each way and the national average commute is 12.5 miles each way.

I did think, Okay, 5.652 tons is a pretty big deal, but how much of a big deal is it.

The first thing you have to determine is where is most of that Carbon Footprint coming from.  Well it turns out that most of it is coming from driving.  Something like 90% of it comes from driving.  The rest comes from the 100 square feet on average that an agent takes up.  If you figure out that other people have to show up as well to the office, the cost per agent goes up again but I digress once again.

Now I thought, how does that compare with a home office.  In most cases most of the costs associated with a home office are already paid for by reason that there is already a home.  The cost of heating the home office is rather negligible and it turns out that running a computer an extra 8 hours a day only adds about 44 lbs of CO2 per year to your footprint.  Even printing is a very minor addition of less then 100 lbs / year of CO2 output with something like 5000 pages a year being printed.

The difference in Carbon Output of a Home and a Home where a Home Office is present goes from something like 2800 lbs of CO2 per year to a whopping 3000 lbs of CO2 output and we if we use energy smart light bulbs, recycle everything we can we will reduce our CO2 output by something like 500 lbs per year.

Compare that to the over 10,000 lbs of CO2 increased by going to an office every day you can see how anyone who is serious about the environment can make an immediate major impact on their Carbon Footprint by working out of their home as much as possible.

The Crazy Talk is when you compare the 200 lbs of additional CO2 output by working out of your home office vs the 10,000+ lbs (5.652 tons) of CO2 output created when you commute to work on a daily basis going to the office doesn't look like a very Green Option.  In fact you could almost say that working out of a Bricks and Mortar office in the face of the alternative of working out of ones home office is downright wasteful.

Think about what is 200 lbs of addition CO2 Output / 10,000 lbs of CO2 Output for going to a Bricks and Mortar office.  We are talking 2% of the CO2 Output of going to a Physical Office or by going to a Bricks and Mortar Office you are increasing your Office CO2 Output by 5000% or 50x your Home Office Output.

Think about the looks we give someone for now recycling their newspaper.  They could recycle their newspaper till they are blue in the face and they wouldn't even approach the impact of working from one's home office even one day a week and yet we don't typically don't look at our neighbor and go, what the hell are you doing driving to work, don't you know that increases your Carbon Output.

It's interesting being a pioneer looking to embrace new technology before the masses.  Obviously there is a lot of talk about what a virtual office might look like however we believe we have a pretty good handle on the concept of the virtual office.

Remember the movie disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore?  Remember the virtual environment that the company they worked for was developing...  Well that technology now exists today and more importantly we are using it...

What you may ask am I talking about.  I'm talking about virtual persistent 3D virtual offices where we can interact in a shared environment which closely approximates that of bricks and mortar...  We have been using this "Second Life" type environment now for almost 2 months and I'll be honest the results are nothing short of extraordinary.  Our productivity has went through the roof and meetings which would have been almost impossible to have IRL without significant expense and travel are now done inside of a virtual environment.

So I have digressed and now to the meat of the Post:

A typical day at the Virtual Office.

I'll usually roll out of bed around 6:15 - 6:30 in the morning... Grab a bite to eat of breakfast and then get in front of my machine, put my headset on and launch eXp Virtual (our virtual office platform).

I'll normally stop by the eXp Operations room to meet with our Outsource team.  These are members of our team who work outside of the borders of the United States and do development work, manage our Newsletters, do some of web and collateral material development work.  We'll review what they had worked on during their day (our night) to see what progress they had made on the different projects they are working on.  That meeting will usually last from 7:00am - 8:00am.  Keep in mind we are all in Avatars, all with headsets on and we are sharing screens working on documents and demonstrating task level work which has been done or trying to determine what the next steps.

8:00 - 9:00am I just into our leadership team meeting inside of the eXp Boardroom.  Currently we are working on getting Arizona opened up so typically I'll meet with our broker for AZ, our President (also in Arizona) as well as our onshore IT/Development and Administrative Team.  All of us are logging in from their homes but we all work together.  Normally this group will range from 8 - 11 people depending on what is going on.

On Monday at 9:00am - 11:00am is our eXp Barcamp.  This is a relatively unstructured collaborative meeting where everyone is encouraged to bring something they are passionate about and run a meeting of their own for 30 minutes.  We'll start by all getting together initially in one common space and breaking out into smaller groups to discuss the topics which we have brainstormed to be facilitated.

On Tuesdays is our Washington State and Arizona State Company meetings.  Similar to the office meetings in a Physical Office we meet online in our Virtual Theatre and go over all the materials which we need everyone to stay current on.  We might display a video, Powerpoint, Wiki, Website or other materials during the meeting and everyone can ask questions and/or participate directly (via their headset) or via the ongoing Text Chat.

At 11:00am - noon I typically meet again with our developers to see any demonstrations that they might be needing to discuss directly.  We'll review where the current state of the Application is and if necessary run some test data through it before moving it into our production application.  All the testing will take place online.

Noon: Well a guy has to eat, so I'll typically break and go to lunch with someone IRL.  Somewhere around 2:00 - 2:30 I'll get back online with either individual agents to do presentations for them or collaborate on a project or open up a round table to talk about a subject to get us further down the road of having a totally defensible business model.

3:00 - 4:30 I'll start to wrap up the day with different people who have been up to different projects.  Again keep in mind that everyone is working out of their homes which is what makes this totally amazing.

There may be a couple more occasions in the office between 4:30 and the time I hit the sack however the bulk of the work is done between 7:00am - 4:30pm.

Bottom line is productivity in all measures has went up, agents and staff are engaged and even though we all work out of our homes we're all having a great time.

Well yesterday was that time of year again.  EdCon...  The Education Conference put on by the Washington Association of REALTORS.  For clock hours its really the best deal in Washington State.  Last year I was pretty busy so I didn't get my clock hours in and I'll be honest I did get my back up against the wall this year as my birthday is coming up like tomorrow...

What I found quite interesting was that EdCon really embraced some of the Web 2.0 technologies this year.  Many of the speakers were talking about box.net as a way to share and store files.  As a real estate company we are actually using it as our Paperless office.  The Virtual Office of the Agent...  Pili Meyer.  She talked about using GotoMeeting and/or GotoWebinar for Broker to Agent communications as well as Agent to Consumer communications...

Gee Dunsten was all about business planning...  Awesome stuff on the 5 stages of an agent's business.

1 - Creative Stage

2 - Directing Stage

3 - Delegating Stage

4 - Cooperative Stage

5 - Collaborative Stage...

There was tons of other great stuff however I figured I would drop a quick note while I was still thinking about it.

BTW: Check out our new company we launched last week eXp Realty.  We are the World's First Immersive Web 3.0 Real Estate Company :D

If you have followed my blogs here on ActiveRain in the past you'll probably know that I'm as much or more a business person then I am a real estate sales person.

That being said I / We have just completed our firth iteration in the real estate business.

Iteration 1 started on April 29, 2002 when I got licensed as an agent at Prudential Kelstrup REALTORS in Bellingham, WA.  During this time I personally built and managed my own lead generation, did my own transaction coordination, showed and negotiated purchase and sale agreements, paid my bill (with the help of my original mentor) and ultimately made a good living as a REALTOR.  

Iteration 2 - By 2003 I was starting to generate leads in multiple markets and started to refer some leads out to agents in my office and a few other Prudential Offices around the Pacific Northwest.

Iteration 3 - March 2004 - Started a couple of real estate teams inside of Keller Williams.  1 - In Bellingham, WA and another in Seattle WA.  By 2005 we added a couple more teams.

Iteration 4 - April 3, 2007 - Fully Vested in the Profit Share program in Keller Williams I decided to start my own firm, BuyerTours Realty which was essentially our team in our branded real estate firm.

Iteration 5 - October 2009 - This last week we launched eXp Realty as the World's First Fully Immersive Web 3.0 Real Estate Company.  The last three months has been the most intense 4 months of my career and its been totally worth it.  Without going into too much detail on this post, we believe that our new model will totally redefine being Virtual without feeling like you have given up any of the interaction and collaboration typical of bricks and mortar.

More to come...  Now got to get to finishing up that Press release ;) that I've been meaning to get to the last couple of weeks.

One of my favorite subjects relating to the real estate industry is business planning.  In my opinion its a subject that is given much lip service by agents and managers however the actual execution of a well built business model is a rarity though any agent, manager or owner could if they so desired really develop and execute against a business plan or model.

That being said, in the book, "The Millionairre Real Estate Agent" by Gary Keller one of the basic premises is how to grow a real estate business into something that produces revenue month after month, year after year and the ultimate goal is to either hire a manager to run your business and/or to sell your business when its your time to start to take it easy.

We all know of what look on the surface to be relatively successful real estate teams and or agents in our marketplace and a lot of agents make truly failed attempts at scaling up their businesses to look like those of their competitors.

As one of those competitors I truly sometimes wish I had the business of an individual agent then the larger enterprise of meeting payroll, lines of credit, P&L's, Balance Sheets, IRS filings, taxes and the many additional features of a business.  Sometimes at the end of the day the net income seems small relative to the amount of work necessary to get a business in place.

That being said, I always go back to the basics, or as Stephen Covey put in his 7 habits book.  Always begin with the end in mind.

In your Real Estate practice, the end in mind should be your exit strategy.  In Stephen Covey's book his end in mind was the ultimate end, or the passing to the other side.  In our case relative to the real estate business, it should be "how do I want to turn over my real estate business to someone else to run with?"

Of course this is not a simple question, because begining with the end in mind ultimately means that you have to examine things like, what does your business stand for, how do consumers perceive it?  What the difference between my business and someone else's business?  What is that differentiation?  Is the differentiation scalable?

Experience says to me that most agents will either not be able to answer these questions with any significant authority even after they take time to think about their business.  That's not to say an agent isn't smart, ambitious, or even hard working.  The reality is that great ideas for a lot of agents are either unatainable or not realistic to begin with.

So assuming that is the case for most agents then what is their choice given their given predicament?

Maybe they should invest in someone else's business.

What do I mean?  There are real estate offices that are already established that maybe you can either earn some sweat equity in by providing knowledge and efforts or if you are able you could potentially look at making an actual financial investment in the company.  Assuming that you have chosen the right company to back either physically, financially or both you may be able to get a return and potentially generate enough free cashflow necessary to create some financial independence from the rat race of always having to rely on the next sale.

Maybe it makes sense to join a company that provides some incentives for helping the office or company grow.  Keller Williams and Exit Realty are the best examples of this, however our company though small provides revenue sharing opportunities for its agents.

Ultimately what you want to be able to do is to be able to step away from the business and still earn some ongoing compensation.

Of course there is always investing in real estate which cashflows and ultimately provides ongoing income from rental properties which having the principal repaid over time by tenants.

Anyway I hadn't blogged for a while but this is a subject that I think about often and I truly believe that if you are in the real estate business you are already in control of your destiny, if you'll only define what that is.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC
http://www.BuyerTours.com/

& Real Estate SEO

Short Answer is they can.  The reality is that they can't stand each other.

First, Let's start with our Sales Person.  You know who you are.  You're excited you have a prospective buyer / seller in front of you and you sell.  You've got the Mike Ferry Scripts happening, you've got the contracts going back and forth, you love negotiating.  It's in your blood.  When you're selling, you're alive.  You are a wheeler dealer.  You make things happen rather then waiting for things to happen.  You are proactive.  If you don't have a client, you'll get get one.  You eat what you kill.  You know the drill...

Now let's put on the Marketing Hat: You are about Lead Generation.  You are a major Quadrant II person.  You have a plan which you review and execute against.  It's not about making the sale, it's about making the phone ring and you can do that.  You've run the ads in all the right places, your website is humming, you've got traffic and you want more of it.

Now your Business Owner Hat: You're questions are, What business are we really in?  You've got your SWAG..  I mean business plan.  It's about ROI and asking, should we even be in the real estate business?  Where can we get traction in the marketplace?  Can we adequately defend this part of the market?  What about our team?  Do we have the right people on the right seats on the bus.  Is the bus pointed the right direction?

I've transitioned over the last seven years from Sales and Marketing to Business Owner and Director and for me it was a natural transition.  It was obvious that if I was going to have some sort of sembelence of sanity in my life I didn't want to continue to be trying to make the next sale...  IMHO that would have been the path to burn out for me.  Nothing wrong with it, I just knew that for me there had to be a better way.

What I find more mentally challenging is the fact that agents generally tend to not move from Sales very well.  They are focused on finding the next customer that they never take the time to put together a marketing plan.  Generate the inbound call necessary to scale a business.

If success leaves clues.  Here's a big one: You can't scale a one-to-one sales business.  The best you can do is create a mini team, but ultimately that's about the best you'll be able to do.  Maybe get a couple of buyer's agents and a couple of assistants and then work your butt off to make sure that you make payroll every month.

Real Estate brokerages thrive on the fact that Sales People aren't good at marketing or running businesses.  They aren't even very good at protecting their paycheck.  Fortunately for the brokerage, there are a lot of agents running around making enough transactions, not scaling their business that they can simply aggregate them under one roof and call themselves a brokerage.  From time to time someone will outgrow the fishbowl, but generally speaking agents are like the elephant with the piece of string hanging off their leg.  They don't believe in their own ability to move up into marketing or business ownership that they ultimately have little to show for themselves at the end of the day.

Sure business people are competitive.  They more then most understand that the fights become more important the larger they grow, so choosing the right fights and making sure you win them is key.  But just like a begining sales person, a begining business owner has to start somewhere and there is no better teacher then failure as long as you are willing to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and give it another shot.

I remember reading The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller and having started a number of small businesses including a couple which I ultimately was involved in getting to the public markets, Gary simply stated the "Self Evident" principals of business and packaged them up for real estate agents.  The only challenge is that most agents didn't have past business experience to match up the book against.

Ultimately they didn't have the 10,000 hours in the business game to be able to jump in and take it to the next level.

The other challenge for sales people is that once they have the "experience" they often don't believe in that experience.  They still have emotional wounds from attempting different aspects of the business and don't realize that now they know how not to do it, so they really are prepared to fight the big fight.

The basic question still remains: Can Sales People, Marketing People and Business People Occupy the same body.

I think my answer is they can, but not at the same time.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC

Looking for a home in Bellingham Washington.  Check out our Bellingham Real Estate website http://realestate.bellingham.net/

I just saw a Tweet go by on Twitter from @TyDowning: 

Plz RT Let's help our own @TimMoore sell his home in 70 hours via ONLY SoMe!! - http://bit.ly/uf8bk - What a great LIVE case study!!

Taking a look at the Craigslist Listing and subsequent Facebook photos it seems that for a guy who knows Social Media he really hasn't spent a lot of time really trying to figure out how to really get this home sold.

Now I'm not saying that the idea is a bad idea but having thought about this subject for the last seven years and having read countless books on the subject of marketing and then comparing that to what actually happens in the trenches there are some glaring challenges for FSBO's no matter what method of marketing they choose.

Value of their time.  On the surface this seems like it might lean in the FSBO's favor.  They market a property themselves and save on the commission, however there is a significant discrepency of the actual returnable investment on the time invested.

What do I mean?  When I as a real estate agent market your home you are typically getting a large number of people and technologies marketing your home for you.  Most FSBO's don't sell because it is virtually impossible to compete with the MLS.  Your advertising dollars are worth less then an agents advertising dollars.

What do I mean by that?  When you spend money (if you choose to): You buy an ad to advertise your home in the newspaper, or even for that matter taking the time to put your home up on Craigslist, Zillow or other places and you get an inquiry on your home and invariably your home doesn't work for the buyer who inquired, what do you do with that buyer?  Ultimately you do nothing with them.  There is no opportunity for revenue if you don't have a home that specifically is looking for your home.  An agent.  Different story:  Advertising a listing which 5% of the time may lead to the sale of the listing, ultimately have a marketing vehicle to generate buyers and sellers.  Keep in mind that most agents are not making a significant income in the current market, so if you take into consideration the amount of dollars spent by an agent and them compare that to the one home that a FSBO has to sell its easy to see how a FSBO in order to create the enthusiasm necessary to sell his/her home may actually spend more (before a home is sold) then they would have paid an agent (after the home is sold).

How do 80+% of consumers search?  They search via sites like REALTOR.com, Major Real Estate Portals.  It turns out that the portals with the most homes are from websites that are extensions by membership of the MLS.  Craigslist may get the occassional investor or tire kicker, but serious buyers want to be able to bookmark and sort and visit a number of homes to make a decision on one.

Who represents most of the buyers in the marketplace?  Well its agents.  They are the ones working with clients to put together the list of homes to see, giving their opinions before even going into homes and for all intents and purposes nixing homes where they don't have a way to get paid for their efforts.

FSBO's are simply on the losing end of the marketing equation.  No matter how good you are at "Social Networking" the power of the coordinated masses (agents and their clients) will out perform the efforts of the one.

Are there cases where this isn't the case.  Of course there are.  But this is like pointing out that people win the lottery and suggesting that is a good reason to spend lots of money on lottery tickets.  Since we've heard about someone selling successfully FSBO we think we can sell on our own and less then 10% of the time the FSBO sale is successful.

Who watches over the pricing of a FSBO?  It's obviously buyer and seller, however in order to get a home sold doesn't the home have to be priced at a bargain price relative to other easier to view properties in the marketplace?  So does the seller actually net more?

Anyway enough comments on this prior Tweet.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC
Bellingham Real Estate

Yesterday I wrote a post on the subject of Commissions and the Rookie agent.  I got a lot of feedback however most of the feedback was about how taking a listing at a reduced fee was somehow unprofessional and that it showed weakness of the agent.  I won't get into the arguments here, however do feel free to review the original post.

Today I'm kind of interested in what are the Sacred Cows of Real Estate?

Commissions certainly fall in that category.

Another Sacred Cow seems to be that for an agent to have a growing business one needs to focus the majority of time aquiring listings.  I've certainly done well on the buyer side of the equation without many listings over the 7 years I've been in the business and in most respects I think that was a good decision for me.

What are some of the other Sacred Cows of real estate?  Do you have any that you think should be challenged as a norm for the industry?  Let's challenge them together.  Please feel free to reply to this post and we'll either start a new conversation on the topic or simply discuss it in the comments section.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
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Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC
Direct: 360-220-1470

http://www.BuyerTours.com/