The saga continues
It’s Thursday. 5:17
72 hours ago I became a lead. Today, I feel ignored. Unimportant. I feel that maybe I failed to clearly express my needs to the agent on whose website I was captured. Maybe I wrote something that rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe she’s sick. Or lying in the hospital victim to a crime. Or illness. If that were the case, I would feel horrible for even thinking that maybe she doesn’t care. Or worse, can’t do her job.
I want to believe that real estate agents are good people who wake up every morning hell bent on doing right by their customer. I know they want to sell their listings. I know they want to get their buyers into new homes. I know they want to build their new client base. I know they want to build deep seeded loyalties with past clients. I know they want to make as much money as they possibly can and live wonderful lives.
Then why aren’t they?
I think they have no idea how.
And I wonder… who’s to blame?
I believe we are all responsible for our own actions.
I believe that our success or failure rests upon our own shoulders.
I believe that if you take your life in your own hands, you can’t blame anyone for your failures.
Yet I cannot bring myself to blame this agent.
A few months back Brian and I were in a cab in NYC and saw a huge ad posted on the side of building. It was a call to action for would be agents. He blogged about it the following week and it’s worth reading. It pertains to this.
Is real estate a career for just anyone?
Has it performed a disservice by importing people into it as easily as songs into iTunes?
What happens when an agent graduates and is awarded their license?
Are they ready?
Did they learn bedside manner? Marketing? Technology?
Have then been taught how to analyze cycles? How to analyze data? How to cope with bubbles or even what bubbles are?
Have they written a thesis or given projects to work on to help broaden their awareness or skill set?
Are they briefed on many online communities, forums and destinations that can help them grow, aspire and connect?
Do they know how to discern between the hundreds of vendors that will promise the earth and deliver them soil?
Are they taught how to properly price homes?
Are they taught how to negotiate through the home inspection?
Are they taught how to respond to an email inquiry?
I don’t know how long it takes for an agent to master their craft but however long that is, today in 2008, given everything from huge commissions to complex market trends, is it fair that agents are allowed to woodshed these critical skills on the consumer?
I don’t have all the answers. But I know this — the system is corroded if what I’ve been experiencing this week happens more than once in a blue moon. And if it is… the industry must consider its responsibility. Its stake in changing it. I refuse to believe there is an epidemic of agents in that don’t care about the consumer. And if that is the case, all the more reason to mend it.
But I actually believe most agents care.
I believe they love their job.
I am convinced they just don’t know how to represent.
The industry as a whole owes something to the agents it recruits. It owes them a more comprehensive education at the onset. Better training and internship once hired. And stricter standards along the way.
The industry owes something to sellers like the owner of the home I inquired about and never heard back on. The industry owes something to buyers — the ones who get sucked up into the vortex.
And the industry owes something to the professional agents who who kill for their clients but get lumped under the big tent of stereotype.
And the industry owes it to itself to live up to its self portrait.
- Davison
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Freaking...
I feel your pain! Yesterday I previewed a property that is perfect for my client. Called the agent; left a voice mail – twice. Sent an email – twice. 28 hours later… no response.
Did these 2 agents not come into the business with the simple basics of common courtesy?
This past week, I've had a real estate colleague ask my advise about various software products, action plans and goal setting. We scheduled an appointment today for some training… and she canceled. Two hours later, got an email asking my advice about a software program.
Lots of education opportunities. Lots of folks looking for the magic solution.
"Did these 2 agents not come into the business with the simple basics of common courtesy?"
Spend a few days manning a vendor booth at a conference Kathy and you'll think not.
But there has to be more to it than this. I just don't know what that is. What I do know, is that the more rampant this is, the longer it is going to take for the market to correct, for the industry to right itself, for homes to sell and for consumer trust to rise above 7% trust factor as indicated by Harris Interactive polls.
Thanks for your contribution!
***sigh***
Sadly Marc, I think your title for this part is wrong. You weren't abandoned at 72 hours. You were abandoned from the get go. (I suppose technically you weren't ever really abandoned as that implies that at some point you were "joined".)
Yes, the "barriers to entry" are ridiculously low. Yes, brokerages bring in new agents by the cartload and many provide little to no training, guidance or mentorship.
The industry is clearly partly to blame, but some responsibility also rests squarely on the shoulders of the agents themselves…
Looking at it from the inside… totally right Jay. Looking at it from the outside… totally right too. Within minutes I would have sourced other sites, other agents, other homes.
I felt that for the benefit of the doubt and sticking with industry stats, I should wait the customary 55 hours it could take to hear back on an inquiry even though 30 minutes is fast becoming unacceptable by the consumer.
I think it not my place to lay blame on the agent until I ultimately learn what happened and it seems more appropriate anyway for her to be judged by her peers rather than by me. I am, to a fault maybe, all to eager to give benefits to the doubt.
Can you clone yourself and move up here? Even for just one transaction?
keep your property safe so try
http://www.penplease.com for property hosting.
Marc, I think that the agent's page you went to was essentially a Real Estate Book page, from "Living Choices." Digging a little deeper, I searched on the company name, went to the company site and found that the agent is not listed on the page where all the agent's info was. Further, the house is not showing on the company's listings page. From this it would seem that the Living Choices page is really old information….
Now, if this is true, you would expect that the broker would have a system of following up on the communication from Living Choices, or to emails going to an agent who is no longer in the office.
Another question would be; is the lead communication system from a really old Real Estate Book ad still even functional….?
As agents contracted to represent the best interests of our sellers, we are responsible to understand how all of the "marketing" devices we use, like The Real Estate Book, actually WORK. This is becoming more and more difficult with all of the choices we take and the paths that our listing data travels on its way to the consumer. We have to know how each of our choices works over time, and only use ones that can be self-managed in some way to maintain the integrity of the consumers experience.
Beautifully written David.
Wearing my 1000Watt Consulting hat, I knew this to be true. But for this endeavor, I am wearing a consumer hat only and proceeding as I think they would and probably not have a understanding what a listing book is, that this would be an old listing or that Living Choices is anything other than the agents private brand or her brokers brand.
In thinking about the many avenues for distribution, I second your motion. The agent must be aware of all of them. Prior to entering this industry I owned a PR and management firm in NYC handling the career of performing and recording artists that had major label albums distributed all over the world. I started this firm in the mid 80's before PC's and even back then we had systems in place then to keep track of what radio stations were playing our artists singles, what outlets were selling their music (albums as they were once called) and where all the royalties where coming from. I poured through more reports per quarter than a real estate agent will ever do in a lifetime.
You are dead on! Despite the assortment of destinations a listing travels too, there are ways to track it and ways to make sure that contact forms are all routed to one destination.
Unfortunately, all the leads garnered from my local broker's webpage are also filtered through several levels before they reach my desk. I have to wonder how much time has elapsed before I get the email, since it's been forwarded and forwarded again before I get it.
I imagine this is the same system in many companies. I just hope Buyers and Sellers aren't getting trapped in a dead-end website with no one on the other end receiving the emails, but you've got proof of it happening, at least in this circumstance.
Bad planning, bad system.
Marlow, your post has given me an idea. It might be hair brained, it might be impossible to do, it might be something no agent would want to consider, but when conceived of through the eyes of a consumer, it may have considerable merit.
Your post has provided the muse for part 4 of this saga. I will post tonight.
Unfortunately, what appears to be old info is still being aggregated, distributed, pushed out, because didn't you find this through Frontdoor in the first place?
Makes a bit of a case for a unified system so the source can be updated, and at least a "no longer available" message could appear. In the end it creates consumer frustration, and the agency involved probably isn't even aware its happened (listing still being promoted), or that this off-shoot discussion is taking place on another corner of the web.
Very interesting case study in real-time. Keep up the good work.
I started my search on Frontdoor which is a great search experience. But like a good portal should it sent me to where the agent/broker would want them to go – to where the listing resides.
What I am doing here is keeping that distance between the mechanics of all this as an insider because I and all who are reading this most probably understand how all this works.
The goal is to offer some insight into the experience through the eyes of Joe Buyer who knows nothing about syndication, portals, expired listings or agents whose listings are sent to places they aren't even aware of.
Seems like we're all on the same page.
Thanks for posting and contributing.
Some good comments here. Sadly, this is not an isolated event. On any number of occasions I have been asked to analyze the website of real estate agents across the country. As part of that process, I complete inquiry forms and send direct email. Months, weeks and days have gone by without a response. This is the norm, I fear, which feeds the mistrust of the consumer.
Could it be more of a problem with LivingChoices.com or rather the general attitude of the Realtor? Selecting the first 3 properties gives you less than 10 total pictures from properties collectively worth over $12M. Many of the agents pushing these properties tend to have been in the industry a long time and maybe they haven't kept up with the changes. I had one agent tell me she turned off her texting on her phone, while we were sitting in a condo who's target client is a Gen Y who's constantly texting. How disconnected can you be to your potential buyers? The only saving grace is that the industry will displace those that can't or won't adapt. I always look at the Apple stores to see where we are moving to. When Apple announced downloading movies from ITunes to your TV appliance, what's to keep a buyer from surfing ITunes and watching a virtual tour from the comfort of their home on their HDTV? Agents need to embrace their local "geek".
LOL. Embrace local geek. I like that.
Marc-
I'm in a "situation" with an agent who I referred a buyer to.
Long story short, she dropped the ball through the entire transaction. I had to play clean-up.
She blamed everyone and everything. Excuse after excuse. To me excuses are failures and anything less than perfect is unacceptable.
This is very interesting series, unfortunately.
Sorry to hear about this Kevin. As if you don't work hard enough.
Was this a Realtor you regularly refer too?