My World: Playing poker and selling houses
I read this article here on Active Rain today. I thought it was well written. So I decided to use this handy dandy re blog feature to others can also learn from this resourse. Thanks
It never fails to irritate me when I'm faced with arranging showings and I run into an agent who seemingly doesn't want his seller's listing to be shown. Most of the time, it's easy to find out showing instructions by making a call or clicking on the Showing Button in the MLS. A certain percentage of the time though, the showing button doesn't contain any useful information and you have to call either the listing agent or their office.
This is particularly problematical when the office is a one-person office. Some agents who have their own office and are in business by themselves are conscientious, but some are either over-worked or are otherwise too busy. We tried to schedule a showing for a house which was listed by such an agency only to find that the office phone number simply provided us with a commercial for Magic Jack and was apparently not actually connected. It makes you wonder how that person gets any business in the first place!
Another agent informed us that the property in question, which had just been listed as a short-sale, could not be shown, since he was too busy and the sellers were leaving town for 10 days and didn't want him to show it until they were present anyway. Two questions came to mind immediately: First, why would you list something which couldn't be sold? Maybe because you needed the practice or possibly just enjoyed filling out the forms? The second question arose as a dark suspicion that possibly the agent was thinking that he would make sure that he was the only one who could show the property for some reason or another. I don't like to think that way, but sometimes you just can't help it when things don't make sense otherwise.
Real estate is sort of like playing poker, you should play the hand you're dealt. Here's a joke which relates:
Four cowboys were at the old saloon in Reno playing poker. A lot of money was at stake as the cards were dealt, and each was keeping a sharp eye on the other.
As one of the players called the hand and laid out his cards, another one jumped up in amazement and exclaimed, "Hey, George is cheatin'. He ain't playin' the cards I dealt him!"
You've got to play the game according to the rules and in the case of real estate as in the case of poker, it's your job to learn them and to abide by them.
There are several factors in selling a house: price is the main one, but location, condition, terms, the agent's ability and marketing budget, and the ease of showing are all important. Why, oh why do sellers sometimes refuse to make it easy to show their house? Even more importantly, what kind of job are agents doing for their seller, when they don't make it easy to get showing instructions and don't teach their sellers how important showings are?
You can't sell property without having people inspect it (well, 99% of the time you can't). Every cent of every marketing dollar I spend is spent with the intention of generating showings. If I failed to return a phone call asking about showing a house I had listed, that is potentially money that I spent on generating that phone call that I just wasted. Of course, if the agent just puts a property in the MLS and does nothing else to market it, perhaps they don't really worry about marketing dollars in the same way.
We had a case a few weeks ago where the listing agent finally returned a call about showing instructions a week after our buyer had finished their viewing trip to Orlando. This person called and tried to convince us that our buyer should actually consider flying back to town just to see their listing! If you want a showing badly enough to go to that length, why not just return the call on a timely basis in the first place?
The real estate business has a few concrete requirements and one of them is that you must have the dedication to ensure that you're always in contact. If you have to leave town and won't be reachable, you'd better have someone who will do a good job of standing in for you. We've had a standing arrangement with another agent in our office to cover for each other. We give the other agent a small percentage of our commission and she gives us the same when we cover for her. I've noticed that the monetary exchange usually works out to be approximately equal at the end of the year. It's a nice win-win arrangement.
Have a great day and be sure to answer your calls - it could mean money in your pocket!
Namaste!
Comments(1)