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Full Service?! What is Full Service?

By
Real Estate Agent with Crye-Leike REALTORS

Who made the guidelines for don't ask don't tell in the military?

Who set the guidelines for daylight savings time?

Who set the guidelines for building codes within the Walt Disney World Resort?

Most of you will know the answer to 2 if not all the above questions. I really don't know the answer to my next question. If you know, please tell. 

Who set the guidelines Full Service regarding real estate agents?

I'm only guessing, but I don't know if anyone will have an answer.

Here is the reason why I ask.

I am associated with a fee for service company. I have and still do claim to be full service to every listing I take. Regardless of the fee, the lister will receive full service.  Now my competitors who cannot compete with the product I have to offer try to twist the truth and state I do not offer full service. Reasoning being, the homeowner has to show their own home.

Fact number 1: The homeowner does not have to show their own home, I'll do it.

Fact number 2: If the homeowner does show their own home, they are not receiving any less services.

Immediately some of you reading have just doubted my last fact. If you'll continue to read I'll make a valid point that may have some changing their mind about full service.

You list a home with as a "full service" Broker as opposed to a "Fee for Service" company offering "full service".   You show the home the day you list. Its not the right home for your buyer so you show the same buyer a home listed with another broker and your buyers make an offer that is accepted. Yeah, you made a sale!  The same day a broker form another company shows your listing and their buyers make an offer. You present it to your sellers and they get the terms worked out. Yeah you now have two in Escrow! Boy its a good day for you!

Now who is getting the service? Are you serving your seller by showing the home and not selling it?   Are you serving your seller by finding your buyer a home that fits their needs better? Is the agent from the other company working for your seller by showing the home or working for the buyer to find the right home?

The point is, showing a home is not a service to the seller. It is a service to the buyer! You show your own listings with the hope of getting the co-op amount. We all know you make more by selling your own homes. But you don't get paid for the "service of showing the home" unless you sell the home. That service pays only if you sell the home to your buyer, therefore, it is a service to the buyer for which you're paid!

I am a fee for service listing agent, and I offer full service. The problem is that many agents have never been associated with a fee for service company and do not know the system we use. Those that have been previously associated with such a company, are either disgruntled, never understood it in the first place and that is why they are no longer there, or have started their own company and have decided to use the same mis-information tactics.

To press the issue for those that still doubt my point of showings being a service only to the buyer, I'll make one last point.

My wife bought some very nice furniture at an estate sale with the idea to resale. Instead, I used that furniture to stage a home on a new vacant listing.  Everyone agrees staging a vacant or new home helps sell it, right? right!. Since the sale of that home, I have used the furniture twice for the same reasons. So I offer sellers of new construction or vacant homes, staging of the property for free!  Its' part of my Full Service!

So can I say that everyone that does not stage homes does not offer full service? By the way, I even do yard maintenance for vacant homes, for free! do you? Then are you a full service agent? 

 

 

 

 

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Fred Griffin Florida Real Estate
Fred Griffin Real Estate - Tallahassee, FL
Licensed Florida Real Estate Broker

We invite you back to ActiveRain in the year 2016!

  Much has changed since your last visit.  We would welcome your return.

Aug 04, 2016 08:37 AM