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Land of the brokers: communication evolution

Email|Link|Comments (7) Posted by Rona Fischman August 18, 2009 02:19 PM

As most of you know, I am a person of sound self-esteem. That’s why I don’t take it personally when I don’t get calls back from other agents.

I remember when everyone in real estate had an answering machine. Yes, I am a dinosaur. The days of busy signals evolved into the age of voicemail and call interrupt – I mean -- call waiting. By the early 1990s, most agents had cell phones, but still used an office land line for business calls.

In the days of yore, the norm was that some offices had paid staff that did all the scheduling; some had agents doing required hours on the phone scheduling for everyone. Sometime in the past few years, a majority of agents began to either use MA PASS or do their own scheduling. A few offices still do their scheduling from their front desk. They are few and far between.

With a large number of agents who schedule for themselves comes a new set of protocols. Since agents use cell phones as the place to call, my scheduling calls interrupt business as well as social time. This gave rise, initially, to comments like “I’m driving, can you call back and leave a voice mail with your contact information and the time?” The next generation of this is “please email me your contact information and the time.”

Now, some appointments are wholly made by email. That works fine unless my initial email lands in their junk folder… (It happens.)

Recent history: I wanted to show a two-family house on a Wednesday. I called on Monday. No call back. I tried again to show this property on the next Monday. Three calls later, I got the agent live. She’ll call back, she says. I email a follow-up the night before the scheduled showing. I get an email back that the tenants are not cooperating; it can’t be shown. Since then, the price has dropped. The agent never called back to see if my client still wants to see it. I had another agent who never called me back, ever. Her supervisor gave me the lockbox code after six calls to the agent, three emails to the agent, and two calls to the office. That property is, of course, empty and still for sale.

Beyond being a royal waste of my time, the true victims of this kind of behavior are the sellers. If the property isn’t being shown, it isn’t going to sell. Period. And, yes I do see more of this behavior in two and three family homes and low-end properties.

My questions are twofold:
1. Sellers, do you check to see how often your property is being shown? Do you know how your agent handles showings?
2. Has communication (particularly scheduling) changed in your business? Or is this a real estate agent thing?

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7 comments so far...

I worry that this is a real estate agent thing. That even a seasoned buyer's agent often encounters unprofessional behavior when it comes to commmunication, scheduling, and interacting with fellow brokers and also their own clients is depressing.

(I can only speak about working with agents vis a vis rentals, but it is frustrating to deal with the many rude, disorganized, imprecise, presumptuous people in that market, and I'd be far more annoyed to deal with them as a potential buyer or seller.)

Posted by jchristian August 18, 09 02:50 PM

(This is kind of off-topic and it may be worth discussing another day.)

"If the property isn’t being shown, it isn’t going to sell. Period."

Rona,

Do you think that this would change if the pricing system for agents changed? I am curious what your opinion is about this. It seems to me that the current system tends to foster "bad" agents. I think if more agents refused listings that are priced too high and more sellers did their homework about the agent's competence, it would help get rid of the sellers that are not really interested in selling their home and the agents that are not doing a good job at marketing/selling their listings.

So instead of a %commission, sellers would pay a flat-fee to agents to list the property and then a flat-rate "bonus" once the place is sold. Ditto for the buyers agents, paid for by the buyer. As a buyer, I think that would go a long way to helping eliminate MY distrust of buyer's and seller's agents because it is in the agents' benefit to get the highest price, to the detriment of the buyer. And as a seller, I would have to be very serious about selling and I would be sure to check on my agent to make sure they have a very good sale history, etc before I paid them any money.

Posted by melonrightcoast August 18, 09 02:54 PM

From reading your columns, you appear to be on the ball and report on some of the skeletons in our real estate closet which our sellers mostly never see. In most States out West, unless a property is more than $5M or is a celebrity owned home (famous athlete, corporate CEO, etc) the house is on a Lock Box!! We are instructed to call the agent and oftentimes, the seller directly, to let them know that we’ll be showing the home. This really helps when we’re out with a buyer – especially an out of town or relocation buyer – and we need to see a lot of homes in a limited amount of time. Also, many times I’m driving down the street and the buyer sees a home they’d like to see and if it matches their criteria, we call and can get inside – 95 times out of 100.

I can’t imagine how you show homes and do the best job you can for your sellers with all of the restrictions you place on showing their home. As we say in sales, “A delayed sale is a lost sale” and often when you can’t see a home ASAP, the buyer will find another, especially if they are under a time/pressure deadline.

We are also a big believer in sales teams – which I see is not big in your area - so that we can bring the added value of our individual strengths and let others who have different strengths add their value to our mutual buyers or sellers.

I’ve heard the argument that it is best for the listing agent to personally show the home as they would know the most about it and has the greatest stake in selling it. Sorry. Since none of your preliminary title work or home inspections are done up front before you place a home on MLS (which we do out West), even your best listing agents are not 100% certain as to the property they are attempting to sell! Crazy and backwards in this day and age. The sellers are clueless, as they think all agents are the same and oftentimes just hire their girlfriend to market the home and hope for the best.

From what I’ve seen out here in the instances where the home is not on lock box is what you described in your blog post. The agent is on vacation, they have no one to cover for them (without having to pay another agent to open the door in their absence), they are “technology challenged” and don’t check their voice mails, etc. These agents and their sellers think they control the buying process and if a buyer is interested enough, they and their agent will knock themselves out to show the home. Sorry. Those “old school” tactics don’t work any more.

Posted by Agent West August 18, 09 03:09 PM

Hi West,
We have different expectations in different towns here. Some towns have a norm of accompanied showings - it is considered a security thing as well as a sales thing. Some have the expectation that every house will have an electronic lockbox; an agent can get in as long as the resident doesn’t mind. Some have a combination lockbox; an agent can show it with the combination as long as the resident doesn’t mind. Some towns have a mixture of lockboxes and agent showings.
The problem here is not always with the accompanied showings. As I stated above, I stood on my head to get a combination for an empty place.

Posted by Rona August 18, 09 04:14 PM

I wonder if this lack of professional courtesy is a result of Realtors who got into the business during the boom and are now getting shaken out of it? My dad was a Realtor (I worked in his office off and on when I was in high school), and I remember him saying that one thing he didn't like about a hot market were the number of "amateurs" who decided that real estate would be a good way to make quick money.

Surely the long-time pros in the business don't behave so carelessly?

Posted by Susan August 18, 09 04:24 PM

Susan, you hit the nail on the head. The barriers to entry for selling real estate are basically non-existent-- i.e. pay a couple hundred bucks, sit through 24 hours of classroom instruction, and pass an easy multiple choice exam. Consequently, there are a lot of incompetent dingbats in this business.

Posted by Lance Stapleton August 18, 09 08:59 PM

Downtown San Francisco has accompanied showings because the units are mostly multi-level buildings in an urban setting. The showings are also accompanied downtown as many of the buildings have doormen and security systems, so a lock box wouldn’t work. In all the surrounding towns, we use electronic lock boxes, which tells the listing agent what the name of the buyer’s agent who showed the property and the time and date. It is quite common for a town such as Atherton, where the least expensive home is around $2M (usually a distressed property), with the bulk of the homes between $3M to $5M, up to a maximum of $17M, for lockboxes to be used.

We Realtors are all licensed and insured, and though there can be a security issue, we rarely have had any problems. We have more security issues with open houses and having on-line virtual tours of the home as part of our marketing, but we still use them! We never use a combination lockbox, as that would be a security nightmare. Those are only used temporarily for trades people, repair people.

• The systemic and never ending problem of our industry is that we have over 1M Realtors, which means we have over 1M independent, private business women and men running their own businesses, regardless of the name over the door at the Real Estate Company where we park ourselves and hang our license. There are no standardized systems for running a real estate business - agents are independent contractors who are responsible for developing their own business and service models. This results in inconsistent (often incompetent!) service because it’s beyond their expertise to build them.

• There are no systematic mechanisms in place to regulate real estate agent performance - we’re free to practice at any level of competence as long as we retain our licenses, which involves 24 hours of continuing education training every 4 years and not running afoul of the law. Only public complaints filed with the CA. Department of Real Estate or legal troubles separate the professionals from the rest. Otherwise, we all look the same.
The bottom line: Selling homes is a highly intangible, service related business. As a result, most prospects can't identify the Realtor best suited for their needs.

Posted by Agent West August 18, 09 10:05 PM